Having now seen what is to the east, west and south of where I am lets have a look north to Germany or rather to the area of Germany known as the black forest.

Just as in France the wheat fields are alive with the vibrant red of poppies and it's quite interesting to know that the farmers in these regions consider the poppies in the same way that we consider weeds.

The route to the black forest takes us north through Bern, past Basel and toward Mulhouse

Once past the cities the country side changes radically to that of deep gorges. (see right).

However, once past the seemingly endless ravinves of green the lanscape holds steady on small valleys lined with deep green pine breaking only for the occasional river or chestnut.

To be honest this came as quite a shock as I was expecting the black forest to be pretty much as the name suggests (big ol' forest everywhere with an underlying darkness), but as you can see it is non the less pleasant - just wider.

 

But the scenery does change a little from time to time (someone builds roads in the middles of it.)
One of the interesting things about the region is that where ever you drive nowhere appears very high but as you can see from the photo (left) that this means when the weather arrives, it arrives in force.

Throughout the seemingly deserted landscape the are numerous small villages the seem to have developed four or five at a time in close proximity but then nothing for about another twenty miles.

One of the quaintest of these large villages is Titisee. Titisee has the typical architectural look and feel of Germany but being on a water front it has distinct differences.

One of the more interesting anomilies of the local architecture are the numerous fountains which all seem to have the same theme, dragons or water monsters

Having explored to my hearts content (because lets face it you can only take so much architecture and dragon models before you need to crash out/sleep) we found a little place called Todmoos.

 

Todmoos is a typical, small, catholic village typical to this area. They see a fair number of tourists in the winter months but have the place pretty much to themselves and the monks during the summer.

There are however two places in Todmoos that I would recommend to anyone who's thinking of going there, the Wehranhof hotel (Germany - 07674 92960) and the resturant right next door (not pictured).

The reason for heartily recommending these two places is quite simple. One common theme in europe is when you go into a shop or resturant you can expect rather naff service, but in these very small places the service is excellent and the resturants serve in a manner beffiting a small banquet.
Irrispective of how tired I feel I never mind looking at some of the beautiful paintings that the churches in these areas posses (ceilings)

The only other place that I have spent time in is Freibourg.

We arrived in Freibourg quite coincidentally at the exact time that everyone was dressing up like demons in some kind of mass German hysteria/ demon cult.

Demon cults aside it was actually an age old celebration of fertility and the starting of the planting season (or trying to entice spring in - or something?).

Pictures of the German demon worshippers are available upon request or if you log on to the Interpol web site.