Black Forest Adventures and Cuckoo Clocks

Soooooo. It's been a while since I've updated. Sorry to all of my diehard fans! What happened is that my computer decided to NOT upload my pictures from Prague and Dresden so I was never able to post about that. Instead of recounting the last few weeks lets turn over a new leaf....

The weather in Freiburg has been absolutely gorgeous the last few weeks, about 60-70 degrees. I couldn't be happier that spring is in full force.

Sitting right at the edge of the Black Forest, Freiburg is located in one of Germany's most scenic regions. I really want to make a point while I'm here of seeing as much of the area as possible. Our semester pass lets us a lot of the regional public transportation around here including trains, which just further urged me to explore a bit. As much as we love the city, Kevin, Heather and I decided it was high time we made a day trip into the woods. After scouring my Lonley Planet Germany guide we settled on Triberg.

Triberg has several things going for it. There you'll find the largest waterfall in Germany, which was the main draw for us. It's also where cuckoo clocks and Black Forest cake were invented.We showed up at the train station Saturday morning only to find out that we could NOT use our semester tickets to get to Triberg. Boooooooooo. In the end train tickets would cost us about 10 euros per person, which we thought was more than reasonable. Off we were!

It was a beautiful ride. Once we changed trains at Offenburg the scenery became breathtakingly gorgeous. I felt like I was in the middle of a fairytale world, as the train snaked through the lush, green valley. I tried to take a few pictures out of the window, not that they do the view any justice.

 

After about a 2 hour ride we disembarked in Triberg. 

Welcome to the thriving metropolis of Triberg

 Just kidding. We followed the road up the mountain and were soon in Triberg.

Triberg is a beautiful little town, if a little touristy on the cuckoo clocks. We headed up the road towards the waterfall, the main attraction.

The walk up to the waterfall was beautiful, and it was wonderful stand in the forest and be surrounded by trees and natural beauty. Some of the scenery really reminded me of the Redwood forest in CA. There were a bunch of people out hiking around the falls as well (though it definitely was not overly crowded), it was nice to know that other people were taking advantage of the area as well. Germans are certainly an outdoor folk....

After about an hour we reached the top and walked down the path along the waterfall. Niagara they ain't, but it was still a beautiful walk.

 

After the hike we headed back into town. We stopped at the renowned Cafe Shäfer, where Black Forest cake was practically invented. The cake certainly lived up to its reputation, as it was the best slice of Black Forest cake I have ever had (and I have had A LOT since being in Freiburg....) 

We walked back to the train station to catch the train back to Freiburg. Once we were home we immediately headed over to Feierling to meet up with Susie and her friends who were visiting from Berlin.

All in all it was a great little trip and I'm definitely looking forward to our next Black Forest excursion!