I have never hidden my obsession for collecting street furniture, be it a lamppost a coal hole cover, or an old manual petrol pump.
Some still perform the task they were intended for but most sit forgotten, and neglected and even vandalized and as such are a rusting monument to former technologies.
But in Freiburg the authorities maintain their cast iron sanitation grids even embellishing them with the town’s seal.
When I first came across one of these cast iron grids, I assumed the ornate markings depicted a nearby castle or the city’s walls while the trumpeters were celebrating a martial victory.
But not so. My Wikipedia tells me that the design has been lifted from the City’s seal and is a “stylised depiction of the façade of the Wasserschlössle, a castle-like waterworks facility built into a hill that overlooks the residential district of Wiehre.
The seal depicts a three-towered red castle on a white background, with green-clad trumpeters atop the two outer towers”.
It can be found “in a few places in the inner city” and of course on those street covers which make perfect sense given that they all carry the inscription which translates as “Freiburg sewer system”.
It is the sort of discovery which makes me smug and emboldened by the information and looked to launching detailed account of the tram system based on a fine pictures whizzed over by my travelling companion.
But to use that old Hebrew observation “Man makes plans. God laughs”.
And so having added the picture of tramcar 257 in its white and smudgy blue livery I discovered that one source offer up that the trams “operate in an attractive dark red and white livery and run on 5 routes”.
So, I await more trams and will leave you with the information that the “network currently has five lines.
The expansion of the tram network since 1980 has served as an example of the "renaissance of the trams" in Germany.
As of 2023, 73 trams were available for regular use: 2 of these were high-floored, 36 partial and 35 low-floored”.**
And just as I finished the piece my travelling companion found a red tram. and followed it up with an old red tram.
All of which leaves me to fall back on that old observation ......"you wait ten minutes for a tram and three Freiburg trams turn up at once".
Location; Freiburg
Pictures; around Freiburg, 2024
* Freiburg im Breisgau, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiburg_im_Breisgau
** Trams in Freiburg im Breisgau, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Freiburg_im_Breisgau
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