We were making our way to Switzerland via the scenic
route. I had read that the Black Forest
Road was incredibly picturesque, with little pull-offs to enjoy the views,
quaint towns, and friendly people. Along
the way, there was also a castle built in 1100 that had fallen to ruins that
was free and open for exploring. Since
seeing the Black Forest and a castle ruin was on the kids’ bucket lists, we
decided this was the route to take.
We drove to Baden Baden, where it began, to start the
journey. It was picturesque. The road was pleasantly winding through
forests and meadows, over and around small mountains, and through tiny villages
with red-roofed houses and flowers tumbling out of window boxes. We stopped in one town and took pictures on a
covered bridge over a small river.
At
another spot, we got out and looked at a quarry lake with people enjoying a
swim. And then, coming around a curve,
we saw it…The summerrodhelbahn!
The kids yelled, “Let’s stop! Please!
We want to ride!”
Well, heck yeah! So
we stopped, and Kirk and Kyle went in to buy tickets and we spent the next
couple of hours being pulled up the hill to speed back down the track through
meadows and trees to do it all over again.
It is really fun, and you feel like you are going to fly off. It’s rickety enough that there is a measure
of danger attached to this ride, but that’s what makes it exciting.
 |
| Kyle and Emily |
 |
| Kirk and Claire |
The kid loading people up was Kyle’s age. They started talking a little, and we found
out that he studied in Nebraska. He was
very flirty with Claire, which was funny to see. She did not like it at all and only rode 4 times instead of 5.
There was a small ropes course next to the rodelbahn, so we
went over and played on it for a while.
We did the zipline, the hanging logs that you walk across, a rope swing,
etc. The girls were able to do splits at
the same time on the hanging logs. They
are so flexible!
 |
| I can do the splits too! |
We got back in the car and kept driving. The road was crazy winding and I got a little
nervous on some of the switchbacks. It
reminded me of driving Mt. Lemon in Tucson.
We stopped in the middle of the forest and took some pictures. It really is like a storybook spot. You expect to see gnomes and elves peeping
out at you from behind a distant tree or what you think is a flower is really a
fairy dancing on a branch.
In Freiberg, we found an Aldi’s and got some food for
lunch. Peanut butter, jelly, bread,
fruit, pretzels. We got back on the road
and stopped at a little roadside “hutte” for lunch. These huttes are placed every so often along
the Black Forest Road. It was fun to
picnic at one.
The way the GPS took us put us back pretty close to where we
started, so we were a little behind schedule for our hotel in Mullheim, down by
Switzerland. We hopped on the autobahn
on our way to Emmendingen where the castle ruins are.
We got to Emmendingen about 4:30, and the GPS kept putting
us in the center of town at the Hochburg Museum. We didn’t want to go to the museum; we wanted
to go to the actual Hochburg. We drove
around the city center and saw a sign pointing left, so we followed it. We drove and drove past a school and farms
and didn’t see a thing, so we went back into town thinking the museum people
could give us directions.
Kirk and Kyle got out to check, but the museum was closed,
so they asked a local person. She
pointed us in a new direction, saying it was just at the top of this nearby
hill. So we drove up this hill through a
neighborhood and past a church to where it changed to a one-lane road. We were pretty sure it wasn’t there. We saw an elderly lady walking down the hill,
and Kirk rolled down his window to ask her if she knew where it was. She did, and said we were on the wrong hill. We were to go back down the hill, turn left,
and go up the next hill on the left. So
we did, but we got turned around again and we were pulling out of a parking lot
and saw her again, still walking. She
waved and pointed, and we waved back and nodded like we realized our mistake,
even though we really had no idea where we were going.
We went back to the city center, where we saw the sign the
first time, and followed it again. We
said to ourselves, “We’ll try one more time, and if we don’t find it, we’re
leaving…” We went past the school again and kept going, and soon, up on the
hill, we saw the tower.
It sat up on a hill overlooking the valley below. The walls had crumbled. Trees and grass had grown up around it. Glassless windows, like blind eyes, stared
blankly. We followed a one-lane road to
the top, past a pen of ducks and another of sheep, until we got to the top of
the hill. There was no parking lot, so
we stopped in front of the gate and got out and walked the rest of the way
up.
The castle originated in the 11th century and was
mentioned in documents in 1127. It was destroyed
in the 1630s during the Thirty Years’ War.
It was rebuilt and then destroyed again at the end of the 17th
century and lay in ruin until the 1970s when it was acquired by the Castle
Restoration Association and has been maintained by them ever since. (http://www.emmendingen.de/en/hochburg/) (Yes, I give credit where credit is due!)
 |
| The view from the sky. Obviously I didn't take it. |
We walked around to the entrance and came through the guard
gates and went into the guard shack. We
looked at dates carved into the stones above the doors. We meandered down into what we figured was
the moat and looked into the windows of the round towers on the corners of the
castle. I thought we could go inside,
but everything seemed to be locked. We
walked around the front, and, much to our delight, we found the entrance into
the castle itself. Seriously, I felt
like Claire and Frank in Outlander
when they explore Castle Leoch.
Grass grew up through the cobbles and along the walls. Scrub trees grew in the courtyard. Vines wandered along tops of the walls, and
wildflowers bloomed in empty windows. We
wandered. We imagined. We explored and fantasized about what each
room had been and who had lived here and how it came to ruin. I found the kitchen and thought about all of
the food that had been prepared there for centuries. We came upon what we thought might have been
the great hall and pictured the king of this castle holding court. We stood on
the top of the castle and looked out over the surrounding countryside and
watched a storm roll in. We envisioned
armies of enemy soldiers besieging the castle and the battles that had been
fought there.
 |
| Kyle looking in a tower |
 |
| Claire |
 |
| Kirk in the courtyard |
 |
| Claire in the castle |
 |
| The storm rolling in |
 |
| Steps to nowhere |
 |
| Emily in the moat |
If there is a magic place, a haunted place, where the veil
between past and present is at it’s thinnest, this place is it.
As the storm approached, we made our way back to the
car. Driving down the hill, past the
chickens and the sheep, we realized that we were actually not supposed to drive
up to the top, and that there is a parking spot right as we pulled out. Oh well!
Kirk looked at the reservation for our hotel in Mullheim and
realized that we were supposed to check in by 8. It was 7:55, and we were an hour away. We tried calling, but nobody answered. We called and called for about 10 minutes and
still couldn’t get through. It had
started to pour down rain, and in a panic, we tried booking another hotel, but
most of the ones we could afford were already booked or too far away. We found one that we thought was close and
booked it on-line (thank god for mobile internet!) and when we plugged the
directions into the GPS, we realized it was two hours in the opposite
direction, so we called back and cancelled it.
It was going on 8:20, and Kirk said to call the Mullheim place one more
time, and I did, and they answered!
The guy said it was no problem for us to be late. The storm we had been watching had hit them
hard, and their phones and internet had been down. We were welcome whatever time we got there.
We drove through the rain to our new hotel, the 3rd
one in three days. It was really
nice. Kirk and I had a big room with a
balcony. The kids had the whole third
floor to themselves. We ate some of the
food left over from the afternoon (which by this time, seemed like last week,
and went to bed listening to the rain and the thunder rumbling across the
German landscape.
It was a great day.
No comments:
Post a Comment