Schwarzwald

Yesterday morning Daniel and I set off from our hotel in Munich to a small town in the Black Forest called Schönwald. We didn't have much time to spend in Munich, so we decided to check out the city's most famous tourist spectacle and just ignore everything else. This led to us standing in Marienplatz just before 11am to watch the Rathaus Glockenspiel. While the Rathaus (Town Hall) which houses the Glockenspiel looks extremely old, it actually dates from 1908 and the Glockenspiel is the same age.

Three times every day the Glockenspiel chimes for about ten minutes while two sets of life size figures move about to tell a couple of historical stories. The top figures relay the tale of a noble wedding, and the bottom figures commemorate a special dance invented to celebrate the end of the plague in Munich.

Marienplatz was full of tourists who had gathered excitedly to watch the Glockenspiel and I really enjoyed the fact that 100-year old technology was still able to elicit so many excited gasps and cheers.

From Munich, Daniel and I set off for Stuttgart, but lengthy delays on two separate autobahns meant that we didn't have any time to stop. It was a shame as Stuttgart was very pretty, with lots of vineyards covering the nearby hills. Eventually we made it to our next destination - Germany's famous Black Forest.

Our hotel last night was in the town of Schönwald which lays claim to have been the birthplace of the cuckoo clock in 1737. As you can imagine there were lots of local shops selling cuckoo clocks, but Daniel and I set off this morning with one particular shop in mind - the home of a really, really gigantic cuckoo clock. Sounds awesome, right? Unfortunately, despite some searching, we couldn't find it. I guess it mustn't have been as big as we were thinking, and in hindsight having an address would have been helpful!

Anyway, no matter, we quickly adjusted our GPS and headed for our next exciting activity - going for a walk in a Barefoot Park. For those who don't know, Barefoot Parks are basically just what the name suggests...parks where you walk around barefoot. I found one of these in the Black Forest and thought it sounded like fun. You get to slosh through mud, walk on moss, paddle across streams, navigate rolling logs, etc. Unfortunately, the employee of the Barefoot Park took one look at me hobbling up to the ticket counter from the carpark with my sore ankle and suggested that the Park probably wasn't suitable for me. It was pretty crushing :( He then suggested that Daniel and I check out another nearby attraction instead - Vogtsbauernhof, the Black Forest Open Air Museum.

Taking his advice, we set off for the Museum and soon found ourselves stepping back into history at a preserved homestead. While it was okay overall, the experience was tinged with disappointment as Daniel was unable to pat a calf because its mother had pooped on it, and I was unable to pose with a wooden frog because a bunch of Japanese teenagers were too busy taking photos of themselves violating it. In addition, there was no loom.

So far our day in the Black Forest wasn't going so well, but we decided to soldier on and made our way to the town of Freudenstadt, famous for its marketplace which is the largest in Germany. Well, I'm no expert but the marketplace really didn't look that big to me. Still, it was rather pretty and we stuck around to have lunch and purchase a couple of souveniers. I really wanted to buy a replica bollenhut (a funky hat made from 14 pom poms which is native to the Black Forest), but I knew I would never, ever wear it again so we just settled for pictures instead.

After lunch, we hopped on the B500 road - also known as the Schwarzwaldhochstraße - and cruised along checking out some amazing views of the Black Forest. We detoured a little bit to visit the ruins of an abandoned monastery known as All Saints' Abbey (Kloster Allerheiligen) and some nearby waterfalls. According to Wiki the location of the Abbey was determined by a donkey who dropped a sack of money there in 1192. I think that donkey must have really had an eye for real estate because the ruins were absolutely gorgeous. There were tall trees and lush green grass all around, and a little stream surrounded by moss and wildflowers flowed close by. It was lovely, and provided the perfect close to a busy day.

- Amanda