Black Forest Roadtrip
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October 4th, 2009
A month ago (has it been that long already?), six of us rented a couple cars and took a rather spontaneous roadtrip up to the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) in Germany. Emily and I had people over to our apartment on Friday night, and then we all took of on Saturday morning/early afternoon. Somehow, we also managed to fit in a quick brunch before we left with a couple friends from San Francisco, Menden and Jonathan, who were in town for the weekend. While we were at brunch, everyone else went to pick up the car and since Emily and I weren’t there, we weren’t allowed to drive the rental car. So we were generously chauffeured all weekend, which worked out rather nicely for us. After a busy summer of making my own last-minute travel plans, it was nice to sit back and let someone else do all the planning (and driving) for a change.
From Zürich we headed North across the border of Germany and eventually stopped for lunch at the Titisee. When we got there, we played with a tennis ball in the parking lot for about a half hour before realizing that we could have just done that at home so we should probably go walk around and explore. After lunch, we drove up to Freiburg where we found a hotel for the night. We had a good German dinner at Hausbrauerei Feierling and ended up staying there all night playing cards. After dinner, we invented a new game that is sure to become an Olympic sport in the near future – leaf racing! Everyone chooses an object that floats (it doesn’t have to be a leaf) and then drops it into the stream at the same time. It is surprisingly entertaining, try it out.
The next morning, we stopped by the Freiburger Münster on the way out of town. Then it was on to Steinwasen Park, a sort of zoo/amusment park/mini-Disney World in the Schwarzwald. We did just about everything there was to do there including the creepy “It’s a small world after all”-type ride, riding chair lift, tobogganing, the water slide, playing on the playground, petting the animals (Peter especially liked the goats), and walking on the suspension bridge. It ended up being a lot more fun than I ever expected.
After the park, we drove to a quaint little town for lunch (I forget the name) then started heading home. On our way back to Switzerland, we stopped by two of the biggest attractions in the Black Forest. The first stop was the biggest cuckoo clock in the world. It was the size of a house, although I had expected it to be even bigger/more impressive. The second stop was the highest waterfall in Germany. It was really four small waterfalls rather than one big one, but it was still pretty cool.
