September 23

After yet another great breakfast courtesy of Inge (just laugh at anyone who calls the breakfast offerings at an American hotel "Continental"), Inge, Dr. Rust, Erik, and I hopped in the car and drove over to a nearby park, where we explored a really neat cave. We can't remember the name of the cave right now - we'll ask Dr. Rust. Anyway, the cave is part of the same system as the Blautopf and Urspring. All the springs and caves in the area are connected, whether the connections are big enough for people to crawl through or not. They've done some tests with colors in the water. I think soap in the water would be better.

Checking out the "cauliflower" stalactites. Do I always look so slack-jawed?

The cave was drippy and wet and pretty chilly, so deep in the earth. We climbed down, down, down on ladders, traveled laterally for a ways, and then climbed back up, coming out at a different spot from where we descended. Dr. Rust stayed up top in the park while Inge went with us. Dr. Rust had bad memories of being put through the paces in this cave by his boys two years ago. I guess they rushed through the whole thing in about 15 minutes, while we took almost an hour. He said he was pretty sore for days after that! Inge was happy to be down there with us, though, since she's a science teacher. Things like stalactites and erosion really get her going, though she can't stand the English names for a lot of them. German is much more scientific, you see.

These stalactites look like frozen water.

Because of the day before at the cathedral, Erik got a lot of ribbing for actually making it all the way into and out of the cave. Poor guy. Dr. Rust had collected some beech nuts to show us. I ate one. Apparently, the Germans ground them for flour during the tight times after both world wars.

We stopped for a few minutes to check out the park's year-round ropes course. It seemed like a really nice one. Inge brings groups from Urspring's sister schools here regularly. Erik and I should do something like that sometime.

We went back to the Banholtzers' place and sat in the garden until dinner. Dr. Rust and I paid Schildy a visit at his turtle pen. Schildy was initially a bit worried but decided that we were okay. Inge and her mom fixed us a really good dinner (Germans eat their big meal at noon), including lots of home-grown and locally-grown stuff. We had rouladen, a chanterelle mushroom dish, mashed potatoes, wine, etc.

After lunch, it was time for us to take leave of the family and head to the train stations. Inge's mom was really sad to see us go and gave both of us big hugs. Our train ride through to the Black Forest was really beautiful.

We checked in at our nice hotel and decided we probably couldn't afford it for supper. So we took a walk and checked out Kirchzarten. It's a pretty small place, so our walk took about 10 minutes.

A stork! We saw this guy and his wife (or perhaps the other way around) a lot while we were in town. Dr. Rust says that in his hometown, everyone has a platform on top of the house to encourage stork nesting. Cool.

We managed to find a good and cheap restaurant - Spritzen Bier- und Weinstube. As could be expected from the name, they have tasty beer. Erik had new wine, something he'd tried the night before. It's the grape-harvesting season here, and you can get some of the newly-pressed, not totally fermented wine. It's sweet and cloudy. We spent about three hours eating and talking and decided to come back the next night.