Easter In The Black Forest
By Eric Greenwood.
(Read before The Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club, Nov.15th, 1910).
Easter of 1910 was getting near, and we, i.e. the Editor and myself, had made no plans. We spoke of “Lakeland as usual” – and thought of dripping slabs and icebound chimneys, of crowded inns and “cold storage” bedrooms! We spoke of Scotland – and thought of Skye in rain, Schiehallion in storm, Arran in mist, the Cairngorms in blizzard, Ben Nevis in fog, Glencoe in spate! We spoke of Wales – and thought of wet; of Dartmoor – and thought of damp; of the Roman Wall even – and thought of ruins and rheumatism! No! We wanted sunlight and snow, and some ski-ing if possible. At this “tweeny” season of the year, the snow is practically gone at the Swiss “Winter-Sport” places, but we were told there was still some left in Norway and the Black Forest. Norway pulled hard, but beds are as bad to come by at that time as at Wasdale itself; besides, those six hundred nautical miles lay – or more probably rolled – between; so we decided for the Feldberg in the Black Forest. It meant taking the whole of Easter week, and a two days’ journey each way, but no matter: we would have a week’s sunshine, and blow the expense! As it turned out, we need not have been so “flush with our brass,” any more than the nervous passenger in the runaway gig, when he said he would give five pounds to be out of it, and was told by the driver, a Yorkshire man, that he would be out “for nowt” in two minutes. The stay-at-homes in fact had ten days of halcyon weather, whilst ours was only very piebald. But to get on!
The Schwarz-Wald, or Black Forest, as everyone knows, lies in the south-west corner of Germany, where the Rhine after running west from the Lake of Constance turns north at Basle; and is not, as I used to picture it, a level tract of dense pine forests, with an occasional wolf or bear thrown in to keep things lively, and here and there wreaths of blue smoke curling up from lonely charcoal burners’ fires; but a jumble of rounded hills from 1,000 ft. to 5,000 ft. above sea level, with wide stretches of pine woods and pleasant green valleys: a peaceful land and a happy, with good roads, clear running trout streams, prosperous homesteads and tidy villages; charming in its way, but lacking the sombre solitude of Scotland or the finished perfection of Lakeland.
We arrived at Freiburg-im-Breisgau (so called to distinguish it from the Swiss city of Fribourg), the , “jumping off” place for the Feldberg, at 7-30 p.m. on Good Friday, by way of the Hook of Holland, Rotterdam, Cologne, Mainz, Mannheim and Carlsruhe, an interesting and comfortable journey.
Freiburg lies just where the lowest foothills of the Black Forest merge in the broad level valley of the Rhine, and is a well built city of 76,000 inhabitants; a happy blending of old and new German life without the rush and commercialism of the larger industrial centres.
We spent an hour or two next morning on the sights – the glorious Minster with its lacework miracle of a spire; the new Theatre, a huge pile built of town funds at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds sterling; the pleasant streets and attractive shops – and at 11 a.m. set off for Titi-See by the mountain railway that runs up the Höllenthal (anglicé Hell Valley) and across the southern part of the Black Forest to Donaueschingen. The sun was just breaking through the mist as our little engine puffed its way across the flat meadows up into the narrow gorge; creeping alongside the road that was just built when Marie Antoinette traversed it on the way to her new home; and, where there was not room, diving into the hillside and coming up further on to breathe; past the pleasantly named Himmelreich (Heaven’s Realm); past Hirschsprung, where a stag is said to have leapt across the valley – and it must be true, for the animal is there now, perched on a rock and made of wood, “as large as life and twice as natural”; past Hinterzarten and other little hamlets, to Titi-See, where the valley broadens out to hold a lake about the size of Derwentwater, set in rounded pine-clad hills. We had arranged to spend the night here, as we could not get beds at the Feldberg until Monday, and made our way accordingly to a big hotel, opened we suspected for our coming, and as comfortable as could be expected under the circumstances; which means it was about as cheerful as a similar place in Lakeland would be out of the season. Nor did the grey sky and the snow-patched hills lift things very much.
We spent the afternoon carrying our ski up the road to the top of the neighbouring hills for practice on what snow there was; but it was poorish fun straddling about the forest drives and young plantations, and the best part of it was the view to the east, of cosy hamlets and green valleys and swelling hills. We felt, and almost were, on the watershed of Europe, for the Danube rises not far away, whilst the waters of our valley find their way to the Rhine. Coming down through the woods, the Editor found what he said was a newly killed chamois, but as that animal is as rare in the Black Forest as snakes in Iceland, it must have been a roe-deer.
