Freiburg - Trolleys, Food, and Shoes

On Monday morning, Lydia had to go into Freiburg to teach her art students. She gave us minute directions on how to take the train, where to get off, how to catch the trolley and where to get off to meet her for lunch. No matter how detailed the directions are, the person giving them doesn’t anticipate the little things that can go wrong when a stranger attempts to follow them.

At the Emmendingen train station, just a couple of blocks from Lydia’s home, I saw this brave yellow daisy (botanists call these things dyds for “darned yellow daisy” because they are so ubiquitous and have a jillion different possible classifications, so I’m just calling it a daisy) in the middle of the tracks. Along came a train, whizzing over it, yet afterwards the little plant was still standing tall. That says something about the seed that’s sown in a horrible place but flourishes anyway.

Freiburg is rife with streetcars (trolleys or whatever you want to call them). The walking directions from the train stop to the trolley stop turned out to be not as intuitive as Lydia had thought. However, as we neared what we hoped was the right place, we saw a trolley with the right name on it heading almost where we thought it would be. Noticing where it stopped, we got there and hopped on the next one.

Helpful people – I love helpful people, and they are everywhere! – made sure we got off at the right spot to meet Lydia. It was an island in the center of a four-lane, heavily-trafficked boulevard. I couldn’t imagine that she would be able to drive up, stop, and pick us up without causing a major snafu, so we looked for alternatives. A pedestrian tunnel led under the street to either side. We chose the right side, which ended at a pretty little park, and waited for what seemed a long time. Then we went back to the island and waited until Mary decided to go to the left side and wait there.

I kept looking for Lydia’s car, rather than for Lydia. “Vickie!” I heard right behind me. There she was on the island, on foot. Mary saw her about this same time and came back.

“I’ve been waiting here, wondering if you’d missed the trolley,” she said. She must have arrived shortly after we left to go hunting for her. Of course, I realized, she would have parked and met us this way. Duh.

Happily, we all drove to Oma’s Kuchen (Grandmother’s Kitchen) for a spectacular outdoor lunch. By “spectacular” I mean ordinary simple fare made glorious by fresh ingredients prepared with love and imagination. FYI, I had a salad and polenta with white sauce and a veggie that was similar to the popular white asparagus which is quite different from our green asparagus. The restaurant is on the corner in a residential (apartments) district with tall trees shading the tables. Perfect, and only known to locals.

Lydia had another class to teach, so Mary and I went sightseeing and window shopping. The Munster (cathedral) was wonderful! I noticed that one of the male statues had two left feet. Sure, shoes weren’t usually differentiated as to side of body, but these – look at the photo and you’ll agree.

The outside is being cleaned to approach the beauty it had when it was first started back in the 1100s. The picture of the crane shows how it’s done, but the pedestal was moving as the cleaner rubbed it. I’m always flabbergasted by the architectural wonders that were built without the engineering helps we have today or even a hundred years ago. Not just European cathedrals, either, but spectacular achievements all over the world in all cultures.

Being a calligrapher, I was thrilled to see the work (first pic) by a master on the face of a printer's shop. Gorgeous, eh? Being an appreciator of graffiti when it doesn’t deface or degrade, I was not pleased to see the junk on this beautiful old doorway. We saw too much of this in Freiburg.

Window shopping – always awed by the shoes.

Am morgen, gehen wir zu Schwarzwald! (Tomorrow to the Black Forest!, and probably my German is incorrect. It’s hard to be correct in German with its odd rules of grammar and weird feminines and masculines – but I’d love to know it better.)