Baden-Baden to Staufen

Good-bye-Good-bye to Baden-Baden.

Paul is on duty….”Kodachrome….makes you think all the world’s a sunny day”,  as we head into the Black Forest, (black ‘cuz it’s dark in there).

We take a two-lane back road and it’s twisty, turning, curvy. The road heads up, up, up, cutting a slice through the tall spruce forest. We reach a literal hairpin turn and then it’s down, down, down. Just the kind of road the driver was hoping for.

We stick to the rural roads and are rewarded with exquisite scenery. The little towns along the way are posing for postcards. Set among the green, green hills the homes look straight out of "Heidi".  Flowers drip from window boxes and ledges, brown cows and white geese drift and graze in meadows and on steep hummocks. There is no litter, not a single junked car, not an item out of place. Firewood is stacked high and long, a telling sign of the season to come.  

We stretch our legs at the Vogtsbauernhof Museum. It’s an open-air display centered around a huge farmhouse that’s been standing there since 1612. They’ve restored a number of outbuildings, a mill, a bakery and distillery so now visitors can walk around the “grounds”, go inside the structures and get a good feel for what life was like in the Black Forest ages and ages ago. Most interesting is the fact that the animals and the people lived in the same building, people on the first floor, livestock on the second, hay storage on the third. The house is built into the side of a hill and a ramp allows easy access to the top floors.

1612 Farmhouse with room for livestock

The Bran Spewer. Guardian Spirit of the Mill

Another leg stretch in Triberg where they are crazy about cuckoo clocks, or is it cuckoo for crazy clocks? Store facades are decorated with clocks and an animated clock sits atop the roof of another.

Taller Than Brez

Schupfnudeln
Potato noodles with sauerkraut

Germany’s highest waterfall is here too, but you have to pay an entrance fee in order to see it. Cuckoo. The Triberger Wasserfall tumbles downward in sections. We walk to the middle section where a bridge traverses the cascading water. Pretty, but not impressive by Pacific Northwest standards.

Staufen is the tiny town where we’ll sleep tonight. Our hotel is on the cobbled pedestrian walkway that winds through the old town center to the main square, (and requisite fountain). We’re allowed to drive into the hotel parking area. It’s a narrow passage and takes some skill to maneuver. The hotel owner moves his car to make way for the Boxster, which just barely squeaks in.

Gotta Drive Through This to Get To The Parking Lot

We walk the town before dinner, exploring the residential neighborhoods and the town’s cemetery, which is like a garden. Plots are not sold, but leased and are used over and over again, (a German custom), generally staying in the same family. Survivors are responsible for tending the graves and in Staufen they go all out. Full sized trees grow from some plots. Flowering plants and rock gardens adorn others.

View From Our Terrasse

After dinner we walk along the cobbles to our hotel. High on the vineyard-covered hill in front of us are the illuminated remains of a ruined castle. Sweet dreams