Today was the last day of my 4-day weekend. We had the 1st and 2nd off from work, so we had some time to all hang out together. Since it doesn't snow a lot in this part of Germany, we wanted to take the kids somewhere that did. Yesterday was our first attempt, but it just wasn't in the cards. We got too late of a start out the door and then accidentally punched the wrong town in the GPS and drove the 45 minutes in the wrong direction. I had been prodding everyone all morning by being the "fun police;" not so much keeping fun from happening, but more like ensuring fun was occurring whether anyone wanted it or not. However, after we got turned around the wrong way, my fun police authority was compromised and we decided to run a couple of errands and regroup for the next day.
So we took off early this morning for the Black Forest in search of snow. We were heading for a place called Feldberg, but we knew we would hit snow before then. After about 2 hours, we reached the heart of the forest and were surrounded by beautiful snowy hills, forests, and countryside. Eventually, we stumbled into the town of Titisee, parked, and explored a little. Titisee is named after the little lake that it sits next to --here's a map with our parking place marked:
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It's green in that view, but imagine it all white and the lake frozen.
We bought a little sled from one of the shops and took turns sledding down the hills around there. There weren't a lot of downhill skiers there, but there were tons of cross country skiers. I don't think I've ever seen cross country skiing in person, so it was a little bit of a new experience to me. We'd be walking along the snow paths, when suddenly a couple of old Germans would silently and quickly glide past us. There was something--unsettling?--about it. It didn't stop us from having a good time sledding though. We had done a little sledding in Italy last winter, but Aidan was a little too young to enjoy it. But, he took renewed interest in it this time and we had fun running up the little hills and sledding down.
There was an unexpectedly funny moment when we went out onto the lake to slide around. It was -5 C there, so the lake was frozen solid and lots of people were out there skating and sliding around. As we arrived at the edge of the lake, I noticed a sign nailed to a tree at the edge of the lake. It said, in three languages(!), "Don't go on the lake." Below is the "ironic" picture I snapped with some of the Germans on the lake. I originally thought that this might only apply to the lake in summer, but a look at the German statement makes it clear--Entering the Ice is forbidden! What's funny about this picture is that so many Germans are clearly disregarding the sign. I'm not sure how much you know about Germans, but they are nothing if not law-abiding. There is a special joy that a German gets from following the rules, especially if they are able to correct someone else who isn't following them. So why the sudden departure from their usual law-n-order nature? Is it the cold, the snow, the winter-wonderful-ness? Who knows?
We took a lot of pictures while we were there, but here's a little montage of some of the highlights. Enjoy!
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