29th April 2010 - Central Europe - Freiburg

When we first looked at the train schedule we thought that we would have to be in Freiburg until 1.30 pm so we could sleep in. But I finally discovered that if we could leave the town by 10.15am we could actually fit in another town called Basal. Freiburg is a bonus city which had about 4 or 5 parts to it. If you don't do all you lose all the points but because it is technically one challenge the two teams could do it together.
The only think that had a time limit was climbing the bell tower of the church. That did not open until 9.30am, could we climb it, run back to the hotel, collect our bags and be on a 10.15 train? Well we decided to try. The first part was to get to the top of a certain walk, see what was there and visit. Well this was a 20 minute hike up hill at the top was a spiral staircase, ice-cream cone shaped tower with 200 steps to the top. Well we huffed and puffed up the hill through the woods.
This was a lovely experience early in the morning. The woods were green and crisp with the dew still sitting on the leaves as the sun had not come up as yet to burn away the dew. The climb up the tower was a little stressful on the legs after the uphill climb but if we wanted to catch that train we had to book it to the top and back down. The tower was very neat from an artistic point of view as it ws a spiral stainless steel staircase being support by these enormous, extremely long and thick tree trunks.

We took a different path down hoping that it would bring us out close to the city gates, the bachles and the church. On the way down we passed this cross just randomly standing there, it was so beautiful backed by the brilliantly blue skies.

We then walked and found the city gate as was required. We had to find some bachles, these are the small little steams that wander through the town . We were also required to learn the legend of the bachles asn as legend has t, if you dip your foot into the backles ( stream) you will marry and remain in Freiburg forever

. We made sure that Lily only pretended and she did not actually get her feet wet, we don't want to lose her to Freiburg:)

Freiburg houses look like something off of a postcard. They have the little streams, the climbing literia flowers and the pastl paint and the shutters etc. So peaceful looking.

The church was still closed so we sat in the town square as the morning market was being set up and eat the food mandatory of currywurst sausage in bread.
We were the first in line to climb the very narrow spiral staircase the 350 steps to the top. The church actually has 3 levels of which you can choose how high you can climb.

We had decided to go all the way to the top to be on the safe side but the church is under restoration and the last section at the top of the steeple was closed. The view was still stunning .

We ran down the steps and ran back to the hotel and caught the train with 2 minutes to spare but we were now on our way to another town called Basal where we could pick up some more points. This day is just clicking together absolutely like clockwork. Basal here we come, suitcases, backpacks, cameras and all!!!!!