Cuckoo Clocks and the Black Forest

I've only a few more posts about my trip to Europe (and as Leo puts it, "I'm seriously milking it") but on the Monday following Christmas, both the Lauras and I drove from Basel to Freiburg, Germany.

I was excited because we were going into the Black Forest which I've been intrigued by since I read The Happy Hollisters as a child. This isn't a famous or popular series, although the author did write many of the

Hardy Boys series, but apparently someone on the Smith side of my family liked the books, and one lonely summer afternoon at my grandparent's house in Milford, MI I found almost a complete set of The Happy Hollisters books,

including one about a "Cuckoo Clock Mystery".

Always a lover of a good detective story, I was hooked, although I had more or less forgotten about the Black Forest until a seemingly innocuous conversation over Christmas Eve. Learning I was so close to the forest brought back a flood of childhood memories about the series and I was determined to see the forest for myself.

As it turns out, although I was assured I was in the actual forest several times, the experience once again proved the old adage that things are much better left to the imagination. More or less what I saw seemed to be reminiscent of a North Carolina scrub pine forest.

But I digress. Freiburg is a lovely town, complete with tiny little "mini canals" running alongside many of the sidewalks. I haven't seen these since I was in Wells, England. While picturesque, it's a little less cute once you know they were used as rubbish chutes to flush trash, including chamber pots, downstream.

However, in the downtown area of Freiburg, there is a beautiful little river running through the town, which in and of itself makes the town worth a visit.

The cathedral was be

autiful and I've never seen so many candles lit to the Virgin Mary at once.