I ought to say here that the Editor’s brother, an expert, by comparison with us in the art of ski-ing, had come with us to put us in the way of it; for the Editor’s experiences had been confined to a twisted ankle at St. Moritz, and mine to a strained arm in Norway and a few hours on frozen roads at home, the latter performance as painful as it was scratchy.
The Feldberg (4,900 ft.) is the highest point in the range of hills surrounding the head of the Bärenthal, a valley running westward from the Titi-See back in the direction of Freiburg and more or less parallel to the Höllenthal, and as we had already exhausted the attractions of Titi-See and thought there might be just a chance of getting beds at the Feldberg-hof, we set off at 830 next morning by the post-wagen or diligence, really a waggonette for six, at first along the lake side and then up the open valley past the Adler-hof to where the pine woods begin.
We had not got far into them before we came to snow, and changing into a sleigh, continued through avenues of fine upstanding pines with spreading branches and tangled underwood, a wealth of green no doubt in summer, but now all piled up in billows of cushioned snow.
And so at noon we came to the Feldberg-hof on the outskirts of the forest and at the foot of rounded uplands, a yard deep in snow, just in fact:
Where the white van of snow
Bursts through the sentinel grey pines
To shatter on the serried lines
Of fir woods far below.
The hotel is a picturesque building in the Black Forest style of architecture, with high pitched roof and dormer windows, a vast improvement on the barrack-like Swiss caravanserais that spoil so many views, and worthy of mention in ” Heimatschutz,” the charming organ of the newly founded League for the Cultivation of Beauty in Alpine Countries. It has been twice enlarged and the new wing is the last word in hotel architecture: spacious dining room; wainscoted hall, with open inglenook and drinking fountain; fin de siècle drawing room in blue; “comfy” bedrooms; spacious cellaring with skittle alley, biergarten and ski-repairing room and, above all, “central heating,” which means a hot water coil in your bedroom on which you can air your clothes, a boon that appeals to the first instincts of a Yorkshire man. I have often thought that every inn in Lakeland ought to have a drying room – but this by the way.
It did not take us long to find out that we had arrived at perhaps the busiest time of the whole year, and our modest request for beds was met by a polite “Absolutely impossible! Not even on the billiard table” Indeed, we learnt later that a score guests had to sleep that night in the skittle alley.
The bell had just rung for mittag-essen, the principal meal of the day, and the guests came flocking in, each with a pair of ski, which they stuck upright in the snow around the stunted saplings in front of the Hotel, till you might have thought that ‘Barman wood had come to Dunsinane.’ So many were they that they quite changed the scenery. You could hardly see the sky for the ski!
We joined the hungry throng, which filled both the new dining room and the old and the restaurant as well; and a jovial crew they were: all, or nearly all, German, and all full of the joie de vivre and freemasonry of a common sport; glad apparently to crawl for a time from ‘ under the “mailey-phist” and spread themselves in their own manner away from the reproving eye of the “correct” English. They had come not only singly, but in families and battalions, he’s and she’s, and all skiers. Our next neighbours were especially lively, drinking health’s in a mixture of claret and champagne out of a decanter with a neck a yard long, which would have delighted Æsop’s stork, and bursting out at times into cries of ” Ski-heil!” the password of the craft, and weird imitations of American college cries, in which “Ninety nine!” and “Anna Maria!” played the chief part.
I may say here that the feeding throughout was on the German plan, simple and massive, and full of quaint surprises. But the mountain air was a sauce for every dish, and the trim waitresses saw to it that you did not lack a second help. In fact the Editor was heard to remark that he found stooping down after lunch to buckle on his ski the hardest part of the business.
Our German fellow guests were friendliness itself, and “Am Tag” and “Dreadnought” were words never heard; but it was pleasant all the same to find one English group, consisting of a lady and her daughter and a retired Indian colonel, whom the Expert had met at Montana a few weeks previously, and a retired Major, brother of a member of the Club. We owed much of the pleasure of our stay to their kind offices.
We went out after lunch on to the snow-covered hill which rises, above the Hotel, away and away in rolling slopes up to a rounded top, crowned with a stone obelisk or denkmal to the memory of Bismarck, and found the snow dotted all over with ski-runners in every stage of development, from the crawling caterpillars like ourselves, cautiously sliding into the gently sloping hollows, to the glorious butterflies swooping down, as it were from the very heavens, mostly alone, but sometimes in troops of half-a-dozen, hand in hand – the very poetry of motion – and sometimes one on a single ski, carrying the other over his shoulder, like Thor with his hammer.
