Long story short, I had a major miscommunication with a friend of mine that was coming to Paris to study at the Louvre, and I ended up in Paris with a bunch of nice clothing and literally no plan for the weekend. It was nearing Friday night, so I had to decide quickly what I was doing. That had never happened to me before: I was alone with a backpack of clothes in an incredibly central location, and I could go nearly anywhere. It honestly felt exhilarating and liberating, 10/10 would recommend (if you’re not the anxious type).
After spending an hour at the train station help desk figuring out how to get to Cinque Terre, I actually decided to play it safe and just go back to Metz and figure out what to do from there. I quickly convinced a friend to come with me to Freiburg, the closest, cutest German town I could find. It’s about 2.5-4 hours by train away from Metz, and I thought the fall colors would be in full swing for a nice Black Forest hike. Unfortunately, we somehow missed the train TWICE (this was not a good weekend for me), one because we were late and the other for literally no reason except that we didn’t check our watches. We finally got into Freiburg in the early evening, not giving us time to really do too much, but we made the most of it. The town butts up against a series of hills that are densely forested, mostly pine but a lot of little foliage as well.
We found a babbling brook and a whole host of little fens where a million rabbits lived. We came down at sunset and found our way to a tavern that served the meatiest, heftiest German meals I’ve ever seen. I had Schweinhaxen (pork knuckle), which sounds weird or even gross, but I promise it was incredible. I’m a small human and tried my hardest to finish the whole thing, but there was simply no way that could happen, as you may see in the picture.
My friend captured me with my hand over my heart, in a subconscious pledge of allegiance to the schweinhaxen. It was so good. We also had Black Forest cake, which is this thick cake with a ton of whipped cream and wine-soaked cherries on the bottom. Satisfied that we stuffed ourselves with pure Allemagne culture, we waddled back to the train station to hop over to our AirBnB in a neighboring suburb. If you have time, I’d definitely recommend taking a walk through the place where people actually live. It’s so interesting to see how just little things are similar or different from your own American neighborhood.
The next morning we headed into town for a last meal and walkabout before we trained home. Freiburg is one of the most eco-friendly places in Germany, so everyone is out on their bikes enjoying the cool fall weather. We weaved through a bunch of modern home decor shops and old woodworking stores, finally settling on a nice, strangely cheap fish restaurant for lunch near the old tower.
Fun fact: after WWII, Europe was so devastated that America had to step in and help rebuild, creating the Marshall Plan to stimulate the European economy. While doing so, America saw this as an opportunity to spread U.S. pop culture and business as widely as possible in an effort to unify a broken Europe wracked with inter-fighting and distrust. I love a lot of things about America, but the fact that you can’t take a picture of Checkpoint Charlie without also catching the KFC sign, and that McDonald’s chose to brandish its name on the defining cultural symbol of a small German town: this is absolutely ridiculous and asinine. American imperialism is alive and well.
Putting the America rant aside, Freiburg was a super cute town with a great atmosphere, I’d recommend it as a short weekend trip for sure.