Hiking in the Black Forest by Sue

Leaving the train station at
Himmelreich.

Peter and Andrea drove over for a weekend of hiking in the Black Forest. The trail network is amazing with several options. The four of us took our local train to Barental which, according to the sign at the stop, is the highest elevation train station in Germany.

View from the trail.

Picnic along the way.

We shared the trail with mountain bikers and horse carriages. It was a slow steady hike to a mountain lake, a good place for photos and a rest.

Sharing the trail and carvings near the lake.

Andrea resting her feet.

The reward was a spectacular view of meadows, forests and lakes...and a biergarten conveniently located right where we began the descent. Peter claimed he could smell beer before we even got started. Those Germans sure know how to set up a hike!

Prost!

Heading home on the train.

Visit from Peter

Peter and Andrea

My friends Peter and Andrea came to visit for a weekend. We barbecued all kinds of stuff like pork kebabs, curled up sausages and mom made a salad. My mom and dad and Peter and Andrea went hiking in the Black Forest.

Cooking on our back porch.

Mom and Andrea drinking coffee before their hike.

The next night, Peter cooked a special German dish called semmelknoedel. It was good. It was a rolled up beef that had all kinds of spices, onins and pickles. He also made huge dumplings from bread crusts and water and I think green onions and onions. My dad has made it since then and it was really good.

Eating semmelknoedel and red cabbage in our home.

Biking Through the Countryside by Sue

Everywhere I see people of every age out walking.

Biking is a joy here. There are trails everywhere and it looks like a picture book. It is so green and the farm houses are so neat and pretty. Almost all the farms have dairy cows, but there are horse farms, goats, sheep and everyone seems to have chickens. The fields have hay, wheat, occasionally corn and lots of barley. Now I know where all that great beer comes from.

Most barns are well over a hundred years old and are connected right to the farmhouse. And all of them have their south-facing roof covered with solar panels. It a curious contrast to see these antique barns with such a modern presence. It is also very refreshing!

See the solar panels above the white part of the barn?

All over the coutryside are little chapels or crucifixes. It is very Catholic here close to the Swiss and French border. Often, the chapels have two or three rows of pews, but sometimes they seem more like mauselaums attached to a farm. The crucifixes are everywhere, seemingly random.

Crucifix near the road in front of an old farmhouse.

Sue's Corner-St. Peter

Church and cemetary

at St. Peter

Katie and I took a brutal bike ride up a mountain to the lovely old village of St. Peter on the southern slopes of Mt. Kandel last Thursday. It is on the Schwarzwald Panoramastrasse (Black Forest Panorama Road), but we came in from the backside on a grueling one lane path. It is a beautiful ride from our town on a bike trail through a couple of small, picturesque villages and past quaint farms. We continued along a stream into some woods and then began the vertical climb.

View at the top of the single lane
road as we rode into St. Peter

After several switchbacks and lots of puffing, we broke out from the forest into a beautiful mountain meadow. Farms dotted the countryside and just above the horizon we could see the domes of the church. Whew!

St. Peter centers around an old Benedictine abbey founded in 1090. It burned in 1238 and 1437. It was rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries to match the style of the times.

St. Peter's Benedictine Abbey

The town square has several little shops and restaurants. Like most places in southern Germany, there is a small, austere Lutheran church tucked off to the side and a huge, ornamental Catholic church anchoring the town square.

Catholic church on the square

Interior of St. Peter's Lutheran/Evangelical
Church

Interior of St. Peter's Catholic Church

Pipe organ in the Catholic
Church

Katie and I toured the neatly trimmed cemetary adjacent to the square. Each plot has it's own little garden.

Cemetary in St.
Peter

There is a memorial to St. Peter's war dead in the graveyard that was originally built to honor the World War I soldiers. But then two long plaques were added to pay respect to the World War II casualties. It was astounding how many young men from this tiny village were killed between 1939-1945. I took a photo of only one of the two WWII plaques on the memorial. Next time I ride up to St. Peter, I am going to count the number of dead from each war.

War memorial and one of the plaques honoring the
dead soldiers.

It was quite cold once we stopped sweating, so Katie and I found a cozy spot to drink a milch kaffee (latte). The ride down was full brakes and absolutely amazing! It was a great workout with a wonderful reward...St. Peter!