In dress, the men had broken away from the loden cloth suits of sub-fusc hue, so familiar in Tirol; and tweed suits of English cut, white sweaters and round woollen turbans were common; but the correct uniform was one copied from the Norsk – blue peaked cap and serge suit, coat buttoned up to the throat and trousers made full round the knees and tight below, with knitted worsted scarves of primitive colours round the ankles; the result being not unlike a glorified engine driver. But no lodgment has yet been allowed to the fast-spreading heresy of ” evening dress,” and the Major told us that once, when he had got his other coat wet and appeared in a dinner jacket, he was met with a universal groan of dismay, which only dissolved into cheers when he solemnly stood up and revealed a pair of unmistakable tweed “continuations.”
The ladies, throwing convention aside, have imitated the men; and though it was a little startling at first to see a pretty girl in tweed coat and knickerbockers and white sweater, it soon became so much a matter of course that any addition would have seemed out of place.
But that day we could only take a wistful look into our Paradise, and then, leaving our heavy luggage, had, perforce, to go down again to the humble Adler-hof which we had passed on our way up. The Expert, guided by the Colonel, made his way through the woods; whilst the Editor and myself, not having yet got our ski legs, clattered painfully down the hard frozen road, catching many a fall by the way and learning something of the wayward habits of ‘the fair, the chaste and unexpressive she’ – unexpressive herself perhaps, but ofttimes causing her votaries to be anything but!
The Adler-hof we remember as one of the many pleasant wayside inns we have found in our mountain rambles, and we ate our wiener-schnitzel– the “ham and eggs” of Germany – and the saucerful of stewed fruits that accompanied it, in the common living room; and snoozled against the warm stove in the corner and read Shakespeare in great content. A stove may not be so picturesque as our coal-eating open fireplaces, but its other advantages are manifold.
Our English friends at the Feldberg ‘phoned us during the evening that there was going to be a jumping show next day, so at 8 a.m. we started back carrying our ski and riicksacks with us. It was a glorious morning with a keen frost and hot sun, and we were not sorry to put our loads on a sleigh which we overtook on the road.
The jumping stand, about ten minutes walk from the Hotel, was a steep, narrow clearing in the pinewoods leading down to the “take off” or a level platform, built up on its lower sides with an eight foot wall of timber, the edge indicated by upright poles, with the “run off” below, at first almost level, and then sloping down at an appalling angle -33° to be exact -easing off into a level amphitheatre, shut in with pinewoods; and, beyond, a far spread vista of valleys and hills. From above the “take-off ” the eye travelled across the hidden slope to the pinewoods and the hills on the horizon.
We had not long to wait. A signal from the judge, and presently down the clearing comes a ski runner, steady and swift as a gliding hawk, body erect, outstretched arms moving gently up and down, till he reaches the take off, and then, with a heave of the body, he is off the ground and up in the air, body stiffened, arms outstretched, feet together, soaring forward to the horizon. For a moment you hold your breath and can almost hear the rush of his body against the air, then the momentum dies away, his ski smack down on to the slope and he is shooting away towards the woods, but, with a swift Telemark swing, turns sharp and stops; the distance he has cleared is measured and announced by the judge, the slope is trodden out by two men on ski stepping down it horizontally, and another competitor comes down. But the snow was not good, and they all fell, some on alighting, in a wild smother of snow and ski; the others when turning, so none of the jumps could be reckoned as a record. One of them, Herr Dorendahl of Norway, cleared 42 métres, (45 ½ yards) – the record jump, I believe, is one of 46 métres by Harold Schmidt. Sometimes a ski came off, – they are fastened loosely on purpose-and one man had to chase his into the woods below.
From the Feldberg-hof, ski-runs can be made in every direction, some to the summits of the neighbouring hills, and others down through the steep woods into the valleys below. There are no glaciers or rock peaks, such as one gets in Switzerland, and no nights to spend in ice-filled huts, with the chance of frost-bite in the morning. Everything is laid out on the comfortable German plan, with lines of poles over the bare uplands and red flags hung from the tree branches to mark the way, and one can always reckon on getting home for supper.
