Black Forest

It all started here

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in February 2010 when Heinrich(on the left) suggested to Kev(on the right)

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that we should do a trip round the Black Forest on the bikes!

So, we had a chat with Ken and Jo

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and they said they'd come too!!

We headed off first thing Sat 30th July 2011, Dublin Port to Holyhead and rode straight to Essex where we met up with friends in our favourite restaurant, the Village Indiya, in Grays, Thurrock

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The guy on the right is getting married this Sat and Kev and Phil are the 2 best men!

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We started laughing and never stopped for 2 weeks!! Best Holiday ever!!!

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The next morning we headed for Dover. It was Jo's birthday and she wanted to go to Bruges on the way to Germany so we could chase each other round the tower and call each other 'fat bastards' like in the film 'In Bruges'
Obviously, because it was her birthday we obliged
while we were researching places to stay in Bruges she found a castle and because it was her birthday we stayed there

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What an amazing place!

When you go through that door in the middle of the photo there's alittle chapel type room, with a balcony above it, a la Romeo and Juliet
The balcony was in a room upstairs that was part of the room Ken and Jo were in, and the room/balcony has a strong tradition of couples becoming engaged there

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Ken and Jo didn't use it in the traditional way at all
Perhaps they'll be along in a minute to own up!!

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The next morning we went into Bruges to fulfill Jo's dream

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We climbed the tower, luckily there were rooms en route to stop in and pretend to look round whilst desperately trying to catch our breath!!

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View of the square below from the top of the tower.

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Photo a la Keith Bouncer

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The boys eating ice cream

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At the start of the thread I mentioned Heinrich who suggested this trip. Heinrich's wife Svenja has been a friend of mine for 20 years and it was whilst visiting Germany for her 40th last year that we started thinking about doing this trip.

So we couldn't possibly do the trip without popping in and spending some time with Svenja and Heinrich. We went to them from Bruges. They live near Cologne/Bonn. We spent 2 nights with them, fantastic hosts
We arrived at tea time on day 3 and sat in the garden drinking beer til we left on the morning of day 5

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Mr K said:

Click to expand...

Although the rest of the report i will read on my return from Euro Land

Doesn't Ken look like a golfist.



Great stuff so far Mide.

did yis visit the pie and mash shop in the row of shops near the honda place when ya did grays

lovely report

More please

Sorry for the delay!! We were in Uk for aforementioned wedding all weekend

So we woke up on Day 5 and it was pissing rain so we hung around for a while waiting for it to pass, when it slowed to a drizzle we headed south. We decided that if it stopped we'd pop into Nurburgring

It stopped so we popped but there was no open session til 5pm and we couldn't hang around
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We continued on Southward til we came to Pension Williams in Seebach, a guesthouse that we found here on Ukgser, highly recommended and rightly so It is run by an English couple, David and Angela, they couldn't do enough for us

This was the view from our bedroom window!

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We went out for a meal down the road
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On our way we passed what looked like a grotto, only there was no statue, just bottles of schnapps, glasses and a money box
Kinda like an honesty schnapps stop!! Apparently they're all over the place and they have no problem at all with theft?!

We got to the restaurant at the bottom of the hill to find no one spoke any english at all! This was the beginning of what would become regular sign language conversations

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Bottle of coke and a glass of ice?! I eventually settled for flat sprite for the rest of the holiday
They had no problems at all with 3 beers please

Ken found a new bird

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As the other 3 got more drunk, the heavens opened and it lashed rain
We had 3 raincoats between the 4 of us! The owner came over and made some hand gestures at us, like he was holding a steering wheel so I thought he was saying he'd give us a lift home Turns out he was offering an umbrella and a torch

In the end he did bring us home, in the boot of his jeep with no seats!!

