Hanne

27 July 2009

So tomorrow morning I have to give up my room and the next morning I will be on my way to Spain. I can’t believe that my time in Freiburg has gone by so quickly! In fact the thought of leaving is such a distressing prospect that I have just been in the kitchen baking one last cake in order to calm myself down. Pretty sure my flatmates are going to remember me as that random chick from New Zealand who was always knocking on their doors asking to borrow a cup of sugar or 50ml of milk!

The past few days have been super full on, even more so than when I first arrived. Amongst other things I have been to France (for all of 10 minutes, yay!), met the local hippies and experienced first hand the nude sunbathing culture. Let’s start with Friday though, because Friday was road trip central. Heidi’s best friend had booked a ticket to Germany to help her pack up her room but instead of flying to Frankfurt she was flying to Frankfurt Hahn, which is actually in the wops and not really anywhere near Frankfurt at all. So we rented a car to pick her up and stopped in Mannheim on the way. There is not really an awful lot in Mannheim except a water tower and a train station. There is a city centre but it is like any other city, full of H&M, Starbucks and Aldi. They did have Pizza Hut though, which is where we stopped for lunch. The pizza list came with a wine menu suggesting matches for each choice. WTF? Wine and pizza hut is like chandeliers in McDonalds (which, by the way, I hear is the case in Budapest, where one can see the prettiest McDonalds ever. Will keep you posted on that one, but I think you get the point…). Anyway, the pizzas actually came either on a stone or in an iron pan – deep pan meant just that. Also, there were no slugs in the salad. Win!

Then we drove and drove and finally found the airport and it was very convenient that the space right by the door was free. It was a ‘Frauenparkplatz’ – ‘Please keep this place free for women’. Apparently these spaces, located in the most convenient spots for those housewives returning with overloaded shopping bags, are also wider than usual. Germans clearly have plenty of confidence in the parking abilities of the fairer sex. Hmmm. Having said ‘Hmmm’, I must admit that our stop at the petrol station on the way home WAS slightly embarrassing… We were four women in our little red rented polo and decided to tank up. So we pulled into the station. Which side? I leaned out the window. Yep, on the right. Sweet. Hop out. Grab keys. Crap, how does the petrol cap open? There was no key hole, and also no lever under the seat. Pushing the cap flap did nothing. But if at first you don’t succeed, then try try and try again! We managed to pop the bonnet, move the driver’s seat forwards, make it more upright, toot the horn and turn on God knows what else, while Heidi pored over the manual and her friend waited with the gas hose at the ready. Eventually we figured out that you need to lock the car and then press the flap. Press the flap? You mean, like we tried right at the beginning? Exactly. I think I laughed for about three minutes at the absurdity of the situation, and how it was such a cliché. Bloody German engineers with their complicated aesthetic designs!

On the way home I was super excited because we actually drove through France. Despite living so close to the border here I never actually got around to crossing it, so it was really neat to cross the Rhine and say ‘bonsoir’ and stuff. We were only actually on French soil for about 10 minutes because that was the quickest route home, but it was still something. Oh, and every half an hour the radio would give us reports of all the traffic jams: ‘4km Stau, 8km Stau, 3km Stau’. Most of them were caused by road works (there are ALWAYS road works here! But then again ,the quality of the roads is very good because they are constantly being upgraded…) but one of them was caused by a fridge on the Autobahn. Yep, someone had lost their fridge. Very bad luck, but also a very original reason for a traffic jam at least. ‘Sorry I’m late honey, I had to give way to the whiteware’.

We arrived back in Freiburg around 10pm and headed for the International Students’ farewell party in StuSie. This involved much dancing, bake-your-own-pretzels and a Penny Markt trolley which was steadily filled with empty bottles. This might as well be the party paragraph, so Saturday night can join in too. On Saturday we decided to finally go dancing in the city and headed for Karma, the ‘Public Living Room’. It was great to get out and boogey, and really special that everyone could come along. We just looked at each other and asked why we never got around to organizing it sooner, because we were all too lazy and always stayed in the StuSie bar or had a BBQ at Gabriel’s place whenever we got together. But there was plenty of dancing and celebrating this weekend.

Returning to baking and cakes, our Black Forest cake tasted even better at 3am. Holly and Carl and I walked home together on Friday and had a lovely little tea party at the kitchen table. It was very civilized, complete with cake forks and little cherries on top of each slice. It was dark outside, so the black forest was really properly black. This led to an air of authenticity otherwise unattainable by the mere presence of a forest without the ‘black’. And apparently one should always drink a glass of milk with one’s cake. At least, Carl told us that is the Canadian way and went home across the landing to add some dairy to the ‘party in his mouth’.

On Saturday I took the train to Titisee once more to do some last minute souvenir shopping and bought, amongst other things, a porcelain doll for Stephen’s mother. Then we went for a two hour hike in the mountains. I really had not thought things through very well though, because then I had to carry all the bags through the forest. The hardcore Nordic walkers gave us very odd looks but I’m going with the line that the walk gives the souvenirs an extra note of originality.

Originality rather matches the hippies part and the ‘Säule der Toleranz’, or ‘Column of Tolerance’ in the Augustinerplatz. Lots of people hang out there to play music and drink beer and smoke weed and promote freelove and stuff. If the noise level gets too loud the column, which is lit from inside, turns red, so people in the square actually call it the ‘Column of Ignorance’. We went to eat ice cream in the square on Wednesday and again last night and the music was really pleasant, a couple of guitars and a clarinet having a jam. Also an old hippie with hip length hair was trying to eat the face off his lover in the corner. Come to think of it, he resembled rather closely the vampire from the Norwegian film I saw a few weeks back…

Dancing, road trips, rock ‘n’ roll… and now comes the ‘Eurotrip’ part. On Sunday I went and met a couple of friends at Lorettobad, the oldest Freibad (outdoor swimming pool) in Freiburg. It is very popular because it has a Frauenbad, or women’s bathing area. This was essentially a field where everyone was sunbathing topless, which was a true European cultural experience for me. Pretty much like the old monument the Eurotrip gang DIDN’T visit. We stayed for 4.5 hours, did absolutely nothing apart from lie in the 30 degree sun and enjoy the atmosphere, and went home rather crispy ><.

And now my room is all packed up, the walls are once more white, the floor is vacuumed (maybe for the first time since I got here >
Keep safe in NZ and I will keep you posted on the progress of my ‘B’ trip (Barcelona, Billund, Berlin, Budapest!)

Bis Bald,

Hanne

PS The last picture is of a swede.... My cousin is marrying one of those, should I be worried?!