Giant chess set on the square and our cozy kaffee spot.

Trip to Loffingen

Catching the train to go to
Loffingen.

Sunday went to a town called Loffingen, higher in the Black Forest. The person who owns our townhouse invited us to lunch. His name is Fritz and he's the minister at a church there. So we attended the service. It was kind of weird because it was all in German. I recognized the Apostle's Creed and the Lord's Prayer.

This is the outside and inside of the Lutheran/Evangelical Church in Loffingen

Town of Loffingen

After a huge, delicious lunch we went for a walk around the town. Oddly, we saw lots of witches.



Witches in Loffingen. Which witch is which?

We walked by the big Catholic church that had a huge steeple. When we got next to it, I looked up and I thought it was falling on us. But it was actually the clouds moving so fast behind the tower. Katie made fun of me because I held my arms over my head instead of running from it!

Steeple of the Cathlic Church in Loffingen.

Today, my mom and I took the train into the Freiburg marketplace. It goes on every day until 11 in the morning except for Sunday right next to the Münster. It has vegetables, flowers, fruit, honeys, all kinds of different olives and spices, baked goods, different kinds of bratwursts, and other wursts, wooden toys and crafts.

Market place in Freiburg.

Madison, Wisconsin is a sister city of Freiburg, Germany. This emblem is right next to the town hall in the old city.

I bought this wooden crossbow that shoots corks in the Freiburg marketplace.

Everywhere we go there are big snails, especially after it rains. These are the biggest ones I've seen. Some are real small. I wonder how long it takes them to get across the sidewalk?

My hand next to some of the big ones.

Wild Boars

This is part of the trail from Kirchzarten to our little village of Burg Birkenhof.
I'm hauling up a load of groceries.

I finished the last of my math today! Hurray! I also finished my Germany animal report on the wild boar. I have posted it below. Both Katie and I spent the last few days doing lots of homework. It's been cooler and cloudy so only thirteen kids were at the pool yesterday when I took a break and rode down there on my bike to check it out. I helped my mom with groceries, too.


These are the goats we pass on the trail to Kirchzarten.

I am going to be taking care of my neighbor Johannes's guinea pigs for the next few days while his family travels to Italy for vacation.

These are two of Johannes's guniea pigs.

Every Saturday morning I take the train into Freiburg to have breakfast with my dad. Sometimes we visit the International Market which has fruits, vegetables, fish and baked goods. It's pretty cool.

Here's my animal report on Germany's wild boars. The blog format won't let me indent paragraphs, but believe me, Mrs. Mantooth, I did it right on my final copy.

Germany's Wild Boars

Germany’s wild boars are amazing. First, my animal is a mammal. It has stiff bristles (hair) that feel like a brush. Wild boars can be 110-200 pounds and up to six feet long! Its colors are dark grey, black, and brown. Those aren’t very bright colors are they? Wild boars have continuously growing tusks. They can grow up to one foot long! The head is large and the legs are small and short. The babies have stripes when they are born, but after a little while when the babies have a chance to grow up the stripes fade off.

The wild boar is a unique animal for its unusual habitats. They make a shelter by forming a canopy with the grass they’re using. Wild boars also use mud wallows to keep the parasites away and to protect their skin from the sun. They live in the forest and grasslands. Wild boars are found in Europe, Asia, Australia and throughout Germany.

Wild boars are like our own Idaho bears. They are omnivores! Wild boars eat roots, fruit, nuts, fungi, amphibians, birds, reptiles, small mammals, and carrion. It catches its prey by smelling it then the boar sneaks up on it then pounces. By the way, they grunt a lot while feeding.

Could you imagine fighting a wild boar? When it’s defending itself it lowers its head, charges, and slashes its tucks upward skewering the enemy. It’s only enemies are humans and wolves. Wolves usually go after the piglets.

The males fight for the females. The way they do it is they slash each other with their tusks on the shoulders as hard as they can and whoever gives up first loses the match and the other one goes home with a female. This is similar to Idaho’s elk.

Wild boars have groups that only piglets and females come to. It adds up to about 50 boars. This is called a sounder.

Germany has recently reported a surge of wild boar populations. According to a study by the Hanover-based Institute of Wildlife, “Germany’s boars have six to eight piglets average, other countries have four or five.”