Michael Carr // personal blog of ponders & travels

||Pics From Karlsruhe and the Black Forest||

Today was the highlight of Karlsruhe. Me and shane decided to head for the Black Forest. We found a tram that left at 11am – it took about two hours to get there. I enjoyed the beautiful scenic route. The train took us to the main train station inside one of the many small towns that scatter the countryside—from what we could see the forest was somewhere out there but too far to walk so we asked around till we found out that we had to head to the tourist office a few bus stops away.

Once we did all that and had an English (thank heavens) guide paper (that was actually translated from German and very vague) we bumbled around some small side streets until we found the path that lead into the unknown, the unforeseen, the deep, dark, black forest… it was such a crazy beautiful day. The Lord blessed our socks off. We walked 5KM of the 26km hike (Don’t say it because I know what you’re thinking… hehe)
It took about one and a half hours to walk to make to the first village, a very quiet and small street that had one hotel and several old beautiful houses in the midst of tall green grass. Once we found the only bus stop and checked the times of operation we became aware that the bus only came every two hours and we had just missed it but what seemed about 3 minutes!
We walked down a little further wondering if we should continue the 26km guided tour of wilderness as *BOOM* thunder cracked from the sky. We looked up and saw huge black clouds moving our way. We had two options: Run all the way back to the train station with our tails between our legs protecting the $1200 camera or sit in the bus-stop hut and wait…

We chose to wait. It started raining… hard… it was warm, breezy and raining gigantic balls of water. I checked the bus schedule a second time and realized that I had read it wrong and that a bus was set to come in about 10 minutes. We decided to wait for that and ate our only source of nutrition for the entire journey: A 200g bag of ‘trail mix’. After ten minutes the bus still didn’t come… and still didn’t come. “Well, should we walk?” The rain had stopped for the moment and we thought maybe we could make the window. However I knew that the dry spell wouldn’t last long because the thunder continued to boom overhead. “Let’s hitchhike” Shane stuck out his thumb; the guy only looked at us and kept driving! What an outrage… Then an engine could be heard… I knew it! It was the Lord! Before we could even see it I said “It’s the bus! Thank you God!” And lo-and-behold there she came around the corner…

It only took 10min to get all the back into town. (These German’s drive like maniacs; especially when it’s raining and they’re driving a 73’, 40,000lb super bus.) It was still raining when we got into town and we had a few minutes until our train came so we decided to spend some mullah and get some food…

In Germany every good restaurant is a bar, AND a café. So we chose one from the 4 immediately available to us and sat down. When the waitress came we asked if she spoke English, all she said was “Oh nooooo!” She walked away and then returned with some guy that had silver teeth, a go-tee and some rad square glasses came to our table, “She is a very nice girl, (I guess he was trying to excuse her lack of English skills) “what would you like to drink? Alcoholics?” Me and Shane looked at each other, “Uh, can we see a menu?” He didn’t understand, “We want to eat”. That got him on the right page, “OH! Food! Yes, we only have 1 meal tonight.”
And it goes on… We ordered what he called a snittzle. It tasted like shittzle—it was a heavily deep fried piece of pork, I think. And some pommes frites that would have made McDonalds blush. Sometimes you just gotta pray and don’t ask questions…

Just a day in the life you know? We made it back alive albeit dead dog tired. I called Andrea Sonnenschein this evening and she said we could come on Monday! We are going to Basel to stay with a guy we met off MySpace (Don’t know his name, honestly) for a few days and then we’ll be in Zurich with Andrea till the 31st and then to Italy!

michaelcarr