Grüße aus Freiburg im Breisgau!

I am sitting in Aspekt, a very chill cafe where one can order a beer (Hefe Weizen being my weapon of choice) and use their internet without cost (kostenlos, as people here say). The reason why I haven’t updated this is because I don’t have internet in my room and I have been busy with homework. The main thing that has happened since my last update is my arrival in Freiburg in my settling in.

Things I have gotten used to:

• Bringing my own grocery bags/buying one and bagging my own groceries.
• Always having the right-of-way in the old city, even when the cars have a green light.
• Seeing more bikes than cars.
• Speaking/hearing German all the time.
• Being the only one in my apartment who eats meat.

Things I have not gotten used to:

• Clapping at the end of every lecture.
• The bureaucracy and its crazy opening times.
• Not seeing familiar faces every day.

The city is very nice, in the way a lot of old European cities are. It is 900+ years old and it really shows, when you walk around the old city, through the cobble stone Fußgängerzone “streets” and go into a pub in an ancient dungeon-like basement. There are a lot of cathedrals and open markets. Old ladies on bikes? All the time. Little kids on unicycles? Sure, all the time in Vauban, where I live. There are also a lot of people who live on tree-house-like structures near to where I live, it’s so different here–I love it.

Anyway, I must go and study a bit. I get a lot of homework in my language course, but it is definitely worth it; my German has improved so much–I can barely believe it.