Freiburg Half Marathon

After I started running a little trying to get in shape for ski season, Alissa somehow convinced me to run a half marathon with her in Freiburg, Germany. Before a couple months ago, I had never run more than a few miles at a time because I hate to run just to run. But, low and behold, an hour and 59 minutes later, I made it the 13.1 miles. After all the complaining I did, the race itself was actually a lot of fun and I can see myself doing another one sometime. The competitive side of me won't let me settle for only doing it once.

This is the start of the full marathon before our half marathon. About 6,000 people ran the half.

Finished!

The old town of Freiburg was pretty neat too. The design of the cobblestone was amazing. It was very small and very precisely laid. The little streams in the streets are called bachles and were from old times to be used by the fire department. Rumor has it that if you step in one, you will marry someone from Freiburg. So, I stayed as far away from them as possible! (thanks to Dad for telling me the story about those!)

We were walking into a restaurant to eat lunch and I saw this gold brick in front of the door. I learned about these on the Third Reich Tour I took in Munich, but had never seen one. An artist decided it would be a good idea if all towns in Germany did this. It says, "Here lived Albert Levy, born 1867, deported 1940, died September 30, 1942". This is a Jew who used to live in this building and was deported to and died in a concentration camp. The artist's idea was to bring back the name/identity of each of them. Munich actually doesn't have these because the person in charge of the Jewish community said she thought the Germans did enough damage to the Jewish population that she didn't want anyone else "walking" over them. I think she kind of missed the point.

And what old European town/city doesn't have a massive Catholic Church?

This is the entrance to the church.

This house has the date of 1460 on it. Others were from about 1350.

View of the old town from my hotel room. The second picture shows a large vineyard on the hillside.

This has nothing to do with Freiburg, but Alissa, Jenny and I went to a tiny bar last night in Munich (probably only holds about 500) to watch a band called Theory of a Dead Man that one of our other friends recommended. I didn't think I had heard of them before, until I looked them up and had heard a couple songs like Bad Girlfriend and Santa Monica. They were really good in such a small venue!