just like a snow dome, only slippery

if only the camera could capture how snowy this really is. well, i mean, obviously this is really snowy, cuz you can see, but in this pic it is ALSO currently snowing ... a LOT. a lot a lot.

view out of our hostel window in the morning...

uh oh - that's our car under there !

we got out ok, thank goodness for snow tyres and the true genius of skill that is my driving, coupled with the insurmountable intuitive and perceptual clarity of my navigator. i kid you not, we were driving in a full on white out. if such a thing exists. if you recall our interactive art experience in denmark, this was so very similar, only in a car, with endless space surrounding. looking to the left and right, all you could see was white space, and about 3 metres in front, trees would just appear, guiding you through the roads. AMAZING!!!


you know that it is really foggy (such as the above pic) and really white out-y with snow (above the above pic) when your eyes start attempting to invent perceptive space with those little floater worm thingies in your peripheral vision. crazy.

little stop on our way through the black forest – villingen

apologies for the slightly too darkness of this pic - but oh look at the turret!!!

enid blyton eat your heart out.

a lot of these buildings had awesome scale/feather-like turrets, roofs and even walls. you may have gathered by our pics by now that this area has some pretty awesome looking houses, but oh my. these ones were killer. all of them had their own little personality. the tiles were little and patchy, of all different colours.

an old, walled city, built some time during the renaissance, like much of europe, it would seem.

it took us no time at all to zip from the southern alps, across the ‘bottom’ of germany, and into the black forest. maybe 2 hours and you’re across about a third of the country. the autobahns help, of course. but it was quite snowy so i could only crank it up to 152km/h at my fastest bit.

still – pretty good!

about half was on good road, the rest was normal country roads.

this was our first real attempt at flying by the seat of our pants, as far as accommodation goes. no bookings, just rock up, look around and hope to find a good place.

as with everything so far, the gods are smiling. we did drive around the outside of the town (no cars allowed inside, except for 3 little lanes) about 4 times, as it is one-way traffic flow in a single circle around the town and we had to keep trying to get the right turnoffs. but, we stumbled on a place that fit the bill and - kapow! – we scored a good room, complete with breakfast for a good price. the one catch? place was entirely filled with freaky fucking clown decorations. we thought maybe a party was on that night. no, there was no party. just an empty dark dining hall ... filled with clowns. woot.

for example

i think the flash photography really helps to capture how fucking WEIRD it was.

shudder.

the dude running the joint didn’t speak english, which was a great way for us to try out our stumbly and mumbly deutsch. (seriously, our massive tip for travelling, is to always great people in their language, try to at least start talking to them, but kindly ask if they speak english. so far, this has warmed the locals to us, with kindly smiles and helpful assistance.) there was much merry chuckling from his end, and much cheesy thumbs up and "das ist gut ya!" from our end.

we did all right.

a big room, in a rather ye olde style affair.

overall, villingen was very pretty, very clean and very pleasant.

pretty small, so one afternoon was plenty to get a feel for it.

we did attempt to see what was happening in this small town on a friday night, what with so much vibey-clown-goodtimes. and the result? ghost town. not a soul to be seen, a few shady characters here and there. ba-bow. oh god, i am starting to sound like kent.

breakfast was super awesome. breakfast was ... aaaaah. i cannot even describe.

i’m pretty sure we were the only ones in the joint. we wandered in to the restaurant with its views out over town (the hotel was on a hill just outside the old walls). aside from the creepy clowns everywhere it was all laid out with table settings, maybe about a dozen tables. the old lady came out and blathered on in german about god only knows what, but she plied us with cereals, bread rolls, jams, yoghurts, fruits, several varieties of cold meats, coffee and juice, all with a smile and much rushing about. we totally filled up to the brim, thanked her muchly – lucy read out our gratitude from her german phrase book, which the lady was very pleased about (more cheery chuckling about my retarded pronunciation) - and we hopped into our car, cranked up some nick cave on the stereo, and set out for some serious forest roads into the heart of the schwarzwald (black forest).