Sasbachwalden

We set off yesterday morning from Roissy-en-France (near Charles de Gaulle Airport) for Germany, but not before spending at least 20 minutes driving around the very small village looking for a pastry shop that I had found on Google.  We had yet to have any kind of French pastry, and we didn't want to leave France (at least temporarily) without having had a pain au chocolat - a favorite of both me and Mark.

It looked relatively simple on Google Maps to get from our hotel to the patisserie.  Mais non.  We either drove right by it or totally missed the street.  Enfin, we had to consult the GPS which mercifully came with our car.  Even after it said we had arrived at our destination, however, we still had to look around before we finally found the place a block away from where the GPS said it should be.

BUT!  We were rewarded with two pain au chocolats, a pain au raisin, a chocolate Millefeuille (OMG, it was so good), and two baguette sandwiches to take on the road.

The drive was uneventful.  After driving through stop and go traffic a few miles from the airport, we got on the A4 expressway that led us to our turn-off just north of Strasbourg.  We crossed the Rhein there, and were then only about 10 kilometers from Sasbachwalden, our destination.

Why Sasbachwalden?  Some of my ancestors were from there and from another nearby village, Lauf.  One of my great-great-grandfathers, Lorenz Bauer, was born in Lauf and emigrated to the United States with his parents when he was a little boy.  It had taken me 20 years of research to find his birthplace, and I never dreamed I would someday visit these two villages, but there I was yesterday, soaking up the atmosphere in which they lived.

Lorenz Bauer
Great-Great-Grandfather

Clara (Bauer) Kettler
Great-Grandmother

Elmer Kettler
Grandfather

Lenora Kettler Broom
Mother

As we drove into Sasbachwalden, which is on the western slopes of the Black Forest, above the Rhein River valley, we could immediately see why the town had been named one of Germany's most beautiful villages.

As we stood on the main street and looked around, it was difficult to know where to start taking pictures.  Every house was quaint. In all directions, we could see hills planted with vineyards and trees.

The picture immediately above is of our hotel, the Hotel Engel Gasthaus.  We parked across the street and walked up to the door in the center of the picture, but it was locked.  We looked around but didn't see any other way to enter.  This was when we were first confronted with the language barrier.  No one here, we were to realize, speaks English.  It was baffling.  

Finally, some women sitting across the street said we needed to ring the buzzer next to the door.  I did so, and after a few rings, a woman's voice came through the speaker.  I then uttered the line I had been practicing since leaving Paris:  "Ich habe ein Zimmer reserviert."  (I have reserved a room.)  The woman's voice said something, then was gone.  We waited.  Nothing happened.  No one appeared.  I rang again.  No answer.  Then, across the street, we saw a woman walking towards us with keys in her hand.  She had come to let us in.

We managed to get through the formalities of "checking in," which turned out to be her simply finding our name on her list.  She pointed to my name and asked for confirmation that that was me.  "Yes."  "Zwei person?" she queried (two people).  "Da," I replied, then realizing that was Russian, not German, I added, "Ya."  "Hmmm," she replied.  She pointed to my name again.  "Zwei person," she again said, looking at us.  I imagined that she was trying to do the mental gymnastics to understand why two men were checking into a room with only one bed.

She then beckoned us upstairs and unlocked our room for us.  She went in and again said, "Zwei person."  "Ya," I replied.  Apparently satisfied that no mistake had been made, she smiled and left.

Our room

The deck off of our room

View from our deck

View directly across from our deck

After lugging all our stuff upstairs, we went for a bit of a walk around the village.

War Memorial

We then went back to the hotel and got dressed to take what turned out to be a 17-mile ride down through some villages below us, then south for the first leg of the ride we were planning to take the following day.

Entering Lauf, Lorenz Bauer's birthplace and home of his ancestors for generations

Church in Sasbach where Lorenz's mother was baptized

We rode through countryside interspersed with houses and small villages.  Along the way, we passed corn fields, cherry orchards and other fields, passing the occasional tractor.

Lauf wasn't much to look at, but some of the other little villages were quite pretty.  I enjoyed seeing the Catholic Church in Sasbach where Lorenz Bauer's mother was baptized in the early years of the 19th century.  It was open, and I went in to take a few pictures (taking my cycling shoes off).  It had a lovely baroque interior.

Large painting on the ceiling

From Sasbach, we rode through Achern, then up toward Sasbachwalden, turning south to ride to Kappelrodeck.  Gorgeous countryside with terraced vineyards.  The landscape was so quaint it was almost surreal.

Back at the hotel, we had drinks on the deck and ate the sausage and cheese that we had bought to have as appetizers, watching the sun setting over the rooftops of Sasbachwalden.

Then off to dinner at a local eatery, where we had hefeweisen with our - you guessed it - schnitzel, writing post cards to the kids as we waited for our food to arrive.

It had been another good day.