Celebrating in Freiburg

Yesterday the Mullivans celebrated our -1 year anniversary, meaning that in a year we'll be married. Going to Germany and drinking in a Biergarten seemed like the appropriate way to mark the occasion. We took a train for 45 minutes to Freiburg im Breisgau, which is one of approximately 37 Freiburgs in the vicinity. This confused us considerably when we tried to buy our tickets at the automated machine at the train station. Finally, after missing our intended train, someone explained that we had to buy tickets to anywhere outside Switzerland from an actual person. This made sense to us, since we figured they had to check our passports or something. Nope! No one checked our passports or train tickets at all yesterday, go figure.

Freiburg was a really cute town. We had no particular itinerary in mind so we just wandered. Here are some pictures:

And when you get closer to that gate, you can see:

Behind it is a Subway, and to the right was a Burger King. We were tempted by the Subway until we realized the potential perils involved with communicating all our sandwich choices in German. We did, however, partake of the new McDonalds Veggie Burger on our way out of town:

It consists of a veggie patty that was surprisingly spicy, some lettuce, American cheese and tons of mayo. Not necessarily something we'd ever buy again, but for only 1.10 Euros, we couldn't pass it up.

We also ate a lot of ice cream.

And we saw Liza's personal heaven:

One of the highlights of the town was the system of miniature canals that run along the streets:

You can let your dog or child play in them! (We saw both)

I also really liked the decorative cobblestones.

We climbed two things in town: the cathedral tower and a big hill.

A view of the latter from the former:

The view from the hill:

On the hill, we went to a Biergarten. It's that building on the top right.

We drank a decent amount of beer, including "One of the Best Beers in the World."We thought it looked like Bud Light but since it made such a bold claim, we had to try it. We decided it tasted like Corona with lemon but better.

It's not too surprising that we wanted a McDonalds Veggie Burger after all that beer. We also had more ice cream.

The Best Sticker of the Day award goes to one we saw while climbing the hill:

Hooray for Freiburg!

Lucerne

On Saturday Patrick and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather (a rarity around here, we've learned) and spent the day in Lucerne! The city is really beautiful, as apparently everyone else in the world already knows, since they were all there to enjoy it with us. The quaintness of the city is brought down a little by the hordes of tour groups and the bus parking lot they've installed in the middle of it all, but hey, who are we to complain? We used Lucerne as a jumping-off point to go into the "pre-Alps" and went up a mountain called Pilatus. It was a great day trip, and only an hour from Basel!

Here's some pictures from downtown Lucerne. We decided the riverfront area is slightly better than Basel's, but only because the river is narrower and there many more bridges spanning it so it's easier to keep going back and forth. Plus, there are cute pedestrian bridges, some of which are made from wood and are centuries old - or, they used to be centuries old, then burned down sometime in the 1990s and got rebuilt in the same style.

This is the view across the lake (the downtown spans the point where the lake narrows into a river):

This is a fun building from the old city:

Patrick with bridges:

Patrick needs more cowbell!

We took a train from Lucerne to the town of Alpnachstadt, which is at the base of Pilatus.

From there we took the steepest cog-wheel railway in the world up the side of the mountain, which took about a half hour and gave us some awesome views.

It was really cloudy when we got to the top, so we couldn't see much.

We went walking around on the hiking trails anyway, because it was still pretty cool to be up there.

I call that one "Window Without a View."

Look at that poor bastard! Hiking up the mountain when there's a perfectly nice railway to take!

All that walking can really get tiring. Good thing there are some handy chairs to nap in.

At the request of my mom, we purchased and ate a candy bar on the top of the mountain in a recreation of her ascent of the same mountain 40 years ago. We made sure to get a Swiss one.

Just as we were about to go back down, the clouds cleared! The view was pretty amazing.

We went down the opposite side of the mountain on a pair of gondolas. The first one was really large and they pack a ton of people into it, so that wasn't so fun.

Then we transfered to a way smaller gondola in this mini town.

We got to travel the rest of the way alone, so that was great.

The gondola left us in a town called Kriens, which is basically a suburb of Lucerne, and we took a bus back to downtown. We walked around some more until we felt like we saw all that the city had to offer and then we hopped a train back to Basel. Overall, we had a great day.

Swiss Family Mullivan

The Paper Museum

Today I had plans to go to Bern with Peter, plans that were abruptly shattered at 8:15 this morning when he called to cancel. He said he'd had terrible insomnia last night, but I say he was probably hung over. I say that mostly just because I can, because everyone knows that whatever you post on a blog is incontrovertibly true! I thought briefly about going to St. Gall by myself instead, because that seems like a better place to go alone than to Bern, but then I went back to sleep instead. To make up for it I decided to enjoy some time walking around Basel, in particular the St. Alban neighborhood, which is near where my running club meets. I also went to the Paper Museum, which is in the same area.

This is some church - the placard on the side said it was started in 1280:

And this is the St. Alban Tor, which means gate. It's one of the few remaining original gates to the city.

The actual gate part reminds me of that scene in the Princess Bride when they're trying to stop Princess Buttercup's marriage to Prince Humperdinck.

It looks like people actually live in it now, which is incredibly awesome. I wonder how much that rent goes for! This is what makes me think it's inhabited:

Someone put out a table and chairs on that terrace, and there's a chain going across that says "Privat."

On this side of the gate is a nice park, which I think is a dog park, based on all the little signs with pictures of dogs scattered around. My running club often stops and stretches in this park, though, and I haven't seen many dogs. I have seen other running clubs, however.

Here's a section of the old city wall, which presumably once connected to that gate. I mean, if you could just walk between them (or build buildings and streets between them as it is now), what would be the point?

These are some other random pictures from that neighborhood:

Look at the ducks!

I think this is just about the cutest building ever.

The building on the right is a youth hostel. I think when Patrick and I come back through Basel to fly out, we'll probably stay there, since it looks great.

After wandering around, I wound up at the:

Swiss Paper Museum!

It was a really odd museum, housed in an old paper mill and still functioning as one. The exhibits were fairly interesting, showing the history of writing, paper making, and printing. There were some hands-on activities like trying out calligraphy pens, making water marks, and printing, but these were overrun by children so I passed.

In those pictures you can see how they get power, and then one of the machines that gets powered. This thing was making a huge racket. I guess the idea is that you put a ton of rags in a vat of water and beat them with these hammers until they become pulp.

The funniest part of the museum was the quirky coat room:

How random is that? Overall I think the museum was worth seeing. B+ or A-. Perhaps if I was Monson I would give it an A--!