Hansel and Gretel anyone ? (To Calw)

We drove to Calw, Germany in the Black Forest Sunday, February 26th.  (It's called the Black Forest because of the dense growth of conifers that block out the sun from inside the forest area.)  The description in our travel book made it sound great and wonderful, but it wasn't.  It could possibly be the best place ever and we were just there in the off season when there was NOTHING to look at.  It is the home of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Hermann Hesse.  Now I can say that the buildings were the traditional style that most American's picture in their heads when thinking of the half-timber houses with sharp gables.  That was neat.

The best part of the whole trip though was the drive home.  We ended up going the scenic route which took us through that mountains and many, many tunnels.  The tunnels were open on the side of the mountain, so as you drove through you could see the country-side.  We must have past easily five castles on the way home.  We went through a ton of villages and all along windy roads.  Gorgeous!  The worst part of the drive home was that I had to drive it.  For some reason Jeremy wanted to sightsee like the rest of us get to when he drives! :)

We will be making more trips to the Black Forest, and hopefully we'll catch it in the right season without a lot of touristy traffic!

~Tara