Day 7 - The Black Forest

Day 7 – Saturday, Mar 28 – Breisach Day

This was the first day of our cruise for docking in a different city and beginning our tours emanating from Breisach. Now, in German, you cannot say the final “ch” with enough gutteral sound. It’s a very hard sound. For this stop, we selected the Black Forest tour.

It was a very cool start to the day, and we had been told that there was about 4-6 inches of snow the previous two days at our destination. We drove through lots of wine/agricultural areas where it is the white asparagus season for which this region is famous. There was also a statement about the frugal culture in this region: “If we can’t eat it, we drink it.” We also learned that trucks are not allowed on the autobahn on Sundays. That’s the time for family travel, and it is safer without trucks.

Anyway, I was not expecting there to be such a mountainous, winding road into the Black Forest. I just didn’t know how mountainous it was. Poor homework on my end. But the trees were beautifully covered with snow (Mark noted that he felt like we were inside a snow globe), and the landscape harkens to Don McLean’s song “Vincent” and the “snowy linen land.” The Black Forest is very dense with trees and therefore dark (hence the name Black), and the Brothers Grimm took ideas from this region for some of their fairy talks (Think Red Riding Hood).

 

The Black Forest is known for artisans making cuckoo clocks. [Note: There seems to be some debate about the spelling: is it kukoo (we saw that) kookoo (we saw that) kooku (we saw that). For the fastidious German culture, I found this surprising.] We saw how cuckoo [I am going with the Wikipedia spelling] clocks are made, and the level of detail can be simple and small to very complex and large. There was a full size house that was a cuckoo clock with life size dancing figures on the hour (which we saw at 10:00am (1000).

 

We also saw glass blowing, another staple of the Black Forest, and watched a demonstration of how to make Black Forest cake.

Now the young lady – Elena - making the Black forest cake was quite a humorist, especially when it came to the schnapps that is added to the cake. There were many jokes about drinking too much. There was a point in the recipe when she was done with the very large bowl of cream, and she asked if anyone wanted to lick the bowl. My hand shot up like a bottle rocket from the back of the crowd, and Elena graciously asked me to come forward and accept the bowl, which I took to the back of the room. As she continued, I walked around the room offering cream to anyone who wanted it. Finally, I took it to the kitchen staff in the back and asked them to clean the bowl and give it back to me, which they did quite enthusiastically when they understood the joke.

Now, in the meantime, my sister Mary volunteered to put the cherries on top of the cake (O, c’mon, youi know what Black Forest cake is … don’t you?). after here excellent job and the beautiful cake was done, all applauded (about 100 people). Then I walked up in front fo the crowd with the empty and very clean bowl to return it. I said, “It was very good!” Elena laughed heartily but then noted she didn’t believe me. The audience got a good laugh, and we all had some fun with it.

 

Back to the busses for the ride home through Freiburg where we learned about road projects and other matters to make the social life better in Germany. We heard about free education, and subsidized housing, free medical care, etc. etc. Apparently, this is what they do instead of spending money on defense! (Ooops. Sorry to slip that one in.) We also learned about little plots of land – I mean little – that people can rent for a fruit or vegetable garden. They are about a 30’x30’ fenced in areas and generally have a small building on them. These plots were designed to be an escape from the city and started in the days of the industrial revolution when the cities were very dirty and polluted. People could get fresh air and fresh food. Anyway, we passed a field that had hundreds of these small plots of land that are used in this way even today.

It was back to the ship for late afternoon for lunch and some relaxing. Some of us decided to take the short hike into the two and up the large hill to where the (obligatory for every town) large stone St. Stephen’s church was. Now, it was not large by European cathedral standards, but it is a formidable Romanesque structure. One of the notable elements in the church was an intricately carved altar piece. Wow! These German’s love their wood carving (i.e., like cuckoo clocks). The details was astounding! 

We returned to our ship from the hilltop (You can see our longship as I now know it is called. It's down in the trees along the shore.). You can see what we were travelling in. 

We had a relaxing and excellent dinner, and some drinks after dinner. Below you can see what happens to those in advanced years when they have had too much to drink (i.e., one glass of wine). [Note: That’s my older brother and sister-in-law for those who don’t know.] 

Once again, 10:00pm (2200) is the all-too-familiar replacement for midnight.