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When we got back to the pension, they started on the schnapps

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Jo had been stung by insects, once in Bruge on one hand and again in Svenja's on the other hand the stings were getting more and more swollen so the following morning she made an appointment with the local doctor.
He cut off the swollen stinginess It was bleedin agony
He strapped up her 2 hands and Ken being the sympathetic soul that he is, started calling her Padre Pio!!

We had decided to do the B500 that day so we headed to Baden Baden to the beginning of the B500. What a lovely ride
We rode to Freudenstadt

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We ate lunch al fresco in the market square(which is the largest market square in Europe!) and the whole way through lunch the waitresses from the restaurant next door were serving the most amazing ice creams I've ever seen! So after lunch we moved to the tables next door and got some ice creams Mmmmmmmm

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Then we went to Schilltach, which is supposed to be the prettiest town in the Black Forest but frankly we didn't think it was anything special so we went back to the B500 and home to the pension.
When we got back there was another gs there with Ukgser stickers on it!
Turned out to be Jacko Uk nad his mate Terry, on their way to Italy!!

David had offered to drive us to a restaurant in the next village and the owner of the restaurant would bring us home

We had a lovely meal albeit with very small portions!!
So back to the pension we went, back to the honesty bar and the schnapps!
Can't think why they kept drinking it cos they clearly didn't like it

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But the schnapps fiasco gave rise to my favourite photo of the whole holiday

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Poor oul Ken was in a heap in the morning!!!! Couldn't even lift his head off the pillow

Ken stayed in bed that day and Jo stayed home to keep him company! Kev and I headed to Triberg, home of the duelling cuckoo clocks and home of the original recipe for Black Forest Gateaux
We decided to avail of our free travel passes within the Black Forest and David dropped us to the train station, so 2 trains and a bus later, we were in Triberg! It only took about 2 and a half hours

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We found some silly hats

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Triberg is also home to the highest waterfall in Germany!!

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As you can see it was peeing down with rain again!! and it was very warm! But we were very glad not to have motorbike gear on! We saw one couple trudging up the hill in all the gear, holding helmets!!!

We tried Black Forest Gateaux made with the original recipe!!
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Bloody hell! It was absolutely laced in kirsch brandy Even Kev couldn't eat it!!!
We brought some back to the other pair! Jo couldn't eat it either but Ken ate every scrap!! I think it was 'hair of the dog' to be honest

Jo had another appointment with the Doc that day so we met her and Ken when they got out of the Doctor's and we wandered back to the pension, stopping for dinner along the way! No schnapps though!

The following morning it was time to say goodbye to Pension Williams and David!

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Looks like a great trip

i wouldn't recommend pouring the schnapps into your ears, it makes you go all wobbly eyes:
i'll remember that holiday for a long time to come, roll on the next one

Class

We were heading eastwards now towards Berchtesgaden for the next 3 nights to Hotel Gasthof Mauthausl.

We decided to stop into Munich on the way to go to the BMW Museum

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Here I tried the 1200 for size

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I like it a lot a lot

Then we had a wander around the museum

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Kev made a holy show of us singing "FEED THE WORLD" at the top of his voice!!!

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Ken was a happy bunny having been to the museum!!

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We arrived in glorious sunshine to the hotel
The rooms were lovely with views of the mountain behind us and a walk down to the river below! And best of all, had a restaurant onsite so once we unpacked and showered we headed to the restaurant and had the nicest dinner of the trip so far(Village Indiya excluded)

We had started to notice that wifi is not the norm in Germany
We had done a lot of research online as to what we'd do on the trip and had a list of definites, possibles and maybes But because we presumed that there'd be wifi everywhere, we didn't write anything down We also neglected to bring dictionary or phrasebook

So we found ourselves relying on my memory
The hotel was lovely but the staff had very little english. There were no english menus, and the information pack in our bedrooms was only in German!
Now I know we were in Germany but we had no information, didn't know if there were busses, or a doctor or what time the restaurant opened/closed!
There were fab pictures in the information pack of spa treatments/massages etc but we couldn't avail of any of it

Having said all that, the boys had no problem ordering beer

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We wanted to visit the Eagle's nest but the weather forecast for the following day wasn't good so we put it off a day in the hopes that the weather would pick up

So we went to Salzburg in the rain! We kept telling ourselves it'd blow over but it didn't! When we got there we went for a coffee simply because it got us out of the rain, then Jo and I went shopping

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We went up to this castle.

