Today was our Black Forest day. We set off from Gunzberg (packed up in the drizzle as usual) to the south west corner of Germany. The black forest isn't really black ... just a pine shade of dark green but pretty nevertheless. Our first stop was another gorgeous wee town, Schiltach, with more traditional German houses, many dating from the 1700's. Apart from a Greek food festival happening on the river side it was a very quiet place. I don't know whether the river was man made but it had neat cobblestones on the bottom and the water ran VERY clear. We popped into the museum and saw some working water wheels, took a billion (Brett's words) photos of houses and enjoyed a picnic lunch.

Back into the car and onwards to Triberg ... the town of a trillion clocks! This town was seething with tourists - quite a contrast from Schiltach. Triberg boasts 2 'World's Biggest Cuckoo Clocks' ... apparently they haven't quite figured out which is bigger. I did laugh when the tourism office lady described them as the original and new 'World's Biggest Cuckoo Clock'. We were most impressed with a rather large cuckoo clock just before Triberg. We drove through the town, in my usual fashion I said stop to late, but eventually we parked at 5 minutes to 3. At the chime of three, the cuckoo clock sprang into fashion with music and moving models here, there and everywhere. We did look at a number of the cuckoo clock shops (definitely not all of them or we'll still be there three days later) and admired the intricate detail in all of the designs.

Final stop, Titisee (terrible name for a town!). It kind of reminded me of Queenstown in the touristy feel but it was still a nice atmosphere. We declined the first camping ground when seeing we'd have an entire 3sqm of sloping grass and found an excellent spot with a great view of the lake. By that stage we really couldn't be bothered cooking and wanted to make the most of our last dinner in Germany. We couldn't find a beer garden as we'd hoped, but we did find a great restaurant serving German dishes. We shared our dishes and enjoyed bratwurst, riesenbockwurst, chips and sauerkraut (I thought Dad and Beppe would be impressed with the last item ... it wasn't quite as nice as Beppe's though). Even more than our German culinary adventures was the fact that I drank an entire glass of beer! Me! Non beer drinking Rebecca! Surprisingly it was actually quite nice ... it was a wheat beer rather than the usual barley style and was a bit softer in flavour.

Farewell Germany, we've had a great time and hope to come back someday.

- Rebecca