2nd Friday is up!

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Freiburg: 2nd Friday

Freiburg posts partially released!

Because some of my more dedicated readers are close to leaving for summer project (and a certain one is also bored at work;) ), I've decided to go against my original plan and release what I have so far of the Freiburg posts done. The orginal game plan was to release them when I was done, but I don't think I'll have them done in time so that certain people don't have to rush if they want to read them before the end of the summer. As of when I'm typing this, I have all my coverage up through Thursday of the trip finished and making good progress on the rest. I'll adjust the settings on here so that if you start at the top and read down you will progress chronologically through the trip instead of the usual way a blog has the most recent stuff at the top. I'll also include links to each section at the bottom of each post in case it gets long enough with the pictures that blogger pushes stuff off the bottom of the page. So, here's what I've got so far...

Freiburg: Intro and the Team

DISCLAIMER: This series of posts are not for you. Because of how busy we were, I didn't have the time to keep my own journal of the trip. So I decided to record my memories here online in a way that would serve both as my trip journal and, to a lesser extent, help you understand what our trip was like and how God worked both in our lives and the lives of the Germans we visited. So what does this disclaimer mean for you? No complaining about how long this is! If you just want to scan over the couple hundred pictures I've embedded (I'll count them up and put a total on here when it's done) and not read anything other than the captions, feel free. Oh, and one more thing, whether you read it all or scan a select few pictures: ENJOY!, Freiburg was amazing, fun, and powerful for our entire team and I hope that you'll be able to see that in these posts. So, onto my exclusive coverage of Purdue Cru Freiburg Spring Break...


I think the most appropriate way to begin my coverage of the Freiburg Spring Break trip is simply to introduce you to the team so you have some passing idea who I’m talking about. So here they are:

Chip “Fearless Leader”


Pauline

Shane

Liz “Elly” “Dee-Dee”

Travis "T-Dog" "Mr. T"

Jessica

I Tim “First Timothy”

Emily “Katie”

II Tim “Second Timothy”

Michelle

JD “Fack” “The Fack” “Fack Attack” etc

Anna

Shawn (me)

Mindy

Freiburg Table of Contents
Freiburg: Intro and the Team
Freiburg: 1st Friday - 1st Saturday
Freiburg: 1st Sunday - Monday
Freiburg: Tuesday
Freiburg: Wednesday
Freiburg: Thursday
Freiburg: 2nd Friday
Freiburg: 2nd Saturday
Freiburg: 2nd Sunday
Freiburg: The Quote Book

Freiburg: 1st Friday - 1st Saturday

1st Friday

Well, the “preconditioning” you people all thought I was crazy for actually did work. I managed to get up (and be “functional” if you use the term loosely) at 4am on the Friday we left. At about 6am I started taking my piles of stuff that I’d set out for the trip and my extensive checklist of things to remember (if I didn’t have that I’d never remember anything for a trip) and started packing. My packing strategy was a huge success because I can’t think of any significant item I forgot (or any minor ones, for that matter), used all but 3 or 4 items of clothing I brought, and fit it all into my smaller-than-average rollerboard (with the duffel bag that goes with the rollerboard folded flat inside so I could bring stuff back) and backpack without too much trouble.
After meeting some Cru people for lunch, I drove over to Tark to pick up one of the guys on the team and bring him to the airport with me. We had been given a strict 1pm show time at the Purdue airport, but lunch ran a little late so I showed up to get him at about 12:55. As soon as I reached his room I discovered that he had not yet packed at all. Seriously, he had a couple of small piles of things sitting out, but not a single thing was packed and the piles were only a fraction of what he intended to bring. Because we were on a relatively tight schedule to get to the airport so Liz’s dad could bus us to Indy for our flight, being late was bad news. In short order I had Chip on the phone appraised of the situation and this guy was frantically throwing his stuff together. We ended up leaving Tark at 1:24 and when I called to let Chip know we were on our way I generated the first entry in the Freiburg Trip Quote Book (as kept by Liz): “We are Tarkington inbound, ETA six and a half minutes.” (I think we made it in 4).

The good news is that we made it to Indy without much traffic and had no trouble making our flight to Cincinnati. I was able to go up front while we were boarding (as I later did on every flight during the trip) and meet the crew of our Embraer 145, so it was very enlightening to ask the Chautauqua Airlines crew about their experiences in the industry so far. Our flight was uneventful and after a short layover we were soon boarding a Boeing 767-300 “across the pond” to Frankfurt (the cockpit crew weren’t very nice to me on that flight, the relief pilot didn’t even know Purdue had a flight program). I wasn’t able to get a lot of sleep (~3.5 hours) enroute despite how tired I was, but it was enough to keep from feeling like a zombie the next day.