Our first ski-run was taken that same afternoon, under the guidance of the Colonel and the Major, to the Herzog-horn, a hill two miles away. We found it fairly easy going, though the sun was hot, across the common in front of the hotel, up a steep hill-side and over rolling downs to the little watch-tower on the summit, where the caretaker dispenses tea and lemonade, with a fine view across the Rhine Valley, including, when clear, the Oberland peaks. On the way back we stopped for tea with the ladies at a small hotel and arrived home as the sun was setting in crimson glory and the snow hardening under a keen frost. Sunsets are a speciality of the Feldberg and we were asked to believe that the guests sometimes left their evening meal to go out and watch them!
The crowd had already thinned out a bit, but there were plenty left, and we had a Servants’ Ball, at which the Editor worked hard for the honour of Yorkshire, though he did not venture on the “Burgschen” Dance – I think that is the name – in which you put your hands on your partner’s waist and lift her as near the ceiling as the laws of gravity will allow.
We spent the next morning on the snow slopes, practising runs and stems and swings and falls, in which last we acquired some proficiency, and, as Mr. Assheton Smith remarked, “Any fool can fall, it takes a wise man to know how to fall!” The snow was furrowed in every direction with frozen ski-tracks and not in the easiest condition for beginners.
But, inefficient as we were, the good Colonel, thinking I suppose that the best way of teaching a boy to swim is to throw him into deep water, insisted on our joining in at paper-chase in which he and the Expert were to be hares. They started at 3 p.m. with bags of confetti for scent – as if their ski-tracks would not have been sufficient – and at 3-5 p.m. we followed with the ladies, as the “slow pack,” and five minutes later came the “fast pack” of more expert runners. Of the next two hours I will try to write calmly. At first the track led over easy ground, but soon, mounted a steep slope of frozen snow and turned down into a still steeper pinewood. The path, when there was one, was narrow and tortuous, the trees generally grew just where you wanted to go, and if there was a clear run in front, it was certain to be steep and hard frozen and have another runner in front, who was equally certain to want to sit down in it just as you had started. How I longed for my trusty ice-axe to cut a few steps! But when on ski you must do as ski do – or don’t – and go as ski go – or gon’t -“sometimes in the pretty and sometimes in the rough,” as the golfers say, but always downhill, which was lucky, as the hares had also gone that way. So I blundered on: sometimes I was on top, sometimes the ski; making heavy weather of it, but secretly comforted to ‘find the “whipper-in,” a tall Frenchman and practised runner, in nearly as big trouble as myself. I might say in extenuation that my ski, bought years ago in Norway, were a foot longer than the present fashion and by so much the less adapted for such difficult country. To crown all, a strap, broke, and I had to walk humbly down the last bit into the valley, where it was some consolation to hear the hares had been caught by an active young Englishman, one of a party of four or five who were cramming with a tutor at Freiburg and had come up for a short holiday. In winter, they said, it is possible to run from the Feldberg to your own doorstep in that city.
The valley bottom was clear of snow and we had a short walk down to the little hotel at Pfahl, and afternoon tea’ on a balcony overlooking a tiny trout stream, as the sun was setting behind the wooded hills. The return journey was one long grind up the valley, and once more we traversed the hard frozen snow under the crimson rays of sunset and the cold pallor of dusk.
The weather-wise had predicted snow for next day, and, sure enough, we woke to find a snow-storm in full blast. In the Alps we should never have dreamt of making an expedition in such weather, but that is where the Feldberg scores, as you can always have a run through the woods; and our English friends never thought for a moment of giving up their projected trip to a village in one of the adjoining valleys.
We went with them; crossing over the low hill at the back of the hotel and the high road, and along a track cut out of the side of the hill overhanging the woods, to a cross-road called the Zweisee-blick, where we ought to have seen two lakes, but didn’t, as the storm was too thick. Then through a winding path in the woods and down the bare hill side beyond to Neu-glashütte, a miserable looking farmstead, where we tried to persuade the women to give us lunch, but they were evidently frightened by our numbers and hungry looks and pleaded poverty of anything but eggs and not many of them. So we went on down the valley road to Alt-glashütte and found a comfortable room with warm stove and good cooking – wiener-schnitzel, of course, and omelettes-at the Stag. We could not help making odious comparisons with the chilly “best parlour” and “cold beef and pickles” which would have been our probable fate in a similar inn at home, and we lingered long in that cosy ‘spot, warming our backs and drying our sweaters against the stove, whilst the Expert taught a young Austrian officer, one of the party, the mysteries of the Sword Dance; and we only turned out into the storm outside when we were compelled. The new snow had made the ~ running vastly easier, but at the same time it balled so much under the ski that we were forced to take them off and walk. But the pilgrim on ski, like that other pilgrim who boiled his peas, has a. simple remedy-wax – which works wonders; and perhaps our pleasantest memory is the velvety feel of the snow as we ran gently home through the woods. If a swoop down hill is the Beethoven and jumping the Wagner of the sport, this may well be called its Chopin.
