With medieval alleys suffused with dusky light and wisteria vines, car-free streets intersected by foot-wide canals and the surrounding Black Forest leaning into so much of its history, Freiburg is fertile ground for a stirring city break.
It’s one thing to visit a stock-in-trade German city with a stunning cathedral, mosaicked squares and hazily nostalgic beer gardens. It’s quite another to visit one that has a thriving wine culture, a carousel of trams and funicular to ride, and eco-consciousness hardwired into its brain. This is Freiburg, and if there was ever a time to visit it is now: it’s having a moment.
In winter, this university city hits the travel jackpot, with snow-laden roofs, glühwein stalls and Christmas goodies galore, while summer ushers in lake swims and eye-candy sunsets. Spring is for farmers’ markets, autumn for the wine harvest – how many cities do you know with a vineyard right in the pedestrian centre?
Oh, and the clincher? It’s Germany’s greenest and sunniest city and is only a train ride away.
Read more on Germany travel:
What to do
Sail a toy boat
Setting sail on a Bächle
(Getty)
“There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” So says Ratty to Mole in The Wind in the Willows. In Freiburg that’s equally applicable to messing about with boats.
Like a miniature Venice, the pedestrianised Old Town is cross-crossed with clean water-sloshing gutters only big enough for toe paddling and giddy child’s play. These open runnels are better known as Bächle (“brook” in German) and, though designed in the 13th century to quench thirst and fight fires, they’re now used for sailboat races. Handily, plenty of shops sell dinky Bächleboot vessels for a few euros so anyone can join the Lilliputian regatta.
Take a tour of the Münster
Whether you’re one for churches or not, Freiburg’s landmark shouldn’t be written off: it’s sublime. For starters, the Münster can throw all sorts of facts at you (the spire’s higher than Big Ben! It took 300 years to build! Look, stone gargoyles everywhere!), but the joy is simply taking it all in and finding awe in one of the world’s most beautiful cathedrals.
In the surrounding square, the Münstermarkt pops up every weekday and Saturday morning, with farmers, butchers and florists shaking hands with the…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Independent Travel…