Überlingen/ Freiburg

So I do believe in miracles ^____^

Yesterday Anne-Marie, Brynne and I took the train out to Freiburg. It was going to be a crazy day from the get-go. For one thing, Richard Monk was supposed to come with us, but didn't show up (we found out later that he didn't wake up until 11am -__-"). We boarded the train at Überlingen station, and 2 minutes before we reached our transfer point at Basel the ticket collector came buy and told us that we had been sitting in First Class and that the 3 of us had to add a supplemental 40 Euro fare or else he would call the police. Then we found we had missed our train to Freiburg because it had left from a different platform, but there was another train due in 30 minutes so we waited a little bit and caught that train. On this train we sat across from a friendly German man named Martin. We chatted a bit at first about where we were from and what we were doing in Germany and he told us a bit about the sites to see in Freiburg. When the ticket conductor came, he told us that our ticket wasn't valid for this particular type of train - we had boarded one of the high-speed ICE trains -__-" Luckily the conductor was a nice guy, and Martin helped to explain that we were tourists and we got off without having to pay more fines.

Freiburg was a nice change from the quiet of Überlingen - it's a city of about 200,000 - and there are a lot of students and tourists there. We did a bit of shopping at the H&M there. For kicks we went into a little shop that sold Liederhosen and Drindls. Anne-Marie and Brynne tried a couple on, and the shop woman looked a bit annoyed at us, but the girls ended up liking the tops so much that they bought them!

Of course we visited the famous Münster (catherdral) and we even climbed the stairs to the top of the tower. It was exhausting, and my fear of heights came back to haunt me -__-" But the view at the top was worth it. It's a gorgeous city and the view was spectacular. There was a farmer's market around the church.

Of course we couldn't go to Freiburg without having Black Forest Cake, but we had a very difficult time finding a café that sold any. We checked out at least 10 before finding one, so we had an early supper and shared the monstrous slice of cake. It was delicious!

We were fairly exhausted after a busy day so we decided to take an earlier train home. This time we made sure to sit in the right class and board the correct type of train -__-" The ride over to Basel was blessedly uneventful, but when we got got off there we weren't sure which platform our connecting train was leaving from. We decided to try to find a ticket counter and ask someone. As we were looking at the train schedule - who did we run into but Martin!! He was on his way home from visiting his father. He took a look at our ticket and realized we were on his train so we all RAN to the platform and got on the train. If we had been 3 seconds late, we would have missed the train. This man was certainly our guardian angel for the day!

On the train home, he pointed out interesting landmarks like a castle that was owned by the Templar Knights in the Middle Ages, the hometown of Anne Sophie van Otter, as well as a lovely town that was split in half by the German-Swiss border (the Rhein River). There was another rainbow in the sky. We had a safe journey home, but we were a bit hungry so we went down to the café Piccolo for hot chocolate and tiramisu before taking a cab home.

I learned from Antonio that his family is closing the restaurant in early September. *sigh* no more tiramisu for me . . .

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I'm amazed at the genuine kindness of people here. Wonderful local people like Martin and Antonio, who really are just strangers to us, have really helped to make this trip fantastic.

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On Wednesday night we went out to celebrate Shawn's birthday. There was some craziness going on, but out of respect for my friends here I won't share the dirty details online - but do I have stories to tell!!

The bottom line is - for the moment, I believe in miracles.