Days 117-121: Visiting an Old Friend in Germany

Visiting an Old Friend in Germany

Days 117 – 121

April 24 – 28

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

“It’s the little differences.  I mean they got all the same shit over there that they got here, but, it’s just – it’s just there it’s a little different.”

-Vincent Vega comparing Europe and the United States, Pulp Fiction

“The biggest difference between Europe and the United States is that Europeans complain more about Donald Trump than Americans do.”

-My cynical response to a Danish guy

The bus ride from Munich to Freiburg in Germany resembled the same bus ride that I had taken many times in the United States.  The language on the signs was different, but English is so widely spoken in Germany that the country is almost indistinguishable from the United States.  Almost. 

I met Kat four years ago when I was riding a motorcycle across Vietnam.  Our paths crossed at Easy Friends hostel in the mountain town of Dalat, a place so popular with French military officers during their 150 year colonization of Vietnam that the French culture permanently rubbed off on the town.  In my week there, I learned how powerful a hostel can be in shaping travel experiences.  If it wasn’t for the magnetic personality of Long, the hostel owner, Kat and I would have likely never met.  Consequently, I would have never rode a bus to the German city of Freiburg im Breisgau to visit Kat.  She messaged me when I made my first post about being in Europe, and after seven weeks I finally found the time to make my promised stopover. 

I arrived at midnight.  As I approached the door, I saw a note taped at eye-level and written in glitter pen: “Steve: Feel free to ring the doorbell when you arrive.”  I did as the note commanded, and an excited Kat flung open the door almost immediately.  She threw her hands up in the air and silently contorted her face into a scream, whispering “Oh my God, you’re here!” I did the same, and we hugged for the first time in four years. 

“Why are we whispering?”

“I don’t know!”

Kat invited me to the kitchen where we shared a few delicious German beers, reminiscing on the old times and catching up on the new.  During our conversation, I learned that my timing was impeccably bad: Kat was in the middle of writing her thesis, was swamped with work, and had plans to travel to Koln this weekend for a friend’s birthday.  But it’s more important to make the moments count, not count the moments, and I reasoned that any time spent with an old friend is better than no time.  

The next day, I met two of Kat’s roommates who helped me pick out a bicycle from their garage for a day of riding around town.  Because they needed theirs for work, they couldn’t loan them to me.  But, in the corner sat a bike that apparently belonged to no one; this one became mine.  Refilling the air in the tires was just the beginning of the troubles this bike had.  As a three-speed cruiser, it only had a front brake, which was broken in half.  Any of my instinctive hand braking was met with a squishy lever and no decrease in speed.  But even if the front brake was intact, the obtuse front wheel would have bounced around enough between the pads to make them useless anyway.  Fortunately, the rear brake worked, but not by squeezing a lever.  This one required pedaling backwards, like my bicycle I had when I was a kid.  I pedaled off, the bike squeaking and creaking with every rotation of everything on it.  And it was a good ride.

The day after, I strapped on my boots and took public transit out to the Talstation Schauinslandbahn, the cable car that lifts to the peak of Schauinsland (Germans have long words for everything).  But I didn’t want to take the lift; I wanted to hike to the top.  With a climb of 800 meters over a distance of 6 kilometers, it was a good way to stretch my legs after the last ten days of cities.  Fortunately, I got lost on my way up the hill, so my total distance for the day was closer to 20 kilometers, rather than the predicted 12.  This allowed me to see even more of the Black Forest, taking me to a few viewpoints that I would have never passed if I stuck to the original route. 

At the peak of Schauinsland, an observation tower rose another 30 meters into the sky, providing me with a 360 degree panorama of one of Germany’s most beautiful regions.  My stay at the top was short, however, on account of the cold and the wind.  I only brought a light warming layer, and any view point loses its novelty faster in the presence of discomfort. 

The view from the top of the observation tower.

In the Talstation at the top of the mountain, a heated restaurant served an
important staple of the German diet: beer.

Friday evening was the only time during my visit that Kat was able to break from her extremely busy schedule and do some proper hanging out.  That evening, Kat and I went to a concert.  She only had to tell me the band’s name to convince me to go: Habibi Express.  Nostalgia from calling everyone in Iraq “Habibi” fueled this decision.  To my dismay, the band was not at all Arabic (they were Swedish), but they did play good music.  The show was held underground at an art museum, the ambiance of which was amplified by the barefoot stomping of dancing hipsters once the first song started.  I was happy to join the shenanigans, but sans barefoot (i.e. with shoes). 

I was expecting a massive sign saying "Habibi Express," but this will do.

In my short time in Germany, I had my fair share of German beers, always insisting on getting something local.  Beer is a major part of German culture, brewed in accordance with the Reinheitsgebot (“Purity Order”), a series of regulations on the content of beer that limits the ingredients to four: water, barley, hops, and yeast.  It originated as the Bavarian Order of 1516 in the pre-German state of Bavaria; its adaptation by the rest of the German states was a precondition of German unification in 1871 following the Franco-Prussian War.  It is this order that makes German beer so good, especially their Weissbier (wheat beer).  During my stay, I have been thoroughly convinced that German beer is better than Czech beer.  But there is one country left before I can pass final judgement on the best of the overly-proud self-loving beer-making countries: Belgium!