Last weekend, as is my wont at the end of a month, I hopped on a train again, this time to the opposite corner of Germany to pay my good friend and housemate Clarissa a long overdue visit. It's quite ridiculous that we'd not seen each other for over a year, so despite 6 hours and over €100 worth of train journey, it was well worth it :)
I actually arrived in Freiburg slightly ahead of Clarissa, as she'd been home for a few days, so I took it upon myself to wander around a bit. It's a nice little town, maybe a bit bigger than Västerås, but prettier. However, due to it's size, I was perfectly capable of doing the rounds of most of the sights before Clarissa even arrived, and did just that. After taking lunch in a café Johanna recommended to me, that is. And most spiffing it was too, but I won't go into detail, as I feel I've already written enough about food to fill a seperate blog on its own, and I'm sure I'll mention more later, too.
Clarissa rolled in about six o' clock, and our plan was to drop things off back at hers, freshen up a bit then go out and see where the night took us. However, a year of catching up takes its toll, and nearly 7 hours later we were shocked to find it was nearly 11 PM. As the weekend went on, we eventually came to realise that we were spending most of it in our own parallel dimension where time worked completely differently, and as such shock at where the real world was up to became a regular occurrence on the odd occasion we saw fit to interact with it.
In any case, we did eventually make it outside to a little bar which soon became the "local" for the weekend. Here we ate, drank and made merry all at the same time, but not for very long, because they were almost literally throwing us out when they closed at two. Having both had travel days, we were actually pretty tired by that point, so slumber was the best option anyway.
This slumber continued at a leisurely rate until well into the morning, though we still managed to complete our agenda for the day. Upon arranging my visit, Clarissa had stated that she "hoped I liked trees", as that was pretty much all the area had to offer. As luck would have it, I am partial to a good tree, and the Black Forest certainly has them in abundance. With this in mind, we too a tram, a bus and a cable car into the nearest corner of it, and had a wee ramble around the hills etc. We don't have much in the way of real forests in England anymore, and as most of my travels have been train-bound this year, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite on this scale before. It was amazing, and I was very happy.
Upon returning to the "centre" of Freiburg, we had a bit of a nibble and a drink, which soon became a couple of cocktails, and before we knew it we'd lost time again. Despite this, we did eventually make it back home and then out again in time for a visit to Schlappen and then the local rock club,Crash, which was celebrating its 25th anniversary, or some such. As such, it was pretty busy and full of interesting types, our personal favourite being a pensioner in a suit and straw hat, with an impressive beard, who spent most of his time on the dancefloor. I don't know what it is about Germans, but they seem to have no shame in this kind of thing. It's great.
Sunday morning was once again late, so I shouldn't have been surprised or offended at the wry smile our waiter gave me when I asked for breakfast at 3 PM. But I was, and as he went on to speak to us in a combination of French, English and German, he gradually worked his way out of a tip, despite an excellent breakfast. Foreigners eh?
The rest of the day was spent pretty much in the same way, just in cafés, bars and Spielotheks...pretty much the only way there is to spend time in Freiburg, it seems, but pleasant nontheless. We arose a little earlier on Monday in order to take another extensive breakfast with another strange waiter before my train home. It was truly wondrous to see Clarissa again, and also fun to frolick in the Schwarzwald, a much-needed break before the onset of exams. This week, in between revising, there are two trips to the theater and a Porcupine Tree gig. More on that story later.
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