Freiburg: My Gateway to the World

By Tara Lassiter (AYF 2022-23, UW-Madison, Recipient of a Freiburg-Madison-Scholarship)

Making friends with the cats of Athens

I feel extremely privileged to come from a family of travelers. I grew up in awe of my German grandparents’ apartment, which they crammed full of trinkets from around the world. To kid-me, their home was a museum of wonders I could’ve poked around in for hours, akin to an I Spy book in its wonderful clutter. I used to spend entire afternoons flipping through their dated atlases, imagining someday hanging their maps on a wall and letting a dart throw determine where I was bound for next. And when I wasn’t admiring their collected foreign art or enjoying the Thai cuisine they loved to cook, I was watching home videos from their couch or clinging to every word of a story I’d likely heard a million times before. One of my greatest regrets is feeling like a lack of confidence in my German ability prevented me from picking their brains as I would have liked to before they died, but still, they imbued me with a curiosity that has and will stick with me for a lifetime.

Despite this, I wasn’t nearly as brave as my younger sister. She always knew she wanted to go abroad. I’d never lived away from home and was afraid of the unknown. Half-baked plans to study in Germany were tabled early, and I wound up at UW-Madison, where I spent the first two years of my undergraduate degree enjoying campus life but yearning for more. Then opportunity struck in the form of AYF, an academic year in Freiburg that seemed to answer all my prayers; while the commitment was less daunting than a full four years overseas, it still provided me with a chance to immerse myself in German and really work on my fluency. And, tucked into the southwest corner of Germany, less than a day’s travel away from France and Switzerland, it stirred my desperate desire to see the world. Now, a little over 8 months in, I’m happy to report my time in Freiburg has exceeded any and all initial expectations.

It’s difficult to sum up the last months. So much has happened I hardly remember it all myself, as though I dreamt my time here and am now struggling to retain blurring memories upon waking. Still, I’ll do my best to recount some highlights:

The Acropolis, Athens

September saw me attain my first German job as a server at Ganter Oktoberfest, as well as my first ever Covid case shortly thereafter. Although this was an unfortunate turn of events, the many Apfelstrudel I had been sent home with kept me fed during my time in isolation. In October I hosted a multitude of Halloween events, including pumpkin carving and a Halloween party that landed me in heaps of trouble. Regardless, I had a great time forcing my Halloween passion onto my begrudging roommates.

I’m a November baby, and my birth month kicked off with a group of friends and I wandering into what can only be described as a shack rave, an outdoor techno party hosted in an abandoned Schrebergarten. Partygoers rocked an interesting mix of tactical, almost Soviet fashion. Then, midway through the month, a friend and I caught a bus to Paris for a music festival we’d only found out about days before. We traveled overnight, brushed our teeth in the Musée d’Orsay bathrooms, and wandered the city until we could check into our hotel, where we luckily did not encounter any of the bedbugs reviewers wrote of. That same evening, we enjoyed several small venue concerts. My favorite ended up being a Scottish punk show for which we were able to secure front row spots.

Scottish Punk in Paris – It’s about more than the Eiffel Tower!

In early December I worked at Longbridge, an English language immersion camp in Switzerland. There I made friends with a crafting buddy who taught me to mix blue sprinkles with frosting in order to achieve the perfect snowman blue. Shortly thereafter my family came to visit, and soon Christmas rolled around, which I celebrated by accompanying a Catholic friend to mass at our very own Freiburger Münster. Before I knew it, it was time to welcome a new year.

Welcoming 2023 was surreal. It at once felt as though years had passed since my move to Freiburg, and as though time had flown by. I couldn’t believe this was my life, and yet here I was, launching fireworks off Schlossberg surrounded by friends I’d only met a few months ago. I’ll admit my eyes welled a little at the realization, and the thankfulness I felt to be living this dream. Even then, I could hardly have imagined what still lay in store.

While January continued relatively peacefully, February and March took me by storm. Not only did I find myself swamped in Hausarbeiten I’d been neglecting, I also suddenly found myself with two months to spend as I wished, an opportunity I couldn’t let go to waste. Immediately I began making travel plans, and soon I’d blocked my entire semester break, taking care to hunt out the very cheapest travel fares and accommodation. Yet no amount of planning could have prepared me for the experiences ahead: I’ve gone island hopping in Greece, blasted country music while road tripping through Turkey, had to make an emergency medical landing on the way to Las Palmas (a trip which was itself ‘planned’ that same day), and reconnected with an old elementary school friend in Prague (who’d moved to my hometown from the Czech Republic for 3rd grade). It’s been exhilarating, albeit exhausting, and it has affirmed my desire to roam, to live without roots for a while before settling down.

It has to be said that much of my travel wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of the City of Freiburg and the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft, for which I’m beyond thankful. I’ve also exhausted much of the money I earned and saved working last year, but I wouldn’t change a thing. This program has provided me with the opportunity to check items off my bucket list I never thought I’d get the opportunity to check off, much less this young.

Even more importantly, though, I’ve made memories that will last a lifetime: I’ve been slung over the shoulder of a performer at Fastnacht, haggled for an old Tamagotchi and 1930s locket in Berlin, stumbled on an abandoned fairground in Antalya and bathed out of a pot of boiled water in Istanbul. I’ve slept in the strangest places, eaten the strangest foods (many of which I’ve enjoyed, although I will say I’ll pass on the goat intestine and salty beet juice moving forward), and sought out as many new experiences as possible in the spirit of my grandparents. Even as I write this, I’m hours away from attending an orchestral performance of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (my Opa’s favorite) at the Smetana Hall in Prague, something I could have never conceived of a year ago. Meanwhile the atlases lie in wait, tucked into my bookshelf back home, a bittersweet reminder of where it all began.

Getting ready for Naxos