But our short holiday was coming to its end and we had to be in Freiburg next evening to catch the train home on Friday. It was snowing harder than ever when we got up, the window sills were full of drifts, and it looked as if we should have to abandon our plan of sending the luggage off by post and running down to meet it at some station on the way to Freiburg. But, as I said before, weather does not count up there, and we only modified our plans so far as to go by the woods instead of over the Feldberg itself, where indeed a blizzard seemed to be raging. So after lunch we set off with our friends for Hinterzarten, the next station below Titi-See, giving ourselves a bare two and a half hours, too little the croakers said, and they were nearly correct, for this is what happened.
Turning over the hill behind the hotel and plunging into the steep woods below, we twisted and turned down its hollows, all choked with new snow, where steering was difficult and gave me at one place a bad twist, and at length struck a path where the going was easier -though with several deep cross-ditches, traps for the unwary, and at one place a fallen tree, under which we had to duck – and came out at length into open ground at the head of the Barenthal, where we took a farewell snapshot of the party and set off down the valley.
But the wax had by this time ceased to do its office and the chariot wheels drave heavily. Shuffling along with the snow balling underfoot at every step is worse than having no ski at all and we had perforce to take them off, at least the Editor and I did. His were short and could be carried, bucketwise, by using the sticks for handles, one end through the straps and the ring at the other end over the point, but mine were too long and had to go on my shoulder. The Expert kept his on nearly all the way, on principle I suppose, or perhaps his wax was better.
We hurried on, sometimes walking, sometimes running, until we came to where the narrow track, which had led through fields and coppices, turned over a low depression into the next valley into a road and presently brought us in view of the straggling village of Hinterzarten. It looked a long way off through the storm and time was “of the essence of the contract,” for the train was nearly due. Some peasants met our anxious enquiries with a genial “Still a good quarter of an hour – and not an easy road to find at that!” We hurried on and ten minutes later met a ski-runner carrying up his ski, and again got the same reply. “Thank goodness,” we gasped, “We are keeping up with it,” and staggered on.
We blundered on into the main street of the village, the blizzard worse than ever, the summer hotels all shut up, not a soul out of doors, the smoke curling from the train as it stood in the station and the few passengers who had come by it toddling homewards to supper and stopping ,to smile on our efforts. I had already resigned myself to a three hours wait for the next train, and a cold and hungry arrival at Freiburg, but the Editor vowed he had not run every morning at home to catch the 8-41 a.m. for nothing, and sprinted on, his nailless boots slipping and landing him now and then in the snow-filled ditch, faint but pursuing. We pushed up to the doorway, burst through the scandalized officials, and rushed on to the platform, only to see the train moving out. The guard’s van stood invitingly open in continental fashion; the Editor tried to bundle his ski into it and the Expert to board the platform at the end of the carriage. “Strengst verboten!” shouted one guard; “Jump in quickly” said another; “Hands off, at your peril!” roared the station master – and all of them in the resplendent uniform of State railway officials. We hesitated and drew back, and then a strange thing – for Germany – happened! The train slowed down and we were bundled in! As we threw ourselves on the hard seats of the steam-heated carriage, hot but happy, the Editor exclaimed “Saved by the skin of our ski, and the great German Empire held up for three minutes! Now let us go home!” Which we did, next day, of course in perfect ski weather; the big towns, full of strong German life, reminding us of our own busy homes in the North, and, on the Dutch frontier, the assiduous guard who looked in and remarked ” Gentlemen, I am sorry, I am desolate, but I leave you here” completed the illusion.
In conclusion, and in reply to some who will say it is hardly worth while going so far for so little, I would plead that we cannot all take holiday in February, the best time for Swiss winter sports, and the chances of getting any ski-ing in England are so uncertain, and the sport so comparatively poor when got, that a place like the Feldberg, available at Easter, is very welcome, especially when the accommodation is good and cheap – you can stay en pension for 7s. 6d. a day – the opportunities of learning the art so great and the journey so easy. That the surroundings are German and not English is, perhaps an advantage, and may help a little – and every little helps – to foster a better acquaintance with the good points of our German cousin and with things “made in Germany.”