Day 17 – A jacket, Swiss motorways, Freiburg and Colmar

It was time to leave Switzerland and return to France. Due to my oversight in checking that all my clothes ended back in my suitcase, I needed to return to Strasbourg to retrieve my jacket from our AirB

Central Freiburg

nB host. As Bev had not seen the pretty little town of Colmar and since it was not far out of the way, it was a nice opportunity to both see the village and reclaim my jacket.

Some of the old restored buildings Freiburg

I had not wanted to spend money on a “vignette” which gives permission to be on the Swiss motorway system. Given we were only going to be on them very briefly it seemed like a waste of money to do so. That came with a downside. It meant having to take the back roads. I had programmed the navigation system not to put me on motorways however, for some reason, twice, it put me on them. I assume, that they were not the tolled portions, if not, knowing Swiss efficiency I am likely to be hit with a hefty fine.

Not only that it seemed I may have programmed in a wrong destination because it seemed we went around in a circle until I programmed in the route again. Then we were off through the very pleasant countryside and eventually we crossed the Rhine into Germany. Immediately we noticed that the roads were not quite as perfect as those of Switzerland. However, we had a nice drive through the Black Forest to our intermediate destination of Freiburg.

Freiburg was a delight. It is a buzzy university town at the foot of the Black Forest. We found out that the old town was completely restored after being 80% destroyed by bombing in WW2. We saw pictures which were smoking shells of the former buildings with only the Munster still standing. The cost of restoring the city must have been immense, but what they have done is a delightful pedestrianised central city area with light rail (trams) threading its way through the city. We were only there for about three hours but it completely charmed us. We climbed the tower of the Munster. I have no idea how many steps it was but it was a quite a number. I did for a moment have an acrophobic moment but it eventually it mostly went away. The view was quite good but with the wind blowing it was quite cool up the top under the spire.

We did have one moment just as we were leaving when I couldn’t find the parking ticket to get out of the car park. Bev found it as we went back to talk with someone about the loss. Phew, and we had not gone over time.

We took the motorway to Colmar which was about an hour away across the Rhine. Our host, Francine was delightful and she did not speak much English. In fact, I had more French than she had English and fortunately she seemed to understand my broken French. The room was lovely, better than a hotel with some very lovely touches.

We were to meet our previous host in Strasbourg to retrieve my jacket but it became clear that due to heavy traffic we were not going to be able to do that so we canned that idea and rescheduled for the following day.

The extra time gave us opportunity to look around Colmar which is a lovely town. There is a part called Petit Venise as the houses face onto a canal. They are beautifully painted. We found a nice restaurant at which to eat but they were not open, so decided to go back and retrieve the car. By the time we had done that there were no seats for another hour or so. Instead we went to another place close by but the food was average at best.