July 10- The Black Forest and Rothenberg ob der Tauber

We got an earlier start this morning. We had breakfast eaten and were on the road by 8:00. Unfortunately, the rest of the Black Forest wasn’t up as early as we were.

Today was dark and very chilly. Many of the past days have been cool, and the guy that took Julie to our room last night said that it was a front that came down from the north that was making it unseasonably cold. Whatever was causing it, we were all a little cool, even in our windbreakers and light sweaters.

We found the Schwarzwald Hochstraße, the High Road through the Black Forest, and headed west towards Baden-Baden. We saw some hiking trails, but it was very cool and seemed like it could downpour at any minute. We didn’t want to get caught in a cold rain miles from the car. The Black Forest landscape reminds us of Virginia, and it seemed natural when “This Old House” came on the radio in German, since it is also a song that the Statler Brothers sing in English.

Our first stop was the Mummelsee. When we stopped their in 2001, we loved it. There was a large hotel and restaurant near a tranquil but legendary lake. On our first visit, we watched the paddle-boats glide around on the allegedly bottomless lake as Julie enjoyed real Black Forest cherry cake. We couldn’t wait to take the girls out on the lake and tell them about the water sprites that are supposed to come out of the lake and take people down with them. And the long gift shop nearby reminded us of the similar gift shop in Rockfish that we always liked.

We were shocked and almost ready to cry when we turned the corner to see several large cranes, the tell-tale sign of construction in Germany. (The Europeans must use some different construction techniques because we have never seen so many cranes in use at American construction sites.) It turns out that the hotel and restaurant burned down last year. The gift shop was still there, but was not open yet. We walked out to the lake, where the paddle boats were sitting, but we were all so cold that no one even considered sitting on the paddle boats themselves, which were still wet from last night’s rain.

We waited for the gift shop to open, at least. While we were there, Julie got sprayed with orange pop as she tried to open it for Anna. When the gift shop finally opened, Julie bought a fleecy sweatshirt to keep warmer. Emma bought a realistic looking stuffed fox, and Anna bought a swirly thing that she can hang in her bedroom.

We continued on the Hochstraße through the Black Forest. We saw a mannequin in a bobsled hanging in a tree, and correctly assumed it was advertising a luge run similar to the one we rode two days ago. The girls wanted to stop, so we pulled in. We were too early there too. We watched a group of what were probably high school students go in, and we waited more than a half an hour. When we finally saw an employee to ask, she communicated to Julie (in German) that they were short staffed and everyone had to be with the school group, on a ropes course or something like that. The track wouldn’t open until 11:00 or later. That was 45 minutes away.

We decided not to stay, and drove on, partly because we saw an ad for a similar luge run that was also in the Black Forest. We promised the girls that we would keep our eyes out for that one, but we never did see it and the town it was supposed to be in was not on our AAA map. (We’re not very satisfied with the AAA maps of Europe. We’re going to buy a better one of Germany before we’re done.) As we left the Black Forest through Baden-Baden, the girls hadn’t been on their luge run, and Julie still hadn’t had any Black Forest cherry cake.

One other little incident added to our frustration this morning. Julie and the girls were leaving the parking lot and were heading up to the bobsled track to check for a second or third time to see if they were open. Scott was slower to get out of the car, and Julie locked the cardoors with the click on the remote on the key chain. For reasons that are hard to explain without seeing the door, Scott couldn’t figure out how to unlock his door from the inside. Apparently, this situation hasn’t come up in the past week. He waited for Julie to turn around to unlock the doors, but she never looked back. He started banging on the window, but they were too far away to hear by then. He reached across to the driver’s side, but the switch that usually unlocks all the doors apparently doesn’t work when the car isn’t on. He pulled the door handle on the driver’s side, and the door opened, so he climbed from the passenger side to the driver’s side. As he did so, he must have bumped the parking break down, and the car started rolling backwards in the sloping parking lot, with him caught en route between the seats. He got the car stopped, but was angry and panicked by that point. When Julie finally heard him bellowing, she showed him where the latch was to unlock the door from the inside. That’s a valuable piece of knowledge that shouldn’t be so hard to find.

