From December 26th to January 3rd, Melissa and I went on a train tour all across Germany. The university where Melissa works was closed from Christmas Eve until January 5th and she wasn’t too deep into her work yet, so we figured it would be a good time for our first big European vacation. I was originally planning on blogging as we went, but I forgot the password to the blog, and couldn’t post. Now I think that may have been for the best, I can take more time and write out longer, more thought out posts for each of our travel days.
Friday, December 26th we woke up bright and early in Lausanne to begin our trip. Our first stop, after a train transfer in Bern, was Basel, Switzerland. Basel is located on the Rhine river where the three countries of Germany, France and Switzerland meet. Deutsche Bahn, the German state railroad company, has an office there, and we were able to buy a twin German Rail Pass. The rail pass allowed us to ride almost any of the city to city trains in Germany without reservations, for ten days. It was about $600 for the two of us, but I think we made it pay for itself.
Pass in hand we boarded the first train we could for the short 30 minute ride to Freiburg, Germany. It was getting close to lunchtime, but we knew we wanted something better than the fast food at the railway station, so we decided to walk to old town Freiburg and look for an authentic looking German restaurant. We stopped at a restaurant called Ganter Brauereiausschank, right next to the cathedral, and were not disappointed. We got our first taste of good German beer, then Melissa had ravioli with warm potato salad, and I had roast veal with German noodles. I can say it now, since the trip is over, that was my favorite meal in Germany. The portions were American sized, the food was hearty and the beer was good. I know snobby people like French cuisine, but I’d rather be at a good German restaurant any day.
After lunch we spent a little more time walking around Freiburg. The main sight is the cathedral, it’s much more detailed and intricate than the one in Lausanne. It’s done in the Gothic style, which is supposed to be the same style as Lausanne’s cathedral, but it has a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it more ominous and German looking. All along the roof there are gargoyle statues and we even found one with a strangely placed rain spout.
The other interesting thing to see in Freiburg is the small canals everywhere in the old city. They look like maybe they used to be used as a sewage system, but according to wikipedia they were built to help fight fires, and water livestock.
At about 2PM we left Freiburg for Baden-Baden. We had made out a rough itinerary of our trip and added Baden-Baden because it was rated highly by Rick Steves. We couldn’t remember exactly what he liked about it so much, but we got off the train and started walking toward town to see what there was to see. We walked and we walked but it just looked liked a normal town, maybe not even too out of place in the United States. We were getting tired and still needed to travel to Stuttgart for our hotel, so we decided to leave without seeing much of anything.
That night in the hotel, we looked up what we missed in Baden-Baden, apparently the main old town with the sights is farther from the train station. We also found an interesting blog post by Rick Steves about why he loves Baden-Baden titled “Naked and Relaxed in Baden-Baden.”
We arrived in Stuttgart after dark, checked into the hotel (Melissa got a free room upgrade!), and had pizza in the hotel lobby for dinner.
