As mentioned before, Basel is at the border of Germany,
France and Switzerland. And as soon as one crosses the Rhine into Germany, one
is at the edge of the famous Schwarz Wald, or Black Forest – the home of the
Black Forest cake, and the Cuckoo Clock. Driving through the B roads of the
Schwarz Wald is considered to be one of the great driving experiences – and
most sports car makers like Porsche regularly offer driving itineraries through
this area. In fact, one can rent a Porsche 911 from Zurich, which comes
pre-loaded with maps that take you through some of the best roads in this
region.
Well before we left India, I had spent a considerable amount
of time identifying possible itineraries through the Schwarz Wald. I finally
settled on an itinerary mentioned in the guidebook by Karen Brown. We decided
to look for a hotel close to Baden Baden, which lies at the end of the most
famous driving road in the Schwarz Wald, the B500 or Schwarz Wald Hochstrasse,
which runs along a ridge with beautiful views of the forest on either side. Expedia
helped us find the Hotel Rebenhof, located in the small town of Neuweier,
amidst vineyards, which was not too expensive, and beautifully located. We
Googled the map from Basel to Neuweier, with various waypoints. The distance
was 216 km, and Google suggested a drive time of just under 4 hours. This
seemed like an easy drive, and we therefore were not in a great hurry to leave.
That morning, Maami, Jayashree and Radhika set out to make
Pav Bhaji, which Avinash had been asking for. While they were busy at work, I
went out for one long, last walk around Basel. By the time I got back,
recovered the car from the Pay and Park, and we were ready to set out, it was
almost 11 am. We had planned a relaxed start, but this obviously had become a
bit too relaxed.
Our first destination was the town of Todtnau, along the
B319. The drive along the B319 was pretty. While the speed limit in most
sections was 100 kmph, I often got stuck behind trucks, which were driving at
70-80. Once again, the precision with which the truckers drove was amazing – as
this road was not much broader than a single lane old style Indian NH – albeit
with much better surface and signage. We got to Todtnau, and took a walk around
the centre of town. By this time, we were hungry – and so sat down at an open
air café, ordered a completely sinful Schwarzwald Sundae, and also ate the Pav
Bhaji we had carried. As we were walking around, we observed a roller coaster
like structure on the opposite hill. It turned out that this hill was a ski
resort in winter, but they had also built a rail (called the Sommerrodelbahn),
on which people could travel in single cars with the speed being controlled individually.
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| The Todtnau Church |
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| Radhika and Avinash |
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| The Sommerrodelbahn |
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| Radhika and Avinash in the Bahn |
We promptly took the ski lift to the top of the hill, and
after spending some time taking iPhone pictures of the scenery, took the
Sommerrodelbahn down. It was great fun, and after a while, I grew confident
enough to take the curves at high speed, until I got too close to the slower
car ahead of me, and had to slow down. Radhika and Avinash rode down together –
and opted for a slightly slower journey down.
By the time we finished all this, it was well past 230, and
we had covered only a fourth of our journey to Neuweier. We therefore decided
to skip our planned second waypoint, the Schulsee, and instead headed directly
to Furtwangen, the home of the German clock museum. There were some road
closures on the way, which was a blessing in disguise, since we were diverted
onto some incredibly beautiful L roads. I struggled to drive faster than 70
kmph on these roads, and was promptly passed by several cars driving much
faster.
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| Cows in the Meadows |
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| Winding L Roads |
After spending an hour at the German clock museum, we headed
for the town of Triberg, which is considered the best place to buy Cuckoo
Clocks. We reached there around 430 – and did not get much time to examine different
pieces before the shops were all set to close down. There are two kinds of cuckoo clocks,
mechanical ones and electronic ones. Most of the shop keepers claimed that even
the electronic ones were made in Germany, within the Schwarz Wald. We kept one
of the shopkeepers beyond her usual closing time, and managed to pick up an
electronic cuckoo clock, for a relatively reasonable price.
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| Triberg |
Next we walked down to the Triberg Waterfall, which was
quite beautiful. There were long walking trails around, but it was already past
630, and we did not get a chance to spend too much time enjoying them. By the
time we got back to the parking lot, the town was deserted, and we suddenly
realized that we were still almost 100 km or 2 hours away from our hotel, and
were concerned that the hotel may give our room away. We also realized that
given the isolated location of our hotel, we should be prepared for the absence
of room service – and hence called the hotel to let them know we were late but
on our way. They told us that they would hold the room for us, but we would
need to make it by 9 PM to get dinner.
We then routed ourselves through a set of local roads
towards the beginning of the B500 or Schwarz Wald Hochstrasse, which took us
past a number of small logging towns down roads where we were the only car in
miles. The Schwarz Wald Hochstrasse was a fantastic road, with beautiful vistas
on both sides, and full of twists and turns. It was posted with a 100 kmph
speed limit, which I by and large adhered too – even if I was repeatedly
overtaken by cars and motorbikes doing insanely high speeds. Unfortunately,
since we were so late, we could not stop too often to take pictures – this is one of the few images we managed to capture.
We reached the Rebenhof around 830 – and after quickly
checking in, walked over to the restaurant. While the vegetarian choices on the
menu were limited, the chef was nice enough to whip up something special for us
– even though it was almost closing time. As we had dinner, we caught sight of
an amazing sunset behind us.
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| Sunset at the Rebenhof |
The next morning, we set out for a long walk amongst the
vineyards, and through the town of Neuweier. While we had until 2 PM to check
out, we finally decided to head to the town of Baden Baden, and hence left the
hotel by 1130.
The Vineyards of Neuweier
After a quick drive to Baden Baden, we walked around the quaint
city centre, and then settled down for lunch.
As we were heading back to the
car to start our journey to Munich, I got a call from a German number on my
phone. It was from the Rebenhof – the cleaning lady had found Radhika’s iPod in
our room, and they had called my India mobile to tell us about it. Fortunately,
we were only half an hour away, and hence were able to drive over and pick it
up. We thanked our stars that the hotel staff had been so honest, and
considerate – it would have been very easy for them to either keep the iPod, or
not bother to call having realized that I had not given them a German contact
number.
We then headed for Munich – this time using the autobahns
instead of B roads. We first headed north on the A5 towards Karlsruhe, and then
took the A8 past Stuttgart to Munich.
There were numerous sections along the A8
where road work was on – this time I was more confident, and managed to stay on
the passing lane with cars (which were going at about 90 kmph against the
posted 80) instead of sticking to the slow lane which was full of trucks. The
sections where road work was not on were a pleasure to drive on – the lane
discipline was fantastic, and I was able to cruise at about 190 kmph. Even at
such high speeds (which admittedly was faster than most cars that were doing
about 160), there were times when someone or the other came barrelling down
towards me, before moving into the passing lane at well over 200 kmph. While
Google had predicted about 3.5 hours to Munich, the speeds I did in the fast
sections ensured that we made it in just about 2 hours and 45 minutes.
As we approached Munich, we passed the Allianz Arena (the
home of Bayern Munich). Our hotel, the Westin Grand Munich, was at
Arabellapark, which is in the outskirts of central Munich, and hence was
relatively easy to get to. After checking in, we headed out and had a delicious
Lebanese meal at a nearby restaurant.
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