Angelstein

Today I was visiting my Dad. He lives 20 minutes away from my Mom. I posted my last entry about Udo while I was fixing the computers in my Mom's practice. But now I'm back in Stuttgart.

Dad, his girlfriend and I went on a 3-hour walk into the forest. He still lives in the village in the Schwarzwald ("Black Forest", a famous wooded mountain range in my state, known worldwide for its coockoo clocks, honey, Black Forest ham, Pork Knuckle and Black Forest gateau (Black Forest cake). It was also the setting for many fairy tales popularized by the Brothers Grimm), still the same tiny village where I spent the first 20 years of my life. It's surrounded by a deep forest that goes down to the small cities in the valleys. We were walking around the village in the forest, and I took some pictures of the area where I was playing when I was a kid. Sorry for the poor quality. I didn't take my camera with me, so I used the crappy camera on my cell phone.

Everywhere in this forest there are huge sandstone rocks. Unfortunately the picture doesn't really show how big they are. This one is about 5 or 6 yards high. This area is called Angelstein, when I was a little kid, Gramps and I were taking walks here very often. I haven't been at the Angelstein in about 6 years, and Gramps died 22 years ago. But today I remembered all the "scary" stories he told me about bears and wolves.

This is a little path that goes up the hills. And these sandstone rocks are everywhere. But these are smaller ones.

Unfortunately you can't see how steep the acclivity really is. Crappy cam doesn't show it correctly. By the way, why are slopes on pictures always less impressive than in real life? I was so disappointed when I saw the pictures that I took in San Francisco after having them developed. Even Market Street looked perfectly level.
And again, this rock is more than two times higher than me.

The tiny path goes through this sandstone gate. You can't bypass it easily, on the right there is a fucking huge sandstone and a steep slope going up, and on the left a steep slope as well--but going down. When I was a little kid I was afraid that it will fall down while I'm underneath.

In the picture above there is a small cave. Again, it looks smaller on the picture. But you can walk in there, it's a small room inside. When we were kids we used to play in that cave. Today I wouldn't go in there anymore. Now I'm afraid the "little" stone falls down while I'm in there.

Here's another shot of the same cave. The plate says that the people of my village went to this cave for shelter during wars. It also says that in 1796, while the French were fighting against my state, a woman gave birth to a baby in that cave.

And this is me between all those rocks. Wait, am I a rock star? Sorry, that joke was too cheap...

... and here's another funny stone--which is much bigger than it seems. They are very impressive, but I agree, on the pictures they look like pebbles.


This is the ancient cairn that marks the border between my village and the next city.

I think the signature on this cairn is quite funny. There is a W to indicate the side of the village. I wonder what it means. Wilderness? Wald (German for forest)? And on the left there's a image of a house. This obviously means city. Neat.
As if we didn't have houses back then...

There was no snow, but it was very cold. Everything was frozen, the leaves made funny noises, because they were wet and frozen, and it was nice to come back home, where a homey fire in the fireplace was waiting for us in the livingroom.