freiburg / DELICIOUS BITES

freiburg

11 Nov 2025

My blog's name is 'Delicious Bites, a food and travel blog'. For the past few years this description hasn't been accurate because there has been very little travel. Going forward I'm hoping that will change so in that spirit here's a travel post from my recent overseas trip.

In late September I flew to Europe to attend a conference in Freiburg, followed by my first proper holiday in 2 years. I'd not been to Freiburg and in fact it's been quite a few years since my last visit to Germany.

Freiburg is a small very walkable University town in the Black Forest. It was heavily bombed during World War II, and most of the buildings surrounding the Munster, the main cathedral, were flattened.

Since then the buildings in the cathedral square have been faithfully rebuilt.

The Munster was mostly unscathed.

Freiburg was a bit of a mess during my stay. The area around around the old town hall square was a construction zone and many of the fountains and statues were protected by scaffolding. The centuries old Freiburger Munster was also covered in scaffolding but apparently this is the norm and it's been the same for the past 20 years. She's an old girl who is cumbling so is under constant repair. Many of the original gargoyles have been replaced and the originals are housed in the Augustiner Museum.

I wanted to climb the Munster but the stairs were only open during the afternoons, when I was at the conference. During my visit the cathedral organist was practising so I sat in the church transfixed as I listened to some wonderful music.

Freiburg is known as Germany's sunniest and warmest city, receiving around 1800 hours of sunshine per year. Well I'm not sure that statement is correct as it rained every day I was there and the temperature didn't rise above 11°C. Despite the rain, Freiburg is still a very pretty town.

I arrived from Zurich by train and orientated myself to the city. My little apartment was close to the Old Town whilst the conference was held at the University on the other side of town. I became very familiar with Freiburg's tram network and the rest of the time I walked.

Freiburg is known for it's cobblestone mosaics representing local trades and of course, the bear from the town's coat of arms.

Autumn had definitely arrived in Freiburg. Even the man hole covers are decorative.

I found the very ornate Archbishop's Ordinariate just around the corner from the cathedral.

In my free time I roamed around the Old Town, visited the Munster and the Munsterplatz Markets, walked to Schlossberg and visited the Augustiner Museum, the Museum for New Art and the chilling National Socialism Documentation Centre.

I also made a pilgrimage to Brotbruder, an excellent sourdough bakery. I bought a glazed rosinenschnecken, a raisin snail, which was so tasty, I'm hoping to recreate it at home.

As I bought the snail from a sourdough bakery, I'm assuming the base is a yeasted sourdough. I've looked at some raisin snail recipes and most have a frangipane or a cinnamon and butter filling. This snail didn't seem to have any filling other than raisins/sultanas so wish me luck as I try to reverse engineer this baby.