Visiting the Black Forest Town of Freiburg, Germany with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
The one-thousand-year-old town of Freiburg Im Breisgau is a shopper’s venue for hand carved, wooden cuckoo clocks as you would expect for a site so close to the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest. Master woodcarving shows up all throughout town on the façades of wood buildings and on corner turrets of many houses.
The old
coexists amiably with the modern in Freiburg.
Trams whisk multitudes of people around town. Germany wants to be an energy-independent
nation, and trams are one means of reducing dependence on oil. Solar panels on rooftops are another means of
becoming energy-independent as are solar panel fields on hillsides that are
oriented towards the sun.
On the side
of trams, I saw advertising for Freiburg’s sister city relationship with
Madison, Wisconsin. Madison is one of the many places I have called home. The five-hundred-year-old university in
Freiburg gives the town a cosmopolitan flair as the University of Wisconsin
does for Madison. Pairing Madison up
with Freiburg is a great match, especially as Madison and Wisconsin in general
have a large population of descendants of German immigrants.
University
towns everywhere seem to have an abundance of pizza parlors. German-style pizza parlors are actually
doner-pizza parlors run by Turks. Turks
are the largest minority grouop in Germany, and every town seems to have a
doner-pizza parlor.
Pizza is
well known, but doner kebab needs an introduction. Doner resembles Greek gyros and Arab
shwarma. All three are meat cooked on a
vertical spit. Doner is made with lamb
and seasoned with ground red pepper, cumin, and thyme to give it its particular
flavor. It is sliced to order and served
in a flat bread with salad. The aroma is
delectable as is the finished product.
Many people
eat doner and other treats outside when the weather permits.
The
proximity of Freiburg to the Black Forest gives visitors an ideal base for
tours and hikes as well as visits to nearby Switzerland. The Black Forest is Germany's lung and makes the air in Freiburg pure to breathe.
By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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| Laaurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Ruth Paget Selfie |
