Blogabroad
by Mary Pinckney Waters

June 2, 2006 - On the road again

This weekend I took more than 300 photos, spent about 16 hours in a train and saw thousands of celebrating German soccer fans. In light of having no school Thursday, a few of us seized the long weekend (who has Friday classes anyway?) for traveling, something I hadn’t done since I’d returned from South Carolina mid-April and something I’d forgotten I missed so much.

Even though traveling among European countries often parallels driving to the next state in America, sometimes it’s nice to stay in our smaller-than-Montana country to get a feel for German regional differences. This weekend we went to the Bundesland of Baden-Württemburg in the Southwest, first to Constance (Konstanz), then Freiburg and Titisee. (What? It’s the name of a town. God, you’re immature.)

Constance is a small, quaint city on the border of Germany and Switzerland. It lies on a sprawling lake with water worthy of promo shots for a Caribbean resort, a backdrop of snow-topped Alps and white triangles of various sizes sliding along its surface. The main harbor downtown is surrounded by ducks and swans, a lush park, restaurants and souvenir shops, and a few street vendors.

The city straddles the Swiss-German border, forcing travelers to silence their cell phones which seem to alert them every few steps that service has switched countries. The Swiss are known for their high standard of living, and their influence is apparent in Constance, speckled with unique, high-end decorating and clothing shops. The four of us window-shopped, lingered over espresso and gelato in a café and tried to keep pace with the rest of the tourists in town, the overwhelming majority of whom were senior citizen.

Saturday noon we trained three hours to Freiburg, a busy city on the Schwarzwald’s (Black Forest) western edge and rumored to be the sunniest place in Germany. As a popular tourist destination and a university town, Freiburg offers an Innenstadt (downtown) full of life. Musicians, painters, jewelry makers and craftsmen of all sorts tease you around every corner. You should never need more than a few coins and some sidewalk space to enjoy a good show.

Miniature waterways about a foot wide line most of Freiburg’s downtown streets. I was told that if you stumble into one, you’re destined to marry someone from the city. Apparently, my fate is not set on any Freiburgers, but I saw a few dogs who seemed to be seeking out such a spouse.

After an afternoon’s worth of wandering downtown, we boarded a streetcar in the direction of our hostel. Waiting at our stop were people decked out in yellow, red and black (Germany’s colors) in varying degrees of tackiness: T-shirts, flags, giant foam hands, fake afros and Mohawks, two-foot-tall fleece top hats, etc. Behind them was an approaching stampede of soccer fans with no end. We quickly spotted signs for our Jugendherberge (youth hostel), which directed us head-on into said crazy-German-soccer-fan stampede.

“Oh, crap,” we thought, backs strapped with weekend necessities. I had sent an email reservation request to the hostel before we’d left, but hadn’t received a confirmation. Something told us all these screaming sports enthusiasts couldn’t all be from Freiburg. We feared not having a room in the hostel and being forced to sleep on the street, or something even worse: having to pay three times as much for a hotel.

Thankfully, the Black Forest Hostel on Kartäuserstraße found beds for us. The clerk also informed us that the German soccer team had won against Luxembourg 7-0 a few minutes ago in a stadium right down the street. Aaach so. After a half-hour’s rest, we braved a streetcar toward town, each claiming a square foot beside other sardined passengers. The car had to stop picking up people halfway through its route. Our courage was rewarded, though, by four large German suppers and some Ganter Pils (brewed in Freiburg). Later that night at the hostel, we sat outside the entrance with 20 or so soccer fans and an old, plastic tape player, exchanging stories from our day’s experiences.

Sunday we took a 30-minute train ride to Titisee, a small tourist town that boasts a spectacular view of the Black Forest. We did not get see the Schwarzwald, though, because it was cold, rainy and miserable outside. As any self-respecting college student, I a.) had not checked the weather, b.) had not brought an umbrella, c.) wasn’t sure if I owned an umbrella anyway and d.) wasn’t about to pay a couple euros to buy one. Instead, we sought shelter in a cozy restaurant near the train station and warmed up on Spargelsuppe (asparagus soup), a delicacy in Germany this time of year.

Later that night we arrived back in Bamberg, thankful that it wasn’t raining, that we would reach our beds soon and that we’d gotten ourselves so exhausted seeing Germany over the weekend.

Mary Pinckney Waters welcomes your comments and feedback: marypwaters@yahoo.com

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