Frances in France

As advised by my dearest friend, the title of this post almost cleverly encompasses the subject of most of this post. On Saturday we decided to take a jaunt to a different country. When we met at nine we had plans to go to Basel, Switzerland, but we found out that more planning was probably necessary to get there with just our tram cards which only cover part of the trains that run out of the Freiburg station. We hopped on the next train that could, though, and decided to go to Neuenberg, and walk to France. It was a bit chilly and foggy, but the train quickly took us to a teeny tiny German town, and from there we walked across the Rhein bridge and another giant canal and were in an even tinier town in France. You could tell how small it was because, though there were only four of us, wherever we went I saw people looking out their windows or looking at us quizically to see if we were lost. We tried to put my French skills to the test, but I was nervous since I hadn't used it in awhile and it didn't turn out so well. Luckily many of the people on the border speak German as well so the fluent German speaker with us was able to talk to them. We wanted to find an authentic French restaurant but we came to find that we would have had to walk anywhere from four to seven kilometers more and that wasn't exactly at the top of our agenda at the moment so after a good three laps around the city in a matter of an hour we just relented and went to the only restaurant in the city, an Italian restaurant. We ordered in a mixture of English and French, spoke some German and had a few Spanish phrases thrown out there just for fun. It was definitely a confusing lunch to be overheard by the guy who got us our food but we just thought it was the funniest thing to have an experience full of so many languages. I got the linguini and it was quite wonderful.
I could definitely tell that we were in France as soon as we got there, though. All of the buildings were bright, soothing tones and it just had that quaint feeling that German towns just dont possess. It was so nice to hear and attempt to speak French also, even if I couldnt recall as much as I'd liked. Speaking for even a short time in French affected my German for the rest of the day, and even my English. Everything was tinged with a French flair that the boys I was with laughed about but I didn't even mind, I think French is the most beautiful sounding language. All in all it was a short trip but so cool to think about how quickly and easily we can get to an entirely different country in a matter of less than an hour, thanks to the proximity of most countries in Europe.

 Crossing the Rhein

Chalampe

Another adventure that I took last Sunday was a day trip to the Mountains amidst the black forest, to a place called Schauinsland. We took a bus for what felt like an hour up, up, up a mountain to a quaint spa/getaway hotel. From there we hiked to the peak, to a lookout tower that let us see the Alps to our left and the French Voll mountains (I think thats how its spelled) to our right. It was really incredible the way the clouds were below our line of sight, and looked like soft pillows hiding the rest of the world below from us. I kind of felt like I was on Mount Olympus, it definitely made me speechless for quite awhile. On our way up to the top, we passed by children sledding with their parents and it was probably the most adorable thing ever. After we were done we had "Kaffee und Kuchen" at the resort. Thinking the "Apfel-Mohnkuchen" (mohn meaning poppyseeds) would be something similar to lemon poppyseed cake with apples inside, I ordered that. What came to me was something consisting of pie crust, a solid mass of poppyseeds, and sliced apples and streusel on top. I'm pretty sure if i took a drug test even now I would test positive for opiates, it was so many poppyseeds that I definitely wasn't expecting. I couldn't even finish it, and that's surprising if you know me and my love for cake and pie. It was an interesting experience to say the least, but the beauty of Schauinsland is one that will stay with me. Everything in Europe it seems is so beautiful in such an effortless way. I'm glad I picked a spot where I can still always see mountains in the distance, because living in Idaho spoiled me with the comfort of gentle, tree-laden giants always on the horizon. 

literally all poppyseeds

Tomorrow, I leave at 6:50am for Berlin, and from there we're off to Prague on Wednesday! I can't wait to add another country to my list and see what the North has in store for me :) Mach's Gut!