7th Aug – 21st Aug 2024
We were beginning to fall a bit in love with Southern Germany. This was a little unexpected as we hadn’t paid it much thought when (very loosely) planning this trip. Although more subtle than the big ticket offerings of major cityscapes, gorgeous coastlines and towering mountain ranges, the charms of Baden-Württemberg and Bayern (Bavaria) are multiple and varied. Beer and sausages are a constant, however.
Due to a rather significant ongoing and ever increasing procrastination of blog writing I am going to slightly curtail my ramblings here in order to attempt a partial catch up.
From Stuttgart and the Porsche museum we headed eastwards to the delightful and affluent spa town of Baden-Baden. Originally it was known only as Baden, but this didn’t distinguish it from all the other ‘Badens’ around and about and the double barrelled name was formalised in 1931. The town’s current strap line is “Baden-Baden, the good, good life!” It is a popular destination for many tourists, especially, rather oddly, Italian and Spanish motorhomers. This we discovered as we witnessed the jostle for space in the town’s limited Stellplatz spaces and 80% of our co-campers were from these two countries. We did our usual trick of arriving early and magically scoring (what we considered) the best site in a Stellplatz that was about 3km from the town centre. The place was full by 2pm and people were still arriving at 10pm, hoping for a space. One Spanish traveller gave it a negative review online as ” we arrived in the middle of the afternoon (7pm) and it was already full…” Can I stop you there, Manuel? I think that I can see where you are going wrong…
A pretty and shaded bike path took us from camp into town and we spent some time wandering around. There were lots of designer shops and restaurants, fountains, art installations, many expensive cars and a surfeit of well dressed folk with expensive shoes sitting outside fancy cafés. We also cycled up to the funnicular base station and rode the train up to the top of the nearby hill. Here we admired the view of the town and the neighbouring Black Forest before walking the 4km back down to our bikes. This was a far more pleasant experience than the knee-killing ‘steps-to-hell’ of Heidelberg, although our bike brakes were severly challenged on our rapid free-wheel back down to town. What we didn’t do here was ‘take the waters’, which is code for ‘pay over-inflated prices to stew in hot water with some questionable health benefits’. We also apparently didn’t take any relevant photos. This was the only one that I could find.
After two nights here we headed further into the Black Forest and to the university town of Freiburg-im-Breisgau. This city is dubbed the ‘greenest’ in Europe and allegedly has more solar power than the UK in its entirety. It also claims to be the sunniest, warmest city in Germany, a fact that we could not dispute on this very warm day. We chose a Stellplatz on the outskirts of the city which doubled up as the car park for the football stadium, home of Bundesliga team, SC Freiburg. This was an excellent spot as it had tons of space and also had a tram stop right outside. The major downside was that there was a home game the afternoon after we arrived, so all the (100 or so) motorhomes and campers would have to vacate by 10am. We revised our ‘2 night stop’ into a single night stay and headed into the city by tram in the early afternoon. Freiburg boasts an epic cathedral with an amazing carved spire and the usual array of squares and old buildings and the old narrow streets are criss-crossed with network of streams flowing in narrow, open irrigation channels. These were created by coralling and diverting the natural water courses that flowed through the old city, and were useful for watering humans and livestock in past centuries. Now they provide children with the opportunity of buying small wooden boats on strings made by local craftsmen to float in the streams, provide drinkers sitting at pavement bars a cool place to soak their feet and provide a modicum of jeopardy as trip hazzards for those grown ups not paying attention as they are shopping.
The heat of the day of course led us to discount a walk up hill to the castle and instead seek out a cool place for a rehydrating beer. We found the perfect spot in the form of Hausbrauei Feirling, which had marvellous beer served at tables on a perfect shady terrace, slightly off the beaten track. Again, Lonely Planet’s suggestions are rarely disappointing.