We left the Black Forest disappointed, but turned towards our next destination- Rothenberg ob der Tauber. Since we weren’t going to meet Julie’s cousin in Stuttgart today, and we left the Black Forest somewhat early, we arrived in Rothenberg earlier than expected. We parked our car outside the medieval town walls, and walked through the town to find our hotel. It turns out that our reservations are at a lovely little place right next to the Rodertor, one of the towers in the town’s walls. The kids love the room because it has a bunk-double bed, with plenty of room for both of them on the top and plenty of room for Mom and Dad on the bottom. Julie used her extra time to try to catch up on some laundry at a little Laundromat outside of the walls of the town. After that necessary chore, we went for dinner in the restaurant of our hotel. We had a combination of sausages (that the girls really liked), ham, and schnitzel.

So then the real adventure of the day began. We walked the complete circuit around the town of Rothenberg by climbing and exploring the town wall. It’s a walk that we really loved back when we visited before. The town itself is said to be one of the best preserved walled medieval towns in Europe, and walking the wall is a wonderful experience. We learned (from Rick Steves) that the wall is more or less empty in the evenings and early mornings, because most of the throngs of people that visit the city come during the day on busses and leave for hotels in nearby cities. Once again, we had the wall almost to ourselves and enjoyed the peaceful, scenic stroll thoroughly. The sky was blue again. We figure that it took us around two and a half hours to do the complete walk. We started near the Rodertor, which is right by our hotel, and walked counter-clockwise. Julie thought she was sneaky by heading us in that direction, but we soon figured her out. She was going that way because when other people approached us, we would move to the right, where we had the wall, and they had to move to our left, where there was only a railing. We returned to the hotel healthily tired and ready for a good night’s sleep.



Note: We've found a way to upload the past pictures. We've gone back to Salzburg (July 5) and added in all the pictures since then.

July 9- Ehrenberg and …Merklingen???

For the first time in this trip, we didn’t have reservations for a place to stay tonight. That meant that when we checked out of our pension this morning after breakfast, we didn’t have a clear idea of where or when we would stop, except that we were headed west, towards the Black Forest.

We stopped first in Garmisch Partenkirchen because we knew of a great little shop there that sells second hand dirndls and lederhosen and other authentic German paraphernalia. It’s the place where Scott bought his zither back in 2001. We found the place with no problem but it’s doors were locked. The sign said that it should be open, and at least one other customer came to check the door, but she wasn’t there. We decided not to wait and headed on. We stopped at a supermarket called Aldi’s where he picked up items for a picnic. We drove past the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany, but its top was covered in thick clouds. We quickly decided not to go up, since we had seen such nice views at the Eagle’s Nest two days ago and we knew from out 2001 trip that it’s an expensive trip up just to see the insides of the clouds.

We headed on through a bit of Austria, since that is one of the easiest ways to curve around the mountains. As we rounded one bend there was a very picturesque castle in ruins at the top of a hill along the roadside. Scott had enough time to whip out the camera and start it rolling. Anna asked, “Dad, why do you take video of castles when you see them?” He told her it’s because you can’t just drive around a corner in Western New York and see an unexpected castle on a hilltop.

As we drove past the castle, we wondered if this was the castle ruin that Rick Steves had recommended so highly. We decided to stop either way, since we had no particular time schedule that we were on. As we entered the building at the foot of the mountain for tickets, we were only slightly surprised to find a sword in a glass case inscribed to “Sir Rick Steves.” It was indeed the place he had been, and they had built up a whole display about his visit there, including pictures of the ceremony in which he was “knighted” with this sword. We felt proud that we recognized the place as one of his “Back Door” treasures, but the European visitors to this park must really be puzzled about who this guy is.

The park is the called the Burgenwelt Ehrenberg (Castle-World of Ehrenberg). It actually consists of the ruins of three castles that were built on three separate nearby hilltops and a museum complex at the foot of the hills. We started in the museum and were surprised to see a very interactive, hand-on, and engaging museum about the life of knights. The museum exhibits loosely follow the story of the fictional Heinrich who wants to be a knight, and who goes on a Crusade to Jerusalem and fights a joust for the hand of the woman he loves. There are lots of things to touch and see along the way. Anna got to try on pieces of knights armor. We all were amazed to see a 600 year old picture of St. Mark’s square in Venice in which we could recognize the buildings we had seen and the places we had stood less than a week ago. Emma was spooked by the room that told about the effects of the black plague. The climax of the exhibits is a 3-D movie of the joust. Julie and Scott were both thinking that this museum would be a perfect place to bring 5th or 6th graders when it’s part of their curriculum in New York.

