Black Forest, Freiburg and a Blizzard

Freiburg, or to give it its full title, Freiburg im Breisgau is one of the famous old German university towns, was incorporated in the early twelfth century and developed into a major commercial, intellectual, and ecclesiastical centre of the upper Rhine region. Statistically it is the sunniest and warmest city in all of Germany but that certainly wasn’t the case today. As we parked the car and walked towards the city centre there was a steel grey sky, a spiteful wind and stinging sleet, the pavements were wet and the colour was bleached out of the buildings and streets and after just a couple of minutes we knew that it was unlikely that we would be seeing the best of Freiburg today.

We walked to the centre of the city to the cobbled Münsterplatz or Cathedral Square where there was a small unhappy looking market where people were rushing past the stalls because it was too cold to stop (except for the fast food van that was doing brisk business and had a queue of people lining up for fasnacht doughnuts) and we did our best to find the cheerful bits of Freiburg’s largest square. The square is the site of Freiburg’s Münster, a gothic minster cathedral constructed of red sandstone, built between 1200 and 1530 and which is memorable for its towering needle like spire. We went inside and it was cheerful and warm with large stained glass windows and friezes on the walls that commemorated the various traditional trades of the city.

It didn’t take long to do a full internal circuit of the Münster and fairly soon we were back on the perishing streets complete with the city’s unusual system of gutters, called Bächle, that run throughout the centre. These Bächle that were once used to provide water to fight fires and feed livestock are constantly flowing with water diverted from the River Dreisam. During the summer, the running water provides natural cooling of the air and offers a pleasant gurgling sound but we didn’t need cooling down today. There is a saying that if you fall or step accidentally into a Bächle, you will marry a Freiburger but I imagine there is a much greater chance of just breaking a leg.

The weather was horrible now, it was getting colder and beginning to snow heavily so we had to concede that Freiburg wasn’t the place to be this afternoon and we returned to the car getting lost and losing our way in the tangle of little streets around the Münsterplatz. We were glad to get back to the car and begin our journey back to Offenburg. On the way out of the car park the ticket machine flashed the message ‘gute fahrt’, I thought ‘thanks very much and after that glass of gassy German Pils I just might.’

To return there was the same choice, autobahn or scenic route and just like this morning we took the second option but about ten kilometres out of Freiburg it started to snow and within minutes we were in the middle of a full blizzard and the driving snow was beginning to obliterate the road in front of us. For a while we followed in the tracks of vehicles in front but one by one they began to turn off and soon we were left with no one to follow and no tracks to help. Yesterday on icy roads had been interesting but this was just plain scary. We slipped and skidded, the windscreen wipers froze into solid chunks of ice and stopped working and we debated the alternative of turning around but decided that this wouldn’t be helpful because the conditions were just as bad in the other direction. So we carried on. Back through Gundelfingen, Denzlingen and Waldkirch and then the climb to Elzach where the temperature dropped to minus six and the snow on the road just kept getting thicker and thicker. There wasn’t a lot of traffic about which was a bit of a concern, just the occasional car coming towards us in the opposite direction and I was glad when we reached the top and started the slippery descent towards Haslach.

Conditions started to improve but just north of Haslach the road was closed, probably due to an accident, and we were diverted off and had to plot an alternative route back. Kim did a brilliant job of this but I overruled her at one point, went wrong and ended up on a very minor road that was completely wiped out and soon discovered that driving is especially difficult when you have to watch the road and concentrate on keeping your arse cheeks squeezed together at the same time.

Black Forest, Cable Car Ride

Overnight the rain turned to snow and there was a little dusting on the roofs of the houses next to the hotel and on the road outside but the sky was still grey and overcast so we decided to take a drive to the city of Freiburg about fifty kilometres to the south and after breakfast we de-iced the car and set off. We could have taken the direct route on the autobahn but we decided instead to take a scenic route through the forest.

First we passed through the village of Ortenberg which was an ordinary sort of place except for a large castle standing in a dominant position on a hill with a good view overlooking this part of the Rhine Valley. It looked in good condition and we found out later that it is now a youth hostel.

Soon we arrived in Gengenbach which is a small town and a popular tourist destination on the western edge of the Black Forest. Gengenbach is well known for its traditional Fasnacht where the residents of the town closely follow tradition with the wearing of costumes and carved wooden masks and clapping with a Ratsche which is a wooden rattle like those we used to take to football matches before they became a health and safety hazard. We parked the car and tried to make sense of the parking fee information, bought more time than we really needed (forty-eight hours) and then walked into the Altsadt which was gaily decorated with bunting and flags for the festival. In the main square Gengenbach has a traditional town hall which is claimed to be the World’s biggest advent calendar because the twenty-four windows of the eighteenth century town hall represent the twenty-four windows of the calendar.

Just behind the main street there was a warren of tiny crooked streets surrounded on all sides by the most picturesque half timbered buildings and it was almost possible to imagine that we had wandered into a secret fairy tale village of uneven cobbled streets, colourful houses and cottages and might at any moment bump into Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. This part of the town presents such a traditional image that it was here that some of the scenes from ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ were filmed to represent Dusseldorf. We wandered through and out the other side and then returned to the car promising to return later if there should be any blue sky.

After leaving Gengenbach we followed the same road as the day before as far as Haslach but then took a different route towards Elzach and Freiburg. The road started to climb quickly and it began to snow just as we passed a road sign that seemed to suggest that it might be advisable to have snow chains ready for the tyres. As the snow became heavier we could understand why but it wasn’t getting too deep and the winter tyres seemed to be coping well enough again but just to be sure we kept to the main road and didn’t head off any ambitious scenic detours today.

And we really didn’t need to because this was a very attractive route anyway and we passed through the towns of Waldkirch, Denzlingen and Gundelfingen and eventually approached the outskirts of Freiburg where there was a series of road works and detours. We drove straight through the city with a plan to come back later and continued south towards the one of the highest parts of the Black Forest, the Schauinsland, and once outside the city we started to climb once more.

Schauinsland literally translates as ‘look into the country’ and we now set off on a twelve kilometre climb to the top through a series of sharp twists and turns through hair pin bends and narrow gorges and as we climbed the temperature dropped to minus six, it started to snow and the road turned into a treacherous river of slush. At one thousand, two hundred and ninety-five metres we reached the top and living in Lincolnshire that is about one thousand, three hundred metres higher than we are normally used to. The top of the mountain was a place of winter pastimes and people were skiing down the slopes, children were sledging and families were walking together through the thick snow. There were good views but the weather was getting worse and the snow even heavier and we were apprehensive about the drive back down so we didn’t stay too long.

We negotiated the snow and drove down the difficult road to the village of Horben and then decided to go back up again but by a different form of transport because from here it was possible to reach the summit on the Schauinslandbahn, which at just over three and half kilometres is the longest cable car ride in Germany. The return ticket cost €11.50 but it was well worth it because as we climbed through an avenue of snow covered conifers there were great views to the north-west all along the Rhine valley and into neighbouring France.

At the top once more it was snowing again and we emerged into a scene of pristine white snow, several centimetres deep, a crisp atmosphere that clawed at our fingers and toes and pure mountain air that filled our lungs and cleared our heads. We walked for a while through trees weighed down heavily with snow, deep frozen and covered in frost and ice, along steep slippery paths where we had to watch our step as we walked all around the summit and then back to the cable car. We had a short stop in the café but this was best forgotten because the service was lousy, the coffee was barely luke warm and the prices were a rip off.

On the return cable car journey it was cold and draughty in the cabin but for compensation there were more magnificent views over the mountains and across to the city of Freiburg which was where we were going next.