Crossing the Border

It’s amazing how much the culture changes after just one hour of driving! Last week, we we went to Colmar, France, which is only a 90 minute drive from Freiburg, and I could immediately tell the difference between German and French cultures. Firstly, everything and everyone spoke French (obviously), but it was still interesting to see such a drastic linguistic jump just by driving 20 minutes over the French border! Secondly, Colmar was so quite and quaint. Although Freiburg is small, it’s busy! The only things in Colmar were restaurants and bakeries, at least that I could see. To be fair, though, I was quite hungry the whole time so maybe my attention was targeting just food places.

Though it was small, it was a really lovely town! We went on a gorgeous day, and although we encountered some really unfriendly Frenchmen and ate some interesting looking meat, overall it was a pleasant day.

Gotta love the French wine!

On our drive back to Germany, we stopped at a winery called Ihringer, which was really interesting. We tried three different types of wines: the red wine, the white wine, and the rosé. I think the rosé was ultimately everyones favorite, and I bought a bottle to take back to my parents. Most of the people on the trip were unsatisfied with the trip to France, but I thought it was nice to see another town for the day, even if we didn’t end up doing much. I will suggest, though, if you find yourself in Colmar, don’t go to the Unterlinden Museum. The people working there were incredibly rude and irritated that we could not speak French. The exhibits were subpar and the main attraction was closed due to reconstruction. Personally, I would not recommend it, and I’m not sure many others on my trip would either.

I’m excited for my next blog post because it will be after or during my trip to Dresden and Prague! Bis bald!