Finally after almost two months of working I am taking a holiday again and I am going back to Freiburg in Germany to visit my girlfriend. The trip down was supposed to take around 8 hours, including train and waiting at the airport. But what was supposed to be a routine trip turned out to be something very different. It all started of with my train from Lillehammer being 30 minutes late. Luckily that was not a problem since I had booked the train 1.5 hours ahead of my flight in case of delays just like this one. When I got to Gardermoen (the airport), delivered my backpack (which for some reason is special luggage now) and gone through the security I noticed that my flight was delayed as well. After a lot of waiting I got the information that there was snow in Frankfurt and that was the reason for the delay. After about 3 hours and a free meal voucher from SAS we where allowed to board the plain. Turned out I would be waiting another 2 hours before we even took off. At least they gave us free food and drinks on board as well (you normally have to pay for it).
When we finally landed and got off the plain and into the waiting buses I saw the snow that was causing all the troubles. All 3 centimeters of it... I guess the Frankfurt airport doesn't have the same experience as Gardermoen (where there is snow half the year anyways). The train from Frankfurt to Freiburg was at least on time or so I thought!. I got as far as Karlsruhe before the train had to wait 25 minutes on a passing train that was delayed. I ended up arriving 00:40 instead of 20:00. But I made it and that's all that matters!
The plan was to go to a thermal bath the next day, but the weather was not that good in Freiburg either. The car had frozen and didn't want to start so we had to change our plans. Instead we visited the local Freiburg Christmas market. The market is made up of many small booths selling various homemade goods and food/drinks. On of the famous things you can buy there is Gluehwein, a wine that's heated and served hot. It has a very Christmasy taste and comes in both red and white. I also tried something called Striebele which is a kind of sweet bread snack. It looks funny as you can see on the picture :)
In the evening I went with Annina to her Norwegian lessen. We did different exercises, played games, some grammar and reading. I had to help the teacher pronounce words and read (she was German and had a German Norwegian accent). It was nice to see how a Norwegian class in another country is. During my stay I also visited the kindergarten where Annina works every morning. Her father also works there full time. The kindergarten was located in a pretty boring looking building, but once inside it looked very cool. I loved the way the rooms were designed, some had extra levels and non looked the same. It's hard to describe and I wish I had some pictures to show you instead, but unfortunately I don't.
Since it's advent we had to bake some Christmas cookies. We decided to make cinnamon stars, coconut macrons and "black and white" cookies. We had to improvise a little while baking because we forgot to buy some and had to little of other ingredients and it took us several days to get them all done with various levels of success, but in the end they all tasted good and that's what matters (to me at least).
The weather has not been that good with snow and cold the first few days and then rain, so we haven't had the time and interest to go and explore that much. However we did go to a Cafe with a friend of Annina called Carla and that was really nice. Other than that and the other things I already mentioned the first week has been lazy :P I will post a second post about my visit to Freiburg in a few days and it will have a bit more interesting reading I hope.
When we finally landed and got off the plain and into the waiting buses I saw the snow that was causing all the troubles. All 3 centimeters of it... I guess the Frankfurt airport doesn't have the same experience as Gardermoen (where there is snow half the year anyways). The train from Frankfurt to Freiburg was at least on time or so I thought!. I got as far as Karlsruhe before the train had to wait 25 minutes on a passing train that was delayed. I ended up arriving 00:40 instead of 20:00. But I made it and that's all that matters!
The plan was to go to a thermal bath the next day, but the weather was not that good in Freiburg either. The car had frozen and didn't want to start so we had to change our plans. Instead we visited the local Freiburg Christmas market. The market is made up of many small booths selling various homemade goods and food/drinks. On of the famous things you can buy there is Gluehwein, a wine that's heated and served hot. It has a very Christmasy taste and comes in both red and white. I also tried something called Striebele which is a kind of sweet bread snack. It looks funny as you can see on the picture :)
Since it's advent we had to bake some Christmas cookies. We decided to make cinnamon stars, coconut macrons and "black and white" cookies. We had to improvise a little while baking because we forgot to buy some and had to little of other ingredients and it took us several days to get them all done with various levels of success, but in the end they all tasted good and that's what matters (to me at least).
The weather has not been that good with snow and cold the first few days and then rain, so we haven't had the time and interest to go and explore that much. However we did go to a Cafe with a friend of Annina called Carla and that was really nice. Other than that and the other things I already mentioned the first week has been lazy :P I will post a second post about my visit to Freiburg in a few days and it will have a bit more interesting reading I hope.
I too have made cinnemon stars and the black and white cookies. The black and white were a total disaster thought. I think I didn't put enouph flour in the batter. But did you ever get to the thermal baths?
ReplyDeleteSo this is what you've been up to, very nice! I ended up googling you after I got a spam message sent using your hotmail address and thought I'd check what you'd been up to (you might want to check that if you still use fatsheep_ak)
ReplyDeleteCan't say I've been using my hotmail for quite some time, but nice to see you are still alive and about :D I'll have to google you back some day :P
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