We had passed the store on our first walk from the fortress to the Koblenz train station in the rain, we ended up a little higher than we thought and circled back a bit until we found it- Mark has such a good spatial map for places! When we got there, we had to wait a bit for the store to open at 9am and we were hopeful with the inexpensive prices listed in the windows. Unfortunately, when it opened, we unstacked all of our stuff and it weight about 7 kilos- the lady told us it would cost about 165 euros. After we picked up our chins off the floor (I could buy another bag for 165 euros and carry it myself) and we got over the shock, we repacked all of our stuff and headed to the train station. In hindsight, this might have been for speedy travel, but she never offered us any options.
We caught the 9:48am train to Triburg and got great views of the countryside. First we saw mainly farming communities, with small little houses scattered throughout the flat, green countryside. We also caught our first glimpses of people growing corn- just like back home (but I have heard that Europeans think corn is only for the animals- they don't grow sweet corn). As the hills crept in, the houses got larger and ended up changing slightly, they still had a large number of skylights and small windows tucked everywhere, but now the roofs look like the front and back peaks were collapsed in- so each roof had 4 flat sides. There were also nice balconies under the front roof peak with loads of the ever present flower boxes. As we entered the forest, we ended up passing through 16 tunnels and learned that the train stops on unmarked towns. There were many hills and all very steep! The forest itself looks very manicured- types of trees were grouped- as if the whole thing had been planed and planted again and again.
We got into Triburg at 1:40pm and took some steps down to hike along a river. Of course this hike was more energetic with it's steep incline. We passed the Post station with their bright yellow signs and little did we know, we passed the info station, which was just a posted map. As we continued up, we came to the main part of town, we found where the old info station was according to the map. In fact, Mark asked some locals and they told us that this closed building was the information station, and that it opened at 6??? We are suppose to be at our hostel at 5pm, so we headed back to the main part of town, toward the large wooden sign for the waterfall. Mark asked the lady at the waterfall ticket counter for directions to the station which lead us to a building across the street- YEAH!!
After getting a map and told that it is only a "short" hike with a "small" incline to our hostel, we headed out- there are no buses headed toward our hostel. That was one of the longest and steepest hikes of the trip- note that we still had all of our stuff on our backs and in our hands. We passed a swimming pool, another stream, and a little lady that told Mark we didn't have much further to go. We also kept pace with a delivery truck making his rounds. By 3:45 we had made it to our hostel and our feet/legs/backs were killing us. At 4:30 the desk clerk arrived and we paid for our rooms and the best Fanta of the trip! We also got free entrance cards for the waterfall.
After dumping our stuff, we walked down to the closest cafe- along a little footpath- we were walking in the cool dampness of the black forest! We got to the café to learn that it was closed for a party- so we walked back to our hostel and begged for dinner. You are suppose to give 24 hours notice, and we were so tired from arriving that day, that we couldn’t have hiked back down to the town for dinner. Fortunately there was enough, so we hung out until 6pm to get the most filling dinner we have had yet!
The first course came on this really heavy tray that Mark took to our table. There was vegetable soup- maybe split pea- so amazingly good we ate it all- which was 2 helpings each. A variety of rolls came in a basket with it and polished off those as well. Next was a delicious salad with a lovely balsamic vinaigrette, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber (Mark even ate his). Taking our dirty dishes back, we got our main course- chicken and mushroom stroganoff with rice and a weird rhubarb and vanilla tea (we do miss plain water). We were so full after our meal, we could barley eat our desert- lime jello cubes with a creamy custard on top.
Happily full we decided to try and tackle laundry. We purchased some tokens from the desk clerk and “followed the noise” to the laundry room- it was loud- I don’t know what the machine was making all of the noise, but on the plus side we didn’t have to worry about running the machines too late! While our laundry was started, Mark took out Ebb and Flow- we kind of invented our own rules since the English translation was difficult to understand. When we tried to put in our second load for wash, we somehow messed up putting in the token and didn’t get the wash- so the second load we did in our bedroom sink- using my bar of soap and my brush as a scrubber- the compact shower as the rinse. A while later and with red hands our whole room was covered in wet laundry, so we used our second dryer token and let it run until we went to sleep- the close didn’t get dry, but they were definitely less damp. A note on the drying, for this machine, there were 10 different settings. The first load that we picked, our clothes came out rather damp and we learned that the setting we chose was for clothes you want damp so you can iron them afterwards. Therefore, when we took the really wet clothes from our room down to the dryer, we also took our dictionary and found the setting for “desert dry” or something similar- the second load didn’t finish drying either, but it ran for 2 hours- I guess our clothes were just that wet.
We decided to go to sleep around 11, pulled out our wet laundry and rehung it around our room. As we both lay exhausted in our bunks we saw the full moon rising over the tree covered hill outside our window- it must have been a great night to see the stars- maybe tomorrow…
