Black Forest

The USO has provided services to the military community for, well a long time. First time I had contact with the USO was in 1966 when I was a Seaman Apprentice stationed at NAS Fallon, Nevada. I helped them move offices in Reno. Subsequently I availed myself of their services over the years. Mainly the tours they. arrrange When on board a Navy ship most times foreign port of calls are pretty short. A USO tour is the best way to see a lot in a short time. Brenda was turned on to the USO by someone at her workand arranged for us to head out on a tour to the Black Forest during the short period I was here to help set up the house. The following are pictures of our Black Forest USO tour. Now realize this was a cold-cold time in early January. We froze our THUS off on this tour. But it was fun anyway. Boarded the bus at a base I can not begin to spell the name of, but I did set the location in the trusty GPS. It's Vogelwey. The trip was all day and half the night getting there and back.

http://www.tompgalvin.com/places/de/baden_wuerttemberg/black_forest.htm

I mentioned before that geting a bump on direction is difficult. On the way to Heidelberg, I made a comment about the countryside and Brenda says yes there is one of the castle ruins we saw from the bus on the way to the Black Forest. Wow. .. I thought we had gone entirely the other direction. That's alright though, for all my smarts, I know what it is to feel dumb (more frequently that I care to admit). See how the Navigon is wonderful to me. Okay, on to some pics.

We are on the orange one.

That is Diet Coke Light she is drinking. For a true diet coke with nothing worthwhile in it you have to get it on base. The German economy has only the light.

This is a "Full size" working cuckoo clock.
The Black Forest is noted for the production of cuckoo clocks. They is not cheap. Whatever happened to the day you could go over seas and get stuff at a bargin over stateside? Small clocks are a little over a $ 100 to several thousand for large ones. We plan to get a small-medium one someday when we're over the price shock.

This was a stop at the house of Ten Thousand cuckoo clocks. The Black Forest is another couple hours up the road.

Little village by the House of Ten Thousand cuckoo clocks. Looks cold, uh. It is.

The tour guide on the bus is a wife of a soldier stationed here and of course she has checked most things out and recommended this Pizzeria for good food. She was right.

This was in the pizzeria. We sat with a couple that had flown over by space A military hop being that he is an airforce retired dental tech. After retirement he opened up his own dental lab, that's where he made teeth, and then sold it out he when hit 70 years old and now they travel around on military hops. Cheap way to go if you have time to wait for a couple seats to open up on these flights. But, the flights go everywhere in the world, even New Zealand and Australia. I think that it is really commendable that they are brave enough to be adventureous, buck the unknown to get out and about.

The following pictures we took after it got dark. Up in the forest there is a waterfall with a platform across the rocks that these fellows put on a fire show. Yes, FIRE, they whirl the stuff around and set off explosions. Impressive I must say. Fire or not it was really cold for us even though we were packed like sardines in with the crowd to watch them. We might not had stayed to see them except we could not have gotten out until the rest of the lemmings started to move. We are glad to have experienced it.

Here are the entry ways to the waterfalls.

Okay, finally our fellow lemmings are in motion. I can not believe we were the only ones to freeze our tails off.  But, the Germans seem to be a bit more use to it. Now, I could be wrong, but I never heard anyone around me complain about the cold - Hum - or did they? I have got to learn some German. This is a little bridge that crosses over the bottom of the falls for the descent to the town.

 

A tourist shop in the town. There are a lot of shops like this one, but this one was lite up enough for me to get a shot without a tripod. This is pretty much the light lights for the Black Forest. I marked it in the GPS and we intend to head back out there when we do not have a bus to catch and it is way warmer.

Bye, till next posting.