Our enforced decamp in the morning had a plus-side. It meant that I could do another Parkrun on our way out of town. The early start also meant we could be away before the mass exodus. My lagging fitness and the heat made it another 5km of ‘personal struggle’ but at least I wasn’t the tail-end-charlie runner this week. We had a cooked breakfast afterwards and I then had a shameless, bikini-clad wash in the car park with our cold water outdoor shower attachment. I’m all class!
It being a Saturday in peak summer season, we thought that it would be a great idea head to the lakes of the Black Forest to find space in a campsite without having made a reservation. This was both highly optimistic and majorly stupid. As Germany’s only coast is on the Baltic Sea, where the water is, well, baltic, the lakes of the country’s south provide the only domestic warm waters for holiday fun,and as you can imagine, it is very popular. We selected a lake called Titisee (See being the German for ‘lake’) and headed there. The first two campsites we called at were completely full and unpleasantly busy. We felt an impending sense of doom. We arrived at the reception of campsite number three about 30 seconds before it shut for lunch. Yes, they had a space! We didn’t have the usual cares of how good a space it was, we were just glad to be in. Go and get settled they said, and come back after lunch to do the paperwork and pay. We gingerly picked our way throught the busy campsite, everyone parked cheek-by-jowl, looking for our spot. It transpired that our flukey last minute allocation of a site had scored us the most magnificent one in all the campsite. It was massive, grassy, shady, slightly elevated, had a lake view, was off the main path and had only a few neighbours in a discrete cull-de-sac area. What a coup. We extended our planned 6 nights to 8 and could have happily spent the rest of the summer here.
What we learned over the course of this week was that this campsite operated on an entirely anologue, no-reservations occupancy system. Obviously many people knew this and arrived early, queuing down the road, waiting for spaces to be vacated by those moving on/going home. In quieter times of day there was some degree of choice and people could be seen walking around with a map, selecting their preferred site in a civilised manner. At other times it was like the hunger games, with the tense tussle for camping real estate bringing out the warrior in usually mild mannered campers. We watched it all from our plinth of superiority.
The lake here is charming, gorgeous and warm, surrounded by beautiful forest and amazingly underdeveloped. The lakeside village of Titisee, 2km from camp, accomodates the usual array of tourist needs and desires, such as beds to sleep in, restaurants and cafes to eat in, delis to sell local products, an array of ‘fluff-and-stuff’ emporia to flog the tatt, and the all important boat and paddleboard rental outfits so everyone can enjoy the lake. What it didn’t have was a supermarket, but an easy 8 km round-trip cycle from camp to the neighbouring town solved that problem.
How did we spend our long week here? Paddle boarding mostly. It was a leisurely 1 hour loop around the perimeter of the lake, dodging other paddlers,the electric rental boats and the three larger sightseeing vessels. Then we loafed, drifted, dunked and sunbathed, convincing ourselves it was exercise. There was a 6km lake loop path that cut through our campsite and offered a very scenic route for a morning walk. We did this a couple of times, each time stopping at one of the aforementioned delis on the way round to pick up buns and frickadellen for a BBQ breakfast sandwich on our return. (Frickadellen = seasoned pattie of veal, pork, onion,breadcrumbs,herbs = delicious. If you haven’t ever had one, Aldi sell them. Try some). My husband is motivated to exercise by carrots (a.k.a. pork products), not sticks. One day we also walked up the nearest, tallest hill. We had taken the obligatory picnic of ham and cheese buns but as the walk took less time than expected it wasn’t lunch time until we got home. Nothing like unnecessarily lugging a packed lunch and drinks around on a 10km hike, then eating a warm and slightly crushed sandwich back at the starting point, which has a perfectly good fridge. We did swap out the warm drinks for cold ones though. We’re not animals.
The significant event during our Titisee stay was a death of sorts. The unexpected loss of a old friend. My Red paddle board exploded. Well, burst in a dramatic and noisy fashion, anyway. A fatal wound was rent in its side seam. There was no doubt of its permenant demise.
Cause of death?
1a) Failed main side seam. 1b) Being left in a shady spot at 7pm that unfortunately became a very sunny spot by 10am the next morning thus heating up the board to bursting temperature. 2) Old age.
