There’s a saying in Freiburg stated with perhaps a little exaggeration: “There are two kinds of people in this world: People who live in Freiburg, and people who wish they did.” After a few days, you may feel the same way. At very least, you may not want to leave.

 

Quite simply, Freiburg is a joy to visit. The city is relaxed but electric, calm but alive, a small city dressed in smaller-town clothes. It’s a German city with an almost Mediterranean climate and certainly the attending ambiance and joie de vivre. France, after all, is just 25 kilometers (15 miles) away. The Austrians also left their cultural fingerprint here, too, thanks to the city’s 400 years as part of the Habsburg Empire.

Pride is expressed everywhere is Freiburg. The sidewalks are paved with dark pebbles from the Rhine. In front of each shop, quartz and other stones form mosaics of medieval trade symbols: a boot for a shoe store, a mortar and pestle for an apothecary, a bear in front of the Gasthaus Zum Roten Bären, and an ice cream cone—with three scoops—in front of an ice cream parlor. This is no easy task: Three men are employed full-time and can complete only a few square meters (about a 10-foot-square area) a day. The shops share the costs.

 

 

This and the following pages of the article appeared in its original form in Gemütlichkeit Travel Newsletter.