Day Seven - The Black Forest

Today we took a bus tour of the Black Forest.  The mountains of the area are filled with pine trees and large farms while sprinkled with small towns.  The area has been known for its lumber for hundreds of years which almost caused them to overuse their supply.  Starting with Napoleon, restrictions have been enforced to ensure the abundance of trees and today the German government controls two thirds of the land in the area.  It is protected in a similar manor as our national parks. The other one third is owned by private families from wealthy families that own large tracts of land to the farmers that work the land.  In any part of the Black Forest today if you cut down a tree, you have to plant a new one to replace it.

The large farms have been in use for hundreds of years.  When they were first built, the homes contained a small living area with a fire stove and with a thin wall between had the barn in the other part of the house.  This kept them all warm in the winter and the slope of the roof spared the collapse of the structure with the large amount of snow in the region each year.

We stopped to visit a Baroque style cathedral with great detail within its Romanesque exterior.  From the outside, it appears to be a simple stone church, but St. Stephen's Cathedral was a Benedictine Monastary for hundreds of years.  Inside, rather than stone sculptures and stained glass windows like those in the cathedrals we have visited, this cathedral was decorated with Renaissance style paintings.  Paintings covered the high ceilings, the chapels, the walls, and the few statues were also painted.

We continued to travel through the Black Forest to a small village to see the work of local artisans.  The area is known for its products of blown glass and it is the home of the handmade cuckoo clock.  Of course I bought a cuckoo clock . . . magnet! lol

There is a small town with a workshop for a handmade cuckoo clocks.  One entire side of the buiilding is a giant cuckoo clock.  It plays a song every thirty minutes after the bird chirps and a series of dancers rotate across the top of the face of the clock.  The clocks were very pretty and some were extremely elaborate, but I did not think that I could  have that music in my house every thirty minutes!

Our ship was docked in the town of Breisach where we spent the afternoon walking around the outside of the fortress wall.  The city was another Roman settlement and a wealthy trade town during the Middle Ages.  We visited a museum of the town's history where we saw town charter documents, a suit of armor, and ancient rosary, and chain mail.

The heat wave has spread to Germany so the walk back to the ship was rather warm!  Due to the heavy rains in Switzerland in the last few days, the river has risen to a level that is too high for our ship to clear the bridges between Breisach  and Bsael.  So rather than cruise to Switzerland this afternoon, we stayed in Germany and will simply have a bus ride to the airport in the morning.  We are disappointed to not be able to see Basel, but it is better ti be safe than stuck under a bridge!

(With the heat, came severe lightning and thunderstorms wheich prevented me from posting this until today.)