Hello! I don't have a whole lot to report but Hans went on a bit of an adventure today so he agreed to write about his experiences:
On this morning, while Dani was off to go shopping and to the spa, I headed into the woods and mountains around Baden-Baden, hopefully to find one of the mountain huts for food, or at least a restaurant at the castle ruins in the area. I left the hotel and walked through a bougie set of staircases though a neighborhood, the Wasserkunst Paradies. From there I made my way to the funicular to the summit of the Merkur, Mercury Mountain in English. The funicular was quick and efficient, but I was not able to take any photos in the car; because even though the parking lot was almost abandoned, the one vehicle in the lot was a bus full of retirees making their way to the observation tower on top of the mountain. There really wasn’t much to see since the summit was in the clouds and this was one of the worst days, weatherwise, we had all trip. It was cloudy with constant sprinkle, that would become full-fledged rain later in the day. I didn’t bother to go up the observation tower since there would be nothing to see. I merely took a few snaps of the giant dice sculptures that made the tower look like a giant board game token, and made my way to the trails.
The first thing I came upon was a large open field that was used for paragliders to launch from the mountaintop. I made my way down through the trails enjoying the scent of damp woods that reminded me of hiking through the woods in southeast Alaska. Wet spruce has a distinctive scent. Despite the tangle of trails, it was not hard to find your way. There were trail markers at practically every intersection. As long as I knew what settlement I wanted to get to, Ebersteinberg in this case; I was able to make my way without any difficulty. The descent didn’t take long and I made my way through Eberstineburg to one of the many shelters that dot the trails, the Lukas-Hütte. If the weather would have been better, I would have had a great view of the small city of Gaggenau on the other side of the mountains from Baden-Baden. But the weather was still uncooperative and I got a misty view of the valley below. After some time drying out in the shelter I continued on.
I made my way through the woods to the town’s old castle, Burg Alt-Eberstein. But any hope of exploring the old ruin, from which on a clear day you can see all the way to the Vosges mountains in France, was quickly dashed as the whole complex was closed. My hope to have a beer at an old castle at lunchtime was definitely for naught as the castle restaurant was also closed. There was nothing to do but to soldier on through the woods to the next castle, Altes Schloss zu Hohenbaden.
Before I could make it to the Altes Schloss, at about 1PM the rain picked up and I decided to hang out in a shelter fairly close to the castle ruins and dry and dry out. Since the temperature was in the low 50s Fahrenheit, waiting for the rain to let up for an hour and a half would get a little chilly. I quickly regretted not having a hat and gloves. Moving about I was fine, but sitting and waiting in the wind was not good for staying warm. By 2:30 the rain started to let up and I realized I was directly above the castle, so I snapped a few shots of Baden-Baden and the castle and made my way down to… another closed castle and restaurant. No luck at all. If only I had done a bit more research! It seems like most of these places were closing down after the summer. Oh well.
At this point I made my way back into the city and down through a lovely and well-kept park with some open space and with the Neues Schloss, the New Palace, on the other side. There were several people walking their dogs through the park but not much else going on. It appeared that most people here had the good sense to not be out in the woods today. Apart from the dog walkers, I only saw four other people on the trails in the five hours I was in the woods. I made my way to the Neues Schloss, past a beer garden that was also closed, sigh. The Neues Schloss was rather uninteresting and at this point in the day annoying to me; since it represented a giant roadblock that I couldn’t go through to get back to the hotel. By this point I just wanted to be back in the hotel room. Dani was still at the spa so I got the key from the receptionist and promptly took a hot shower and waited for dinnertime in the warm, dry room.
Dani jumping back in, now. While Hans was off I did a little bit of shopping in the rainy streets downtown and then took a break at the hotel. The two conjoined buildings have been the site of a hotel for over a hundred years and I just loved the absolute lack of straight lines or walls anywhere within. Coincidentally, one of my coworkers was visiting her husband in nearby Stuttgart and so they came into town and the three of us met up at the Caracalla spa, one of two thermal spa facilities that lend their names to the city. We paid for three hours of relaxing and soaking in the various pools and steam rooms.
When we were done I texted Hans to let him know that we were all going to get dinner in town together. At the very cosy Le Bistro, with it's Amelie colored interior, I had an excellent regional German dish called maultaschen. It's kind of like a ravioli, except it's more like a nice morsel of meatloaf wrapped in the thinnest noodle. It was so good! Hans had a very tasty sausage dinner. Still, our dinner companions were the best part of the meal :)
I did not have any difficulty falling asleep when we got back to the hotel! That being said, I enjoyed opening the ceiling window so that I could hear the town hall bells calling out the hour while I imagined a creepy mist floating into the dark room like Dracula. Being in Europe in the fall gives me pre-Halloween spooky feelings.
