Triberg

This weekend was a lot of fun, we took a nice trip to a small place in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) called Triberg on sunday. Ever heard of Black Forest cake? Yep, it originated here. The black forest is pretty big, there are a lot of small towns in it. The worlds largest cuckoo clock is here too. Both of them. Yes there are two world's largest clocks. Didn't see them though, they were in another town not on the itinerary.

What was however, was Germany's largest waterfall, which wasn't really that big, or impressive. It was more like a series of small waterfalls or rapids, and the paths hiking to the top were all paved. So, you know what we all did instead? We climbed the waterfall. We went around the fence and climbed the rocks all the way up to the top! The german tourists were appalled... maybe they were afraid we were going to displace the fragile waterfall... They do like their rules here. But the nice thing about being a tourist is that you can get away with doing stuff like that.

It was a lot of fun, but rock climbing is really not my sport. My balance is soooo bad (I'm blaming it on the 5 operations I've had on my ears), so I came out with a lot of scratches, a little blood, some welts from encountering some stinging nettles, two soakers and drenched in sweat. I managed to scrape both elbows, both knees, my shins, a lot of places on my shoulder, and everywhere skin was bare was covered in nature of some sort. Mostly mud. I'm cool. Some of the people I was with (there were 8 of us) were just fearless.... I'm much more cautious when it comes to things like that.
Oh, right at the bottom my sunglasses fell off my head and down the waterfall. So now I can say I've lost my watch at the opening game for the world cup, and my sunglasses at Germany's largest waterfall. Now I should just take a trip to europe's largest mountain and throw my shoe off the top or something.

After that we took a 15 minute ride to a nearby town and swam in a man made lake. The thing had corners for goodness sakes... Well the German's do like things to be orderly. I'm noticing that at the lakes and pools here there are a lot of things that we will never ever see in Canada. There was this enormous inflatable climbing wall out in the middle. I'd say the top was a good 4 metres off the water, if not 5 and when you got to the top you could slide down the back side or jump off. At the pool nearby where I live there are these big round things that protrude just above the water and people are actually allowed to play push off on them. That is just asking for a split head... I think we coddle the kids too much in Canada.... And in the states these things would just be begging for a law suit. Anyways, the climbing wall was amazing, def wreaked havoc on my bathing suit bottoms, a lot of people have now seen my ass, but it was fun.

So that's about it, got home around 9:30, and I'm sunburnt, exausted, and happy.

Today was a day of physical activity. We ran to catch our train, we climbed a waterfall, we ran what I'm going to say was more than one kilometer, possibly 2 to catch the train to the lake, climbed the big wall a few times, swam. Man it felt good. I forgot how good intense physical activity makes you feel. Mmmm endorphins.

Here's a shot of the cast and crew for this adventure. It's blurry and we're missing some.... It was me, Denis, Nina and Petar from the IBM crew, Simon and Chris (a couple other Canadians), Stanis (from Bulgaria), and Stuart the American.