An End to the Family

...visit, that is!

Alright. I’m getting exhausted from blogging 5+ months worth of stuff for all you kiddies to read, but I know that I must persevere!! Therefore, I’m sorry for lack of quality from this point on.

All of this is written in bits an pieces, so I’m sorry for the discontinuity.

Saturday (waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in August somewhere, when they visited), I join Mom and Dad for breakfast at their hotel. It’s probably not allowed, but since they’re paying for Karin’s breakfast and she never eats, we figure it’s okay if I pick up the slack. I tried my best! We left shortly thereafter and headed towards Baden-Baden, which is sort of at “the beginning” of the Schwarzwald. As we got closer and closer, things started to look more and more French. We stop for about 25 minutes to run over to a café named “Koenig.” COOL. Then we spend 75 minutes trying to escape Baden-Baden (apparently a tunnel that we needed to get through was closed off, so the GPS lady was no help at all).

We come to Freiburg. Which is pretty much the heart and soul of Schwarzwald. Sorta. We drive into the pedestrian zone, but it looks like through traffic is permitted. Check in to the hotel, dump our stuff in our rooms (ALSO in the attic with no elevator! I am CURSED!!). Karin and I had windows which opened to the skinny alleyway, while mom and dad’s room had prime windows facing the street.

((EPIPHANY!! I never want to write my blog entries while I’m at work A) because that’s not what I’m supposed to do at work, and B) the keyboard is too high for me to be comfortable typing for extended periods of time. I really really like my computer’s feel to it as I type. AND SO, when I get home from work, I don’t feel like blogging, so it was a catch-22 (or something). Maybe an endless cycle of irony. Anyway, back to my story.)

Clock tower

So we get back to the car to try to find parking. Here’s where things got hairy. So we’re putzing along... continuing on eastwards from a point of origin which google maps tells me is actually at 47.993414° N, 7.850524° E. The road narrows. The pedestrians are looking more and more like beasts from the Black Lagoon, hungry for human flesh. The buildings lean in closer. Then the road disappeared. No really, it kind of disappeared. We stop. It seems like everyone is staring at us, and we can’t tell whether we’re allowed to drive forwards anymore, because NOWHERE IN GERMANY IS THERE AN ADEQUATE AMOUNT OF ROAD SIGNS!!!! So dad backs up a little bit, and goes up the hill to the left. Following a car. Or what we THOUGHT was a car. We go that way, before any of these pedestrian monsters try to eat us. We pass a monument. Wow, this really is a pedestrian zone. HOW did we get here? Oh well, might as well forge ahead, and hope we bust through it. Hey! Here’s a street! Hmm... it has tram tracks on it... Oh well! LET’S DO IT!! And all this time, we’re trying not to get run over by the trams, or drive into the gutter water troughs, or hit a pedestrian, and ALL THIS TIME, I’m cowering in the back, freaking out because I’m pretty sure that we’re not allowed to be driving where we’re driving. Long story short (...too late), we survive. And park. And walk to Hausbrauerei Feierling.

Note: The water trough thingies which are located where the gutters would be on pretty much every street in the downtown area of Freiburg used to serve a purpose. Something about there being either no fire brigade, or the houses were SUPER flammable (they flammed easily), so these troughs provided anti-fire measures. Also, if you stopped a couple water gutters up, the street would be flooded in no time flat.

Yes, this is their REGULAR Bier. It's
unfiltered, so that's why it is cloudy and
looks like a wheat beer. SO YUMMY!!

As we order, I repeat what my family says in English, to the waitress in German. I didn’t realize how rude that might have seemed until she walked away. Oops. So I drink my wheat beer. And it is delicious. And we eat our food. Equally delicious. And then, time stands still when I get my Feierling beer. Because: It. Is. GLORIOUS!!!!!!! Honestly, it was the best beer I’d had since being in Germany. So yummy. The only thing I can compare it to, in the states, is a better version of Leinenkugel’s Sunset Wheat. Seriously. So I’m feeling good, and when the waitress comes over to talk to us again, I didn’t even bother to translate anything into German. Haha. We take one more walk around, get some Häagendazs ice cream, mom tells me to inform the worker that there’s a hair in the display item (mission accomplished), and return to the hotel, victorious.

Duckies, swimming in one of the
gutter/water troughs which are
ALL OVER in Freiburg!

Wooden wall carving. I want one.



Flying Buttresses!!!



Sunday. What happened Sunday? I know that we drove around, checked out the cathedral pretty thoroughly (where my camera decided to kick the bucket), raided the souvenir shop (where I got an awesome satchel/bag/purse thing!!!), drank some hot cocoa (channeling the essence of cocoa bean... it was that bitter), and then left! The next eon was spent winding through the mountains of the Schwarzwald and the clouds and rain. It was very beautiful! Pretty sure dad drove the wrong way. But in his defense, he did take the shortest path to the Shell station. Point for dad!

And theeennnn..... I think we went to Hummelsteiner Park? The Biergarten? No, my previous blog tells me that we did that on Friday. Sooo... AH YES!! We sat down in the Biergarten area of the hotel where my fam was staying, and we all had one last Bier together in Germany. Aahhh!! :D And petted the kitty. The end. Then they left me :(

Thus endeth the visit by my famileee.