It's Freiburg Weather...

It's Freiburg Weather. That's shorthand in our house for "Ann is going to hate this." When I awaken to hear my husband say, "It's Freiburg Weather," this means my run will suck and I will loathe the day I decided to take up running. Well...a little.

Let me backtrack. Somewhere around fifteen years ago, my husband and I found ourselves living in Freiburg, Germany when we received postgraduate Fulbright and DAAD Fellowships. This is a big deal for philosophy types. Freiburg is the place where Husserl "invented" phenomenology and Heidegger, perhaps the most important Continental philosopher of the 20 th century, wrote and taught. Anyhow...we found ourselves living in an attic apartment in "die Wiehre," a district that wanders right into the paths and foothills of the Black Forest.

The Schwarzwald has a distinctive microclimate: mountain-y, humid, foggy and damp. No matter what the weather, your best clothes are always slightly sweaty. It's like dropping Seattle into a German forest. I hated that climate--I was sick most of the time (and learned lots of medical terms in German.) Nonetheless, we spent lots of time climbing and hiking in the Schwartzwald out our front door. Lots of those journeys were hell on earth for my humidity-hating Slavic constitution.

But sometimes, the hell miraculously gave way to wondrous surprises: a magical vista, the transformative power of pine scent from the damp forest floor, a moment of sunny clarity, or just plain relief that the journey was over. One of those surprises followed a long, wandering climb where I sort of lost my bearings. After hours of crankiness (definitely up there on the "for better or worse" list my husband has endured), we stumbled upon a lush green clearing dotted by a lone grazing cow (complete with picture-book bell clanking around her neck). At the edge of the clearing, like an apparition, was a tiny ramshackle wooden cabin. From it, emanated the most amazing smell. In this tiny shack in the middle of nowhere, Schwarzwalders were cooking up sublime Pfannkuchen--giant cast-iron pancakes filled with apples and dusted with powdered sugar. Oh my god, that was a nice moment.

So when I awaken and I hear, "It's Frieburg weather," I sigh, put on my running shoes anyway and hope for the best. You never know when a pancake-filled apparition will be waiting around the corner.