Germany

Germany

The road to Heidelberg, Germany, was filled with trees, trees and even more trees. Right then, we were passing through the largest forest in Germany and that is the Black Forest. You will never guess it but this Forest was at one time a place for unwanted people and convicts. Due to the Black Forest’s dense forestry, the inside is so dark that Toadstools grew in abundance. Thus whenever anyone was lost in the forest, or those convicts and unwanted people couldn’t take the loneliness anymore; they would do a self-suicidal stunt by poisoning themselves with the Toadstool.

Remember your childhood fairytales, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Greta and Snow White and the 7 dwarfs? They originate from Germany and all these stories came about because of the Black Forest. Do you realized that all 3 of these fairytales involve the woods?

According to our tour guide, Hansel & Greta had met this witch who wanted to eat them. Well, he explained that this ‘witch’ was just a normal old woman who just wanted to survive and the only way she could do that was by eating other people. As for Little Red Riding Hood, she could have met a dog instead since the people last time couldn’t differentiate between dogs and wolves. Lastly, for Snow White’s story, the 7 dwarfs could actually be people with deformities ( eg, dwarf people) because last time parents used to dump abnormal children into the forest.

These folklores are actually used to scare the children and tell them not to go anywhere near the Black Forest and in the case of Snow white, it is used to brainwash children into believing that Step-Mothers are evil. At that time divorce is taboo so they used all these stories to brainwash us kids into telling us not to divorce or remarry.

The next story is about the Heidelberg Castle. Long time ago, there was a 25 year-old King named Frederick and the people often wondered why he wasn’t married and always visited Austria. Later, they realized that he was actually in love with this Austrian Princess named Elizabeth Stewart but she was only 12 at that time. (erm…, the middle part of the story I can’t remember. I think Austria allowed Frederick to marry Elizabeth) Anyhow, on Elizabeth’s 16th birthday, Frederick wanted to surprise her with something big. Knowing that his beloved loved Roses, he got people to dig out an entire Rose garden from England and brought it into the Castle’s garden. Later he built a gate for the garden and called it Elizabeth.

We had a original Black Forest lunch and it consisted of pork knuckles( the 2 front legs of a piglet, poor thing), fries and a slice of black forest cake. Truthfully, the pork knuckles tasted awful! It tasted pretty porky and there was a strong smell. However the cake was fabulous! The top layer of cream contained some alcohol but overall it was good and authentic. After that pork knuckles scare, I am going to avoid pork for the moment.

General Info about Germany:
Black forest cake originated from Germany but I shall not tell the story of how it came about as it may bore you.
Germany has the least unemployment in Central Europe as they are the most heavily industrialized country there.
When it rains, there is a high possibility of it being acid rain. ( I was pretty freaked out whenever it rained, luckily while I was there, it only rained when I was in the coach)