Freiburg and Triberg, Germany: The Black Forest

I had wanted to visit Germany's Black Forest ever since I heard the Grimm Brother's fairy tales as a kid. And I wasn't disappointed! It was Germany at its most stereotypical (lederhosen, etc.) and yet most charming. We were in the fairy tale!

We made the city of Freiburg our home base, as the "gateway" to the forest. This was the first of many misjudgments I made on this trip about the size of the places we were going to visit. In my mind I had conceived of Freiburg as a small town, when really it was a small city! It was a unique one, though, in that it had maintained some of its medieval traditions. Walking around the city I noticed that there were frescoes painted on the sidewalk in front of shops: these pictures actually represented what the shop sold. For example, a shoe store had a picture of a shoe out front. Another cool feature of the city were its crystal-clean open gutters (or "mini canals," as I call them) that ran down the streets of the city. As my guide book cheesily points out, they're literal "tourist traps"! Ha ha. They were holdovers from the Middle Ages when they were used for transport, water for animals, preventing fires, and cooling down the city.



Freiburg has maintained its medieval past in its Munster (German for minster) as well. It's a great Gothic cathedral, unique in that the people of Freiburg themselves owned it and not the Church. Its amazing tower also survived bombing raids during World War II. Freiburg also had awesome wall murals showing seems from Church and German history on many of their historic buildings.



We got there bright and early at 6 AM after taking the overnight train from Amsterdam. After getting virtually no sleep in the "reclining seats", we decided the best thing to do until the hostel let us in was to take a hike up a massive hill! So we did, and we got great views of the city and forest in the distance. We even climbed a scenic viewpoint tower at the top, which was difficult for me, given my fear of heights!

The next day we went deeper into the forest by taking the train to the little town of Triberg. Fun fact: Freiburg is pronounced "Fry-burg" and Triburg is pronounced "Tree-burg". German is hard. ;)

Triberg is famous for its dueling cuckoo clocks; two of them claim to be the biggest in the world. Even though one is clearly bigger by measurement...anyways, we hiked out to the biggest biggest cuckoo clock in the world and arrived just in time to see the bird pop out! Perfect timing!



Another biggest: we saw (and climbed up) Germany's largest waterfall. Now, it was no Niagara Falls by any means, but it was still cool. At one point were we able to get close enough to get sprayed by the mist, which was refreshing on a hot day! We hiked a few trails around the waterfall, and the Black Forest was dense and dark, as advertised. But no trails of bread crumbs leading to a witch's house, unfortunately.





This was also my first taste of authentic German cuisine, which I loved--up to a point. Wurst and schnitzel is so hearty that I had to take a break from it after a few days! We also tried a Radler and Black Forest cake (yum). And I confirmed that I still do not like sauerkraut.