The night in the crib of the farmstead by the lake close to Garmisch offered us the best sleep so far on this journey. Dry, warm and complete silence except for the small river passing close by. Topping that with eggs, bacon and coffee made for a pretty decent start of the day.
Unfortunately, we could not hang around for too long. We had a long hike in front of us, and JC had a flight to catch that same evening from Munich (yes, JC unfortunately had to head back to Colorado to take care of the US office).
The strong sun had us dripping of sweat, and we stopped half way to take a dip in the cool turquoise lake, dried off on the beach afterwards before speeding on towards the closest train station that would take us Munich.
The 3 remaining of us, left the alps behind us as we railed towards the Black Forest.
Late in the night we got to the hotel in a quiet deserted-looking neighbourhood on the outskirts of the forest, only to find it dark and closed. We kept calling and knocking the door for almost 15 minutes, and as we were about to give up, an old lady suddenly appeared behind the frosted glass door. She opened the door and let us in. The interior that met us reminded us of a blend between a David Lynch movie and the Shining. Rather spooked out we tried to explain that we had already reserved and paid for the room online, which was refused by the old lady on the grounds that her computer was turned off.
Still she went and got the keys and walked us down the long dark corridor with wall-to-wall carpets covered in flowers. Time had really stood still here since the 50s. The rooms were huge, more like small apartments and we all locked the doors behind us and slept with one eye half open that night.
