Freiburg

When people think of Germany they probably think of beer, pretzels, lederhosen, the Black Forest, and half-timbered houses. Well, a large portion of those things are mainly Bavarian traditions. The city of Freiburg, however, is a very quintessential German town located in Baden-Württemberg NOT Bavaria. It has the above mentioned half-timbered houses and it is nestled in the Black Forest. The city is filled with old world charm with evergreen covered mountains surrounding the city. It is really something to behold. After me and my friend left Heidelberg, we headed to Freiburg. It was unbelievably close to Radolfzell where we were there our first two months in Germany but a certain visit by the pope ruined a trip we attempted to make while we were in Radolfzell and much closer. You see, when the current pope recently visited Freiburg, no trains were going in to the city for saftey. Ughhhhh! Why does a whole city need to shut down just because the pope is visiting? Anyway, this time we made it to the city with no pope shenanigans. We arrived at night and made our way to our hostel. It was called the Black Forest Hostel which was very fitting because, we were, in fact, in the Black Forest. The whole hostel had a very bohemian feel to it with little mini Buddhist temples carved into the walls. You would be walking through the hallway and smell incense or see fresh flower petals laying on the ground. It also had a yoga/meditation space. There were a lot of people staying at the hostel. Freiburg is pretty touristy and I really couldn't find other quality hostels in the city besides this one. With that said, I feel like every tourist in the city was staying at this hostel. It was okay though because it was big with plenty of space. Me and my friend stayed there for two nights. We had originally only booked the room for one night. When we first checked in we said we might be interested in an additional night and the man at the desk said if we wanted to stay an additional night we would need to move to a group room instead of our private room for the additional night because someone had already booked that room for the following night. The following morning, we went to the desk to tell them we definitely wanted to stay another night but there was a woman there instead of the man. We told her we wanted to stay an additional night...she looked at the room chart and just moved the people who had requested the private room we were in to a group room even though they booked it first and probably wanted the private room. Ahhhhhh I couldn't believe she did that but I am glad she did because I didn't want to sleep with strangers. The next night I expected someone to knock on our door and scream "Give us our room back you thieves!" That, luckily, did not happen. The room was pretty cool. It had a little table for snacking and the door was really interesting.

This building was obviously not designed to be a hostel...stairs going to nowhere?

In addition to exploring our hostel we did eventually explore the city. One of the first things we did was check out the Freiburg Dom (church) while the sun was peeking out for a whole 10 minutes. I have developed somewhat of an obsession for climbing church towers in Germany now. You may recall that this obsession started when I climbed the church in Ulm which is the tallest church in the world. After that, everything seems so easy. This was not the tallest anything in the world but a very beautiful church nonetheless.

After our calves were thoroughly sore from climbing stairs, we decided to walk it off. We ventured into town. A new surprise lurked around very corner in Freiburg. The town had some really neat looking old buildings. I was also able to find something very interesting to eat. It was called a Baden-Württemburger. It was a burger but since were were in Baden-Württemberg it was not just any burger; it was a Baden-WürttemBURGER...get it? It was a pretzel bun with two Klops patties inside. Klopse are like little German meatloaf patties and pretzels are super German so this was a very German experience for me. I was in Himmel (heaven).

Me and my Baden-Württemburger.

One of the city gate towers. Do you see the McDonald's sign plastered on it? Even in old-world quintessential Germany, capitalism and fast food are creeping in.

The Herz-Jesu-Kirche Freiburg. I love how they designed the bridge to line up perfectly with the church.

One of the other city gate towers. They were both just beautiful.

And now we come to the last and my favorite part of this story. If you recall, I have been on a mad search for beer gummies ever since I had them my first day in Germany when we stayed in the dorms at a seminar building. Germany is full of gummy shops. They are just like they sound. Shops that really sell nothing but gummies. They are mostly bear shaped (Haribo) and the flavors are normally not too out of the ordinary. I had been to multiple gummy shops in Germany in search of the elusive beer gummies. They all had the same answer. They either did not have them or they used to have them but did not currently have them and didn't know when they were gonna get them again. Very frustrating. I started to question if I was still in Germany with how hard it was to find beer gummies. We stumbled upon a gummy store right by the Freiburg Dom. I thought they wouldn't have the beer gummies but I figured I would at least try. Good thing I did because THEY TOTALLY HAD THEM!!!!!!!! Endlich I had found them! I bought two bags. One for me to slowly eat through in Germany and one to send home. They are just the most amazing thing ever. I don't even like chewy, sugary candy (just every other kind of food) but these beer gummies are so amazing. The perfect combination of sweet gummy flavor with beer flavor. I even took a picture of them because I can't even find pictures of them on the internet. That is how elusive they are. Try it for yourself. Type "Beer Gummy" into Google. You will not find pictures like these. Sure you will find beer flavored gummies in beer glasses but you will not find beer glass shaped gummies that taste like beer. Amazing, just amazing. I let my host family try some and they said they had never even heard of them before. So some germans have never even seen them before.

My mouth is watering just posting this...