In the mystical Black Forest of Germany

Ah Rheinfelden! How can you not fall in love with this picturesque little city? Snuggled between the River Rhine to the south and Germany’s famous Black Forest to the north, it sits in the extreme southwest corner of the state of Baden-Wuertemberg. Andrew and I were in no hurry to leave this place as we sat and had our mid-morning break of pudding-filled pastries, followed by disgusting-tasting coffee. My kingdom for a Tim Hortons!

I felt this would be a good time to replenish my wardrobe, since we still had not been able to find a laundromat in any of our travels. We later learned that only university towns have them. The locals simply bring their belongings to the dry cleaner that will wash, dry, iron and fold laundry, and 24 hours later it is ready for pickup.

Leaving this city behind, we followed “the Route of the Clocks,” which is a 200-kilometre route through the Black Forest, ending up at the city of Schiltach. The forest is home to the world-famous cuckoo clock. They are handmade in all shapes and sizes, from mass production to custom designs.

Beautifully carved village clocks could be seen everywhere. After 20 kilometres, the route ran parallel to the “Nostalgic Train,” constructed in 1887 to take visitors throughout the forest by way of its breathtaking bridges, tight turns and passes. It is hard to imagine hundreds of square kilometres of huge straight trees in such a heavily populated country when its neighbours such as France, Netherlands or the United Kingdom have very few remaining large forests. It was in 1881 when Prince Otto von Bismarck, The Iron Chancellor to Kaiser Wilhelm II of Prussia, decreed that for every tree cut, 10 must be planted to replace it. The start of modern-day reforestation.

Near Badenweiler, the Duke was in residence so we had to content ourselves with only an outside tour. Not far from here at Furstenberg Castle, the rivers Brigach and Breg meet to give birth to the Danube, Europe’s longest river.

Somehow, I felt the trip was not complete since we could not visit Burg (Castle) Hohenzollern, home to Germany’s royal family, the House of Hohenzollern. Lying further to the eastern end of the Black Forest, its present ruler is Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, great-grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm II. My son Rolf had the opportunity in 1989 to see the family’s hunting castle in Bad Homburg near Frankfort. To this day, the holdings of this family still include castles throughout Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.

We continued our journey north along very narrow, paved switchback roads that wound their way up mountains and down into very steep valleys where the homes were primarily of huge log construction. Even the logging was different to what we are accustomed to. Here the trees are stripped of all their branches and bark, allowing the waste to return to Mother Nature. In many places we saw large piles of peeled logs beside the road.

A countryman told me that the German government knows exactly how many trees there are in Germany at any given time. Talk about Big Brother.

It was at Bad Krozingen that we decided to take the E35 Autobahn in order to bypass Freiburg, capitol of the Black Forest. This city has produced no less than nine Nobel Prize winners in its 900-year history.

The E35 follows the east side of the Rhine valley right up to Baden-Baden, where we crossed the river into Alsace and Lorraine, France, just north of Strasbourg. This French province has been fought over and has changed hands many times between the French and the Prussians. It seems strange to see the towns and villages having German names and the people speaking German. Today, the French and Germans get along quite nicely in this province — a lesson to be learned.