A warm goodbye to Freiburg
Trip Start
Nov 22, 2007
1
14
16
Trip End
Dec 2007
Freiburg im Breisgau,
Germany
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
It is only a few hours before I get on the midnight train to Frankfurt and then onward to DFW and LAX in the morning. We will share a nice dinner of turkey and pasta, salad and alcohol free champagne and a few laughs no doubt before heading for the train station. There is rush hour traffic on the road below me but nothing like what I will face upon getting home to Los Angeles.. I have kind of grown used to relying on my arms instead of the back of my Honda to carry groceries. It is a completely different lifestyle here that I have a strange love for and will miss. I like the idea of going to the pharmacy to get my skin care and throat lozenges, the bakery for bread, the drug store for everything but drugs. I like the idea of going downtown and that everything you need is within a short walk from the strassbahn stop. Well, like it or not I will sadly leave it in just a few short hours
view out the window
. Today was filled with packing, catching up on Dagmar's favorite tv show Supernatural (and it's growing on me too darn it!), and ahem, buying another small suitcase. I will blame the chocolate in my bag- very heavy stuff you know! ö But I really must fill you in on a very special evening we enjoyed last night.
A dear friend of Sunny and Schnippi's took us on a historical walking tour of this very old city. Hartmut owns Historix-Tours based here in Freiburg. They offer many different tours and I think we got a deluxe taste of everything. Since Freiburg was founded in the 12th Century, there was much to see and hear about. Hartmut speaks good English but the stories he tells are very detailed and dramatic so Sunny and Schnippi took turns translating for me which was an adventure in itself. Especially when Hartmut spoke in english and Schnippi translated into German accidentally! It was a great night- very cold and dark and thus perfect for our first stop- the Old Cemetery!
A cemetery in the dark cold rainy night is something to be experienced- if you can handle it! But this cemetery gives the term 'old' a whole new meaning. Nothing in this place is newer than 1860..
Cemetery
. so just before our Civil War began, the last person to be buried in this cemetery died. The gravestones are elaborate and beautifully carved with relief sculptures of Angels, sculls, and urns. There are beautiful crosses in lovely metalwork that have lasted hundres of years. Hartmut took us to several of the gravestones and theatrially filled us in on the local ledgends and spooky stories behind the dead. The hundreds of years yielded some very interesting and amusing tidbits.As our tour took us closer into town, their friend Chico joined us. We made our way by the original city wall and into the Münster Platz- the Cathedral. The cobblestones glistened with rain and light. The Gargoyle waterspouts gave the place a spookier feeling. I listened to the stories of this place with such interest since this is a rich history that I am unaccostomed to. The work began on the Munster in 1120 and the people, not wanting to be far from their dear ones, buried the dead in the area around the church, poor people at the edge of the church yard, the very rich inside the church and the middle class in the ground where we were standing. In that time it was a sin to die during childbirth so they buried those victims under the waterspouts to wash away their sins. An archeaological dig at the church yard showed a skeleton of a woman with the child only partially born which led to this discovery. There are 91 of these and they believe that all of them mark burials of these women and their children.
When it rained here, some of the remains would float to the top. Strangely to us, children and dogs would play with the bones. Eeeewwww. We continued onward to see the house of the Executioner and seeing as witch hunts were common in the 1500's, he must have been a busy guy
Hartmut and a skull!!!!
. They know of 42 witches who were decapitated and then burned here. No doubt there were more than that. yuck...Well, I smell some yummy delicious dinner from teh other room. I will get going now. I send you all lots of love! Thanks so much for all of your sweet comments and emails of support. It really means a lot to me. I look forward to seeing all of you that I can around the holiday! Until then, Chus!
Love,
Kathryn
A link to Hartmut's tours! Highly Recommended!!
http://www.historix-tours.de/
Here is a link to the live web cam of the Main Train Station in Freiburg that I will be leaving from. :)
http://www.regiowebcam.de/fileadmin/template/main/img/webcam s/bahnhof2/640.php?img=f_20071212165101.jpg
