We thought about staying in Freinheim another day today as we feel we spent our time socialising and didn’t get to see the place properly, however the rest of Europe is calling us. So we left this little German village with a couple of bottles of wine under our arm and headed south to the Black Forest area. But that wasn’t before admiring the oxalis cultivated in pot plants on the way through the garden.
Our first stop was Baden-Baden, a town that Bill Clinton once referred to as “So nice, you had to name it twice”, and nice describes it perfectly. But before we got there, the road works and detours took us through France for about half an hour. As soon as we were in France we knew it, no only because of the flags, and the language, but also because the remarkable thing that happens over here. You would think that these days with the non-existent borders, that one country would slowly blend into the next, they don’t. It is like an abrupt change, that you can almost feel in the air, you know that it feels like a different place. And this is what it was like today. We went through a few small French villages that had the look and feel of a small rural French village, and distinctly different from the villages that we had been driving through just a few kms away in Germany.
Be that as it may, we left France and got back into German territory and continued on our way to the nice Baden-Baden. This was definitely going to be a short stop over as we had to get to our destination in time to find somewhere to sleep, in other words, before the tourist information office closed, and these can be unpredictable at the best of times. As it turned out, we hadn’t quite been prepared for the opening hours in Baden-Baden either. We had heard that there were ruins of Roman Baths that were worth a look. These ruins are inside a museum and can be viewed between March and November between 11:00 – 12:00 and between 15:00 – 16:00. For a total of two hours per day for nine months of the year?! That is insane. We had arrived at 12:15 and we had no intention of waiting around until 15:00, so we went for a walk around the central town for a while before heading out. We came to the conclusion that Baden-Baden is … nice. It has several thermal baths that might well be worth a revisit within the next few days, but these baths are also responsible for the bus loads of elderly tourists ‘taking the waters’.
From Baden-Baden we headed south into the real Black Forest country, and the Black Forest really is black. Large areas of very dark, straight, vertical trees. Looking into the heart of the woods, all that you can see is … black. The villages that we passed through were very quaint, old villages, filled with half-timbered houses that seem to be leaning against each other for support. Each house helping its neigbour to retain its semi-upright position. Passing through woods and villages we arrived in Schiltach at about 4:00 pm, and the tourist info was very helpful in finding a small B&B to stay in for the next few nights at a reasonable rate. Our hosts seem very friendly and are accustomed to accommodating Kiwi and Aussie travelers. Our room has all the amenities including a bath, something we have been craving recently, and our hosts seemed more than happy for us to use it.
After settling in we went for a walk around the town and returned happy in the knowledge that we had made the right choice in which village to stop. A pretty little village with the half-timbered houses that seem to dominate around here. This village has the appearance of ‘the village that time left behind’. It seems like time has moved on and someone forgot to tell the people around here. Today has been another great day, which we thought we would finish with a nice long soak in the bath (it’s been a long time since we have had that pleasure). Then just as we were finishing up, and I was standing there with nothing but a towel and a face full of shaving cream, we hear our irate host outside the door knocking and telling us very loudly “There are other people in the house!” We wondered what on earth was going on. Perhaps we had used all the hot water, but it seemed that I was making too much noise with my shaving. And we thought that we were being as quiet as possible (it was 11:00pm). The way that he behaved, we are convinced that he is Swiss.
We have never been yelled at, told off, or reprimanded as much and as often as we have since we have been in Switzerland and the West of Germany. We spend our time feeling like naughty school children, wondering what we are going to do wrong next.
Our first stop was Baden-Baden, a town that Bill Clinton once referred to as “So nice, you had to name it twice”, and nice describes it perfectly. But before we got there, the road works and detours took us through France for about half an hour. As soon as we were in France we knew it, no only because of the flags, and the language, but also because the remarkable thing that happens over here. You would think that these days with the non-existent borders, that one country would slowly blend into the next, they don’t. It is like an abrupt change, that you can almost feel in the air, you know that it feels like a different place. And this is what it was like today. We went through a few small French villages that had the look and feel of a small rural French village, and distinctly different from the villages that we had been driving through just a few kms away in Germany.
Be that as it may, we left France and got back into German territory and continued on our way to the nice Baden-Baden. This was definitely going to be a short stop over as we had to get to our destination in time to find somewhere to sleep, in other words, before the tourist information office closed, and these can be unpredictable at the best of times. As it turned out, we hadn’t quite been prepared for the opening hours in Baden-Baden either. We had heard that there were ruins of Roman Baths that were worth a look. These ruins are inside a museum and can be viewed between March and November between 11:00 – 12:00 and between 15:00 – 16:00. For a total of two hours per day for nine months of the year?! That is insane. We had arrived at 12:15 and we had no intention of waiting around until 15:00, so we went for a walk around the central town for a while before heading out. We came to the conclusion that Baden-Baden is … nice. It has several thermal baths that might well be worth a revisit within the next few days, but these baths are also responsible for the bus loads of elderly tourists ‘taking the waters’.
From Baden-Baden we headed south into the real Black Forest country, and the Black Forest really is black. Large areas of very dark, straight, vertical trees. Looking into the heart of the woods, all that you can see is … black. The villages that we passed through were very quaint, old villages, filled with half-timbered houses that seem to be leaning against each other for support. Each house helping its neigbour to retain its semi-upright position. Passing through woods and villages we arrived in Schiltach at about 4:00 pm, and the tourist info was very helpful in finding a small B&B to stay in for the next few nights at a reasonable rate. Our hosts seem very friendly and are accustomed to accommodating Kiwi and Aussie travelers. Our room has all the amenities including a bath, something we have been craving recently, and our hosts seemed more than happy for us to use it.
After settling in we went for a walk around the town and returned happy in the knowledge that we had made the right choice in which village to stop. A pretty little village with the half-timbered houses that seem to dominate around here. This village has the appearance of ‘the village that time left behind’. It seems like time has moved on and someone forgot to tell the people around here. Today has been another great day, which we thought we would finish with a nice long soak in the bath (it’s been a long time since we have had that pleasure). Then just as we were finishing up, and I was standing there with nothing but a towel and a face full of shaving cream, we hear our irate host outside the door knocking and telling us very loudly “There are other people in the house!” We wondered what on earth was going on. Perhaps we had used all the hot water, but it seemed that I was making too much noise with my shaving. And we thought that we were being as quiet as possible (it was 11:00pm). The way that he behaved, we are convinced that he is Swiss.
We have never been yelled at, told off, or reprimanded as much and as often as we have since we have been in Switzerland and the West of Germany. We spend our time feeling like naughty school children, wondering what we are going to do wrong next.
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