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| The view from our accommodation... |
If there’s one thing I love about the Germans (and to be honest, there are lots of things I love about the Germans), it’s the way they utterly embrace and celebrate whatever season they find themselves in. I think it comes from living in a country where the seasons announce themselves to much more definitely than Australia. When I’ve been there at Christmas time in the past, every house is adorned with traditional Christmas decorations – not the neon-lights-you-can-see-from-space kind (though those can be fun too) but carved wooden candle-holders in the windows and evergreen wreathes and beautiful old nativity scenes and gluhwein drunk in the snow at little stalls at the Christmas markets. This time we were there for spring, and Freiburg was going to be ready! Every window was decorated with traditional wooden eggs with delicate painted designs and spring flowers were growing in profusion in every garden. My prevailing memory of our visit to Freiburg, a university town in the Black Forest, was the market that was on around the church at the centre of town, where the locals (and tourists) had gathered to buy fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables, local meat, wooden toys and flowers – lots and lots of flowers. We wandered there quite happily for quite some time, also popping into the church, which had some pretty stunning wood carvings to see.