Then came our own journey-- a half an hour walk up to the ruins of the castle of Ehrenberg. The walk was up-hill all the way, and quite steep and rocky by the very end. There were a few signs that told stories along the way. One told the story of the Schnurfler, a gnome that didn’t like people on this mountain, and who often allegedly pushes rocks down on un-welcome visitors. Anna and Emma both laughed that his nickname was “Butz.”

When we had finally climbed all the way to the top, we found the ruins of the castle that had originally been built in 1296, over 700 years ago. The castle really is in ruins, and is quite a contrast to the 19th century fantasy castle of Neuschwanstein from yesterday. Many of the walls are crumbling (although we saw the scaffolds and concrete of workmen that must be trying to stabilize them). You enter the ruins at your own risk, but are allowed to climb on the piles of rubble that take you to the higher parts of the ruins. This scene was quite a grueling hike for us to get to, but it was worth it to explore. We remembered that Rick Steves had sat in these ruins on two of his programs and said what a great spot they were for a picnic. Umm… Our picnic stuff was still in the car back at the bottom of the hill. Oh well.

We worked our way back down the hill. Anna was looking hard for fairies in the woods this time. She took pictures of many mossy little holes under the trees that may be fairy homes. Who can tell for sure that they are not? At one point, a rock rolled down the hill behind us, and it must have been Butz trying to make sure we didn’t come back.

There were two more castles on higher hills that overlooked Ehrenberg. No one but Julie wanted to climb to them. It could certainly take up the entire day if you did. Instead, the girls bought souveniers- treasure chests of polished rocks, and we went to the car for our “picnic.” It might not have been the top of the mountain at the castle, but we still got a view of the Alps as we ate our sandwiches.

We drove on, with the girls asleep in the backseat after our long hike, and easily found the little town of Merklingen, not too far from Stuttgart. Merklingen is the ancestral home of the Pfaeffles, on Julie’s paternal grandmother’s side. We have an account, written by one of the German members of her family, that traces the Pfaeffle’s line back to 1535, 14 generations from Julie. For several of those generations, the family life was supposed to have centered around a specific church that we have both old and new pictures of. The church’s architecture is unique, because it was part of a small medieval fort to protect the townspeople. Nearby that church is a building that has been a tavern, and which was owned by an ancestor of Julie’s at one time.

The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a church like that in the town we were in. We’re not sure why, because we have found references to it recently on Stuttgart region websites. We showed pictures of it to two townspeople and Julie asked them about the church using the little bit of German she knows from high school. They directed us to the next town over.

Rural German towns in this region are set up slightly differently than American farms. In America, farmers lived in a farmhouse surrounded by the fields they owned. In Germany, because of their feudal background, the people lived in towns, and the towns were surrounded by the fields which people went out to in order to work. That land use can still be seen in this region today. As a result, Merklingen is a very small town, and the town that we were directed to was literally a hill away, over the fields, and was also quite small.

We found the church there, and the steeple certainly is similar to the one in the picture that we got off the Internet and the one from 1980 in Julie’s family history. However, when we studied it, it was quite clear that it was not the same building. Julie went into the church offices where a secretary was working. Again, using her high school German, Julie was able to ask about the location of the church in our pictures. The secretary studied them and said quite definitively that there was no church like that in the area. We were certainly puzzled by that, because the German relative that wrote this history had been to the church itself to look through the ancient records when he did his research. This bit of a search for family roots came to a dead end pretty quickly.

We pushed on, deciding to try to get to Freudenstadt in the corner of the Black Forest. (Scott suspected that Julie was just trying to get to a place where she could get some “real” Black Forest cherry cake.) We got a little lost at one point, but Julie made use of her German again. A couple gave her directions and actually led us for the first part of the way. We caught a late dinner at McDonalds and made it to Freudenstadt, and found a hotel on the town square. We’re paying a little more for it than we have for some of the others, but that’s part of what you get when you wing it without reservations. Even so, we’ve got a relatively large suite with two bedrooms, so the girls get their own room for tonight. It’s décor is set a little later than the place we stayed in Oberammergau-- perhaps 1960s? It’s our spot for the night, anyway.