Pulling the rug out and seeing where you land...

Freiburg im Breisgau

Approaching the end of August, we look back on a month that has provided a decent level of stimulation and excitement. And the opportunity to do some abstract wondering about why we are motivated to throw such a big shift into our lives again, to walk away from existing friend networks, school situation, and a cozy comfort zone where we've basically figured everything out. 

Have not fully found the answer.

Beginning of month I appeared in Freiburg, met the movers and set about organising utilities, internet, and general unpacking. A week in, I hosted two buddies from Berlin who came down for a boy's weekend of hiking and hanging out. The following week Cassandra and the kids arrived and saw the place for the first time. Luckily, it passed muster and they agreed to move in with me. 

We immediately set to exploring the heavily-overgrown back garden and attacking the remaining 40+ unpacked boxes. A few days later friends Kath and Georg and their girls came to visit for the weekend, just as Cass and kids were getting over their jet-lag. We spent proper amounts of time on the Terrace sipping our drinks and making sure the mountain across the valley wasn't moving anywhere.

We've been taking advantage of the huge inventory of garden tools the previous renters had left us to dive into serious yard-work projects. We've not had the opportunity to do such things at the flat in Berlin, and being project people we (me mostly) have thoroughly enjoyed diving into the garden clearing project. Inside, the kids have enjoyed stomping about and making noise without us yelling at them to be quiet for fear of our downstairs neighbors. The house is ridiculously well-outfitted for hide and seek, or just general exploring and discovery, since it has all sorts of random things like a secret underground bunker, an indoor tiled water basin/fishpond, and a wine cellar.

The house is positioned in a preposterously scenic area. It sits on top of Lorettoberg hill with the terra-cotta church steeples of Freiburg on one side and the ridgelines of the Black Forest on the other. The hiking trails start within a couple minutes walk from our kitchen. A huge back terrace opens up to the South with a view of the Schönberg mountain on the other side of a gentle valley, which has the small village of Merzhausen lyrically nestled in it. In the mornings the mist comes over the mountains to our left and at night the sun sets over France's Vosges Mountains to our right. It is such a novelty for us, used to a pleasant but enclosed view of our courtyard in Berlin, to step outside the kitchen into a scene that feels like a scenic outlook halfway up a hiking trail somewhere. I keep thinking we are in some AirBnB and that in a couple days the trip will be over and we'll be heading back to the big city.

Of course not all aspects of this are of such a fairy tale-quality. You've now reached the point in the post when you get to decide if you are a glass half-full or glass half-empty kind of person! 

1. Our neighbor to the South is building a new house on the footprint of the older one, so we awake every morning with the sound of hammering and cement mixers. The project is supposed to be complete this fall, so we're rooting for them to speed things along. 
2. While the kitchen is full of big windows that bring the views inside, the kitchen itself has not been successfully updated since it went in during the early 1950's. So parts and/or all of it should really be pulled out and replaced. We won't be doing a full renovation since we're just renting this place, but there will definitely be some updating happening soon. 
3. The other aspect of living on Lorettoberg is that with these views comes a bit of isolation: running out for milk or baked goods requires either walking or biking down to town off of the hill. And then climbing back up the ~200 foot elevation back to the house. Everyone in the neighborhood has cars, which we don't, so we're still seeing exactly how all this will work. 

Beyond the physical house reality, we've started the process of exposing the kids to the local stuff that we came here to do. The first outing was with the local Scouting troop. We went down with the kids to meet the leaders and the other kids. Jasper and Cody were hesitant at first, but then a fire pit was mentioned and they become quite interested. We slit bananas and pushed dark chocolate bar pieces into it, then roasted these on the coals until the chocolate melted. Afterwards the kids played dodgeball. We cooked up pizzas in the church kitchen where the Scouts meet and then had impromptu dinner with the group. 

As we walked home, Cody was very interested in seeing how he could join. He is also interested in the uniforms and what the deal is with the merit badges and patches. The group was heading to Croatia the next day for two weeks of hiking and camping: Scout groups here do local hiking trips as well as multi-country outings so there is a lot to take advantage of with this program. 

This week the "Nature Camp" started, a program Cass found for the kids. We ride our bikes about 5 miles along the edge of the city on nice bike lanes that course up and down through the forest before making a turn and climbing about 300' up a village lane to a forest trailhead with an open mountain hut. 

Yesterday was the first day, and it was raining nearly the whole day, which made us worry that the kids would be wet and miserable and refuse to go the rest of the week. But kids surprise you, and when I picked them up yesterday afternoon they both were brimming with excitement and stories of their day's adventures: explaining the survival "games," hiking up to the ridgeline and gorging on blackberries, making shelters in the forest with tree limbs and tarps, making pit fires, etc. They were both muddy and rain-misted, but in tremendous spirits. They appeared to have already made new friends and another big advantage, they were in German all day long. Good to get their heads back into it since school starts in a couple weeks. 

