The Black Forest - last days in Germany

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Hello from the swiss alps!

Currently on a train from germany to italy and running along the bottom of the swiss alps right now as i write this. Well now I can say I've been to the Black Forest.... The home of so many legends and fables. The first thing I noticed about it upon arrival was how white it was... The Black Forest was completely covered in snow. Earliest its been in over 30 years apparently so that was nice to know that it showed up for us 😞 I don't really like the snow as I struggle with just the cold weather yet alone snow but Jaime was loving life as fortunately for her she had never seen snow before in her life! We were staying at her relatives house in a place called titse-neustadt (apparently right in the centre of Black Forest, just near Freiburg, don't really know why I'm telling you this as I doubt anyone will know where that is haha). But anyway klaus and Karin were amazing people and had so much stories and knowledge about the area they were great fun, also having home cooked meals and clean laundry was a bonus!

We went for a causal day trip to Switzerland (no big deal!) to a town called Basel which actually had a very lively art culture. We stumbled upon a great museum that had a degas exhibition on along side work by Picasso, Monet and my favorite Warhol (just want to note how much I am loving all the amazing art in Europe and havnt even made it to the louve yet!). We couldn't have gone to the Black Forest without eating its famous cake and to tell the truth we were disappointed in it... Maybe we just managed to find a crap cafe. The Black Forest was fun but not what I expected. Not sure if we were in an area that wasn't so postcard picture perfect as I was imagining or all the google images I searched were actually made up! I enjoyed it though as it felt good to have people look after us for a couple of days and not have to worry about anything. I even got the chance to eat traditional Black Forest food as surprisingly not all traditional German food is meat! Was great to get to see what it was like living in the Black Forest for locals, we went and visited klaus' mother who was a lovely 85year old who speaks no English but loved to have us over and made us the best cakes (what I will remember as being proper Black Forest cakes). Was so interesting to get to listen to the stories of klaus and Karin as well as they told us about what it was like to visit east Berlin in the 70's with the wall still up and how they had to hide from the police as they were not technically allowed to be there. I could have listened to their stories for hours.

The last night we spent with klaus and karin started with a few quite wines at the local bar and ended with them handing us schnapps shots... We couldn't refuse there traditional in the Black Forest apparently haha but god did they burn, they were not pleasant! We're going to miss having them around I think but we have already promised that if our trip works out we will be back to visit after we come back up from Italy and Greece.

Times running out and I don't want this trip to end... We left Germany today for Milan. I feel a connection to Germany and feel sad to leave the security of a country I have spent most of my trip in... But I just keep reminding myself that in less than a year ill be back in my city Berlin starting a new exciting life! I can't wait. My life has taken a complete turn and for once in my life I'm excited for the unknown. Milan is meant to be full of expensive shopping but don't really know what else to expect other than our hostel having wi-fi (something we were deprived of in the Black Forest, and missed greatly).

From Milan we are planning to do Venice and Roma, as well as a little village called luca based on a strong recommendation by jaimes mum! And I'm not sure where else maybe Naples. From Roma hopefully we can get a cheap flight to Greece to have a bit of a look around. Then its back to Italy to Florence to meet back up with seb (cant wait it looks like an amazingly beautiful place full of even more amazing art)and then back up to Black Forest for a quick hello to klaus and Karin if time permits before we tackle France and Spain with the Netherlands thrown in there somewhere hopefully. Then sadly that's our European trip done as then our three month visa will be up and it's off to the uk. Not really looking forward to the uk at all really, all I have pictured in my head is grey skies, constant rain, and cold cold weather which doesn't sound appealing but who knows maybe ill be wrong.

Until next time!

X

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