Visiting World Wonders: The Black Forest

Let’s talk about The Black Forest today.

For the previous post in the series, click here.

Hello everyone! Today’s wonder is a natural one and one that I personally have been intrigued by for years. I studied German as my third language in middle school and for one of my assignments we had to do research on tourist spots in Germany. That’s when I first came across the Schwarzwald, or literally, The Black Forest, named so for being so dense that it actually appears black. My interest was piqued; Could it really that dark?

The more I looked into this mythical place, the more interested I got. The Black Forest region is responsible for many good things in the world today. To name a few, cuckoo clocks, black forest cake and the most fascinating to me, fairytales. This area has most commonly been associated with being the backdrop for many of the Grimm Brothers’ fairytales with notable ones being Hansel and Gretel and Little Red riding hood. (If you couldn’t guess it yet, I ended up doing the assignment with the biggest portion of it dedicated to the Black Forest.)

Now that you have somewhat of a backstory on me and the Black Forest, I hope you can understand the level of my excitement to visit the forest of literal fairy tales. We stopped at the Black Forest while driving from Mannheim to Zurich and it was an actual dream come true. I had been so fascinated by this place and now, I was actually there. It was mind-blowingly unreal.

To answer the most obvious question, yes, I honestly believe it really is that dark. It’s huge and it stretches over the mountains as far as you can see. I only walked through a very small portion of it and that too in peak daytime but it was pretty dark inside and this is at the edge of the forest. I can only imagine how dark it would be further in the forest.

We stopped at one of the charming little towns that are in the Black Forest and did two really awesome things; We had an authentic Black forest cake and we went to a Cuckoo Clock workshop. As a cake lover who has had many different Black Forest cakes growing up, the best one was definitely the original, in the heart of the Black Forest itself. Plus, I get to say I had Black Forest cake in the Black Forest. It is immensely satisfying.

In the Cuckoo Clock workshop, we saw many different cuckoo clocks of different sizes and different methods of working. Some had just the cuckoo pop out every hour, some played music, some even had characters that moved and played out entire stories with the music but all clocks had an incredible level of detail and were made with a lot of love and it was obvious how proud the lovely people at the workshop were of their work. We ended up buying one ourselves for our bedroom and fulfilling all our childhood dreams of having an actual cuckoo clock in our room.

We also witnessed the hourly show on the giant cuckoo clock in the town square and it was nothing short of magical. The Black Forest was every bit as charming, mythical and straight out a  fairy tale as I imagined it to be and I am so glad I got to actually visit and see it with my eyes and experience the magic in the place in person. I hope I get to go back again someday and experience more of the fairytale that the Schwarzwald is.

THIS POST’S QUESTION: Have you ever been to the Black Forest? Do you think it is actually as ‘Black’ as the name suggests? Comment below with what you think about it, I’d love to hear from you!

For the next post in the series, click here.