First Week in Freiburg!

Week of 16.02.2011

After an exhausting few days of winter weather and cancelled flights, I made it to Freiburg, Germany on January 12. There was a whirlwind of paperwork to catch up on, introduction to the dorm, tram station, and more. The first night I arrived, my 5 roommates and I had a delicious pizza with sweet corn, ham, salami, and mozzarella.

All of my roommates are Freiburg University students around the ages of 19 and 21, studying medicine, Islamic sciences, engineering, history, and more. Total there are four girls and two boys. The room setup is very different from that of Wofford. We share a small flat with a common room, kitchen, and table. Three people are assigned to one of two bathrooms (I actually share a bathroom with two boys, but they are the cleanest people I have ever met). We all have our own large, white room with a small safe, closet, TV, and large window. It’s a nice set-up that seems to work well for everyone.

The next few days consisted of catching up what I missed from orientation, configuring the internet, buying a German phone, figuring out the calling service, and, the most fun part, exploring Freiburg!

I walked around Freiburg to understand how it is laid out. Freiburg is located in the southwest region of Germany near the Black Forest. It is a beautiful university town of 200,000 people and about 30,000 students. It boasts a charming, upbeat city center near the Munster Cathedral that with plenty of cafés, bars, clothing stores, appliance stores, bakeries, and more. The city streets are lined with shallow streams or canals that were designed to keep fires from spreading. It is a walk able city and very “green.” Trashcans are sectioned for paper, plastic, and everything else. The stairwells of buildings, in particular the dorm room buildings, are not lit throughout the night, only if you trip a sensor. There are plenty more bikes than cars and there are even small plots of land one can rent to tend a garden.

My first weekend, IES took a half-day trip to Staufen, where there is a ruined castle and small quiet city center. The ruined castle is surrounded with vineyards, as the Rhine Valley region is known for its sweet wines made with Riesling grapes. A great stop was the kaffee and kaufen (coffee and cake) at café Decker. I really enjoyed my cappuccino and black forest cherry cake! I learned from Ms. Karin (she is in charge of housing and pretty much everything expect academics) that bakeries are required to use kirchen or cherry schnapps when baking the famous cake or they will be fined.

Our classes don’t begin for another week, but we started an intensive session about the EU and German language. We’re cramming in as much as we can before our trip to Berlin and Prague on Monday!