My new home

Freiburg is a great little city.

I live in Vauban, an environmentally-friendly neighborhood of student housing and co-ops. Colorful buildings, very few cars, and bikes as far as the eye can see. I live in a reclaimed French military barracks (presumably because this was in the French occupied zone) in a flat of six people: 4 Germans and one other American. My American flatmate is also studying here through IES, but she is in the EU program, so she has already been here for two months and isn't home a lot because her program travels all over the EU. My German flatmates seem super cool, they all speak English well and I hope to someday be able to talk to them in German sometimes too. They know a lot of American TV shows (they love the OC, Gossip Girl, and know Connecticut from Gilmore Girls) and music: I've heard them listening to Taylor Swift and Mat Kearney, among other things. My male flatmate likes Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. We've already had some great conversations about entertainment, food, politics, and cultural differences, and I think I'm going out to a rugby party with a few of them this weekend. I'm excited to get to know them.

We each have our own bedroom, and mine came furnished with a bed, linens (all they have for sheets here is a flat sheet and a duvet, it's kind of weird to get used to. Even at IKEA they didn't sell regular sheets), a desk with chair and lamp, a bookcase, a mirror, and a wardrobe with a safe. It has nice wood floors, a high ceiling, an old radiator, and a huge window that has these very industrial German blinds outside that you crank up and down. The windows also open multiple ways: you can open them inward like doors, or you can crack them at the top by tilting them inward. My room is a bit hospital-white right now, and I'm sad that I seem to have forgot to pack my stack of pictures from home. They would have brightened up my walls nicely. My friends and I have figured out an easy, free way to decorate though. There are event posters EVERYWHERE in Freiburg: buildings, bus stops, doors, handrails, you name it. And we kindly wait until the day of the event or the day after, rip it off, and take it home.

My flatmates and I all share a kitchen and various bathrooms: we have two shower rooms and a bathroom with two stalls. Lots of things are different here. We share two small refrigerators, and one is little more than a glorified mini-fridge. The oven is in Celsius (obviously) and has lots of weird pictures on it instead of words so I have to figure out how to use it. The bathroom stalls go all the way to the floor, unlike in America where you see people's feet and can sometimes nearly see over the top. The toilets have buttons on the wall to flush them, and the flushes are customizable. Some places have the 1 or 2 flush option that I've seen a few times in America, but most, like in my flat, have a button where you press one side to flush and the other side to stop, so the flush is exactly the length you need.

There is also LOTS of recycling here. I'm a big recycler at home but everything we have is single-stream so I don't even think about it. Here, there is a bin for paper, bins for glass (further separated by color), a bin for organic waste, a bag for plastic/combined materials/metal packaging, and the Restmuell bin for the rest of the stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else and is trashed. Recycling is free here, and trash pickup is very expensive, so there is big incentive to recycle.

There are three grocery stores in walking distance from my building. Aldi, Rewe, and a natural grocery store called AlNatura. I have Aldi at home so I know a little bit about German grocery shopping, but I didn't realize that every store here is like that: you have to pay a deposit to get a shopping cart (which gives you the incentive to put your cart back in its proper place to get your money back) and you have to bring your own bags with you. If you forget them, you can buy paper or plastic bags at the store, but it seems frowned upon. Also no one bags for you. The checkout line can get kind of intense as you are trying to pay the cashier and bag your stuff at the same time so you're not holding up the line. Germans also seem to make small, frequent shopping trips. I haven't seen anyone stocking up with a huge cart full of stuff like I would in the US, but I guess it makes sense considering the small fridges and the fact that almost everyone here uses public transportation to get places.

As a "green city," not as many people drive cars in Freiburg. There are bikes EVERYWHERE. Thousands and thousands of bikes: parked at the train station, under beautiful bike shelters at the University and at Oikos (one of the student dorms), along rails at Vauban, and on the streets. I plan on getting a bike, but first I have to figure out how to ride in the city. In some areas, bikes have their own lane, sometimes they ride with the cars and follow all of the same rules for stoplights, and sometimes they are allowed on sidewalks. It seems really confusing, but driving seems worse. I don't think I could drive here. I've seen lots of people driving on things that I didn't think were roads, so I don't even know. The pedestrian rules are kind of weird too, drivers don't necessarily stop for you, and apparently Germans aren't big jaywalkers. My chances of being hit by something in my four months here are pretty big: be it a bike, a car, or the almost silent trams, there is always so much to look out for on the roads and sidewalks.

Most people travel by tram here. I bought a Regiokarte that's good for all trams, buses, and some regional trains for a month to get around. I take the tram to school and basically everywhere else. The trams have tracks in the middle of the road and they are really quiet. Public transportation in Germany seems to run on the honor system: you just hop on the tram or bus anywhere you want, and don't have to show your ticket to anybody. Apparently ticket controllers come around and check at random, but it hasn't happened to me yet. The punishment for traveling without a ticket is a steep 40 Euro, and if you have a transportation pass and just forgot it that day, you can go to the transportation office within 24 hours and show it to them and the fine is only 7 Euro. Good to know.