Sankt Peter in the Black Forest
21 May 2018
We chose to drive the tiny roads through the forest toward France instead of taking the highway. We really love those woods, villages, and the small roadways that wind through them all. Sometimes there is no need to really rush through places like those. We passed under high tree canopies, looked out across brilliant green fields, and even found a farmer selling amazing fresh strawberries from his car. The area is just so vibrant, and even with the constant cloud cover and intermittent sprinkling of rain, we can’t help but just be happy. One day I tell you, one day we will take extensive hikes though these trails.
One of the difficulties of driving through the Black Forest - and through Alsace too, maybe elsewhere as well - is that lines that look like roads show on the maps. Everywhere, the maps show roads. Some of these are actually roads, some are trails, and some are roads technically but are private or otherwise no entry spots. Yet they are all on the map as roads. I remember last time in Alsace looking for a castle where we drove a good bit along a road we shouldn’t have even been on! The signs could be confusing at first, as they do have the typical “do not enter” signs like we do, but also another sign with just a plain red circle that means “no access” or “no vehicles” (we, uh… didn’t know about the red circle last time). In the US, we would use the “do not enter” sign for both here, or simply a sign that spells it out. In addition, the “no access” sign doesn’t really come off as being a forbidding type of sign if you aren’t familiar with it. It is very similar to the “no parking” sign, but without the cross-out through the circle… which almost makes it inviting, as if it was contrary to “no parking”. A red circle sign can also forbid whatever is in the circle, such as a red circle around the number 70 means over 70 kph forbidden. But if nothing is in the circle, nothing is forbidden… right? Well, after almost getting stuck on a dirt road before, we’ve come to recognize the “no access” sign. As we drove through the forest around Gütenbach, we tried to stop and visit small chapels that appeared on the map to be roadside but along roads marked with that red circle sign. Maybe they were considered trailside chapels instead? Can’t really tell the difference on the map sometimes, and the map doesn’t show any circle-signs!
We drove through the forest to the town of Sankt Peter (on roads without circle-signs, thanks). We decided to stop and check it out, as there is a cathedral there that seems like it is as large as the rest of the town! We pulled into the parkplatz near a little park, walked by the town walls, and made our way into the sprawling courtyard. The rain was coming down a good bit by this point, so it was a nice relief to duck into the giant church.
And giant that place was! The church with the white walls and ceilings adorned with paintings reminded us of places like Andechs and the little church in Eguisheim I missed last time, although significantly larger than either of those. There was a monastery there also, off to the side of the main church, but we spent our time in the actual church itself.
We wandered through the small town, up and down its few hilly streets. We came to another small church that had an outdoor stations of the cross going up the hill back to the town. There seems to be lots of these outdoor stations throughout Europe, very different than the flat indoor ones I had to do back in the altar boy days. Not that I'm complaining… ours were bad enough, I couldn’t imagine working these! We hiked the hill back into town like doing the stations on express mode, made our way to the car in the misty rain, and headed further west through the forest. It wasn’t long before we were crossing the Rhine and the border.
Bienvenue an France!
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