Zähringen

'I know!' Gen thought with a smile, 'I can stroll through Freiburg with my roller blades and cover 4 times the area!' And right she was. Today roller blades enabled me to go all the way to the neighborhood on the far south side of the city, Zähringen. Definitely an awesome name, the Zähringen family was a ruling German clan at the turn of the first millennium. Konrad of Zähringen (and his brother Duke Bertold III) established Freiburg (1091) as a free market town, lying on perfect location between the Mediterranean and North sea trading routes and on the Rhein and nearby Danube rivers.

Despite that Konrad's son, Bertold V died childless and that was the end of the Zähringen family, the favorable market location and the close silver mines made Freiburg a very influential town by 1200. With this excess money, the cathedral (Münster) construction was started, only to be finished 300 years later (1513).

The Zähringen neighborhood I explored today, I'm not too sure on its history. It had many old houses of course, and a couple cobble-stoned streets (which are scary scary on roller blades), a nice biergarten where I ate Käseschnitzel and drank Apfel-Schorle and a pretty wall mural.

A special moment came when I rolled into the next town Gundelfingen and over this cute small wooden bridge... and on the other side were 6-8 closely designed houses evenly spaced out on either side of the street... and for a second my mind travelled back to a rainy day in Seattle. Sebastian and I were bored and ended up building not only (playing-) card houses, but a card city. My mind replayed the exact moment when I showed Sebastian my card suburb: a cute small card bridge and on the other side were 6-8 closely designed card houses evenly spaced out on either side of the street. The memory at that moment felt so fresh... hmm, I should call Sebastian, I haven't talked to him in a while.

Or I'll lay down because I am pooped!