Yesterday I had a free day and me and an Erasmus student from Finland decided to visit Colmar. It’s a small town in France, around 50km away from Freiburg.

It’s a lovely small town and is definitely worth a visit, especially if you really like Christmas Markets because Colmar (despite being small) has a quite big Christmas Market and abundance of Christmas decorations all over the Old Town which look nice in the background of traditional architecture.

I have never studied French and my knowledge of French is limited to bonjour, merci and au revoir, thus when I went to Colmar I hoped that since it’s close to the German border, most of the people will be able to speak some level of German. It does seem to be true to a certain extent (can’t say a lot after a mere afternoon spent there), however, I have noticed an interesting tendency. Quite often when you ask something in German (or in English) you receive a reply in French… Believe me, when I got back to Freiburg after a day spent in France hearing everyone speak in French, German seemed so familiar and understandable as English…

And here are some pictures from Colmar if you need some inspiration to go there: