Of the Black Forest

Pardon my horrible delays in getting all of these entries up. In contrast to the ones of Italy, I did not get bring along my laptop this time around so for all of the places I am writing about, I'm recalling them from memory (which may account for why these entries are so short). Of course, you can always tell of the impression that a place has made on you depending on how much you end up writing about it in your journal. So keeping that in mind, we move onto:

The Black Forest, or rather, the two towns that we visited that were near the Black Forest: Freiburg and Triberg. Time spent: 2 days.


Freiburg


Triberg

We arrived in Freiburg at 6AM, after spending the night in an overnight train and almost missing our stop. Luckily, days of waking up at 7AM and sleeping in a room together had acclimated us to becoming very light sleepers. So after what was a very bumpy rest in a reclining seat (since we were cheapskates and didn't want to pay an additional 10 euros for a bed), complete with the periodic waking up in the middle of the night anytime the train stopped , we woke up right at our destination, and hauled our duffel bags and our tired bodies off of the train a minute before it left. Talk about great timing.

What follows is me recalling our first morning in Freiburg where all I wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. Suffice to say, sleeping on a train is not something I care to repeat, only because of the exhaustion and dirtiness that follow from not being able to shower the night before and from only getting a light sleep. Perhaps sleeping in a bed would have been better...

Yet, one cannot call the morning unproductive since after dropping our luggage off at the Black Forest Hostel, we proceeded to climb up to the old fort on the hill to get a glimpse of the town and the forest that surrounded it. Nothing like a good walk uphill to work up an appetite, especially since that walk gave you the countryside of Germany in the morning light.



I may have been a bit presumptuous (and a wee bit ignorant) calling San Marino in Italy the place of fairy tales, considering that the Black Forest in Germany is where most of them originated. Looking at that blanket, and then walking through it the next day, it was easy to see where such dark thoughts of fairies, elves, talking wolves, and gingerbread houses came from.

Though there were no houses of gingerbread, there was a giant cuckoo clock next day in the town of Triberg, located in the middle of the forest, and infamous for its clock. And we had come just in time to see this one come out of its doors and greet us.



There was also the waterfall, which is one of the tallest in Germany and the mist was so refreshing after such a humid walk up and through the woods. I had never been so close to a roaring waterfall before and it had always been a dream of mine ever since Yosemite at age 8. Of course, at that time, that fall was dried up and there was barely any mist. Not in this one though, we got so close that I could just almost touch the water.



Then there was just the hike deeper and deeper into the forest, with the trees on both of your sides just waiting to envelope you up. They grow so thick and dark. At any moment, the Elf-King could come and take you away and no one would even know...


"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
For many a game I will play there with thee;" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Erlkönig

The most surreal moment of that walk, to me, was just coming out of the forest and as the trees parted, you were greeted to a view that seemed to have come from the pages of a storybook. It was the picture that I have always used to associate with Europe in my mind, the rolling hills of green with cottages, and fields that seem to go on forever with no fence to picket them off. The strangest thing about it was the enveloping silence where nothing seemed to disturb the air, save for the mooing of cows. It was such a strange moment and one that I have not experienced before. Usually, when you go to any of these places, there are always the chattering of tourists or the clicking of cameras. Not then, it was just us, the fields, and the forest behind, waiting to envelope us in again. Strange and yet, so calm. I would never be able to live in such a place but sometimes, it is a wonderful reprieve from the stress of car horns and the cold steel and concrete of city life.



To end our days in the Black Forest, I had what I had been dreaming about the whole time, ever since Allison told me that we were heading towards that area of Germany: the Black Forest cake. It is a dessert concoction of chocolate cake, held together with black cherries and covered with white icing plus just a spray of rum. Bittersweet and slightly tart but that's the way all good fairy tales traditionally end. In our case, it was an ending to replace the lack of gingerbread houses and witches that were supposed to dwell in the woods.



Freiberg, the photo album

Triberg, the photo album