The Hochschwarzwald (Sunday 24th September 2017)

It’s general election day in Germany today. It looks pretty certain that Angela Merkel with get a fourth term as Chancellor but with a reduced majority for the CDP in the Bundestag. The real surprise is that the far-right AFD party won 13% (89) of the seats – the third largest representation in the parliament. This will make for an interesting four years in Germany. Mind you, this is all based on exit polling, not actual vote counting. But that hasn’t stopped the respective victory and defeat speeches by the party leaders. Good luck to the German people for the coming years.

Today was sunny although a little hazy. We hoped the warming sun would burn off the haze and it largely did by about midday. With no real plan about where we might go we picked Feldberg on the map and headed towards that. We took frequent stops along the way to take many photographs. It was quite hard to do because there was always traffic about, even on the relatively quiet roads in our area. One might see a spectacular vista and not be able to pullover due to a lack of somewhere to poll over too or because there was a car or two right up your clacker. I was keen to not give a repeat performance of Friday’s effort when I darted off the road into a bus stop only to mis-judged the kerb and trash my tyre.

 

 

 

Along the way to Feldberg we passed through a sort of “resort” town called Titisee-Neustadt sitting very picturesquely by the shores of Lake Titisee. I didn’t see any so we moved on. Feldberg came and went with barely a change-down of gears. We founf out later in the day that the real Feldberg action is 6kms further up the mountain at the ski village. In fact we did stop just outside lower Feldberg at a little tavern sitting at the bottom of a ski-run as it was way past coffee-time. There we enjoyed a break sitting in the sunshine sipping our coffee and conversing with the tavern owners, a couple of middle aged ladies.

 

 

On the subject of winter sports it’s not a wonder the European’s dominate the disciplines. It’s just a normal part of their everyday life because the facilities are right in their backyards, sometime almost literally! For we antipodeans it a huge expedition, weeks - even months - in the planning, at great expense and with great disruption to our normal lives. For people in the Black Forest at least I can imagine it’s no more difficult than, “Hey Mum, I’m going for a ski with Heidi and Klaus. I’ll be back for dinner.” To be fair though, I can’t recall the names of many German World Surfing Champions either. 

 

 

Anyway, we moved on past the lovely Lake Schluchsee, shimmering in the abundant sunshine, where a little sailing regatta was underway. We were now headed for the town of Waldshut-Tiengen. It came as a real surprise to us that the town is on the Rhine and therefore on the border with Switzerland. On the Swiss shores of the river stood a menacing looking nuclear power plant. The town had a very nice Altstadt, quite similar to the one in Freiburg with gate-towers at either end of the main street sporting a great big clock that chimed every so often. The main pedestrian street also had the little canals running down the middle. We found the ice-cream shop and a seat and watched the world go by then headed for the car.

 

 

 Aiming to complete a loop circuit back to Feldberg we pointed GPS-girl at the town of Bad Säckingen. Halfway there we encountered the deflating sight of the red cross on the road sign for the road to Bad Säckingen and Basel. Aaarrgghh! This road was closed too. So we did an about face and retraced our steps to Feldberg. I hate doing that when touring! At lower Feldberg we took a left-hand turn and headed up the mountain to the ski village. Once again, the trip was only 6kms and a walk in the park to reach the Black Forest’s highest peak. Nothing much there to speak of, apart from the massive Haus Caritas, you need to organise a conference for there Megan, so down the mountain we went and headed for home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The late afternoon/early evening light was giving a wonderful glow to all the forests, fields an buildings so there were a few more stops in the way home. AN early dinner was enjoyed at one of St Margen’s Gasthaus (hotel with accommodation) where Weiner Schnitzel was on the menu and, therefore, our choice. It came with a salad and five different vegetables including little roast potatoes and it was all very lovely. We finished that off, drove home and turned on the box to see what sort of a day Angela had had.