The Schwarzwald and the Bodensee

And a goodbye to Germany

By Where's Herr Gruber?

September 16^th, 2020

Hello from the road...

Yeah, we are finally on the road!

After moving out of our 6-story-high-no-elavator-apartment in Aachen, we spend a week at Emy's parents in Brabant, NL. Where we did Herr Gruber's last must-needed touch-ups (read: internet antenna and isolation for cold nights) and for some reason every day ended with a lot of specialty beers in the garden with the family... Then off to Germany to say goodbye to Simon's parents and of course we couldn't say no to some home-made currywurst and kartoffelsalat, thank you mama Antje!

Landau

From there we simply started driving south, and thought we would spend the night around Landau. Imagine hills full of vineyards and pretty cute villages, is this Germany? We ended up finding a great spot to park up Herr Gruber, next to a lake in Silz, just when the sun was going down #vanlifegoals. The next morning an early dive in the freezing lake, an outdoor shower (literally a Swiss army water bag thingy hanging from a tree) and we were on the road again.

The Black Forest

Off to the Schwarzwald, The Black Forest. We passed Freiburg, which is a beautiful city, and in thirty minutes Herr Gruber took us from 270m to 1150m altitude, we bought a beast. Disclaimer: I wrote this before we passed the Alps…

We settled in Muggenbrun, a tiny town in Hochschwarzwald. Since it have been quite hectic times before we left, we decided to stay two nights at a camping spot to chill, take one tiny hike (which ended up being 4,5 hours including a Barfußpfad…) and get to terms with the fact that we will be traveling for a whole year... It seems so long, with endless possibilities laying ahead of us. Keuzestress!

So what’s next? We checked the weather map of Europe and saw some fine sunny days with 30 degrees coming up and opted for a lake.

The Bodensee

Lake Constance, or as the Dutchies and Germans like to call it: the Bodensee. Huge body of water just in front of the Northern part of the Alps, bordering three countries: Switzerland, Germany and Austria. And the next stop on our trip!

We found a very beautiful beach with free showers, win, because we decided to camp wild for a couple of days. And found a beautiful spot via Park4Night as well, up in the hills among the trees. Met some nice people with vans there and there were even people in a tent.

We cannot show you much of the Bodensee picture-wise, since the days existed of extensive chillings on our Fatboy Lamzac’s at the lake. Which for some reason were very popular, with four people inquiring about them. So, Fatboy if you’re reading this, sponsorship?

From the Bodensee we were bound for Sud-Tirol, Italy and wanted to check out Switzerland as well. How we ended up there is a whole other story, which we will tell you all about in our next update!