Saturday

We arrived in Frankfurt Saturday morning, and after a painless trip through customs we met up with Aaron and the IU team. For those of you who don’t know, Aaron is one of two Purdue people on STINT in Freiburg and the older brother of Bekah from Mer’dith. I never really got to know him while he was here, but he’s a good friend of Chip’s and they were really excited to see each other. We trekked through all sorts of tunnels, stairs, and escalators and eventually got to a beautiful glass building to wait for our bullet train to Freiburg.




It wasn’t long before our train came, most of us got a little extra sleep on it, and we got our first look at a rainy, chilly Freiburg:

A look from the Strassenbahn bridge going to the train station:


Bertoldsbrunnen, the Strassenbahn stop that was our main stop in town:

After meeting up with Courtney (“Corndog,” our other Purdue Freiburg STINTer), we got on the Strassenbahn (a streetcar system that makes for an excellent way to get around the city) and rode out to the stop for our hostel. From there it was about a ¾ mile hike with our luggage in tow that we’d repeat every time we wanted to go to or from the hostel. We had a small briefing from the STINT team, checked in to our rooms, and then headed back to downtown via the Strassenbahn for dinner. I ended up going with Corndog and a bunch of IU girls to a local place called Tackles that was known for their Schnitzel. I had the house receipe (Schnitzel with sherry cream sauce and a side of Spätzle noodles) and it was AMAZING. I now officially love Schnitzel. Then we headed back to the hostel and went to bed early to get some much needed sleep.

The girls at Tackles (left to right: Jaime and Shauna from IU and Corndog):

My roommates (Chip, me, Travis, and Shane):

Freiburg Table of Contents
Freiburg: Intro and the Team
Freiburg: 1st Friday - 1st Saturday
Freiburg: 1st Sunday - Monday
Freiburg: Tuesday
Freiburg: Wednesday
Freiburg: Thursday
Freiburg: 2nd Friday
Freiburg: 2nd Saturday
Freiburg: 2nd Sunday
Freiburg: The Quote Book

Freiburg: 1st Sunday - Monday

Sunday

After almost 9 hours of sleep (rare indeed), we rolled out of bed to find a coat of fresh snow covering Freiburg and, cameras in hand, started the trek back to the Strassenbahn so we could go to church.

Walking to the Strassenbahn:

The Black Forest covered in snow:

Fack being, well, Fack, on the Strassenbahn:

Calvary Chapel:

Calvary Chapel is a small English-speaking church where about half of the worship songs are in German and there is a translator for the sermon. We definitely felt a little out-of-place at times, but overall the experience was overwhelmingly awesome, especially to know that even though we might not be able to understand each other, we are worshiping the same God and He doesn’t have any “language barriers.” After church we split up for lunch and I joined a group going to a local Italian place called “Bellas.” We had some really great pizza and Shane was able to catch up with an old friend (Lori, who, if memory serves, is the former roommate of his cousin when they were at Purdue and is now on staff with Crusade at Illinois Catalytic). After lunch we headed back to the hostel, dodging the crowds of people going to the soccer game at the stadium near us (a few people from the team went to the game) and spent some time relaxing in our rooms. Liz and I split off to head back to the stadium so she could buy a scarf (the guy selling them had already packed up and left), and by the time I got back into my room I discovered I was stumbling into a minefield…

Every once in a while, Shane, Chip, Fack, and I (or any combination of the above) will find ourselves with the need to discuss something serious and/or (more rarely) confront one another about something. We’ve taken to referring to having one of these talks as a “pow-wow” and I walked right into the middle of one. Apparently there was some misunderstanding or something (doesn’t really matter) that needed to be talked out and it ballooned into a very fruitful discussion about some related topics and how we approach some of them. I think it was especially interesting for Travis, who’d never seen Christian brothers go at it in such an intense, direct, and yet still loving way. It was also the site of the second instance of me saying something with Fack responding with a “where have you been all my life?!” comment because it was either perfectly tuned to our senses of humor (as in the first case) or especially insightful to the question at hand (as in this one). For those of you who don’t know Fack or the dynamic between us, I consider those lines from him to be very similar to death threats from Toby; something to be treasured and tallied. Anyway, that first pow-wow of the trip ended up being encouraging, fruitful, and helped set a tone of openness for the guys that extended through the rest of the trip.

Later that afternoon we broke into teams for a scavenger hunt around the city to help us get to know the area. A few pics…

My scavenger team (left to right: Emily, Michelle, Mindy, Travis, and Ken from Illinois Catalytic) in front of the Döner place:

My “postcard” shot that turned out way better than expected of the Münster cathedral:

A vertical panorama of the Münster stitched together from three different shots:

I kid you not: a SmartCar convertible!

