Travel
A Tour in the Black Forest
Fon people who like something more subtle than the usual theatrically beautiful holiday scenery, a trip to the Black Forest is recommended. This is the land out of which Grimms' fairy tales emerged ; a land of reticent valleys and shy hills, incredible loneliness and silence. It avoids rather than defies description ; and in picturing its forest depths, where out- crops of granite boulders crouch in darkness, footed by luxuriant ferns, one loses the special quality that makes these scenes more than merely beautiful. It is a quality of fear, an awe-striking peace, a brooding sense of birth and the emer- gence of gods and spirits.
If this sort of country tends to be too impressive for the holiday-maker, a quick escape south brings him to the Bodensee (Lake Constance), where can be found yachting, bathing, and other sports man atmosphere of sparkling delight. One can com- bine the two very cheaply. The best route is vid Tilbury and Dunkirk to Strasbourg. Here it is worth while to spend a night, in order to visit the redstone cathedral, which, in spite of its seven hundred years, suggests that the Gothic genius has only just sprung to life. The windows here are famous. Entering the cathedral, one is dazzled by the cluster and shimmer of broken hues that run like stains of visible music down the pillars and along the pavements. The rose-window in the west end is austere, but its design is such that it seems to be involving on itself, pulsing in upon its own core, towing from periphery to centre.
The old town, with its ancient walls and defence-towers, and its top-heavy houses leaning over and reflecting their fantastic glazed roofs in the canals, is an example of unspoiled mediaeval civilization. One can still hear the wheezy clanking of Gutenberg's printing press, which was set up in the town centuries ago. One can still expect to meet Erasmus or Paracelstis walking in those narrow streets, fastidiously lifting the hems of their fur-collared cloaks out of the filth in the runnels.
Next day one can proceed to Freiburg-in-Breisgau, crossing the Alsatian frontier either at Kehl or Colmar. Freiburg is a caskef of the harder jewels flung out upon a crumpled bed of black velvet. The stones are the glazed tile roofs of the old town ; the velvet is the forest, which here hangs over the out- riders of the ancient rounded hills, as though shrouding their age from the busy stare of the broad Rhine valley. The town is lovely ; so dignified, cultured, and so conscious of its clean- liness and perfect natural setting. Seen from the top of the neighbouring "berg," its houses seem to be gathered like canary-coloured chicks round the old hen of a cathedral, who dozes with breast to earth, and clucks out each hour pro- tectively over her brood.
With Freiburg as centre the tourist can plan circular trips north, east, or south ; either on foot, or preferably by com- bining tramping with the excellent State post-coaches and the cheap railway. With a little ingenuity in studying time-tables, he can find connections of train and coach which will enable him to poke his way into the most remote villages in the hinterland of the forest, and to cross from one to another of the three main wanderwege which run for nearly 200 miles from northern to southern extremity of the Forest. All these wanderwege are maintained by the Schwarzwaldverein, and are marked each with its particular sign at every few hundred yards. These main paths run over the hilltops, like a fish's backbone, and are met by ribs which run up from the valleys and the villages below. One cannot walk for more than half an hour along one of these paths--through superb scenery of rock and pine—without coming upon a shy little guesthouse tucked away in the shelter of the trees. They are clean and cheap, the price of a bed ranging from one to three marks (shillings) a night. As one passes them during the day, one sees the bedding and mattresses out of doors airing in the sun- shine. And at night this gathered light seetns to lap one round in sweetness, and the perfume of air.
The following trip from Freiburg is recommended for its variety of beauty and interest. Take train to Waldkirch (40 minutes), a charming little town on the Elz. From here one can climb the Kandel (4,500 feet), the second highest point in the ScharzWald. It is a five-hour climb through the wooded slopes. On the summit is an excellent guesthouse, where one can get a good dinner and bed, and rise next morning to see the early sunlight sweeping across from the distant Alps, over the gloomy whalebacks of the Forest, across the valley of the upper Rhine, to the Vosges in the West. From here one can wander leisurely to the lake called Titisee. a well- known winter resort, and therefore more sophisticated in its prices. One takes train from here southeast over a wide plateau, in the _middle of _which the "Danube_ rises at Donane- schingen. Lake Constance is reached at Radolfzell, a yachting
town on the lower spur at the extreme west end of the lake. Thence the tourist can walk along the northern shore, passing through a sort of lotus-land, luxuriant with orchards, corn, .vines, and such_wild. flowers as iris, lupin, columbine, cam- panula, as large as our garden species. At the eastern end is the island of Lindau, a fabulous place of gaily-coloured roofs and towers and baroque churches, lying reflected in the bosom of the lake.
After a few days' rest in Lindau--with perhaps a day trip by motor-coach to the Alps—one can return to Constance by steamer, calling at the island garden of Mainau. From Con- stance one continues by boat to Reichenau, an island with a monastery which has been the centre of South German Christianity since the eighth century. It contains fine 'primitive mural paintings and treasures of carving and jewellery. The traveller pushes on by boat to Stein-am-Rhein, at the point where the huge volume of the lake narrows into the Rhine. The complete mediaeval village seems to cling like a leaf in the wind, perilously hung on the banks of the tre- mendous torrent. It has its old gate towers intact, and the streets seen through these archways look more like a Rein- hardt production than twentieth century actuality. Every house is covered with frescoes, and one can stay in a hotel (The Sun) five hundred years old, a museum painted inside and out with delicate work. The boat journey ends at Schaffhausen and the Rhine falls. Then one goes by train to Waldshut, and from there by coach, train, or on foot back through the Forest vid St. Blasien and the Claudesque H011ental Pass to Freiburg.
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