Schiltach, Wolfach, Triberg, Furtwangen and Titisee

We started today off very early because of all the planned stops we had. The first two towns were small and charming but offered us nothing really worthy of getting out of the van into the cold rain. The third stop would prove more worthwhile. Triberg is surrounded by three mountains, has the highest waterfall in Germany and is home to two of the world’s largest Cuckoo clocks. Since we left Baden-Baden we have been driving on the B500, which is considered the tourist road for the Black Forest. Up until Triberg it would seem to be just an ordinary road, nothing touristy about it besides it connecting the towns we have been visiting. Just before we entered Triberg we saw a huge shop called “The house of 1000 clocks”, corny but we stopped anyway. Before we got out of the van I had said to Julie “I wonder if this is where Rob Zombie got the title for his movie?” Of course this was wasted on Julie. It was still fairly early in the day and when we entered the store I was greeted with an automated cappuccino maker. I enjoyed a large chocolate cappuccino while we shopped. Julie picked out the clock we purchased for one good reason. I would have chosen the one that was huge, expensive and did just about everything a cuckoo clock could do, that being, many, many moving parts. In the end it came down to two clocks. The shop manager did his best to leave us alone but when he found out about our trip he couldn’t keep away from us. As is the case when people learn we have quit our jobs to go adventuring for a year. He was extremely helpful though. He managed to educate the both of us very quickly on cuckoo clocks and had placed all the ones that interested Julie on a plain white wall next to each other so she could better see what she wanted. In the end, I did have an opinion. The two she had chosen were more or less the same size. One had wooden carved maple leafs on it, the other had two horses pulling logs on it. The birds sounded different as well, but the main difference to me, was how often you needed to pull the chains. The horse one was needed to be pulled every day. My parents owned one like this and it became frustrating, I don’t know where they put their clock now. So knowing this, I suggest she go with the one that lasted a week. That way when we leave on weekends or what not, we wouldn’t need to worry about the clock keeping time. In the end, Julie was extremely happy with her purchase. The only thing that concerned her was that they didn’t start to package up the clock in front of us. She was worried he’d ship the wrong clock.
Once we parked we made our way to the tourist office to locate where the two “dueling” cuckoo clocks are. In the shoestrings guide we were led to believe that these two clocks faced each other. This was not the case as they were at least 5 km apart. So we decided to go do the hike to the waterfall and then take the van to view these giant clocks. The hike was an easy one but it was truly wonderful to be outside in the fresh air. It was fairly cool and when we got closer to the waterfall it was very damp but it was great anyway. The hike took no more then an hour and when we got back we decided to look for a restaurant to eat. We wanted to try the Black Forest specialties in the black forest. As you can expect, everything was expensive. So we left to see these clocks and can confirm they were large. We didn’t hang around for them to go off though, as we still had two other stops for the day.
Furtwangen is one of the larger towns on the list, but we only came here for the cuckoo clock museum. They had more clocks here then just the traditional style of the black forest. They also had many styles throughout the ages. Many were religious. One in the main hall was of Christ being nailed to the cross on every hour. It was about as exciting as a clock museum could get, so we moved on rather quickly. Our last and final stop for the day was Titisee. Titisee is a famous resort town that has the largest glacial lake in Germany. The campground where we stayed was nice enough and the restaurant was a fair price. So we had our dinner at the restaurant and it was rather nice – but way too much food was served. Julie could barely finish the main course and neither of us could finish the salad.