One Night in Freiburg, Germany

Freiburg im Breisgau is a delightful university city in Southwestern Germany with a large pedestrian downtown. While there may not be enough major activities to fill a couple of days, it is definitely worth spending a night there.

Our motivation for coming was that we had planned a road trip through parts of Germany, France, Luxembourg, and concluded that Freiburg was a good transition place between trains in Switzerland and cars in Germany, particularly:

We wanted to pick up our car in Germany since we were eventually dropping it off at the Frankfurt airport. Generally, car rentals are less expensive if you pickup/dropoff in the same country.
Freiburg is close to Switzerland and easy to reach by train. Having already spent a week in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland, we were able to arrive just after lunchtime.

Our Experience

Upon arrival, it was too early to check into our hotel, so we dropped our bags with the front desk and set out to explore the city.

Freiburg Münster

Our first stop was the Freiburg Münster, a cathedral whose construction began in the 1200s.

The stained glass windows were quite impressive. If you want to see the front portion of the cathedral, you will need to pay a small fee, however it is really only worth paying for this if you are really into art and church architecture. Personally, I found the stained glass in the free section to be the most impressive.

Münstermarkt

From there, we wandered through the market in the Münsterplatz, picking up some wooden coasters as a souvenir. Since Freiburg is in the Black Forest, it makes sense that the markets would have a lot of wood products!

Old Town Wanderings

We wandered through the town, simply enjoying the atmosphere. One oddity was that people seemed to be using the gutters to store various items. Wine and watermelons were being chilled in the icy cold, and seemingly clean, water. Just keep in mind that if you happen to trip into one of these gutters, the locals will claim that you are destined to marry one of them!

As we popped into a few shops, we discovered that John has incredibly expensive tastes in knives. Too bad his style wasn’t my style, or I may have been tempted to get a new chef’s knife. We were also looking for a new daypack to replace one that was starting to unravel at the seams, but nothing at a reasonable price point was quite right.

James and I decided to pose at the Swabian Gate, which has an interesting backstory about a merchant who tried to buy the city, but was thwarted by his wife who when into his trunks, removed his money, and replaced it with sand and gravel.

We also took a few pictures that included the Merchants’ Hall and some other buildings that I enjoyed looking at.

As we continued to wander, we admired the artwork around the city.

We also popped into church and made a few stops for ice cream and pastries.

Dinner

Eventually, it was time for dinner. After a week of cooking our own food in a Wengen vacation apartment, it felt really nice to go out for dinner. German food can feel quite simple, but it is also very tasty.

We thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon and evening in Freiburg. If you are driving through and have a few hours to wander the historic old town, make the stop!

In the morning, we had a mild snafu with the rental car and had to pick it up from a different location than planned, but it all worked out and then we were on our way to Stuttgart to see the Porsche museum!