Schwarzwald - The Black Forest - Germany

Our last trip was to Holland with our native tour guide Madelon. This time around Bernhard accompanied us to his childhood home turf in the southwest German state of Baden-Württemberg, famous for being the home of the Black Forest. Madelon had a friend in town to keep her company so it worked out that we could all fit in one car. 

We planned the trip several weeks ago over the May 1st holiday in Germany where they celebrate the coming of spring. There are gatherings at the May pole in all of the towns across Germany. In Bavaria most of the May poles are blue and white, here in Baden-Württemberg they are yellow and black. Someone forgot to tell the weather to cooperate for this long celebration weekend. 

We broke up the drive on Friday by making a few stops along the way. First was the Schloss Lichtenstein. Not to be confused with the tiny country of Lichtenstein that is close by bordering Germany and Switzerland, this is a castle in Germany.

The money shot is the castle on the top of this hill overlooking the valley and town below. The rain and clouds were a little bit of a bummer, but you can still get the idea.

The timing of our arrival turned out to be just minutes before a tour started to see the inside. The tour was only in German, which was fine for Bernhard. The rest of us got an English reference card.

Overall is was a pretty short tour for this small castle. There has been a castle on this hill since the 1200's, but the current one was completed in the 1800's.

 Here is the view down to the town from the castle window.

We stopped in a small town nearby for lunch and found a cave to explore to stay out of the rain.

There was nothing too amazing but it was a nice cave with good formations and a little light show at the end.

We continued west towards Hohenzollern Castle. Here was our view as we approached...........

Well, not really, this was the real view looking over the hill up in the clouds. The parking lot for this place was at the bottom of the hill and myself and Bernhard were the only willing ones of the group to make the trek to the castle. It was a tough walk and I was really glad that it was cool and rainy.  

We thought we had made it when we bought our ticket to get inside only to find out that the actual rooms were several levels more up the hill. You just could not tell how far was left due to the clouds and rain. Finally we made it and got to walk around the completed rooms. This was very different than any of the other dozens of castle that we have seen. No pictures were allowed, but the inside was very clean and looked almost new. The history of the castle is like most of the others. It has been destroyed and rebuilt several times over the past 800 years. We were glad that we made the hike and saw it. After being gone about an hour we met up with Cindy and the kids to continue towards the town of Triberg for the evening.

We got checked in to our hotel and walked down the hill to find a restaurant for dinner. I was tired and grumpy and did not care for the poor service and bad wine at the Italian restaurant. After dinner I felt better once we got the kids into the indoor pool for a late night swim. I swam with them for a little while until we called it a day.

Triberg was our primary destination for the trip. The main goal was to find and buy an authentic Black Forest Cuckoo Clock. This is one of the best places to do that. First we headed out to see the tallest waterfall in Germany close to the city center.

This large restaurant is next to the entrance of the waterfall area.  We still had to deal with some rain but the clouds had lifted a bit and we had some nice cool temperatures for our hike.

Referring to this as the tallest waterfall in Germany I think is up for debate. It was very beautiful and there was a very long area of water coming down the hill, but never one huge drop off. Instead we kept climbing up the hill along the path finding several shorter falls along the way.

Some areas were absolutely breathtaking. The brand new spring growth with that light green color along with the flowing water was just great.

On Friday we had planned to visit a forest challenge course, but did not due to the heavy rain. David noticed a sign as we entered the waterfall area that there was another challenge course here. Sure enough we ended up going that direction. I was out, ready to take pictures. Cindy planned to stay with Katherine, who was really too short but the people let us convince them to let her go. Bernhard was going to hang with David on the higher tougher course.

Bernhard quickly learned what I already knew, David had a huge advantage being short and light. Bernhard turned around and joined Cindy and Katherine after attempting this first challenge. David was the only one picking on him after it was all over.

It turned out to be a really good thing that he joined Cindy and Katherine. The little girl needed lots of encouragement along with some help at the beginning and end of each obstacle. She was so excited to get started, then once it was time to go she was freaking herself out. This has been a common occurrence lately with various activities. Once she finally does it she always enjoys it, she just has to have the drama first.  

David tore through the tough course and quickly caught up to the rest of the group, passed them, started the course over and caught up again. This was mostly due to Katherine taking a while to get going. By the end she was doing some really tough obstacles pretty quickly.  

The obstacle above was the last one before the short zip line finish. These free swinging logs were the toughest of all according to everyone. After a bit they were able to figure it out and finish up. Below is David going to the very top course which was an all zip line course.

This was the view of the town from the challenge course. Below is a very short video showing the Katherine drama and the big zip line that David was doing at the end. 

After we left the waterfall area it was time to get some lunch and clock shopping in town. We first stopped at the House of 1000 clocks, the largest souvenir shop with many cuckoo clocks. We did not fall in love with anything and decided to try a smaller local shop. The second we walked in we found the one that we wanted. No pictures yet, sorry to say. Well, here is a crappy one that I found online that does not show the carved backboard.

We are so close to being back home that the store is delaying the shipment so we can have it arrive in Allen as we are getting back. It is not a traditional carved clock that you see when you look at cuckoo clocks. This one is a sort of Gothic church dark stained wood with a wood backing. We loved it and are very excited to own it once we get back.
One of the fun things about the shopping experience was getting to speak with the guy that actually makes the clock. He was very passionate about the process and quality even showing us how to spot the difference in the real hand carved pieces and the other ones that were at the first store that we visited. It was much like the southern Bavarian wood carver that we purchased the nativity set from a few months ago.

Next we made the drive to Freiburg, a larger town further west and very close to the French border. There we checked out the main square near the cathedral.

It was a pretty quick stop. We looked around the square and went inside the church. There were too many people on the street and it was very busy and hectic. It was time to head towards out lakeside hotel for the evening.

I was excited about the hotel this evening because we were supposed to have a great view of this small lake Titisee. It turns out that the hotel had some rather misleading questionable practices with their booking system and we did not end up with the room or the view that was reserved. I did throw a fit and spent most of the remaining daylight complaining. In the end I did get some satisfaction in the result and because the rain had moved back in we were not going to get to enjoy any outside patio time anyway.

Even after this long and busy day late that evening we took a thirty minute drive to another waterfall area that was lit up on Saturday evenings. We were literally the only car in the paring lot and the only people there. I was wanting to see some colored lights but it was all regular lighting. Still, it was not a bad stop and overall we were glad to make the trip.

The next morning was a travel day home. We had planned to see the Rhine falls area in Switzerland where the Rhine river empties into Lake Constance. It was heavy rain and poor visibility so we skipped that and headed to a monastery and brewery.  

Zwiefalten was a nice stop about halfway back to Munich. The church was pretty amazing and one of the most detailed that we have seen anywhere.

This is not a very well known monastery or brewery so we did not have any crowds to deal with.

After the church we headed over to the restaurant brewery and had a nice traditional Baden-Württemberg lunch with the Zwiefalten beer. It was a pretty smooth couple of hours on the road to make it home late in the afternoon.
We primarily headed to the Black Forest to get a cuckoo clock, but I came away with a lot more. It was a short but fun trip, aside from the bad restaurant and hotel experience. The Black Forest was really something worth checking out and is yet another beautiful part of Germany.