Today we had a change of plans, we will be heading home to Florida early, leaving on Monday, October 4, instead of continuing on until October 10. My Dad’s health has significantly declined over the past week, and he probably does not have much longer here with us. We knew it was something that might happen before we left, but things seemed to be fairly stable with his health when we left.
It was a hard call, a lot due to the inability we have to communicate to home. The SIM card we bought for the phone worked at times, but was not very reliable, and we tried all morning to load up more time onto it, but we were unsuccessful. The company we bought the card from will be hearing from me when we return. That, coupled with the time difference made it hard for us to make an informed decision. Our only consistent method of communication was email, and that is where the time difference really becomes a factor. We did have the benefit of using Skype here in Rothenburg with the fairly good internet access.
The hotel staff in Rothenburg were very helpful, they allowed us to use their phone to call the airlines, and it was probably long distance. They also set us up in the breakfast area so we could use their internet connection to try and cancel all of our hotel reservations for the remainder of the trip we will not be able to complete, and to get information on routes and distances through Google Maps.
As I am writing this now at 10:20 AM our time, I still do not know what is going on with Dad.
But, since we can’t get a flight out until Monday, we decided to go ahead and try to drive to the Black Forest anyway, since it was not too far from Rothenburg, about 2 hours drive.
The Skoda Rental Car
We headed out of rainy (yes, it was raining again this morning) Rothenburg about 12:15 PM and used the GPS to guide us to Triberg, one of the more popular destinations in the Black Forest. It was an interesting drive, they have some VERY narrow roads when you are on the back roads of Germany, and the speed limit on them is 100 kph. Add in a little rain, and it is a full concentration effort to drive, I did not see much scenery, only asphalt and grass.
We finally got on the Autobahn, and found it was not significantly different from the Autostrada in Italy. In some areas, the speed limit is 120 kph, and then in others, there is no speed limit. I think we got up to about 175 kph a few times to pass some of the slower traffic, but in general, most people seem to be driving around 160-165 kph. It was still fun. We have a Skoda car, made in the Czech Republic, but Skoda is owned by VW. It is a 4 door car with a trunk for luggage security. It took me a little while to figure out that it had a 6 speed manual transmission, it had seemed to be running hard at the Autobahn speed, I had even commented on it to Stephanie. The computer on the dash kept blinking a 6 and I finally figured out it was the indicator to tell you to change gears for fuel economy. I never drove a 6 speed transmission car before, only 5 speed manuals….who knew.
Chuck & Stephanie at Triberg Falls
We arrived in Triberg about 2:45 PM and were going to go to the famous waterfall here first thing since it was SUNNY in Germany, finally. However, we saw the tourist information building and decided we should go in and see if they knew of any hotel availability since we did not have a reservation of place to stay for the night, and the information office closed at 5:00 PM. Stephanie went in to find out while I was trying to fine a parking spot. It is very hilly in Triberg, and parking is at a premium. We finally met up at the information office, and they gave us a recommendation for a room at a place close by called the Hotel Pfaff. It was right next to the entrance to the falls. We went in and checked into the hotel, the room was nice, and not too pricey.
We headed for the middle level entrance to the falls so we would not have to climb up as much. I have developed a bad shin splint, I am not sure how, maybe it happened on all of the extra walking in Munich the night we got a little lost. It really started a couple of days ago, and since we are in very hilly towns, has only gotten worse with all of the walking we are doing. It is only painful when I was walking downhill. Unfortunately, we climbed up a lot to see the falls, and some of the trails were steep, so the only was back is downhill, ouch. The falls were very pretty, and some of the
Triberg Falls
trees here are turning fall colors. The sun was out some, although it got cloudy again for some of the hike at the falls. We also saw some very pretty birds called Nutcrackers. The males had very pretty blue and white colorings on their wings.
Then we started downhill, and that was very slow and painful. for me Afterward, we headed over to a Catholic church Stephannie had seen a sign for while we were driving through town. Unfortunately, they did not have a Saturday evening vigil Mass, but someone there told us about a church in another small town nearby that did. We drove over to St. Josef, in Gremmelsbach. It was a very pretty church inside, and for the small size of the town, there were a lot of people there for Mass. The church was located on one of the really, really skinny roads, in some places, it was not wide enough to pass another car. I thought they were one way, but they are not, just really narrow. At one point, we had to back up about 200 yards because of a small bus going the other direction that needed to get by us, and there was absolutely no where to pull over to let them pass, guard rails on one side and a hill on the other.
The Mass was nice, of course it was all in German, but it was apparent that they were doing some special type of blessing for the harvest, there is a lot of farming in this area. The altar was decorated with different fruits and vegetables from the farmers.
After Mass, we went back to the hotel to get some dinner. In the rush to do everything, and get here today, we had forgotten all about eating lunch. We had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, and it was very good German food, with a very nice atmosphere. The hotel itself is very pretty, lots of wood, and typical German furnishings.
At about 11:00 PM here, we were able to get a hold of my mom and learned that my Dad had passed away at around 4:00PM Eastern Time. It was time for him to go, he had just gotten old, as we all hope to do, and his body just shut down. It was good that we had made our changes in plans this morning so we could get back home. I knew I would not be there with him at the end, and that was OK. It could have happened the same if I were at home in Florida, still far away, or abroad, you just don’t know when.
We will spend tomorrow morning here in Triberg looking around a little, maybe go to a couple of close by towns, and then head for Frankfurt in the afternoon. It has been a good trip, certainly we wish it would have lasted for the full time. I guess we will just have to plan to return someday and finish what we had set out to do. We did learn a lot by being on the road, we certainly learned a lot about packing, next time we will go a lot lighter.
We will make one more post for tomorrow, and then try and get the blog wrapped up while we are in transit home.