Day 1 - Freiberg

Well, we arrived today. The flights were all on time and smooth. In total, from door-to-door, it took us 13 hours. That included the ride to Pearson Airport, a flight to Dusseldorf, and then to Basel, and finally a 45 minute drive to our hotel.

With the 13 hour travel, mostly overnight, we were pretty tired when we arrived at the hotel, but our room at the Hotel Barbara wasn't quite ready. So off we headed to explore the town, with a few errands in mind. We looked into resident permits, got a pay-as-you-go cell phone, and met up with Alice's host colleague at the University. All very nice.

Our first few hours confirmed in person what we had already seen in pictures. A lovely city Freiberg is, with lots of hidden alleys and plazas, colorful cafes and nicely painted older houses, and loads of people wandering the streets.

One of the predominant characteristics of the day was the number of languages we spoke. Alice spoke czech, english, french and german, and I spoke english, french, and a bit of spanish and german. Unfortunately all of these languages came out while we were trying to speak german. It was quite humorous that we intend to speak german, but threw in all the bits and pieces of foreign languages we know. I did manage my first full sentence in german, "Ein pretzel, bitte". It worked, I got my pretzel - mmmmm.

Late afternoon brought a nasty thundershower, which put me right to sleep, while Alice went out for a bite to eat. And that brings us to the present. Alice is fighting to stay awake (and losing, I might add), and I am a bit foggy as well.

After a rest, we headed out to the Freiburg Weinfest. Lots of great wine (one of which we had because of it's winery name - Buchholz - Hi Andrea, you make a lovely rose!), mozzarella schnitzel (essentially a heap of cheese, breaded and deep fried...Mmmmm...), cheesy synthesizer musicians and great Nutella crepes. Tomorrow we diet...Naaaah. We stayed up until about 11 and then had a great night sleep.

Bye for now. Hiccup!