July 10 – Garmisch to Freiburg

Today was mostly a travel day. We journeyed to the southwestern corner of Germany, Freiburg, to set ourselves up for some pillaging in Bern later this week. We took a train that involved 2 connections:

Garmisch – Munich – Mannheim – Freiburg

The entire journey took just under 6 hours.

Before we began the journey, I actually had the pleasure of directing a German tourist to the grocery store. He asked me a question in German, and I  responded with something like, “no sprecke deustch…English?”, And then he nicely asked me where the grocery store was. I responded in English and that was that. Good exchange.

We also had a run in yesterday with someone asking us (in German) where the local MacDonald’s was. Now, I am usually all over this, but didn’t know where the Garmisch MacDonald’s is. I looked at her and said, “We aren’t from around here”, and that settled that.

Anyway, back to the train. These things move quickly here. We clocked one in at 130mph, but we got up to 150mph.

I was nervous we wouldn’t make it in Mannheim in time for our 6 minute connection, but we somehow made it from Stuttgart to Mannheim in like 25 minutes.

We made our connection there with about 2 minutes to spare. However, the train from Mannheim to Freiburg was operating with fewer cars than normal. This meant we basically stood at the train exit for the first 30 minutes of the ride, putting us perfectly in the way at the first stop. I tried to move to the dining car, but like 9 staff members were exiting, and Bae got her backpack stuck on the door. Huge mess, but only partially our faults.

A huge mess and definitely not our faults was the damn screaming baby on the train. We’ve been pretty lucky so far this trip in that nearly every transportation we’ve taken has featured at least one screaming baby.

We arrived at our Freiburg Airbnb where the hosts spoke Spanish to us at first. I was super excited because I actually kind of know that language! However, turns out they speak great English in addition to their great German, and only spoke Spanish because they thought we were from Mexico because they knew Ikumi lived in New Mexico. I’ll let that one sink in a bit.

Frieburg seems like a super cool place. There are a ton of people in the streets, like Munich, but unlike Munich, these people seem to actually live here. We caught the world cup game at a bar just down the street from us. We are in a pretty happening spot.

Here is a quick Freiburg teaser:

Saving the good ones for tomorrow.

We are going to explore the city a bit tomorrow, and maybe go out east a bit. One thing about this city is that it is SUPER bike friendly, but we still aren’t sure how pedestrian friendly it is. The Slumdog Bike Army would have a field day here.

Stay metal, kids. Should have sent bitchin’ photos up tomorrow.

-Babe

P.S. quiz time. Who can tell me what these huts are for? Post a comment on this webzone with the answer, and you might get a surprise if you are right (you won’t, and you won’t be).