Like the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Black Forest only appears black when seen at a distance. Up close, it's a very dense green, and this time of year beginning to show color as the leaves of the deciduous trees turn and begin to fall.
Normally we would have gone by train, but there was construction on the tracks to the east. Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway, kindly provided "ersatz" transportation in the form of buses. We were dreading the bus ride, but it was something of a blessing because of the great views we got from the highway. And there were only five people on the bus, including ourselves.
On arrival, we quickly found our way to the lake for which the town is named and started on the hiking path around the lake, which is about four miles. The first part of the hike was very beautiful, on the east side of the lake. But hotels, resorts, RV parks and other private owners block the west side, so we had to be satisfied with walking on the wide sidewalk/bike path along the road.
It was still a very nice walk, with excellent views of the surrounding hills and the Black Forest trees. They say it's windy here a lot, but the lake was still and the reflections perfect. Leaves are turning, but we are a bit early for the peak. Our cameras didn't seem to capture as much color as we saw.
The forecast had been for a very cool, cloudy day at this higher elevation, with a high in the 40s. We had sunshine and upper 60s. It was perfect, and we were stripping off layers as the day went on.
We had planned to have a nice lunch here, but the restaurants were all very over-priced. So we wound up each just getting a brat at a lakeside stand. That was over-priced, too. We walked around town a bit, but there was nothing to see but junky souvenir shops. Cuckoo clocks are the big thing here. The shops have them for hundreds, up to thousands of dollars. We thought that most probably come from China. This was even the first place we had to pay to use the toilet!
Glad that we hiked around the lake and got to see the place, we were nevertheless happy to get on the bus and get out of there. The return bus was not as much fun because it was very crowded, and the seats were uncomfortably close together.
When we had to change to the train at Freiburg, we decided to walk into the city center and have dessert. I told Mary that we had to find a place with Black Forest cake, beer, and a table outside where we could sit and people-watch on this beautiful day. She said we'd never find a place that offered all of that. But the first restaurant we came to on the Rathausplatz checked all the boxes.
The train from Freiburg back to Bad Kozingen was packed, mostly with school kids. But when we got off the train, there was beautiful sunshine and 70+ degrees. We sat out on our little hotel balcony in shirtsleeves in mid-October!
We did have a bit of stress trying to map out our travel for the next day (thanks, Google Maps, for some very confusing misinformation). But once we got that resolved, we went to a pizza place and split a "pizza mit salami," which is what pepperoni is called here.
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