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We laughed so much on this holiday I'm laughing even looking at the photos!

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So the boys wandered off somewhere and Jo and I wandered into the marionette museum and were looking round this one room at all the puppets and the pictures and the glass display cages. Then were turned around and saw this

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When we stopped laughing, we took this one

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We came back down into the town again. It had stopped raining by then.

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But we went to get a photo by the fountain and the wind blew the water all over us

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Being as Mozart was born here, we had to get a photo with him too

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More Class

:beer jug:

A Great report

I'll have to get round to doing our one.

It was still lashing rain the next day

Kev and I had a wander down to the riverside before breakfast!

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One of the staff at breakfast spoke english, turns out she was American but had been living there for 20 years! We asked her about a bus timetable, told her we were going to the Eagle's Nest and had decided to have a day off the bikes.

The bus was due at 10.10 so we went out to wait.

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We got on the bus and said we were going to Berchtesgaden, we knew we'd have to change busses once. The driver had no english and we weren't sure if he knew what we wanted but sure enough we got to somewhere and he gesticulated us off the bus

So there we were, standing on the side of the road, we didn't even know which direction we were to go in

We wandered for a bit and eventually spotted a woman who had been on our bus, she sugn languaged to us that we needed to be where she was and get the bus she was getting

The bus came along and we jumped on, got to Berchtesgaden, got off, thanked the woman and went to the information centre to ask where to get the bus to the place where the special bus would bring us to the Eagle's Nest!
Jesus, I'm exhausted just telling ye about it

The bus wasn't due for an hour so we decided to wander around Berchtesgaden

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This one's for Reonvore!! Tiny hands!!!
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More from Bertesgaden!
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We think this is the Eagle's Nest

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So 3 hours after we left the hotel we got the special bus up to the Eagle's Nest!
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We went through the tunnel, to the lift! What an amazing place! Kind of eerie
It was absolutely freezing when we got out of the lift at the top.

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The visibility wasn't great!

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We went in for lunch, hoping that the visibility would improve while we had lunch
It didn't It got worse
We walked up to the highest point anyway

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This was the view that we should have had and what we did have

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We were booked onto a particular bus back down the hill so we headed back to the lift, and back down through the tunnel! The boys realised that there was a fantastic echo in the tunnel and so they immediately reverted to 6 year olds!

We then went to do the Obersalzburg/Bunker Tour. I have to say that as an Irish person, the World Wars didn't give rise to any emotional response from me at all until we visited Auschwitz in 2008. We've subsequently visited Paschendale, Menin Gate in Ypres and several other graveyards and museums.
It was fascinating doing the Bunker and reading the various things about Hitler It was horrifying to read and see pictures of the extent of his madness and cruelty. There was a map of Europe with train tracks on it showing the train lines going to Auschwitz to bring Jews to 'cleanse' Europe. I had no idea how many Jews and Gypsies were brought there from sooooo far away. I think Ken has a photo of it.

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When we came out it was still raining, we were wet, tired and cold. The thought of a 3 hour bus journey home was not pleasant. It had cost €57 to get there on the busses

We stopped a taxi and asked how much he'd charge to bring us home, he said €50 we jumped in and 40 minutes later we were at the hotel

We went to the restaurant in the hotel again that night, 3rd night in a row! Great food Turns out when I checked it out on tinterweb when we got home that it's an award winning restaurant

And again, the langers came out to play
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Very Nice... what is the name of the castle in Bruges?

Kasteel ten Berghe

It's well worth a visit

You and jo are so fackin lacky it hurts

Superb write up, slide show at the next BBQ??????