Like I said, it would have been a crime had I not taken Dave for a trip to the Black Forest since Karlsruhe sits right at the foot of it. We made base in the village of Malterdingen, near Freiburg which Elise and I found by accident last year. From here we were able to check out Kaiserstuhl, Titisee, Höllental, Wutachschlucht amongst other sights.
For those of you who don’t know, the Schwarzwald or Black Forest is a forest stretching from Karlsruhe in the north to just north of Basel to the south made mostly of hilly (nearly mountainous in places) pine forest. It is one of the best natural getaways in Germany.
The black forest is famous for its traditional clock-making, Rothaus beer (one of the few remaining state-owned breweries, maker of the famous Tannen Zäpfle), black forest ham or Schwarzwälder Schinken (which is nothing like what Americans call black forest ham), and its seemingly endless natural wonders of rivers, mountain tops, lakes, and valleys. It is one place in Germany that still feels rural and full of villages as though time had forgotten it.
