Triberg im Schwarzwald (Triberg in the Blackforest)

Ruhig. naturnah. gelassen. (peaceful. close to nature. serene)

I ended my stay at the Blackforest area with a visit to Triberg on the 24th May. In a sense, Triberg was the last place which I visited before I started studying (from scratch) for my exams then. It is small but very laid back town within the heart of the blackforest area. With a population of only 5000 people, it gives the feeling of a quiet authentic German town by the woods. The serenity and natural beauty of the town is perhaps its most valuable assets, although most people would claim otherwise, saying that the two most important assets of Triberg are its world's largest cuckoo clocks (there's not 1, but 2 of the world's largest) and one of Germany's tallest waterfalls.

A view of part of the town built in between valleys and the lush Schwarzwald (blackforest)

Eine Stadt voller Kuckucksuhren (A town full of cuckoo clocks)

Indeed, the main enterprise of the city is centered upon the cuckoo clock industries. Shops and shops selling claimed to be genuinely made in Triberg cuckoo clocks, and some can be as expensive as a few hundred Euros. What attracted me was the design of each of the shops like in the few photos below.

Deutschlands höchster Wasserfall? (Germany's highest waterfall?)

The entrance to this area which is like a specially protected nature reserve of the black forest shows a sign saying that the waterfall below is Germany's highest waterfall. At a height of 496 feet, it seems to be so. However there are some claims online that there is another waterfall in Germany which is higher than this one, making Triberg's waterfall the second highest. Whatever it is, I have to say that I could actually feel the force of the gushes of the water as I stood close to it, looking at the water slapping the rocks.


And of course, unlike the nature reserve at Bukit Timah where they do not encourage you to feed the monkeys, here they actually sell a bag of peanuts for people to buy and feed the squirrels. However the squirrels here appear to be very shy. They would take the peanuts and then scramble back into the woods to eat at a distance, making it difficult to take pictures of them. And the above picture was the best I could do. After a while, I ate up the peanuts myself cos its acutally quite a handful of peanuts!

Die weltgrößte Kuckucksuhr (The world biggest cuckoo clock)

The house you see below looks like any ordinary medieval German house. However it is acutally not a house but rather a clock! Indeed, the Eingang (entrance) at the door is actually an entrance to enter the "clock", and when we went in, we saw the mechanism (gears, pendulum, etc) of the clock itself like in the 2nd picture.

If you'd understand the mechanism of the cuckoo clocks, all of them are driven by weights. Now "Gewicht" means weight in German, and the weight that drives the world's biggest cuckoo clock here is 70kg, which is actually slightly heavier than I am!

From inside the "clock", there is a backdoor to the backgarden, where this is how the clock above acutally looks like. We were lucky to arrive at 15minutes before 1pm, so we could actually see the bird cuckoo-ing. However the bird appears to be very dark, and so its not very well captured by the video. But check out the woodcuter and his axe! I did not notice it there until I played the video at home.

And we also saw some cows along the way too. Moo.

What I like about Triberg apart from its serenity is that actually this place is supposed to be touristic but apparently not so. And I kinda liked it although the township would definitely want more tourists. Morever the train services to Triberg arrive only once an hour compared to more touristic places like Heidelberg. But places like Triberg by the blackforest are really cool because they do not give you the impression that you are in a "conventional" German town.

http://picasaweb.google.com/vintagebin/24MayTriberg