September 24

We slept in a little and then had breakfast at the hotel before taking the train a few stops back, deeper into the Black Forest. We stopped at Titisee, a lake there in the forest. It's apparently a pretty touristy place on the weekends, but we were there in the morning of a weekday, so it was nice and tranquil, for the most part. We mostly walked around and looked at the scenery. I looked at some kitschy gifts but couldn't quite bring myself to buy any of them. Then we sat on a bench and watched the boats on the lake. That was probably the best part.

Boats for rent, lined up on the shore of the lake.

The water was so clear. Look at the fish.
Just so you know, German ducks say "kwak, kwak."

We were all standing there enjoying the peace and quiet when a tour group showed up and piled onto a nearby boat. We'd all had enough of tour guides the day before, so we were pretending to be annoyed. Dr. Rust dreamt up a good newspaper headline. We thought maybe the story could run in the Lariat:

CRAZED GERMAN NAVY VETERAN TORPEDOES TOURBOAT ON LAKE TITISEE. 27 CHINESE TOURISTS DEAD.

Okay, I'll admit that this is still cracking me up, a week later. Maybe you had to be there.

Trying to restrain the crazed Navy vet.

After we had enjoyed as much of Titisee as we could stand, we got back on a train and traveled over to Freiburg, where Dr. Rust does research in the naval archives. He was pretty excited to show us around a city he loves, and we had a good time. Our visit began with trips to five or six bookstores. Erik was way too happy, and we finally had to tear him away so that we could get some lunch. We went to one of Dr. Rust's favorite restaurants, a pizza place near his normal hotel, and split a few pizzas.

Afterwards, we visited the Freiburg cathedral, which is pretty neat. It's built out of a red stone that I didn't recognize, and the gargoyles are really low, where you can see them well from the ground. After that, I looked through a bunch of sheet music for sale in the cathedral square. Some of it would have been nice to have, if it hadn't mostly been transcriptions for bassoon!

The Freiburg cathedral

Gargoyle Row

This is the really impressive portal to the cathedral.

Dr. Rust and I dwarfed by said portal.

The church had lots of really neat side chapels, all the way around the back of the sanctuary. This altar was amazing, all carved so delicately from wood.

We spent a little time wandering around Freiburg and then decided to head back to Kirchzarten for dinner. We ate at our same place from the night before. We spent three or four hours solving the world's problems over dinner, as usual. They probably miss us there now. And our hotel probably still hates us for not eating at their restaurant.