Beautiful black forest and the Schloss Ortenberg

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So we got to Offenburg station right on time. Like I said the hot guy had told us where to get the bus from. We were staying at the Ortenburg castle - which is now a hostel and can be reached by bus 7134 usually before 8pm or by walking for an hour. The hot guy from the train also said that the buses had probably stopped running. He was right. We were like oh no way. To make matters worse the hostel was not answering the phone. So we debated staying in Offenburg - or catching a taxi to Ortenberg where the hostel might already be closed for the night. We decided to ask an Internet cafe what they thought. The Internet cafe gave us the contact details for a hostel that was in Offenburg. As we were walking up the street to the hostel and past the taxi stand again I saw a lady get off a bus. We tried to chase the bus down but it was too late! asked the lady if she knew where Ortenburg was. My Dutch speaking lessons were working to my advantage as a lot of the words were easily understood by a lovely little German lady which was helping us find our way. She understood me and offered to share her taxi with us. Her German husband believed that the castle/hostel would be open at this time of the night. Of course we took the cheap ride.....(5 Euros)! after an exhilarating communication experience which turned the most common of conversations into one of the most exciting challenges; I discovered the lady's name and general background.

The hostel was located at Burgweg 21 77799 Ortenberg - www.jugendherberge-schloss-ortenberg.de
After waiting outside the hostel for about 5 minutes our despair was replaced with disappointed as the was no answer and the huge castle doors were chained and bolted together. We turned and headed for the taxi driver who kindly offered to wait for us (just incase things didn't work out). Our brief depressive moment was interrupted by the sound of the clinging and clanging of chains. Curious, we both turned around and found ourselves being greeted by a handsome Fabio looking fella. the moonlight was shinning at a perfect angle merely reveling his shinny caramel-blonde hair and sexy jaw line.

Instantly we grabbed our bags from the taxi and leaped for the castle doors. we were so pleased with ourselves that we virtually through our money at the hostel manager and made a run for our room. i know your probably thinking "its a hostel, get over it". but this was no hostel; i tell you. it was amazing. it really was an ancient castle. so princess nadia and dasha called it a night whilst prince charming guarded the palace doors with his high powered computer monitor; backed by his royal deck of cards.

The next day the 18th of December 2008 (after woken up by girls running around who were on a school camp) we got up nice and early and made it down for breaky at 8:30am. IT was a good breaky of breads and
slices of meat and jams and butter and cereal. We also managed to pack some for lunch. We set off after having a look around the castle we went and looked around the forest - the black forest nearby. We hiked
for about 2 hours talking about high school and then arguing about Berlin and Munich and generally taking in the beautiful mountain views - you know the general married couple thing people go through. After a
long arse hike we made it to the look out. Even though it was foggy it was still so beautiful. We had some lunch on bench covered in snow and we sat on Nadia's jacket till she got cold then a plastic bag. And
Nadia made it up despite her gimpy leg! Really it was perfect like a fairy tale hiking through the black forest and more better than I had imagined it. We also ended up walking past some vineyards so we nicked some grapes which later got squashed in my bag. It was around 3pm and we decided to go to the markets in Offenburg. It was about 7.5km hike but we finally found
it. With some help on the way from a lady parking her car who spoke great English!

Actually speaking of really attractive women - Offenburg was full of them - Nadia picked it up first and I agreed a lot of really pretty girls here. Anyways we got to the markets and Offenburg town and it was great walking through. I ended up having a white worst - a white pork sausage. It was Divine and I couldn't wait to have more. We got to the main part of the markets and they were selling the hot wine everywhere. Yummo. And strawberry with chocolate fondue on it! And hot chocolate oh yum the goodness. We found another bigger sausage place and had some veal sausage. IT was even better! Oh so good. And this
time Nadia could enjoy the goodness. Then we went by this stall which turned out to have Syrian dishes there. I was full but Nadia saw some vine leaves stuff she adores that her mum makes so she decided to get
some get some. The lady was excited also I think when she realized Nadia was Arabic and gave her some falafel to try which Nadia split with me. Nadia asked if I wanted any vine leaves but I was like nah I was so damn stuffed from the curryworst. So she got 5 pieces and now she was stuffed. Then we got some hot chocolate - she got the plain hot chocolate and I got strawberry. I asked for cream on top - but they ended up putting creamer not whipped cream😞

But it was still tasty though I burnt myself a bit by drinking it straight away. Then we decided to head off. We got on the bus and found out our Eurail pass worked there too! The bus 7134 was going to
the hostel. We were talking on the bus and realised that we could make it to the other markets that the hostel was talking about so we stayed on. We got to the stop for the markets and checked out this store
where I ended up buying a book for Isabella that uncle Taufik could hopefully read to her in German!

Then we went to the markets. The markets were even cuter here then Offenburg and so many more people here just hanging around with their partners and families just generally having a good time. It was a
great sight to see! We walked around the markets had a brief look around and took some photos. It was getting close to 7 so we decided to head back - as the last bus to go to Ortenberg left some time around then. We saw the 7160 and piss bolted and made it! On the bus we told the driver were we wanted to get off and he said he went there. We were talking then I saw a lady behind us and asked her if
she spoke English - in German. She said she did so I asked her if she could tell us when to get off. She agreed.


When it came to our stop both she and the bus driver told us to get off. So we thanked them then got off at our stop. It was about a 10 minute hike up the hill to the castle. We were busting to go to the toilet and Nadia was the only one who had not gone all day she was virtually on the verge of breaking down and making do with someone's front yard. knowing that she will not let loose i decided to be annoying and make it worse for her ....... and that's exactly what i did. it was soooo fun watching her wiggle and squirm to keep herself together. when we arrived, Nadia made a run for the toilet and I began exploring the rest of the castle. we took a nice long steamy shower and then hoped into bed. Whew. What a day. I reckon we walked at least 14km. Well good!


The 19th of December saw me and Nadia waking up nice and early - a good clean crisp start with an all you can eat breakfast provided at the Schloss Ortenberg/ But the all you can eat breakfast wasn't so good - possibly cause they were closing up over Christmas - the 18th of December was the last night they were open for 2008 and they were using up the remaining stocks of food they had. And also possibly because they had a whole bunch of kids staying there and didn't anticipate other horses like myself eating their food. So today I didn't get totally full of the food. But anyways - after getting a whole bunch of tea bags (and a sandwich for later) we grabbed our bags and headed up to reception. We checked out and paid our room bill 37e per person for the 2 nights and headed down to the bus stop to catch the train to Offenburg station. When we got to the station we looked up the times and hoped onto the train to Munich. We had a moment were we were going to change route and ride up to Berlin however proved a bit difficult as most of the train seats were booked out. We decided to stick with the original plan and go to Munich.

To see some more images of Offenberg and the Schloss check out the following movie:

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