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Day trip: Christmas market in Freiburg

To ring in December in style, I went on a day trip to beautiful Freiburg on Saturday. As an apology: Due to the cold, I took all the pictures with my mobile phone camera, which explains the somewhat poor quality.

Freiburg im Breisgau is very well connected to Switzerland’s public transport network and not that far away. From Basel you can reach the “Black Forest capital” in about 45 minutes by ICE or in 1 hour and 10 minutes by regional transport. So there is no reason to make the trip by car.

Since I had never been to Freiburg before, I was of course very excited about the old town and the famous Christmas market, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. At the train station we let ourselves be carried away by the crowd (yes, some other people had the same idea as us) in the direction of the old town. After just a few minutes, you are standing in the middle of the hustle and bustle between the beautifully decorated Christmas stalls in Franziskanerstrasse.

We then strolled leisurely through the old town to the Münsterplatz, where you can marvel at a wide variety of market stalls between the impressive cathedral and the beautiful red historic department store. Personally, I particularly liked the stalls with the many wooden products, the tea and jewellery stalls. However, you should be aware that it is already very crowded between the stands. Despite the cold, we had lunch at one of the stalls on the town hall square (that’s the way it should be, isn’t it?). There was mulled wine and a fine veal sausage and we had to realize that the effect of mulled wine on an empty stomach should not be underestimated :).

Afterwards, to warm up a bit, we browsed around in the many bookstores and department stores and enjoyed a very tasty, huge Mozartkugel at Café Schmidt in Bertoldstrasse. What I particularly noticed while strolling around and like are the very nicely paved road sections, where there are some exciting subjects to discover.