You know what's fun? climbing hills of snow in shoes and clothes that are absolutely unsuited to cold, wet weather! that's fun! if you're an idiot!
convinced that the light powdering layers of white i'd seen in Berlin and Essen weren't enough, Basti decided today to show me real snow. accompanied by german versions of cheesy old english pop songs, we drove through the incredible countryside surrounding freiburg and up into the mountains. the unusually warm (sorry, warm?!?!?) winter this year has resulted in green where there would normally be white, but the scenery was nonetheless beautiful. way up in the mountains though you could forget you'd ever seen grass, or ever lived in a place where it never snows. having walked from the car to a cafe we decided we'd earned a hot chocolate by an open fire, then wandered through the snow. now we're talking about a boy in snow here, so the obligatory snow fight ensued. it was very civilised though ("ok, one at at time, no moving. oh i'm sorry, i threw out of turn, that gives you 2 free shots"), and not very gruesome at all - basti either stood still while my reliably unfortunate gross-motor skills and terrible aim did the work for him or simply caught the snowballs i lobbed at him and threw them back at me (now that shit is just rude.). after calling a truce (read: erica admitting defeat and basti being extremely kind) we wandered further into the snow along a perfectly serviceable path until i decided that bitumen was no longer for me, i was in fact a snow bunny, and ventured into the white. it could be argued that i should have stopped after my first step off the road landed me up to my knee in snow. really though, where would the adventure be in that? the tripping, falling, flailing, giggling catastrophe that followed was, unbeknownst to me, captured as video on basti's camera, and it gets funnier every time we watch it i swear to god. eventually though i got up the first, most slippery part of the hill and, having chosen my target point, trudged slowly up the hill, one ankle deep step at a time. when i got as high as i wanted to, i never wanted to come down. hiding out under a tree buddha-styley seemed like a perfectly workable idea until i realised i couldn't feel my feet anymore (proper snowboots? they're for sissies!) so i decided to go back down to civilisation, just to get some waterproofing spray for my shoes and a couple of pretzels for sustenance (i know, i know, abstinence from everything, transcendance of needs, but one has to take these things gently you know...). once back on the road though i allowed myself to be dissuaded from my snowy pursuit of self-realisation by the promise of warm feet and beer. what can i say, i'm a simple girl, i'm motivated by simple things. leaving the skiing children (i don't feel inadequate when children can stay upright in snow better than i can, NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT!!!) behind us, we drove back through some of the most beautiful country i've ever seen and into freiburg, where basti showed me the (even) prettier parts of town (IT JUST KEEPS GETTING PRETTIER!) and then up to a lookout point with views all the way to france (seriously). freiburg is incredible - it's so pretty it actually hurts to look at it. i have to close my eyes at intervals so my head doesn't explode. i'm worried that when faced with brisbane's 70s construction dullness in comparison to this, my central nervous system will actually grind to a halt, i'll be so unaroused.
the atmosphere this week is nice and relaxed, which is brilliant. basti's mum is really hospitable and incredibly sweet - this morning she bought me a chocolate croissant when she went to get breadrolls for breakfast, because she knows i like them. ok, so, she's either incredibly sweet... or fattening me up so they can kill me and eat me. either way, there are chocolate croissants though, right? so... we'll see. basti on the other hand keeps threatening to make nasty gas emissions during the night, and he says if i'm not nice to him he won't wait until i'm asleep. he is CHARMING and i like him a lot.
