Living in a Dream World

Germany just made sense to me. The stereotypes about German engineering and efficiency are true, especially in Freiburg. I lived in a dream world, where everything worked. Let me break it down for you.

I lived in:
Vauban, the most ecologically sustainable neighborhood in
Freiburg, the greenest city in Germany, which is located in the state of
Baden-Wuerttemberg, the richest state in
Germany, a highly developed and powerful country with one of the world's largest economies.

The larger German economy didn't really become apparent to me until I traveled to Rome, which frankly, I found to be dirty, inefficient, and with incredibly incompetent and frustrating public transportation systems. It took me one step off the plan to become aware of the difference in the state of economy in Italy compared to Germany. I was never so glad to be in Germany as when I arrived in Berlin from Rome and was greeted with an airport full of immaculately clean (fee-charging) bathrooms, ample recycling stations, and a vast yet easily navigable public transportation system. I don't mean to rag on Italy, but I just had such a different experience that I wasn't necessarily prepared for. The differences were so stark I couldn't help but point them out and think about them.

Vauban was a very interesting neighborhood with a really turbulent history. I lived in the Studentendorf, housing owned and managed by the university. The oldest buildings in Vauban, which comprised most of the Studentendorf, were French military barracks from World War II, because Freiburg was in the French occupied zone. I lived in one of them, in a six-person apartment.

150/06, converted military barrack and my home for four months.

If you don't believe me, check out the gun rack we had recessed into the wall of the common area of the apartment.

Vauban is a vibrant area of town. In addition to the student housing, there is regular family housing and the SuSi, a commune of sorts. There's quite an interesting political history in Freiburg that is now mostly concealed by agreements and new construction. See, decades ago, after the French left town, the area was occupied by squatters, both in the old military buildings and in caravans on the grounds. At some point the city came in and decided to reclaim the buildings, and there was a big battle between the city and the squatters. The city agreed to let the squatters keep two of the buildings, and in them the SuSi was born. SuSi is an acronym that stands for "Selbst-Organisierte Unabhaengige Siedlungs Initiative," which basically translates to "self-organized independent settlement initiative." It's easy to tell which buildings belong to the SuSi, because they have brightly painted murals, grounds covered with interesting recycled art, highly
decorated balconies and staircases, and are surrounded by old vans and RVs that people live and work in.

I walked through the SuSi every day on my way to the tram stop.

Pippi Longstocking is one of the mascots of Vauban.

The SuSi proved to make very interesting neighbors. There were some students there, but mostly families, and fairly ethnically diverse ones at that. It became a completely normal thing for me to see all kinds of folk around: children with dreadlocks riding unicycles, groups of people on stilts, people wearing all kinds of harem pants and flowy clothing playing outside barefoot. They had really interesting wooden playgrounds, mysterious art installations (this giant white dragon thing made out of lights and umbrellas for the 1st of May celebrations...I wish I had a picture of that), and at the end of my stay, the craziest parties. 2013 marks the 20th anniversary of the SuSi, and so they had the most fantastic three day celebration one weekend. It was like a music festival in my own backyard, except with even crazier decorations. The week leading up to the party, my walk down the street through SuSi included a stroll down a purple carpet under curtains of tinsel blowing in the wind, with mannequins with animal heads and wings guarding the path.

One of the last squatter strongholds in the area was this area called "Rhino," which was basically a lot full of vans and RVs and small buildings and art. The city kicked them out to build a new, super "green" hotel, which was being completed when I was living there. I could still see the scars of Rhino though, with signs saying "I miss Rhino" tied to the fence around the construction area, or Rhino-related sayings being graffitied onto buildings and signs in the area. If you look it up on the internet, the Rhino controversy looks like a pretty big deal:

Rhino used to exist along the tram lines in Vauban.

Here you can see it getting pretty politicized, surrounded by signs and banners.

The people did not let go of Rhino without a fight. There were riots and police activity.

There are pictures of riots on the website for the state newspaper, Die Badische Zeitung.

And now, where the free citizens of Rhino used to dwell, there's this:

Hotel Vauban, a brand new, just-opened, super modern and green hotel.

Vauban was an amazing place though. I need to get back to telling you how awesome it was. It's basically an urban planning experiment to see how people can live without cars: there is a solar parking garage on the outskirts of Vauban, and there was a small parking lot in the Studentendorf, but other than that, there were no cars inside of the neighborhood. All of the streets were very narrow and pedestrian-oriented, and named after scientists and philosphers and authors, which was pretty cool. Nobody really had a yard like they do in American suburbs, rather people lived together in ecologically designed buildings and used their balconies/doorsteps/rooftop terraces to the fullest advantage and covered them with plants and lights. There was lots of beautiful common space interspersed between all of the houses: several playgrounds, gardens, lots of trees, grassy areas with fire pits. The Strassenbahn (tram/streetcar) had four stops in the area, and there were also bus stops. I lived equidistant from two tram stops, and had about a 4 minute walk to get to public transportation every day.

I should mention that everybody in Freiburg bikes. There are bikes everywhere: in nice bike shelters, along railings, on balconies, whatever. There are well-marked bike lanes on the street and definitely a big bike culture there. The law says you have to have working front and back lights on your bicycle, and I know more than one person who has gotten a bike-DUI.

Freiburg was set up on a very human scale. What I mean by that is that the infrastructure is such that every neighborhood has its immediate needs taken care of. In my neighborhood, there were three grocery stores (including AlNatura, perhaps a smaller, German version of Whole Foods), a bank, a drugstore, a bakery, a couple of restaurants (including a Doener place, Doener kebab being the most popular type of fast food in Germany), an ice cream place, a bike shop, and a small department store. You can walk to everything and easily get what you need without having to take three buses across town or drive to a strip mall on the edge of town like you do anywhere in America. People buy only what they can carry, and so I went to the grocery store every couple of days to get food, instead of stocking up on two weeks' worth of food like I do at home. The refrigerators are smaller, too. The six people in my apartment shared two glorified mini-fridges, so I couldn't hog the whole fridge with a week's worth of food or anything.

Nature was also extremely accessible. Vauban is on the edge of town in the shadow of beautiful Black Forest hills. I just had to follow the path out my back door, walk a few blocks, and then start ascending the huge grassy hills that were a combination of fields and vineyards, eventually giving way to forest. I had some amazing hikes in those hills, my favorite places to go to being the tiny hamlet of Schoenberg, and the ruins of castle Schneeberg above it. There were medieval castle ruins practically in my backyard! It was amazing.

Here are some photos from my hikes: