Sometimes I think you just need a couple days to regroup, which is really what Freiburg ended up being for me.  Staying in my own hotel room, free breakfast, and a smaller, more relaxing city to wander around without the pretense of needing to overload on sights and attractions.

But I walked through the old town area like I do everywhere, checked out the town halls and cathedrals, and walked through their main city area (population is about the same as Rochester). And yeah, I saw some cool cuckoo clocks.  But I didn’t have the Cherry-Torte cake they are famous for.

Here was the view from my hotel room:

I had thought about spending an extra day or two, renting a car, and driving through a bit more of the Black Forest (Schwarzwald).  But, meh, ya know?  Instead I decided to just take a couple hour hike through the Black Forest area, then finally up to Schlossberg to get a nice view of everything.  I took a couple pictures there.

So was it worth it?  I dunno, it’s a nice area.  I would go back and spend more time there, but I don’t have the patience for it at this point.  I got some good hiking in and saw a cute town, but I don’t have the energy to be excited about it (plus I watched Before Sunset and Before Midnight the last couple days, which got be depressed after watching the first one).

And then I was off to Cologne.  Pretty standard, boring train ride that cost a fortune.  But you step off the train into the Cologne Cathedral.  That was nice, since it’s the #1 attraction and I don’t have to go out of my way to see it.

The rest of the day was spent between wandering around Cologne and working.  I took a walk across Hohenzollern Bridge, which has the most densely-populated array of Love Locks I’ve ever seen.

I bought a couple Kolsch beers which is the thing to do here, and they taste like normal light beer.  Like a lot of German beer does to me.  Some Halloween festivities here, but not a whole lot.  Looked like a fun little town and old town bar area, but I didn’t really meet anyone at the hostel so I just wandered the streets a bit before going to bed.

And nothing opens until frickin 10am on Saturdays in Europe (which I forgot, again), so I did some more strolling in the morning but wasn’t able to go in any of the museums before getting on my bus to Belgium.

People really like watches here.  There’s one brand using imagery with the guy from The Mentalist petting a horse.  No idea what the watches looked like, but that’s the one I want.