Hi from the sexy town of Freiburg.
It's not really sexy - i'm just a little limited for adjectives right now. The jazzy semi-porn music at the hostel must be influencing me.
After the usual "finding the hostel without a map" hassles (this time including a trip to the tourist info centre that Lonely Planet said was open and quite clearly wasn't after i'd schlepped my 16kg bag there) Freiburg has been great. The Blackforest hostel is awesome (non-hi this time). The super-helpful staff even located me the perfect Thai restaurant to have dinner in last night. I splurged on a huge sizzling muli-meats platter before relaxing in a deck chair and watching Switzerland lose their soccor match against Czech republic. Nice life huh. then they also recommended a cafe for breakfast with a 10% discount for us hostellers. So for breakkie i had a giant Cafe au lait and not one but 2 delicious croissants.
The town itself is pretty and relatively easy to get around and EVERYONE bikes here. I have never seen so many cycles in one place before. I haven't been game enough to try yet (what with them driving on the wrong side and all) but will probably hire a bike tomorrow.
Spent today out at Titisee (a town in the black forest with a picture perfect lake). Was a fantastic decision - being a tourist town they had a thriving market going (compared to Freiburg which was dead on a Sunday). So i could shop and enjoy the view. Hired a rowboat for an hour cos was too lazy to walk round the lake. Sooooo embarassing. I got in and then couldn't work the damn thing (it was a huge boat and i was expecting it to be like kayaking). Much to the amusement of the boat hire guy and all the people in the neighborouring restaurant i'm sure. Eventually got the hang of it and it was a quite nice hour though i'm left with the blisters and the cringing memory.
Rowing is hard work so naturally i would need something to eat. Lunch was sauerkraught with Knopfli (German home-made pasta) and Speck (delish German ham). Couldn't go without an icecream (the sun was shining after all - a rarity in the last 2 weeks) after that so had some very lovely kirsch (cherry) and strawberry icecream.
Then there were just so many shops to browse through. There is one shop dedicated to clocks (the black forest is the home of the cuckoo clock) - so so many clocks. Some really cool modern ones (knock of a couple of decimal places and they're almost affordable).
Then there are the gastonomic wet dream shops. I secured myself some Schwartzwalder Schinken (orgasmically good proscuitto style ham), local mustard and some blueberry wine in an oldschool style flask (i took ages to chose that over a selection of minibar sized schnapps). Just finished having it back at the hostel - delish.
Only downsides to the day were the train breaking down (the second time this has happened to me in 2 weeks) and then the spectacular thunderstorm i had to walk back in. Amazingly i managed to get lost 3 times on the way home (despite having successfully navigated the town several times). I may never get my poor shoes dry.
