Freiburg & Rieselfeld, Germany

As noted in our most recent post about Staufen im Breisgau, Germany, we tend to go to this area of the world quite often. We have a lot of friends from the region, but we also regularly have to fly through Frankfurt.

So, we often spend some time between flights in and out of Frankfurt heading to the Freiburg area of Germany to hang out for a while. This post is an amalgamation of two visits we made here.

Let’s start it off with a coffee and a pretzel! I know I usually do when I’m in Germany.

Freiburg is a really cool city of about 220,000. It’s a university town situated next to Germany’s Black Forest, so it’s quite scenic in both architecture and landscape. We didn’t do a lot of sightseeing on this trip, so you won’t be privy to much of that this time around. But, you might get some outside-the-box ideas about other things you can do in addition to sightseeing the city while you’re here.

Oh, Rieselfeld! So, this town is essentially part of Freiburg, but has its own name. It’s more or less a suburb next to the city, connected by easy tram routes to downtown Freiburg. Our Canadian friends live here part of the year, and are often one of our reasons for heading here.

The beauty of Rieselfeld is that it’s next to a protected nature reserve and the large Mundenhof park. This provides some spectacular views and easy access to nature itself.

So anyway, we stayed in two different places on these two visits. The first place was totally insane and a real luxury.

Here’s the view from our wintergarten, which is next to one of our three balconies.

And our rooftop terrace, because apparently, balconies aren’t enough.

Pretty sweet. While it was nice and all that, this place was massive and a bit over the top for us. So, we found another place on our second visit, which we’ve already stayed at on another visit not featured here. It’s a nice one-bedroom that’s more our style, and it has some decent views. Also, the owner is amazing.

Random, but I’ve always dug the art on this building in Rieselfeld. It features the photos and names of everyone who worked on building it! Pretty sweet, even if the building isn’t gorgeous.

This church is also very fascinating. It’s shared by protestant and catholic congregations, and sits next to the main square of Rieselfeld. I love the architecture.

I don’t know the story of its design, but it gets a thumbs-up from this guy.

Anyway, one of the easiest and most relaxing things to do in the area is to head to the aforementioned Mundenhof. This massive park is also home to a zoo and a beer garden. It makes for a great day of hanging out with animals, visiting the botanical garden, and eating and drinking big mugs of delicious German beer.

That dude let me feed him some plants, which was awesome. Goats!

So yeah, what’s up in Freiburg?

The city is very walkable, and has some great architecture to check out. It also has an amazing market, which our friends, Bev and Bruce, like to visit to “do a shop,” as they say in Canadian. Ha. Heading down to the market is also good for just hanging out, as we did by sitting in a cafe forever.

Of course, we liked exploring all of the things for sale here, too.

You can also check out the Freiburg Münster here, the main church of the city. You can climb it as well, but be prepared for something like 250 steps. We’ve done that in the past, and it’s a one-time go for Angela and me!

It does provide killer views of the city and mountains, though.

Who wants some beer?!

There are actually several great craft breweries in Freiburg. And as you should know, we love us some craft beer. We visited a couple of breweries here on one of our trips, both to drink some beer and to meet some great people.

First up, we went to Martin’s Bräu.

As you can see, it’s been around since 1989, which is pretty long for a craft brewery. We actually went here to meet up with someone from another brewery, who had done a collaborative kölsch style with Martin’s Bräu.

So yeah, that other brewer! Meet James, one of the founders of Brau Kollektiv.

While we didn’t get to head out to the actual brewery on our trip, we did have a wonderful time talking to James and drinking some amazing brews from Brau Kollektiv.

You can head to Schlappen bar in the city if you’d like to sit down and drink some of their beer. We did!

 

Lastly, we headed over to Decker Bier, which has a tap room in the city as well as brewing classes for its customers and patrons.

The aptly-named Decker Garage is a great place to chill with friends and drink some tasty brews. Unfortunately, it was a bit cold on our visit to sit outside. Womp womp.

Meet Markus, 1/3 of the crew that runs Decker.

And David, another 1/3. Say hi!

Unfortunately, we wouldn’t meet the third third, Daniel, until a later visit.

And, welcome to one of my favorite photos of all time. =P

Us with the Decker crew, as well as our friends, David and Claudia. Rock on, guys.

Special, mid-post shouts to the guys at Brau Kollektiv and Decker. Some fine folks with some fine beers, I tells ya.

Now, who wants some food?

A restaurant called Shalimar in Rieselfeld had some really delicious Indian food. Unfortunately, they recently closed. We are all deeply sad about this, especially since another restaurant they own in central Freiburg is nowhere near as good. D’oh!

We also hit up a Turkish restaurant in Freiburg called Divan, which is a fave of Bev and Bruce and is mighty tasty.

We also checked out an Italian place called Casanova, with our friends, David and Claudia. These guys make some delicious food, especially their gnocchi.

Bev and Bruce also hosted us for some filet at their house, which was delightful. We always have a good time with this pair.

And, I guess you can’t leave Freiburg without some Stefans cheesecake!

And that’s it…bis zum nächsten Mal!

Be sure to check out our Staufen im Breisgau post here, and our other Germany posts here.

A very special and very big thanks to all the fine folks in Freiburg and Rieselfeld, especially our pals Bev, Bruce, David, Claudia, Christine, and Viviane, as well as our new pals at Brau Kollektiv and Decker Bier.

Want more? Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and Flickr.

Have you ever been to Freiburg? If so, what’d you think? If not, what say ye? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!