Since they turn the hot water off at 10 30pm, I had to wait to shower till the morning (waking up at 7 20 am). I do not like this shower, despite it’s wonderful water pressure and temperature. Its like a closet…not for anyone who has claustrophobia. And there’s no place to really hang your towel (or bed sheet in my case since I have no towel) or clothes. I say clothes, because we were sharing a toilet and shower with two old men next door and I didn’t quite feel comfortable walking out in the hallway between the two rooms with only a sheet on.
Getting ready went pretty fast, since I am still of the belief that putting on makeup here isn’t quite worth it. Plus after breakfast, I was planning on taking a nap, which was very nice, since Angela wasn’t picking us up until 10 am. Once she did, we were introduced to a Russian internee who was coming with us today. She was fairly quiet, so we didn’t talk much. And I still felt pretty tired.
The drive to Titisee (something lake) took about an hour. It was rainy and extremely foggy. I think at the worst point, we could only see about 10 feet in front of the van. And of course we’re on a skinny, windy, country road. But it was cool to see all the farmhouses on the hills with their giant stacks of firewood and cows. I kind of want to visit one.
Anyways, due to the fog, our excursion to Titisee was rather short and uneventful. Originally we were to take a hike, go on a boat ride, eat lunch, then learn something about the Black Forest Cake. Instead, we took a short hike at the edge of the lake, popped into two souvenir shops, went to a café (half of us ate lunch, the other two of us just had hot beverages because we weren’t hungry), and went back to the car. On the way home, to kill time, we visited a museum which was only about Carnival costumes.
Note: we have Mardi Gras, they have Carnival and theirs is crazy compared to ours.
These costumes came from all the different regions in the BlackForest. Each region has a separate costume, for adults and children. Most of these costumes revolved around a jester theme, witches, and hideous masks. Some of these masks are really scary. If I was a kid, or even just visiting and saw hordes of people running around in these masks, I would be freaked out. It didn’t help that a few of their hoods, resembled colored KKK hoods. And most of the costumes had sticks (that you’re supposed to hit every person you see with) as accessories.
After the museum visit, which I have no pictures of these costumes, because it was forbidden, we got back in the car and drove the rest of the way back to
Since we still had a lot of time on our hands, and we needed to buy some supplies (shampoo, toothpaste, batteries, adaptors, etc.) Frau Brusis took us by a discount center. There are at least two in the area that I’ve seen, and been to both. Basically, it’s a grocery store, a bakery, a couple of clothing stores, and sometimes they throw a travel agency or cell phone store in there as well. So, we were able to find everything we needed in one place. I also bought my lunch, finally, which could have been better, but it was filling: a bratwurst on a roll. The casing of all sausages in
With our shopping done, we were ferried back to the youth hostel to fend for ourselves. It was about 3pm, so we had the entire evening ahead of us. Frau Brusis was surprised to learn that we hadn’t heard anything about hanging out with or getting dinner with the German students. So, we just planned our evening.
Dan had a different room for the second night, so his stuff was already moved into our room by then, so he could move into the new room. We all headed there to decide what to do next. After a little debate and downtime, we all took a walk. There was a different path that headed away from the one Dan and I had gone on the day before, so that’s where we headed. This walk yielded some different wildlife and other scenery.
One of the first things we noticed, were the amount of slugs and snails on the path. This actually got to be pretty gross. There were ones even bigger than the day before. Black ones, brown ones, little black ones with shells, and gigantic white ones with shells. It got to the point where we had to watch where we stepped to avoid squishing or crunching them. Unfortunately in the process of trying to capture the portrait of the first snail with a shell, I crunched one of the big white ones. It’s very disgusting to say the least…not only is it this terrible crunch, but then it’s all gooey and looks like entrails. Sarah stepped on one not long after I did, so I feel a little better.
Another cool aspect we noticed about the forest this time, was how black it gets in there. Yesterday, the part Dan and I were in didn’t really do this. But this time, we looked in from the path, and just saw blackness. It’s kind of like, “Oh, this is why they call it the
From there we decided we should find dinner, and left to our own devices, we attempted to wander back into town. I had paid attention on the carried in, so I had a pretty good sense of where we needed to go. Which was good, because I navigated the way back to another discount center. This time we spent entirely in the grocery store. After looking at pretty much everything and grabbing a bag of dried, sugared pineapple, I suggested we just buy stuff for sandwiches. Dan and Sarah were fine with this, so with Dan in tow (Sarah perused the wine section) I found some Emmentaler cheese (it’s like a Swiss cheese), salami, turkey breast, and Dan picked out six Broetchen. Then I asked if he wanted some juice, so I introduced him to the extensive juice section.
He was a little amazed. It is quite a selection, with a lot of kinds we don’t have back home. Like banana, blood orange, strawberry, mango, and some others. He settled on the blood orange juice and we were on our way. The walk back home was fine, and we were glad to be there. By now we were hungry and a little tired. The juice proved to be much better after eating something salty, like the salami, but was otherwise a bit bitter. The sandwiches were great (especially after walking around for about 3 hours) except for their tendency to leave breadcrumbs everywhere!
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