After getting some food at the Döner place, we all met up at “the office” to get to know the teams from IU and Illinois Catalytic a little before heading back to the hostel (“The office” is the local HQ for Campus für Christus and is an apartment they use for gatherings and the English Café coffeehouse):




Later that night, I was back in the hostel and decided to track a couple of people down to back up their pictures to my portable hard drive. When I found them in the basement, I discovered that I’d stumbled into yet another pow-wow, this time mainly between Fack and Pauline with a few others listening in. I quickly realized two things, the first being that this was going to be another one that I wanted to be a part of, and the second that I was needed to translate Fack-ese (his characteristic style of communicating) into something everyone else would understand clearly and vise-versa (and a little bit of that for Pauline also). The bulk of the conversation consisted of trying to define and clarify the question Fack was asking because there were a lot of misunderstandings with what he was trying to say and we didn’t get very far with finding answers, but I’d still label the whole thing as a success. Moreover, something very important happened while we were down there; Shane got invited to join in a game of Table Foosball (regular foosball for us, but they also use that word for soccer) with some German high school students staying there on a class trip. Eventually they finished the game and Shane went to go hang out with them in another area of the basement for the next few hours. You’ll hear more about them later…



Monday

We started off our morning with a group devotional/praise and worship time, and then dove straight into some basic cultural and evangelistic training:

Then we headed for the Mensas (the cafeterias at the university) to start our ministry time. Shane and I headed to the Science Mensa (one of three at the school and located near the science department, rather than by liberal arts as you might expect…jk). After buying meal cards and putting some money on them, we got our food and started looking for someone to sit down with. Eventually we spotted a late-20’s guy sitting by himself and, practicing one of our newly-learned German lines “Ist heir noch frei?” (“Is this seat free?”), we were able to sit down and start a conversation with him. Now in Germany, they have a very post-modern culture that loves to share ideas (and unlike here; politics and religion are allowed as discussion at the dinner table), but it is often a case of sharing ideas without any intent of looking for new ones to adopt or convincing others of your position. This usually results in people being very open to talking with strangers over just about anything. Sadly, this guy was not one of them. He was a grad student in physics and engaged us in small talk for a little while, but anytime deeper subjects would come up (even just his religious background/beliefs) he would tend to shut down. We did get him talking about the protestant/catholic divide in Germany a little and Shane got into a little bit of a faith vs. works debate with him that taught us a lot about German culture but ultimately got us nowhere with this individual.

That afternoon we met up at the office and split into two different groups. The first group went to a giant tower on a hill overlooking the whole city and the second group (myself included) rode about a half-hour away by train to visit a small town that had the ruins of a ~1000 year-old castle. The castle was at the top of a tall hill and was surrounded by a vineyard. We spent a couple hours hiking to the top of the hill and taking pictures in and around the castle.

The castle:

Hiking up the hill:

A panorama from part way up the hill:

A two-frame panorama of the town:

We think this is going to be his album cover someday:


Don’t fall Mindy!

Fack found a perch about 20ft up inside the castle walls:

The Purdue students and STINTers:


After getting back to Freiburg and getting some dinner, we went to the hostel for Campus Time. Stealing an idea from one of the IU girls I’d overheard mention it, I’d made some special arrangements earlier in the day, so we were able to have a genuine Black Forest cake that evening.

Campus time:

Why they dressed up Lerola's (Fack's guitar) case, I don't know, they were just playing with my camera:

Big eyes:

Then, after some praise and worship, Shane came running into the room demanding our help. He’d been downstairs continuing to build relationships with those high school students and apparently they’d asked him “would you like to learn a cool German dance?” He agreed, one of the kids started playing some music off his laptop for the whole room to dance to, and Shane was stunned to realize that he did already know that particular dance. I kid you not, the 30-40 Germans in the room all got up and started doing the Chicken Dance!! Yep, they thought that regular staple of American barn dances was a German thing. So naturally he ran upstairs and tried to recruit us to go down and join them (I was one of the few who actually did). It was hilarious, and it helped him continue to build those friendships and even begin the process of sharing the gospel with them.

