Freiburg and the Black Forest

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I just got back from 5 days in the SW corner of Germany. Basically I had my "spring break"...the temperature there was 10 or 11 degrees celsius, instead of zero, and a couple days we had some lovely sun.

My friend Laura studies at the University there, which is super-old. It's in a mostly-catholic, wine-drinking part of Germany, with low unemployment...very different from Berlin. Anyway, Laura had been at UNC for a year, studying English. She's very fluent! I met her and a bunch of her friends. (I also went on a side-trip into France, to the city of Colmar, but that will get a separate entry.)

The quirkiest thing I experienced was the Basel airport, into which I flew. The airport straddles the national boundary between France and Switzerland (and Germany is just a few miles away). Well, borders don't really exist anywhere in western Europe anymore, except for Switzerland. (You know, the neutral country that gets rich off of other countries' wars?) The airport had separate immigration areas, and glass walls and metal fences split the whole thing right down the middle. Kinda weird.

Freiburg is allegedly the sunniest place in Germany. It also is the largest city with a Green mayor. The university (and other educ) dominate city life...it's a real college town. It's smack dab in the middle of the Black Forest, too, so the "suburbs" are largely undeveloped mountains. Growth does occur in interesting neighborhood redevelopments, which I visited with my camera. One place is called Vauban, built on the old French army base and named after the old French military genius. It's very green and I think it's energy and water self-sufficient, with lots of solar. Almost no parking, as you're supposed to use the garage on the neighborhood's edge. The other, much larger development is called Rieselfeld, and it's the site of an old sewage field, so to speak. It's still under construction, and doesn't have as committed a philosophy as Vauban, but it's so large it has its own schools, church, and parks.

So now my spring break is over and I want to finish a draft of my thesis in three weeks. We'll see what happens!

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Photos

The Freiburg Skyline
from atop one of the nearby "peaks"

City Gate
one of the two still up...it looks like Rothenburg

Franzi, Angie, und Laura
after lunch at the cafeteria, we got some coffee

Vauban
way denser than similar "green" developments in America

Rieselfeld
The mound-looking-thing is part of the school, and the concrete-modern-thing is a church

Comments

[Mom & Dad]

Say hey!
Please tell Laura that your parents said it was good to see her again, although it was just in a blog photo.

[Coates Clark]

Armchair review
Rawley, Loved the City Gate picture --really great. I think your mother should enlarge it and then get out her paints! -- sooo interesting. Enjoyed all the pictures - so different from what I see around us. Good luck on your writing draft. It's a unique time in your life and you seem to know it! Co