Freiburg eggs are very thin-shelled. I wasted 2 of xxoo's eggs - one fell onto the floor when I left them on the counter (my fault) and the other had the yolk fall into the sink when I cracked the shell. It's not my fault! Dutch eggs have thick shells!
On Wednesday it was 6 degrees in Freiburg in the morning (at 278m).
Legalize it; if I printed such stickers in Singapore I'd be sent for the hair test
Funky locker at the train station
xxoos had a 3pm class and my train was to leave at almost 4, so I decided to leave my backpack in the station. It was funky albeit expensive - €3/24 hr; what's wrong with normal lockers which only cost €1,50/24 hr?! Fortunately, for some reason the machine spit out my €10 note while still giving me a claim ticket, so I got free luggage storage. Maybe it's free while in beta testing or something.
I then embarked on a self-guided tour of the city with the €1 map-cum-city guide I'd bought from tourist information.
Haus zum Walfisch "with its magnificent late Gothic bay portal. Erasmus of Rotterdam lived here".
There was a shop selling calendars featuring cats, dogs, dolphins, horses, penguins, animal babies and:
Lucky Pigs calendar
Basler Hof
There's this weird German farewell word: "tschuess" ("bye bye"), which "can be shortened to 'tschue' or 'tschuessli'". When pronounced, it sounds like "cheers".
As expected, the Munster was under renovation.
Munster
This is a bad stitch. Just looking at it gives me vertigo.
Munster
Tower
Fountain
Pig ad
Portal
Entrance
Entrance
Entrance
Another fountain
Main entrance
Statue and devotional candles
Knight statue
Stained glass
Das letzte abendmahl von Franz x. hauser, 1806
Interior
More stained glass
'Hosanna' bell from 1258. 3400kg. The heaviest bell is 7000kg ("Christ" bell)
View from the top
Other side of the cathedral
Historisches kaufhaus, 16th century
There was €0,70 gelato in Freiburg also.
German 'curry' sucks because it's just ketchup with curry powder sprinkled on top. Dutch curry is nice, OTOH (even if it's sometimes called 'curry-ketchup'), because it is an integrated sauce.
I've no idea what this crocodile was doing in the river.
Schwaben tor - "A prime example of restoration"
The other side
Zum roten baren, Germany's oldest inn, since 1311
Fountain near the inn
After that I went to the Augustinermuseum, home to medieval art. There was free admission to the permanent exhibition (wah), and a €3 fee for the special exhibition upstairs.
Engel mit Sprachbend, 1350 (my copying of the vowels in the last word is suspect)
King Solomon, 1270/80
Immaculate Mary, 1770
Bildmisse der 3 munsterpfleger, 1584
Leo ropstein werkstaff, 1520
Georg ropstein wekstaff, 1520
Graf von Freiburg
"Lengthy conversations with the museum-guards are not desired, since they will cause the guards to neglect their duties" - Who writes these things?!
Reliquary stand and vortragekreuz, 1342/6
Scheibenkreuz, 1270
Silver altar from Freiburg cathedral, 1784 (?)
The martyrdom of St Sebastian, 1510. Oberrheim/Elsass
Bildnis eines junglings, Oberrheim (?), 1490
Funky thermometer on the wall
Adam and Eve, 1540. Hans Baldung Grien
For some reason there was a portrait of Maria Theresia in the museum.
Zick - Die grossmut des Scipio (undated)
This seems quite a popular theme; there was another painting by this name in the Gemäldegalerie. Of course, it was better, which was why it was there, I suppose.
Ottmar Elliger, Octavian am totenbett Kleopatras (undated)
Matthias Fuller - Bust of St Maximiliana, 1781
Dance of Death, 1440
St Bernard Bekehot die Ritter, Tafel aus Klosser Gunterstal, 1501
Hunting and Piety, from Dominikanerkirche, before 1300
Antiphoner fur Dominikanerlanen, 1480
Capital from said book
Funf hielige jungfrauen, Tafel aus kloster Gunterstal, Oberrhein, 1500
I was due to meet xxoos for lunch, but had wasted money SMS-ing someone about a silly issue (see below), so I had to use a public phone for what must've been the first time in years, and a coin one to boot! The funky T-mobile phone let me SMS from it too. Wah.
The (or at least the one I happened to find) Asian supermarket in Freiburg has Singapore Hainanese chicken rice mix. Wah. Not that I'd be crazy for it.
Harem restaurant. I wonder if it's 100% Halal.
Despite residing in Freiburg for more than a month, xxoos didn't know that there was a food court with food from all over the world, so I had to show it to her. Tsk. Inside, I saw Afghan and Georgian food for the first time, and Portugese for maybe the second. There was also a "Rollo Arabico" but I'm not sure if that was Arabic food.
Portuguese food - Hahnchen in Portwein und Reis, Peru Con Caril
There was a 'Forever' clothes and accessories shop with a 'Forever 18' line. Tsk.
English for pleasure?! Wth.
German pedestrian traffic lights turn red immediately without an interlude where the green man blinks. I wonder that more people don't get knocked down.
Streiburger Beitung
I hope, for this acupuncturist's sake, that they give out BAs in Acupuncture at Taiwan University
The Pope and Topless Women. I swear that they were on the same rack (albeit not on the same quarter of the rack). ms taupok recommends that you pay attention to his hands.
Cable car ride up the Schlossberg Seilbahn, rising up into the forest above the city. I had a train to catch so I didn't linger too long.
This was about 2-3 minutes either way. One day I'll take the 15 minute/3.6km cable car up Schauinsland.
