Germany 3: Triberg and the Black Forest
After partially recovering from our non-trivial Oktoberfest hangovers, Kristine, Javier and I jumped in the bimmer and Autobahn'ed further south to Triberg. Triberg is nestled in the foothills of the alps at the edge of the famous Black Forest. Its a quaint little town whose claim to fame is Germany's tallest waterfall and many, many coo-coo-clocks for sale.Unlike some of the larger cities in Germany, Triberg was lucky enough to be both too small and too unimportant to be decimated during World War 2. You can see a strong Swiss influence here in the buildings.
Here's more or less the center of town.
When I say its hilly, I'm not kidding. Check the map:
And the local church in the distance.
Before going about the exciting business of climbing up a huge waterfall, we needed some hangover fuel. Triberg is pretty touristy, so the names of stuff on the menu were actually translated into English. I wanted to eat a pretty popular local dish so I tried out Schweinshaxe. Translation: pig knuckle. I'm still not sure exactly what it was.
It was DELICIOUS. I think it was near the knee of a pig. The meat was dark, extremely tender and tasted like the dark meat version of pork.
When we were driving into Triberg, much of the forest looked like this.
These stands of trees are exclusively very tall fir (I think) trees. Except for trees that originally grew at the edge of a field or something, the trees only had branches at the very top and did a good job blocking out light. I figured that was where the black forest got its name. Before man's intervention however, thats not what the forests in the area would have looked like. Signs near the waterfall indicated the forest should have looked more like this:
Sure the whole black forest wasn't that hilly, but thanks to the steep terrain this area wasn't really logged very much, and thanks to the waterfall the area was protected as a sort of park for a long time.
Here's an obligatory "i'm a tourist" shot.
Eh, and another.
You can almost get an idea for how far the waterfall goes. Make sure you enlarge this pic and check out the people on the bridges near the top of the frame.
one comment:
Looks like a sweet trip. Thanks for an entertaining lunch read.
Dustin () (URL) - 17 10 07 - 11:43