Another Burg and the Black Forest

Bühl is located very conveniently off of the A5 - the freeway that will take us straight up to Northern Germany, or south to Switzerland. We are just east of the Rhine river, thus just minutes away from all lovely things French, and just west of the gorgeous hills of the Black Forest. We are quite centrally located in the middle of all of Europe! But this past Sunday Karl and I explored the Europe a little closer to home.

The ruins of what was once Burg Windeck stands in the Black Forest looking down onto Bühl. It is not nearly as impressive as the castles we saw up in the Rhineland, but it was far closer to home. The burg is really nothing but a few ruined walls and a couple of tall towers that were originally built around 1200, but there is a hotel and restaurant, a playground for children, and a few paths winding through the forest nearby...so Windeck becomes a busy place on a Sunday afternoon.



We explored the burg including it's two remaining towers. One tower is completely empty and you can look up and out into the sky. The other has stairs to climb up to the top and from there you can look out over Bühl and over to France...unfortunately it was a foggy day and France was just a haze.





After our visit to Windeck, we drove up farther into the Black Forest. The Black Forest begins north of us at about the city of Pforzheim (between the larger cities of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart) and spreads south all the way to the Swiss border. It's a beautiful forest that seems to have a lot to offer. There are, of course, a lot of hiking trails and biking trails, and there are also ski slopes, hotels (big and small), horseback riding, hang gliding, fishing, castles, wineries, lakes, saunas, Black Forest cake (chocolate, cherries, whipped cream...and schnapps!...but here's a schnapps-free version of the recipe), and of course the city Rottweil...the hometown of the Rottweiler dog (oh, yeah...and I guess they've got some pretty annoying cuckoo clocks) . Karl and I found the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse (Black Forest High street) which winds through the forest and made a short walk down one of the footpaths near a motorcycle hang-out before driving back home.



We're excited to live so close to such a beautiful part of the world and look forward to exploring the forest much more!