View from above the city
Double headed eagle on Martinstor
There was gelato retailing for €0,70/€0,80, but near the Hbf I finally decided to try a shop selling it for €1. I was considering Maracuja but didn't know what it was (it's passionflower) and the person didn't speak English, so I went for Papaja, and on eating it realised why it was slightly more expensive than the other brands - the tiniest lick saw my tongue coming away studded with tiny bits of papaya. This was not good; if I wanted that, I could just freeze papaya and blend it up, but what I wanted was ice cream. What's good is a bit of real fruit is in the ice cream, but room must be left for the creaminess of the cream to be appreciated.
Herz-Jesu-Kirche (Church of the Sacred Heart), built in 1897
Thanks to Friedrich for informing me of this in the comments!
Some Freiburg food places have charts telling you which of their foods have "rauch" (are smoked, I guess), ascorbin sauce, phosphate, antioxidationsmittel etc. Must be some stupid legislation of the Green Party, I guess.
On the train from Freiburg, I was treated to a spectacle of German Engineering - above the seats there was a LCD showing which parts of the journey they were reserved for (if any), so people would know if someone would be coming to claim the seat before they disembarked. What I want to know is what happens if the same seat is reserved for 2 different legs of the journey (by 2 different people).
On boarding the train from Freiburg, I happened to peer at the LCD with route info, which said "Dortmund". Alarm bells started to ring in my head, and I got a feeling of impending doom as I remembered what had happened the last time I took this train.
Checking the printout of the route information, I found that it was correct. Looking at the pamphlet, I read: "Please note the following information. In Koln Hbf, this train will be split up", and realised what had happened to me in April. Armed with knowledge now, I was ready for DB's sneaky tactics, despite the printout detailing the route I must take to get to my destination not telling me that the train split.
When the train conductor came to check my ticket, he asked me where I wanted to go. After I told him "Utrecht", he started to walk away even though I was in the wrong section of the train. I had to ask him if I was in the right section before he told me that I wasn't - what bad customer service! I wonder how many people get caught by the train splitting. In fact, I recall that the same thing had happened to me in April, and the conductor hadn't said anything then either - hah!
When the train left Mannheim, there was a long announcement in German and the word "Amsterdam" was repeated a few times. Meanwhile the English announcement just welcomed customers and wished them a pleasant journey. And then when we arrived at Cologne there was no announcement about the train splitting - DB is truly evil.
At Cologne I had a snail sausage (I copied it as spargelwurst, but the word is "schneckewurst" so either I saw wrongly or I was thinking of asparagus for some reason) in a sesame bun; the sausage tasted the same as bratwurst. I wonder how these Germans eat sausages everyday - don't they ever get tired? It must explain the prevalence of Chinese joints in Berlin. The sausage stand in Cologne sold 0.5l of Coke for €1,95. Meanwhile a short way away a vending machine sold the same product for €1,50. Gah. Instead I had a Sinalco Zitrone, since it cost only €1 (yes, including the refund). There were also other Sinalco flavours I'd never seen before, and none of the disgusting Special which is the only Sinalco flavour you find in Singapore and is one of the worst drinks I've ever had (almost in the same league as Dr Pepper and "Dandelion and Burdock" drink).
As the train pulled out of Koln Hbf I got a good look at the cathedral, which was right beside the track - from my brief look, it truly looked like the epitome of the Gothic style. I wonder how much damage it suffered in the days of diesel trains.
Just before the train pulled into Dusseldorf station it passed by this building with many windows and directly facing the tracks. Each window had a number pasted on it. What was more interesting was that women with lingerie could be seen in some of them, with their backs facing the train. I imagine that from the street, most of the windows would not be visible; OTOH, the train ran on a raised track, giving passengers an excellent view of the building. My only question is why the women had their backs to the train instead of their fronts.
When the train arrived in Duisburg, the announcement in German was very long, the one in English brief and mentioned the connections to Essen/Berlin and the Dutch just announced that the train had arrived. The guy must've gotten sick of announcing. Also, in Oberhausen the guy added that it was "the last stop in Germany". Why ah.
someone corrected my pronunciation of "Titisee" as "Tea tea zee" and claimed that it was pronounced as "Tea tea zeh". When I pointed out that the announcer on the train had said "Tea tea zee", someone said my hearing was faulty. When I went to ask a man selling bacon in the village itself and he said my pronunciation was correct, someone said he was wrong.
The next day (Wednesday), I asked a total of 3 people - 2 Deutsche Bahn staff and 1 woman at the Freiburg tourist office. One of the former said it was pronounced as "zee" and the latter "zeh"; the other DB service staff member pronounced it in such a way that it sounded in between the 2 pronunciations, though much closer to "zee" than "zeh". I was intending to call the Titisee tourist office to get a definite answer, but I screwed up my VOIPBuster account and have €0,05 and besides, already have ample locally gathered evidence; furthermore, Tim the Great and I exerted our Internet search capabilities and dug up a pronunciation guide for the Wannsee Conference as well as a MP3 in which "Wannsee" was pronounced as "Van Zeh". The former was sent to someone but cognitive dissonance kicked in and someone, ignoring the evidence of their ears, insisted that "the woman on the clip is clearly saying zay".
My conclusion is that while in official German the place would be called "Tea tea zeh", locally it's called "Tea tea zee". There's a small possibility that both pronunciations are correct (ie It's a Strasbourg/Straßburg, "You Say Potato, and I Say Potahto" kind of thing), but since no one voiced that possibility it's probably wrong. This is like how there's New Orleans but no city called Orleans (this has to be read to be groked).
This is like the time when someone claimed that the OED was wrong, since anything someone disagrees with is automatically wrong.