Freiburg im Breisgau

Today is my first day in Freiburg, Germany. I'm here to visit my friend and water polo teammate Andrew from Pomona. He is more commonly known as the Champ, because he's a champ. So, I flew to Frankfurt last night and took a train in the wee hours of the morning to Freiburg. Here's how it went down:

The flight from Edinburgh to Frankfurt was a breeze. Flying out of Edinburgh is a little bit like flying out of Ontario. There were essentially no lines for anything and I had plenty of time to kill at the airport. I bought Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" and started in on it while I was traveling and waiting. Turns out, Champ is reading it, too. Anyway, once I got to the Frankfurt airport, I scoped out the train station situation and got completely comfortable with my train itinerary (2:05 AM departure from regiobhf track 2). I found the platform and everything, and then I went upstairs again to kill four hours in the airport. This was exceedingly boring, and I got a headache just sitting there and reading under the bright airport lights. When the waiting was done, I headed downstairs to catch the train. There were probably twenty people on the platform who shared in my despair when the announcement was made that our train would be 90 minutes late. The announcements in the train terminal are not made in English following the German. So, this very nice woman helped me out. She even got out here English-German dictionary to look up the word "breakdown". So, we stood there with our translation guides in hand and tried to communicate. It didn't go too well, but the process was enjoyable. It's lucky that she had been there because I would have been going nuts without the information she gave me. I was sitting on a bench when the delay was announced. I had my hands on my head and my left leg crossed over my right knee. A small German boy wearing a light blue down jacket, probably six years old, walked up to me and put his hands on his head. He was pretty intent on mimicking my posture. I laughed, and he was clearly encouraged. Next, he picked up his leg and crossed it over his other leg (with his knee bent at 90 degrees). I was impressed with his balancing ability. Next, I picked up both legs and pointed them staight at him. He did the only thing one can do in this situation, and that is to leap into the air and quickly kick both of his legs in my direction before returning to the ground. At this point, I knew I was dealing with a pro, so I started making weird facial expressions and pulling on my ears and stuff, and he did it all. This was a real crackup, and it came at a really good time because I was starting to get really tired. This was at about 2:00 AM, mind you.

I went back upstairs to the giant airport lounge region where they have a bunch of reclined chairs for people who have to spend the night in the airport. Having already spent some time in one of those, I decided to sit at the bar/restaurant at the center of the lounge because it was more comfortable. I ate one of my granola bars. Then, an older man told me that I would need to buy something from the bar if I wanted to sit there. So, I panicked a little as I realized that I know basically no German words for liquids. At that point, however, I remembered a scene from freshman year (possibly OA, even) that featured Martha and Jon Kadish going over the German word and pronunciation for orange juice. So, I went to the bar and ordered an orangensaft. This apparently worked.

I went back down to the train platform at about 2:50 AM and waited once more for the broken down train. Finally, at about 3:20, it became clear that the train was approaching. This was also the point at which the top-secret announcements about Freiburg began to be spoken in German over the loudspeaker. The train was scheduled to terminate in Basel, but they kept making announcements about Freiburg. This worried me greatly. Basically, what I could hear was something like, "blah blah blah Freiburg. Blah Freiburg blah blah blah. Blah blah, blah Freiburg blah blah blah Freiburg." I took this to mean one of two possible situations. The first and most worrisome goes something like, "Because the train is so late, it will no longer be stopping in Freiburg. If you want to get to Freiburg, you need to...". This scared me. The other possibility was that the train would no longer be going all the way to Basel, but would instead terminate in Freiburg. I was freakin out.

In any event, the train came and I got on and everything worked out ok. I hailed a cab in front of the train station in blah blah blah Freiburg and it took me to Champ's flat. In fact, I've been here for about 12 hours by now. I got in at 6:30 AM or so.

That is the story of the first leg of this trip. So, any of you who say that my worries about travel going wrong are unfounded in any way, take this as an example of how something always goes wrong for me. In fact, while I was sitting in the airport, I began to think about my various excursions this semester. Turns out, of the 6 significant trips I've taken, only 2 of them have not featured significant delays that have made me super nervous. Think Iceland detour, Newcastle suicide, Lancaster water polo trip timing belt disaster, and Bahn breakdown. That's not even counting the Firbush bus breakdown. Awesome. I think I have every right to expect the worst. I am proud to say that while I was at the Frankfurt airport, though, I used Rick Steves' method of changing your expectations. Instead of expecting the train to arrive at 2:05, I just expected it to come at 3:35. And it did.

What do the following statements have in common?

I find traveling in unknown territory by myself to be very relaxing.
I always feel like I can rely on public transportation to get me where I need to be when I need to be there.
I like the thrill of staying up for 24 hours straight.
I speak and understand German well enough to navigate transportation crises.
At least I don't spend loads of time and energy worrying and thinking of every possible worst-case scenario.
I won't be needing a haircut soon.



Answer: They're all false.


Champ and I just went to downtown Freiburg and he gave me the grand tour. We had kebabs at his favorite place. He just went off to his 6:00 class, so I stayed behind to write emails. He's also going to go to water polo, but since I didn't bring my suit I'm going to remain here until about 9:30 or so. Then, I plan on meeting him downtown and we'll do something fun, I guess. His flat is pretty far east of the city center, so we have to ride the tram. The weather today has been really nice. It's probably 65 degrees with a gentle breeze and good sunshine.

I'm pretty excited about the trip. Our plans include 3 days in Stuttgart, 4 days around Bodensee, and a two-night trip to Paris at the tail end. I will do my best to update the blog with the latest happenings.

Wish us luck!

p.s. Sorry I don't have any pictures yet. They're coming, I promise.