River Rhine cruise: Crossing the Swiss-German border to explore Germany's enchanting Black Forest

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This was published 5 years ago

River Rhine cruise: Crossing the Swiss-German border to explore Germany's enchanting Black Forest

By Steve McKenna
A village and monastery in The Black Forest, Germany.

A village and monastery in The Black Forest, Germany.

Once upon a time in the Black Forest, there was a woman called Berta Schneider, who made a frugal living farming, distilling fruit schnapps and smoking hams. One icy winter's day, she fell asleep while cooking beside her kitchen stove and awoke to find her dress on fire. Stumbling outside her cottage, Berta doused herself down by rolling around in the snow, then put out the kitchen blaze with water from the spring in her garden.

After retiring upstairs to bed, she was discovered the next day by a friend, who took her to hospital, but Berta didn't want any fuss and soon checked herself out, eager to return home. She had, she said, some schnapps to make.

We hear this, and a string of other engaging tales about Berta, inside this very cottage, where she spent most of her 91 years before her death in 1986. Dating back to the late 17th century, this hooded thatched cottage, built of oak and stone, is a now little museum, a wonderfully preserved slice of the Black Forest, a rustic region that occupies a 6000-square-kilometre pocket of south-western Germany. The Romans labelled it "Silva Nigra" – a dark and almost impenetrable expanse of ancient forest infused with murky myths and legends. And while tales of gnomes, elves and witches still feature in the local fairytales, Schwarzwald, as the Germans call the Black Forest, is now a much more welcoming place for outsiders. Dotted with quaint villages and spa towns, the region is famed for its scenic hikes and bike rides, cuckoo clocks and cherry gateaux and, in its more far-flung rural areas, for the self-sufficient ways of life that have served the hardy locals well for centuries.

Berta's cottage aka the Bauernhausmuseum Schneiderhof.

Berta's cottage aka the Bauernhausmuseum Schneiderhof.

We're exploring this enchanting region on a shore excursion from Basel, where we'd docked on Crystal Bach, a luxury vessel that's taking us on a memorable River Rhine cruise. Within an hour of disembarking, we'd swapped Basel's urban buzz for the Black Forest, having crossed the fairly fluid Swiss-German border (I accidentally left my passport on the ship, but we didn't need to show it anyway).

Travelling past flat fields of cabbage, corn, onions and strawberries, undulating vineyards and pastoral meadows home to grazing cows, we then coursed along winding back-country roads, overshadowed by the dense canopies of beech and silver fir trees, before our coach pulled in at Berta's old abode, now the Bauernhausmuseum Schneiderhof.

A pair of horses were nibbling on the grass out front and Joe Kammerer, a former local mayor, greeted us for a tour of the cottage. One of the most distinctive things about it is the kitchen. Typical of the region's old farmhouses, it has a charred, ashy aroma, with blackened walls and a ceiling thick with soot. Most cottages had no chimneys – due to the fear of thatch catching fire – so the smoke from the stoves would drift around the buildings, helping to generate heat during the long, bleak winters. Not exactly great for your health – it's easy to imagine Berta rubbing her eyes, and coughing and spluttering in here – but the smoky atmosphere also helped preserve and flavour the cured meats that were hung in the attics above the kitchens.

After popping next door into Berta's cosy old living room, and admiring the antique wooden furniture, we take a walk on a gently sloping footpath edged by meadows and wildflowers behind the cottage, emerging at a viewpoint with panoramas that stretch over the Black Forest's rolling greenery and woodlands towards the distant Jura Mountains of Switzerland.

We're accompanied throughout today's excursion by guide Gerald Nill, who spent the best part of three decades as a journalist in the city of Dortmund, before relocating to the Black Forest with his wife Hilde. So inspired was Gerald by his new home that he recently published his first book, Once Upon a Time in the Black Forest, and he shares many his insights about the region's age-old customs, wildlife, folklore and farming. He's also keen for us to sample the local food and drink, and before dropping us back to Basel, he takes us to Kreiterhof Weinschenke​, a quaint tavern-winery-museum founded in 1809. Against an eclectic backdrop of agricultural machinery, vintage tractors and the like, we sip locally made red, white and rosé wines and tuck into platters of smoked hams, zwiebelkuchen (bacon and onion tart) and cheeses (including a deliciously creamy blue number). A pleasing way to end the tour, it's a lovely taster of the Black Forest and should tide us over nicely until tonight's dinner back on the ship.

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TRIP NOTES

Steve McKenna was a guest of Crystal River Cruises.

MORE

traveller.com.au/cruises

blackforest-tourism.com

CRUISE

Complimentary shore excursions are among the all-inclusive perks of a River Rhine voyage with Crystal. Cruises travel between Basel, Frankfurt and Amsterdam over seven, 10 and 14 days, priced from $US3490. See crystalcruises.com

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