Last full day with the car today and we took full advantage.   We left our hotel a little after 11am and didn’t get back until a little after 9pm.  We headed toward Freiburg, pretty far south in the Black Forest area.  We had planned on staying briefly to eat lunch and then take local roads to Baden-Baden in the northern part.   But Freiburg is really nice and we lingered a while.  They have small water channels that run along a lot of the streets, sort of an open gutter with fresh-looking water flowing in them.  We found a small dog frolicking in one, very cute.

After that, onto Baden-Baden.  By the A5 (one of the major autobahns) that would take about an hour.  We took the back roads and spent more than three hours covering maybe 75 miles.  But we did see some amazing and beautiful scenery.  We didn’t see too much forest, but that’s at least in part because we were on public roads.  But it’s also the case that they are chopping down the forest all over Germany.  We’ve seen logging everywhere we’ve been.  They also seem to water the logs after they stack them.   We saw this several times.

We finally arrived in Baden-Baden around 6:30.  It’s a town know for its spas and medicinal baths.  All we wanted at that point was to have dinner!  We found a nice, non-smoking place on the main square.  Overall we have found Germany to be less smokey than Austria.

Driving in Germany has been fun for the most part.  On average drivers here are far less random than in the States, at least compared to Washington.  But we ran into our share of chuckle-heads today including one guy who frequently passed on the right, which is against the law.  Still, we had a good time driving, listening to Bruce on the iPod and checking out the scenery. 

Black Forest

Black Forest Deforested