The word to describe my last weekend in Germany would definitely be: adventure. Which is exactly what I wanted out of my summer here. We spent the weekend in Oppenau in the middle of the Black Forest. We had a later train from Cologne so naturally they were all running a little late but we made it! On the last leg of the train ride, we met a group of kids and their parents from Manchester I believe or somewhere around the London area. Anyways, we were talking to them and singing one of the girls happy birthday when we look out the window and half of our group was yelling at us to get off the train…. totally missed our stop….. So we go to the door to get off at the next stop. Well, unfortunately we tried opening the wrong door and by the time we realized why it wasn’t opening the other door locked itself and here we go even further from our stop in the remote Black Forest. We finally got off of the train two stops from where we were supposed to be and find that there’s not another train that goes back the other way… Luckily, Nick in his Hawaiian shirt and hiking boots runs after the only other person who got off of the train and we got a ride back into town with this girl and her Mom. I can only imagine what they thought when three Texans, one in a Hawaiian shirt, were running down the sidewalk toward their car in their rearview mirror. The town we were in was exactly what I pictured the Black Forest to look like.. Absolutely breathtaking!
We spent Saturday hiking through the forest. We were going to walk about a 2-3 hour trail to a waterfall, but we started too late and just took the bus up to the nearest stop. From there, we hiked up a mountain until we found the Allerheiligen Waterfall. It was beautiful!
At the top of the cliff, there was a small village where we had lunch and walked around. We thought the latest bus was at 8 so we were taking our sweet time… By the time we hiked back down to the bottom where the bus stop was, we realized that was not true and we had missed it by about 2 hours. With no service to call a taxi, we got to take a nice long hike back down to the bottom. But it turned out to be a great hike, the sun wasn’t too hot and there was a nice breeze. The views were great!
With about thirty minutes of hiking until we were back to town, a nice couple pulled over and offered us a ride back. Hitch hiking episode #2 for the weekend! It was hilarious….
On Sunday, when everyone was headed back to Bonn, I took an impromptu trip to Stuttgart to visit a friend! He has a motorcycle so we got to spend the afternoon and evening riding around the mountains on the outskirts of Stuttgart. It was definitely one of my favorite weekends of the trip. I’m happy I got to end my weekend trips seeing another side of Germany besides the cities. I can’t wait to come back and visit…. the Black Forest definitely looked like something from a fairytale.
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