Freiburg im Breisgau

Today was another gorgeous day in Sussex. I just hope this lasts until all of my visitors (Daniel, Maryse, Martha, Eric, possibly Jordan) come. I've heard it gets rainy again, but I'm choosing not to believe. Instead of doing work, I went out and took pictures of the stunning Sussex countryside, which is fast becoming my favorite activity. And I will probably continue to post an annoying amount of photos on facebook.

So, to start recounting my travels. My first stop was Freiburg im Breisgau. I flew from London Gatwick to the Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg Airport, which straddles three countries: Switzerland, France and Germany. I was happy to find that I could get around the airport just speaking French, in fact, that is what most people spoke, but as soon as I got on the bus, I was expected to speak German, because the bus was going to Germany. I wanted to tell the bus driver, who only spoke German, "but, they're speaking French twenty feet that way" (in the airport), but alas, my German skills are limited to asking "Do you speak English?" and "Hello, and thank-you".

At first it was super frustrating not being able to speak the language. I've never been to a place where I don't speak the language, or have a fluent speaker with me (Brazil and Thailand), and I wondered what I had got myself into, because none of the countries we were going to spoke either French or English. I also kept responding in French to people speaking German to me. I guess my knee jerk reaction to any foreign language is to speak the only language I (barely) know besides English. It was embarrassing.

Although, knowing French really did come in handy in Freiburg. At one point we were trying to find a museum of tin figurines (it ended up being closed) and so we stopped in at an information point. But the man there couldn't sprechen sie englisch, so we walked away, but then I remembered that I should try French, and he spoke French and that's how we found out that the museum was closed. Wah-wah.

But the craziest linguistic experience we had occurred in this really cute market set up around the church. We had decided to make a picnic of bread, cheese, fruit and honey for ourselves for dinner in the airport before taking our flight to Amsterdam. So we went to buy the cheese and were standing in line when I noticed that the cheese seller was speaking French to the man buying cheese and he was speaking German to her. She would also throw in some German words, but they completely understood each other despite speaking in different languages. When it was our turn to pick out cheese I tried speaking in French and she recognized my accent and said, "I speak English, what cheese would you like," and proceeded to tell us all about the cheeses and give us samples. She was one talented lady.

The same thing happened in the airport. I went to information to ask how to get to my hostel once I arrived in Freiburg, and the information person spoke perfect English to me (with a French accent) and then spoke German (also with a French accent, so cool to hear) to her colleague, and I guessed that her native language was French. It was so mind boggling to me how these people were able to keep so many languages in their head. And more interesting, was why they decided to use which language at which time. Why was the cheese seller speaking French when she obviously knows German, and was in Germany? Was it a cheese thing?

The other highlight of Freiburg was the food. I think in each post I will end by describing the new food and drink I consumed. We had amazing sausage in a bun with mustard and onions for lunch, twice. And we went to a place called Schlappen and got an appetizer that was basically french fries with spaghetti meat sauce and a sauce that tasted kinda like sour cream and onion dip. It sounds gross but I've been craving it ever since I stopped eating it. And they were also really big on honey. We got a variety pack for the airport picnic and we even tried honey wine and honey liqueur. SO tasty. They were also big on fruit flavored alcohol. We got a small bottle of coffee liqueur and made White Russians in Amsterdam.

After Freiburg we went to Amsterdam by plane, which was so odd. Just that morning we had been listening to the cheese seller dazzle us with her language skillz, and then that evening we were wandering around Amsterdam at night trying to find the red light district and eating french fries with mayonnaise.