Freiburg Table of Contents
Freiburg: Intro and the Team
Freiburg: 1st Friday - 1st Saturday
Freiburg: 1st Sunday - Monday
Freiburg: Tuesday
Freiburg: Wednesday
Freiburg: Thursday
Freiburg: 2nd Friday
Freiburg: 2nd Saturday
Freiburg: 2nd Sunday
Freiburg: The Quote Book

Freiburg: Tuesday

Chip, according to my “expert” opinion (how’s the saying go? “It takes a crook…”), is off his rocker. A perfect example of this is the lengths he’ll go to (and drag others with him) to get a picture. Somehow he got the idea into his head that the view of the city from that tower the other group visited on Monday would be really great at sunrise (because I never disputed that idea, the fact that he was right is entirely irrelevant to this discussion). After being connived into joining this little escapade of his, I rolled out of bed at, uh…really early, along with him, Fack, and Travis to make the trek to the tower. So we caught a Strassenbahn into town and hiked up the winding trails of the probably 300ft hill and then another 75ft or so up the tower itself. I don’t really have any way of conveying to you exactly how high this hill was (and thus how tiring), but it might help your imagination to note that we were rushing up it to try to beat the sun (already over the horizon). It was also one of the coldest times of our trip, so we were quite bundled up with several layers of heavy clothing to keep warm. As a side note before we get to the pictures from the top, we discovered a rather fascinating fact (well, it seemed fascinating to our sleep-deprived and Purdue-squirrel-obsessed minds at the time): Black Forest Squirrels are actually darker in color than our own!

You can’t see it very well, but here’s one of them running away from us:

Alas, it’s not going to show up on here very well, but here’s a ~300 degree panorama of Freiburg I took:

Looking down at my compatriots from the upper (much smaller) platform:

Fack joined me on the upper platform to shoot some video and I caught Chip taking a picture of us:

The same scene from Chip’s camera:

And a really awesome shot of just Fack from Chip’s camera:

The large building near the center of the picture is the soccer stadium by the hostel (hidden behind the hill just left of it):

The sun rising over the Münster:

We got attacked by a werewolf on the way up, but Fack was the only one injured before Chuck Norris showed up to save us:

About halfway down the hill there’s a large metal cross facing the Münster that makes for a great photo-op:

After we got back we had our second round of training and then headed to the Mensas for lunch. Shane and I partnered up again and went to the Main Mensa instead of the Science one like the day before. Even though we never got a spiritual conversation going for more than a few seconds at a time, we had some good discussion with the music major we met about his field and some of the philosophy books he was reading (Nietzsche, if memory serves). We were both encouraged by the conversation because he proved to us that what we’d heard about Germans loving to discuss things was true, something we had questioned after the conversation with the grad student on Monday.

Later that afternoon we went to tour the Münster and climb up its bell tower. Most of my pictures from the inside didn’t turn out because of the low light, but here are a few:

Some artwork over the main entrance:

Inside:
The Allies obliterated Freiburg in WWII, but if you look closely at this 1945 photo, you’ll see something odd. Even though the rest of the city was leveled (including the buildings immediately surrounding the cathedral), the Münster was totally undamaged!

The pipe organ:

The stages of building it showing how the Münster started out as a completely different architectural style and then morphed as the gothic style became popular:

The alter to Mary (totally surrounded by candles):

The front of the sanctuary:

Then we climbed up to the top of the bell tower, where I got this shot of the tower we climbed earlier that morning (a zoomed-in view is inset):

Looking down at the back of the cathedral:

One of the clock towers the Strassenbahn runs under (and a very nice house on the left):

Liz, Pauline, Jessica, and Mindy:

Pauline, Liz, and I:

That night we split for Men’s and Women’s Times. If you haven’t heard of them, they are a traditional Crusade event where the guys and girls split and the topics/discussion/activites/etc are geared toward the specific needs of each group. The guys all went to dinner at Martin’s Brau, a restaurant/microbrewery that fits the American stereotype of German food (bratwurst, pretzels, etc) (I had a dish of three different styles of bratwurst; man that was good):

After dinner we started walking back to the Office for the rest of Men’s Time, but along the way we stopped to watch some teenage street performers break-dance in the lit entrance area of a store along the street. After a few minutes of watching the three of them take turns showing off for the crowd, one of the IU guys challenged II Tim “I’ll give you 2 Euros if you run in there and dance.” II Tim, being, well, II Tim accepted the offer, dashed through to the front of the crowd during a break between the other performers, and immediately started doing one of the most comically bad “robot” dances I’ve ever seen! After dancing for about 10 seconds, he turned around and dashed back out of the center of the crowd. Naturally, the leader of the pack of German teenagers took that as a challenge for a dance-off, started doing a dance to accept the challenge, and tripped! All eyes started watching for II Tim (who now had the upper hand), but he’d disappeared into the night and didn’t even see the guy trip! This blurry picture of him dancing is the only surviving evidence that it actually happened:

Freiburg Table of Contents
Freiburg: Intro and the Team
Freiburg: 1st Friday - 1st Saturday
Freiburg: 1st Sunday - Monday
Freiburg: Tuesday
Freiburg: Wednesday
Freiburg: Thursday
Freiburg: 2nd Friday
Freiburg: 2nd Saturday
Freiburg: 2nd Sunday
Freiburg: The Quote Book