When the breakfast room was quiet, I swiped a couple of bread rolls and Nutella for later! Afterwards, we went back to our room and prepared for the day ahead. We went on our way to the Black Forest Open Air Museum, which was quite fun, if a little on the hot side! There were a number of old buildings here, and everything was made with wood. So much so in fact, you could smell the wood in the air. It must be affected by the sun warming it up which must release the natural resins. The buildings were really quite cool, which we were thankful for on a day like today! It was incredibly warm, we thought in the mid - high 20s (Centigrade).
This Museum was based on a traditional farmstead, and is comprised of a number of buildings which are a combination of original, restored and moved from other areas into one place - much like the livings Museums we have in the UK like Beamish and the Black Country Museum. The Black Forest Museum was steeped in tradition, where we leant that the unmarked ladies wore hats with giant red pompoms on them, whilst the married women wore hats with black ones. We also discovered that none of these buildings had a hole in the roof as a chimney of sorts - the kitchens would have filled with soot, and it would have billowed out of the building. But they did hang up their meat and sausages which were smoked in the process. Some of these building was absolutely huge, with the cellar being built first to keep it damp and cool, and the house basically being built on the top entirely (most of the time) in wood. e loft space in these things was monumental, and the gable ends almost touching the ground. And plenty of balconies...!After doing half the buildings, we sat down for lunch. I was a little peckish so I thought I would order a salad.......but it turned out to be quite monstrous and almost completely covered in vinegar! I like vinegar but this was ridiculous. I might as well have been eating straight out of 2 pickle jars. Pickled cucumber, pickled cabbage, pickled turnip, pickled carrot, pickled French beans. The only thing which wasn't pickled were the potatoes, tomato and ham. The lettuce was also smothered in dressing.....so much for the light bite and healthy food! Mathew ordered a bread covered bratwurst but didn't realise it until it came, by which time he had already tucked in to what he thought he had ordered, which was a diced sausage chutney with bread which came with compliments from the Chef, as we later discovered!
Needless to say I didn't finish my gigantic salad! We continued on with the rest of the Museum, but we were both flagging because it was so hot in the sun, but nice and breezy in the shade. Eventually we had finished, and we went into the shop before leaving, still baffled by the lack of actual souvenirs anyone would really want to buy. I was surprised that there wasn't much in the way of chocolate and biscuits actually...or perhaps that's just because I'm used to seeing those at National Trust and English Heritage places in the UK.
After we left the Museum, we decided to go for it - we had some Black Forest Gateaux! There was a little area just outside the Museum, of eateries and tacky souvenirs. We sat down in one of the eateries which was playing dodgy music, bad versions of songs released in the 80s is what it sounded like! The cake came and went, it didn't last long! It was very, light and the sponge cake was more cinnamon flavoured rather than chocolate. I imagine there are probably a number of recipes for this cake.After this, we went for a scenic drive to a few "viewpoints" where we took photos and returned back to the hotel. As I was online again, we took a look at the websites for the places to eat in Alpirsbach, and found two in English which saved us a lot of trouble translating! The others we weren't so lucky with. We went to the same place as we had done the night before to lay it safe, and investigate the others tomorrow. I decided to buy app which is supposed to translate anything you put before the iPad, but when we tried it on the menu which we already had a translation for, we ended up with numerous homemade spatulas, cathedral baskets and refractive powder. Hmmmm....not very appetising...!
This evening also, thanks to the translation, I found a very useful fact - the restaurants said they can do smaller portions for a 2 euro discount. So now I know this is possible, I shall be asking for small portions everywhere we go! Tonight I had Zander (Perch) again, and it was very nice indeed, even though it was swimming in the herb butter. Mathew had a pork steak with very nice potatoes. I have to say that this evenings meals have been rather tasty, manly because we've been able to taste the actual food rather than finding it smothered in something which overpowers everything. It was like I had rediscovered cucumbers, red peppers and cherry tomatoes!
Back at the hotel we chilled out again, and thought that after breakfast tomorrow morning, we could take a stroll around the town ad take a photo of the two restaurants which we don't have English translations for. One reason was because one of them had the menu on a box just above one of the tables. We could look at these tomorrow and translate them ourselves with the phrase book.
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