Unfortunately this board was ostensibly the better of the two. It was Nick’s that we have been patching up, trying to eke out its final weeks to get us through the summer. It was an odd experience to throw it away in the campsite dumpster. We headed to town to see what the options were to rent or buy another. Rental was out, it was too far away to be useful, and they had no second hand boards for sale either. There was one sporting goods shop that had one last paddle board, significantly reduced in an end of season sale, propped up outside the door. We made an offer 10% less than they were asking and 10 minutes later were deflating it, packing it in its bag, and heading home with it. Decisions are easy when there is no choice! The new board is nearly 2 foot longer than my old one and even has a viewing window. Just what we needed. We had been a ‘one paddleboard family’ for nearly two hours. Sharing one was just not going to fly.
What else happened whilst we were here? Oh, there was a very exciting, short thunderstorm with a deluge of rain and hail. We were happily safely installed under our (well secured) awning when it hit, luckily not floating around in the middle of the lake. The inclement weather leant a certain frission to the spectator sport of watching the constant stream of new arrivals trying to find a spot to camp. Tension, coupled with saturation led to a few frayed nerves and short tempers. We viewed it all from the plinth of smugness like the critics from the muppets. Yes, the hours do just fly by….
What did we not do whilst we were here? Eat any Black Forest gateau, or Schwatzwälder Kirchtorte, as they call it in this neck of the woods…
Unfortunately it was soon time for us to leave and we vacated the best site in the camp in another rain shower. Who would be the next happy tennants of the plinth I wonder?
Next stop was the town of Meersburg on the shore of Lake Constance. Well, that’s its name in English and the romance languages. Here it is known as ‘Bodensee’. The lake borders three countries: Germany to the north, Switzerland to the south, and Austria has a teeny piece of its eastern shore. It is the third largest lake by surface area in central and western Europe after Lake Geneva and Lake Balaton. So quite big. There is a 273km bike route that circumnavigates the lake, making this a very civilised spot for some easy bike touring, especially when you find out that this whole area produces some very respectable wine. The rain had continued on and off as we pulled into our next stop, a few kilometers up the hill outside Meersburg. This was a Stellplatz co-located with a popular local restaurant. It was very busy too and we were lucky to sneak a space. It was a Sunday. Our food stocks were low, and this being Germany, all the supermarkets were shut. There was only one thing for it. Dinner at the restaurant. Well it seemed rude not too. We had to go in to pay anyway and it was so welcoming on a miserable evening!
Meersburg delivered the usual fayre of castles, churches and old buildings in a well preserved old town with narrow cobbled streets, but with some noteable extras. High points scored for a great lake view and an ancient (est. 1120) town centre winery which offered tastings and wine sales to thirsty tourists. Also extra points scored for having a ferry terminal that had regular boat trips across the lake to many other qually pretty places. But it earned its full bonus points by having a lakeside mini golf, the first we have played on this trip. May it be known that I won by 2 strokes.
So nice (and cheap) was the Stellplatz that we decided to stay an extra day and use it to take a trip out onto the lake on the ferry. We headed over to Konstanz, a German city across the lake, right on the Swiss border. To be honest, all we did was swap a small pretty lakeside town for a pretty lakeside small city for a couple of hours of wandering around, but we did enjoy the boat ride.
What didn’t we do whilst we were here? We didn’t visit the Zeplin museum in the nearby town of Frierichshafen, the birthplace of the airship. They apparently have a full-scale partial replica of the Hindenburg to help convey its massiveness. The Hindenburg, 245m long with a max speed of 130km/h, completed 18 voyages to North and South America before its untimely end. One can take sightseeing flights on a Zepplin from here, the cheapest being €330 each for a 30min flight. Guess what else we didn’t do whilst we were here?! We saw it go over several times though.
That seems like a good spot to sign off. I’m not sure I ‘curtailed any ramblings’. Perhaps it isn’t possible.