This is the town clock/gateway. Although Freiburg is in the state of Baden, this structure is called the Swabian gate, for the Swabian farmer on the mural that you can kind of see.
Here's the gate from another angle as we crossed the bridge to make our way up the Schlossburg, or castle mountain.
There are a few view points/rest stops as you make your way up the small mountain, and here's Xenia, Elo and me taking a load off.
A shot of the muenster behind us as Elo tells me a fart joke.
The town's local brewery, the German equivalent of Hamm's apparently. I had one. It's not bad.
See, not all women besides Elo are scared of me.
This is one of the very few remaining remnants of the castle and it's exterior walls.
The tower at the top of the Schlossburg is very cool, with twining timbers making the otherwise nondescript steel helix interesting.
And now the full structure.
Elo and Xenia ready themselves to climb the tower with the Black Forest in the background.
I try to convince Elo to carry me up on her back. She said no. Wimp.
Elo and Xenia in the crow's nest atop the structure. It was windy and that thing was really wobbling.
And now for their closer up.
A shot of the city from the tower...
... and here with more focus on the muenster.
This is the valley that Elo lived in and attended university.
The long walk back.
So long we stopped at a beer garden.
This is me explaining to Xenia how after Iraq and N. Korea, Germany's next. Notice how much more I've had than her, thereby explaining my efforts.
A shot from the heart of downtown.
Here's Elo relaxing on Tom and Xenia's porch.
We took a walk down the city's river in order to...
... picnic. I, apparently was overwhelmed by gravity. That's our hosts, Tom and Xenia in the background.
This is Elo's school of education. Although in what was West Germany, it has a definite Soviet block-housing feel to it.
The next day another of Elo's friends, Nina, and her baby... errr... baby boy.