Riding back this morning along the valley I was greeted with your typical Black Forest landscape: foggy pine-tree ridgelines interspersed with tiny, well-ordered villages and their church steeples poking up here and there. It does seem preposterous, having moved basically into a bit of a fairy tale, especially when I read that Berlin's Covid numbers are back up and threatening to hit lockdown levels yet again. 

We are so lucky to have the opportunity to do this, something I try to think about every day.

Some Pics: Bye to Berlin

Final Sunday market at the Schöneberg Rathaus

Rudolf Wilde Park, the deer fountain. Site of innumerable Lockdown jogging loops and "get out of the house" strolls.

Brandenburg Gate from the Eastern side

Kieler Strasse's DDR guardtower, one of only about four left in the city. It happened to be open the day I rode past, so I climbed up inside to look around. It is now a memorial for Gunter Litfin, one of the first Germans to be killed by Border Police for attempting to cross to the West.

The Tower in 1990, just after the Wall fell.

The Tower in 2021, now sitting next to a landscaped bike path and bridge over the Moabit Canal.

Meeting up with some last friends to say goodbye: Dominik Hess, a good friend from Thunderbird.

The minivan. We had left some stuff at a friend's in Berlin that I drove down to Freiburg separate from the moving van taking the main stuff.

Some Pics: Driving Across Germany to Freiburg

On the state line between Thüringen and Bavaria ran the old border of East Germany. The tiny farming village of Mödlareuth, divided by a small brook, straddled the state boundary and hence earned the nickname "Little Berlin" as the inner German wall split the town suddenly in two. The border fortifications were all left intact here as a reminder that the border was not just walling off West Berlin, but that the entire country of East Germany had similar fortifications.

Yes you can climb up the old guardtower.

and you can snoop inside the old bunker post

Bizarrely, a Russian T-34 tank sits in a field nearby. Just sittin' there.

Mödlareuth also comes with its own border museum full of gigantic Russian military trucks (Urals) and West Germany counterparts (Unimogs).

Border Area. Closed Zone!

Some Pics: Nürnberg

I stayed the night in Nürnberg, a town lately famous for its huge Christmas Market. Earlier last century it was famous for a different reason: the trials of the Nazi leaders and the former main parade grounds for the gigantic Nazi state rallies. Vestiges of the huge arenas and grandstands they built are still there, albeit half-overgrown and, after 70 years of weather, slowly falling apart.

The Zeppelinbuhne, or the "Zeppelin Stage" named after a former landing field for the Zeppelin airships of the 1920's and 30's, is one of the biggest of the remaining structures.

Watch out for crumbling stadium pieces.

Block-y structure in background is where the Nazi leaders would all gather for the parade reviews. There used to be huge pillars all along the top of the grandstands but they had to pull those down as they become unstable over time.

Main Dias to address the army. This is where Hitler would have stood. 

Germany spends money every year on this site to keep it safe for visitors. It is stuck in this quandary of spending good money to maintain a legacy of something many don't want to memorialize.

Some Pics: Freiburg

After turning South at Frankfurt, you just follow the Rhine River valley along the French border until boom Freiburg.

Rental car and house.

The views are still there, ok good I wasn't hallucinating.

Zapf Umzug, the movers. Amazing experience with those guys.

And here is where we sat continuously for 2 straight months. The End.

View out of the bedroom window takes in the rows of vineyards that belong to the city. They sell everything in the tasting room just down the hill from us.

Pasta, beer, view! Bachelor Nirvana.

Our street is named Kapellenweg ("Chapel Way"), after a 17th century church built on top of the Lorettoberg. It is still here and they've turned its grounds into a popular biergarten/brunch cafe.

Thomas down on a visit.

The house has lots of interesting architectural features, like this swooping concrete staircase and the fountain pond located just underneath it. (We're thinking about putting in some water and making a turtle habitat.)

Once you make the trek down off Lorettoberg, the area you find yourself is called "Wiehre" which is full of shady streets and beautiful pre-war houses.

I rented a car and drove over to France to go hike in the Vosges: great views back across the Rhine River floodplain.

French village of Cernay, foothills of the Vosges Mountains.

Family Arrives! And then Jet Lag catches up.

They slept 14 hours the first night, but it still took four more days to get truly on track.

Moving box avalanche buries two, but they later tunnelled out and survived.

Terrace dinners, yes please

Brambles are shaking in fear of Jasper the hedge-cutter.

The house hasn't been cleared of English Ivy in years, so we set to work pulling off 20' ropes of the stuff. 

Kids now have the freedom to go out and start a fire whenever they like. This alone makes it worthwhile to leave Berlin for them.

More to come...School starts in a week, which is sure to be full of more exciting challenges.