032 - thu 01/06/2006 - freiburg

suz woke up at 8am but kindly let me sleep in a few hours longer. although it later turned out that she wasn't so much doing me a favour, she just figured that the weather was so shitty that it wasn't worth getting me up.

we sought out the munster, the impressive gothic cathedral of freiburg. surrounding the munster there is a daily market in the munsterplatz, with plenty of fresh fruit and veg and the usual market stalls, breads, meats, crafts. you know the drill and we sure has hell know the drill now, somehow we manage to seek out the markets in every city we go to. certain things are constants on this trip - markets, H&M, camper shoes (somehow we always find them, accidentally). the continuing feeling of inferiority that comes from knowing only one language.

at the market we bought some picnic supplies. today's plan: to head to schauinsland and catch the cable car up the mountain for a picnic and some scenic views. after a false start, we figured out the buses and got to schauinsland and found our way onto the cable car. clutching our bag of strawberries we ascended up the mountain.

the views were great but the sky was still grey, in fact the clouds were hovering low around the mountain. our cable car became completely engulfed in fog so that we could no longer see out. then the fog slowly began to thin out, and hang on, is that snow on the mountain? clutching our bag of strawberries, our rolls and ham and cheese, we began to feel kind of dumb. when the cable car clunked into its final position, we realised that we may not be having the picnic we imagined.

escaping the snowy cold we found the mountaintop cafe, which was predictably empty. even the waiters were sitting at a table immersed in a game of uno. they kindly let us unfold our picnic onto the adjoining table after we said something along the lines of "we're australian, we brought a picnic, we don't have snow where we come from". we ordered coffees, they continued their uno game.

frieburg has a few conventional city shopping streets, lined with the usual department stores, the same ones that we see in every city. we wandered around town, came across many interesting historical buildings, some cute freiburg idiosyncracies. like the mosaic stonework logos that litter the footpaths, symbolising sister cities and other things.

we ordered cheap soups (and more riesling) from the restaurant adjoining our guesthouse. we had lots of heavy talk at the dinner table that night, religion, politics, one of those big chats. it was good fun.

click here for photos