Tuesday Sept 18

Had breakfast here at the house and Frau Kluber, the owner, came by to visit. She had been gathering pears from some of their trees for her husband to make schnapps. Yes, he has a distillery to make schnapps here. Hopefully we'll get to see it before we leave!
Forgot to mention something about the laundry from Sunday...and having hung out the laundry to dry on the line...everything smells so wonderful and fresh. It's not only sunshine fresh (like things used to smell when you'd hang sheets and pillowcases outside (when I was a kid). That smelled really fresh and clean and I've forgotten how much I loved that. But this smell reminds me of what you found, Sara, with the peat smell in Scotland. This smell isn't peat, but it's a bit sweet, and herbal, and also forest smelling. It's wonderful! I just like to pick up a piece of clothing and smell it for awhile!
Well, on our drives today, Gwendolyn was really messed up. We were off track most of the day. It just took us a long time to get to where we were going...and part of that was because the extremely winding roads take a long time to maneuver under good conditions. And you really have to slow down when the carpet pissers are out. They come roaring around the curves as fast as they can...and usually they come in groups, or as I like to call them, "swarms". They sound like a bunch of hornets and they scare the crap out of you when they come ripping around the curves...and you can't see them coming until they are right there. One of these days I need to try to get a picture of them...although it will probably just be a blur!
So we started out in Shonach today. It's a wood carving town and we stopped to see some unbelievable hand carved cuckoo clocks made by a man called Hubert Herr...so you can call him Herr Herr! The clocks were amazing, but I was looking for a small wood carving and he only does that by special order. It sure was fun seeing his clock carvings.
We stopped in Triberg which is the village known for the traditional Black Forest cuckoo clocks, but since I couldn't fit a cuckoo clock in my suitcase, I bought this wood carving of a "holzfaller" or wood cutter. It is made from maple and it's about 8 1/2" tall. The detail is truly amazing. This is my one purchase here in Germany and I love it:








The man who carved this was working in the store so I talked with him. His name is Samuel Kammerer and he is a schnitzermeister...or master carver. He has been carving for 30 years and has been a master carver for 20 years. Here he is signing his creation for me:




And here he is holding the carving when I asked to take his picture. All the carvings in the background are done by him. This place was incredible.




We continued down the road. We had packed a picnic lunch before we left this morning, but an hour down the road realized we had forgotten to bring along a bottle of wine. Oh well, that was ok. We had brought along some German salami, some liverwurst that Leo had been waiting for all day, some cheese, apples, plums. So we were getting hungry and started looking for a place along the road to stop and eat. We saw a few, but couldn't turn off in time. After about 45 minutes of looking, we finally found one. We pulled off the road, stopped the car, and got the lunch bag out...but then realized we had also forgotten the bread! So we went to the next town and to the backerei and bought 2 brotchen and found a place up the road to fix our lunch.
Stopped off at Bad Durrheim and found a little marzipan store. They had tons of different shapes and colors. I got this because of the pretty fall colors...and the yummy taste of marzipan!




So we went back by the Titisee and stopped for one last look. Leo thought this sign was the cat's meow. Will it never end?




Next we drove through St. Margen, a very scenic town.
OK....here's a picture for you:




Now you KNOW that this has a caption...right? And you KNOW who just HAD to make his voice known...you got it! Leo's caption is "This is udder-ly amazing". I can hear the groaning! But damn! They must have forgotten to milk this poor cow for a week...ouch!
This is another scenic scene in St. Margen...I love the cows in the picture. It looks like there should be a caption from the cows...as in the Far Side.




Next we went through St. Peter, but ran short of time as it was getting late and we needed to have dinner and be back to the house before dark.
So we stopped at a little restaurant in Reichenback. It's where we had an apple begnet a few days ago. We started dinner with a beer (of course!) and it was the best beer I have ever had. It's a local pilsner...the type is Riegeler...and it's about as smooth as it gets. The kick is that I don't even like beer (except in Germany). We had a wonderful dinner there...I had local forelle...trout, and Leo had schnitzel. We even got a second beer (Joy)!




The lady at the restaurant gave us 2 little sample jars of local honey. Here's a picture showing the difference in thickness of these 2 types of honey. The one on the right, the thick one, is called Lowenzahn Honig...Lion's tooth honey...I guess Lion's Tooth is a flowering plant that grows here and the bees feed on the flowers. I'm not sure why it is so thick. We have the address of the bee keeper so I hope to find out some more about this.




So on the way back to the house, Gwendolyn tried to get us lost again and it was starting to get dark and we really didn't want to be lost again. Luckily Leo realized where we were and corrected things...we had been lost there the other day. So as Leo said "To quote a moron: Fool me once, (ignoramus pause) shame on you"....well, you know the rest.

Location:Gwendolyn's messed up