This weekend we went to the Black Forest or Schwarzwald, which is about 4 hours west of Munich. The Black Forest is where the cuckoo clocks are made. So we knew we would have a few to choose from. We stayed at a small hotel in Triberg, which was OK. Our room faced the main street and there was a church right across the street. The bells rang every 15 minutes starting from 7:30am until 9:00 pm. Finally on our last night they changed our room to the other side where all you could hear was the water running from the creek behind the hotel.
The Triberg area also home to the World’s Biggest Cuckoo Clock, which we visited. Inside the house you can see the clock’s internal mechanism, which are all made of wood.
Saturday morning there was a small band (9 men) parading down the street past our hotel. As we were watching them, they turned around and marched back to a restaurant on the corner, where they must have spent the entire day there, since we saw them later in the day eating and drinking their beer. They would play a few songs then back to their beer.
Later that day we visited several gifts shops in our search for the perfect clock and also drove to several small towns in the area. After walking in a few shops, we knew that this wasn’t going to be an easy task. There were cuckoo clocks on every wall in every shop we walked in. Luckily the shops in that part of Germany were open on Sundays and holidays.
The weather was great – clear blue skies and highs in the low 70’s. We drove part of the German high road where the roads were narrow and windy with great views and the leaves on the trees were just starting to change. We really wished we had our Triumph TR6.
We rented a Volkswagen for the weekend; we should have had a convertible instead. In the car’s center console cup holder there was a removable bottle opener. Those Germans think of all the necessities. Jay had a few of the local beers from that area and we also had Black Forest Cake, which was OK.
Sunday morning we went for a hike to Germany’s highest waterfalls. The falls are over 160 meters high. It was a cool morning and an easy hike.
After our hike we continued the hunt for our clock. It seemed like every place we went into, we liked at least 1 or 2 clocks. At one of the last places we looked on Sunday we found a clock that almost had everything we wanted. While we were there, a worker from the clock factory was there and heard us asking if they could make changes to the display clock. He told the salesman that he would make us a new clock with all the changes and would be ready the next day.
We went to the clock shop at 9:00 and our one of kind cuckoo clock was ready. We left Triberg around noon on Monday, October 3, so we could make it back to Munich to go to Oktoberfest for the last day and our last time during our stay in Germany. We took a different route back, which started on a narrow road through the countryside. The road was so narrow I didn’t think it was a two way road, but it was. Luckily we did not meet anyone going the other way.
The weather once again was great and there were a lot of people at Oktoberfest. We were able to get into our favorite tent and had a great time again. We will miss all the fun of Oktoberfest once we move back to the states.
This year Oktoberfest had about 6.9 million visitors, half a million more than last year, who drank an all-time record of 7.5 million liters of beer. Each year they keep a log of the strange things that are turned into the lost and found. This year they reported receiving a live, eight-centimeter long grasshopper, a Viking helmet, a pair of crutches, an electric wheelchair, a rucksack containing two foldable camping chairs, a case full of musical notes, 1,300 items of clothing, 520 wallets, over 1,000 identity cards, 390 mobile phones, 370 pairs of eyeglasses, 90 cameras, 80 items of jewelry and watches and 425 keys.
