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Published: March 28th 2023
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What are you supposed to do when you've just completed a world tour, and you realize, with the prospect of full-time work looming large, that you won't be on the road for a while? Squeeze in a trip before the onslaught of the new job! Booking a room in Titisee in the Black Forest was intended as a ski trip in the German ski resort of Feldberg, but rather curiously, as time before the departure grew ever closer, the realization that a lack of snow prevailed in the area forced the trip's purpose to alter accordingly. With the prospect of actually skiing shelved for yet another year, the base at a guesthouse on the edge of picturesque Lake Titisee was going to be springboard for a variety of offshoot trips within relatively easy reach. The area is rich in options for exploration, and a complimentary transport pass provided by the guesthouse was indeed the passport to day-trip freedom unless you strayed out of the zone of validity. Within the confines of the Black Forest itself, the various towns and villages varied in size, style and level of appeal, and the inviting area of Kirchzarten, on the Freiburg periphery turned out to
be a wholly worthwhile visit, with a village-like atmosphere, just about large enough to have a tourist information office located within its confines. Of a similar size, but somewhat less atmospheric was Loffingen, with a couple of features which you would appreciate nonetheless, as was the case with Schluchsee, where lakeside views and a distinctive church validated a couple of hours of a visitor's time. Titisee itself is a well-to-do lakeside village where you can easily while away a few hours at the local Badesparadies, a local indoor aqua park, with some truly impressive attractions and features located on the premises. A companion piece to Titisee is Titisee-Neustadt, a commercial extension of lakeside Titisee, with a couple of features, but nothing to rival the crowning glory of the area's towns, which is the twin town settlement of Villingen-Schwenningen, where a scattering of shops, restaurants and ameneties are sewn together by traditional features ranging from churches to city arched entrance gates, and a traditional smalltown atmosphere which makes it a joy to explore on foot. It wasn't all about being restricted to just one nation however, and Titisee's relative proximity to the French border meant that day trips in France were
super-achievable, one of which was the Alsatian city of Mulhouse, which houses Europe's largest automobile museum, well worth a look-in if you happen to be paying the town a visit. The town hall is the centrepiece of Mulhouse, and the painted wall murals set to a pinkish background make it stand out nicely in the spacious square it is located in, where the St Etienne church can also be found, suggesting that this area is where the main bulk of the city's photo opportunities exist. Not content with limiting the Black Forest stay to just one sole day trip to France, a visit to Strasbourg, the capital and chief town of the region of Alsace, was worked into the mix, and the city is synonymous with European politics, being, along with Brussels, a seat of European parliament. For my money, the city's most astonishing building by quite some distance happens to be the gothic cathedral an imposing building which looks slightly lopsided, but thrills and delights for the sheer splendour of its architectural style and features daily parades of the automated figures of its astronomical clock. The area known as Petite France is where you'll find the biggest cluster of
Strasbourg timber-framed houses, all worth checking out, for the variety of styles and the way in which they blend in seamlessly with the canals they are located alongside. Leaving Titisee meant overnighting in the German town of Freiburg am Breisgau, a well-to-do Black Forest town, the centrepiece of which is the Munster cathedral and all its eyecatching features of traditional German architecture. Martinstor gate is yet another city landmark which will get you reaching for the camera, and it is worth noting that this is very much a University city with all the kinds of features which you would associate with a sizeable student population as well as being a city with a growing sense of tourist potential. Leaving Freiburg left only one remaining node on the mini-tour, and that happened to be the Swiss city of Basel, where a traditional city allure fused with the typical features of Swiss cities such as a tram network, a sublime cathedral, and the usual crop of shops ranging from lower-budget to bankbreakingly upscale options. Landmarks such as the castle-resembling Spalen Gate and the occasional church dotted here and there added up to a satisfying whole, and although the local toy museum is crammed so full of teddy bears in abundance, the collaging effect is so impressively cute that you can almost forgive the museum having a focus which you would think is too restrictive to be deemed a (more universal) toy museum. Back on my home continent, the trip fulfilled its purpose as being a cluster of sights and experiences which easily rivalled anything which had been sampled throughout the world tour, and just added weight to the claim that no continent on earth is devoid of charm, substance or scope for living the dream, whatever your perception of that ultimate dream may turn out to be.
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