Through the land of the Black Forest Cake - Schwarzwald!

 My triceps hurt when I pull a door to open. My ankles feel better when I rotate them. My calf muscles stretch uncomfortably when I bend to pick up something. The backrest pillow is suddenly not appeasing enough. There is always this constant need to stretch...Yet, every inch of my muscle ache is worth a trip to the Black Forest!

The Black Forest, locally called Schwarzwald, is a wooded mountain range located in southwest Germany. It was named such because the coniferous trees are so dense that they end up blocking most of the sunlight rendering the forest to be pitch black even during the day. Trust me, reading this fact on Wikipedia is way different from actually stumbling over rocks, balancing your foothold amidst the trees through the darkness at 2 pm in the day. Ever eaten a black forest cake? Well, this region is where the original recipe of the cake came from! :-D

So my adventure started at 6am on a bright cool Saturday morning at the bus stop when I saw that the next bus to the Hauptbahnhof (Hbf) or the main train station was scheduled to arrive in 50 minutes! I was supposed to meet two other RISE students there at 6.30 am and I didn't even have their phone numbers to let them know that I might be late as I had decided to walk it. Having never walked the 45 minute walk to the train station before, I was already thinking of alternate plans for the weekend in case my co-hikers decide to ditch me. That's when it occurred to me that the fastest way is probably to hitchhike to the train station. Now, having grown up in India where girls are conditioned to think that every unknown man is hell bent on mugging you, raping you and then killing you, I was really skeptical about asking random cars for a lift. But then I thought of Kasia, my Polish co-traveler from Krakow to Berlin, who said that single girls often hitchhike in Europe and as long as you look confident enough to kick their balls, you should be fine. Just confidence, eh? Sure I could pull that off! I decided to give it a shot. First two cars I thumb signaled at, had aged drivers who wouldn't stop for a black-haired foreign girl at 6 in the morning. An asian man passed by in a van and I lowered my hand as soon as I saw that it was a work van. I don't know what made me do that but it definitely didn't look like a good idea to get in that van. Ten minutes and a couple of cars later an Audi slowed down on seeing me. I got excited and nervous at the same time!! My first time hitchhiking and that too in an Audi! I kept hoping constantly that the man doesn't mess up. A late 20s German man opened the door before I tested my language skills with him! I did convey the message across that would he please, as to drop me to the station if he is going that way, please. Note the repeated use of 'please'. 'Bitte' in German literally translates to 'please' and that's the one word Germans would use in every single sentence if they could. Bitte is surely the metaphorical mother of all the magic words out there. So, even while the Audi cruised through familiar roads, I didn't let go of the Swiss Army knife that I had clutched fast in my pocket. At one point I swear I felt as if my pounding heart was competing with the Audi to go faster. Retrospecting, I guess I just got lucky with the hitchhike - probably shouldn't do that again! :-P

The beginning of the trail at Pforzheim

The route that we chose for our hike was to go to the northernmost city of the Black Forest and keep going south till we reach a town called Forbach and then we take a train back to Tuebingen. Two transfers later, my co-hikers, Patty, Nick and myself reach Pforzheim. A nice little town with really pretty flowers and fountains but the buzzkill was the paid bathroom. After a little exploring around the town, we finally hit our trail - the Westweg. It's one of the popular 14 day hiking trails through the Black Forest and is about 279 km long. We had decided to cover the first 2 days of the trail which would take us to Dobel in 25km and Forbach in another 25km.

I've never really hiked 25km in a single day before so this was quite a challenge for me. The trail to Dobel was not as densely covered as we expected it to be, although it was beautifully scenic. The triangular tree tops of the Forest cutting into the clear blue sky in the distance looked like out of a postcard. The white water river gushing over mossy green rocks, drowning the noise of the city traffic felt oh so sublime. I suddenly didn't miss my cities any more...
One of the co-hikers, Patty is really adventurous. She grew up in Alberta, Canada at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and has been cross country skiing, multi-day backpacking and mountaineering ever since she could remember. My other co-hiker, Nick grew up on a farm in Western Michigan and still lives there with his family, his horses, ponies, cats, dogs and potbelly pigs . Clearly for both of them our weekend nature trail was more like finding a home in Germany. For me, it was quite the opposite. And I loved it!

Half way to Dobel, we came across a castle called the Neunberg Castle. The castle looked really old and the doors were locked. The windows were a little too high for us to jump in through. Yet, we decided to climb up the rocky window and get into the dilapidated castle for lunch. If that wasn't enough, we even end up climbing up to the second floor window of the castle!

Try to find Nick(in red) and me(in gray) in the first window

The window we climbed to get into the Neunberg castle

Dobel is a cute little hill station and our hostel turned out to be really nice. I was totally exhausted by this time and fell asleep as soon as I hit the bed. All I rem is Patty asking me to wake up the next morning saying it was my second wake up call! :-D Yeah, I still take ages to get up in the morning, tired or not. After seriously considering in the shower if I should just abandon the hike and take a train back to Tuebingen, I settle on testing myself to hiking 25 more kilometers! When am I gonna get a chance to hike in THE Black Forest of Germany again?! I shouldn't succumb to my laziness when new places are waiting to be discovered! =) So, a really heavy complimentary breakfast later, we set out on our way to Forbach. The forest patches got denser as we climbed the hills further. We even spotted many fellow hikers on this trail. Germans live really healthy lives. Here I was massaging my foot at every opportunity while people aged 55+ coolly overtook us with their walking sticks in tow. There were also people aged around 70 biking the trail! Yes, I did feel ashamed at my lack of physical fitness and that served as one of my motivations to complete the trail.

Our hotel, Gastof Zur Linde, in Dobel

The awesome restaurant of the hotel

At the highest elevation, we reached a watch tower built by Kaiser Wilhelm in 1897! It overlooked almost all of the northern Black Forest region and the view was amazing! I was really happy to see that in today's concrete jungle, this forest was preserved through the times. I felt a really cool breeze evaporate all of my sweat away and I was good to go to complete the journey! There are some times in your life when you are so engaged in doing something for a continuous period of time that you feel completely empty and void once you're required to stop. That's precisely how I felt when we only had to cover 650 m to reach the Forbach Hbf. I wanted to keep walking...

Forbach is a very very scenic location. It is located right in the middle of Schwarzwald and the local S-Bahn train makes it's way from between the forest hills. I was reminded of this Hindi Bollywood movie song video because the train ride shown is very similar to what I rode. The Black Forest hike definitely took me even more closer to nature than before. There is something about temperate forests which is just so alluring and peaceful. The tropical forests in India are kinda chaotic and intimidating as compared to these. Definitely worth a visit if you're in Germany! Oh, and don't forget to try the tastilicious AUTHENTIC Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte! ;)
I'll let some of my pictures do the talking now! :)

2:37pm. Really?

Look at the Forest behind me!!

It's so dark!

Patty and Nick

A witch chilling by a drinking water tap in Forbach

Cheers!