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06.24.04
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This was our last morning at Burg Hornberg. After breakfast we packed and said our goodbyes. We drove to Rohrbach (a suburb of Heidelberg) and picked up Christa. We drove to Emmerscund to my cousin Jasmin’s apartment. We picked up Jasmin’s 3 year old son and headed off to the Schwarzwald. On the way down to the farm house where we are going to stay we decided to make a stop in Oberachern. Oberachern is where Bruce Ring’s wife Inge’s family lives. Inge and their daughter Elena are staying there for a few weeks this summer. It is the home I stayed in when I visited Deutschland last spring. It was nice to see Inge’s parents again, Paul and Uschi, and her brother Rolf. It was also really great to see Inge and Elena. The kids played in the yard and we picked and ate cherries from the orchard. Uschi went to the bakery and got some cakes and made coffee. We sat outside and visited for a little while before heading to Fischerbach. Inge and Elena drove with us in their car. We followed them to Offenberg to pick up Elena’s friend Lara. We took the back roads and it was quite a ride. We then headed down to Fischerbach. On the way we stopped and bought groceries for our stay at the farm.

The Farmhouse is named “Ramsteinerhof”. It is located in The Black Forest up in the side of a hill between Haslach and Hausach about 40 minutes south of Offenburg. The farm is owned and run by Ulrich and Brigette Müller. They have 2 boys around 10 years old and one girl about 7 years old. The farm has a main family home/barn a bake house with an apartment above it, the old pig sty that has been converted to an apartment and the Leibgedinghaus from 1608 that we are staying in. There is a vegetable garden, cow pasture, play yard, and all kinds of other farm stuff. The Müller’s bake bread in the bake house 3 days a week for market, make sausages, fruit schnapps and other goodies they take to market and sell to guests. They have fresh milk, cream and butter for sale also.

It would be very difficult to describe the Leibgedinghaus we are staying in with due justice but I will give a brief run down. It is a very rustic timber frame, straw thatched roof in-law home. The Müller’s restored it a couple years ago and have received awards from the county and state for preserving it. Upon our arrival Brigitte toured us through the house and gave us a history of the home and the remodel process. She said the contractors, had a very difficult time because the framing is not plumb or level anywhere in the home anymore. It took them a year to restore it. In the dining room is a tiled heating stove that was dated from the style of carvings in the tile to be over 200 years old. The contractors hand made wooden doors, wooden hinges and matched the multi-paned windows. Everything is held together with pegs. The house is 3 stories tall with the kitchen, living room and dining room on the main level and the bedrooms on the upper 2 levels. The kitchen has the original iron stove and stone hearth preserved next to a very modern kitchen. The floors, walls and windows in the dining and living room are extremely slanted from age and settling. The upper levels have different odd slants to them also. I will not go into any other major details because I just cannot sit here and type an appropriated description. I will need to wave my hands around and use all kinds of body and facial expressions to describe it to you in person.

After we moved our bags into the house we drove to the top of the hill and had dinner at the gasthaus in Nillhof. The view from the top was incredible. When we got back to the house after dinner everyone was pretty exhausted. The boys went to sleep almost immediately. Rebecca and I stayed awake for quite awhile just sitting and looking in amazement at how beautiful our surroundings were and how unbelievable it was to be staying in such an old home. Staying in a castle that is hundreds of years old for our first two nights in Deutschland and then staying in a farm house that is 400 years old immediately afterwards is nothing short of being in a wonderful dream. We are having one heck of a time and we have only been here for 3 days!!!

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