A Week in Baden-Baden in the Black Forest, Germany

[Pauline]

The Drive and Arrival​

Tuesday May 27, 2025
Rained for much of the drive

We left home a week ago, driving from Dorset to Baden-Baden. The traffic in England was horrible but it was the day after a Bank Holiday weekend and, I think a school holiday week, so what did I expect? Traffic thickened about 30 minutes from home and remained slow and thick for the over 4 hour drive to the Chunnel. Despite that we got the train after the one we had booked so we were only 30 minutes behind schedule.

Once we crossed to France the roads were clear, which is frequently the case driving across Northern France. I think people avoid the autoroute because you have to pay. It can cost over €50 for a 6 hour drive. Maybe traffic is thicker on the secondary routes. France always feels less dense than the UK.

We spent the night in Arras and were too tired from the drive to go to our favorite Chinese restaurant there, plus it was raining, so we had instant ramen noodle pots. I always bring some with us for just this situation.

It has been sunny and warm, even hot, for the last 6 weeks in Dorset and I worry about the heat so I was dressed wrong for the drive. I had to dig out our fleece coats when we got to Arras.

We stayed at the Mercure in Arras. The last time we were here, October 2023, we both caught Covid from someone in a huge crowd in the lobby when we were checking in on the drive home. At least that’s what we believe. It might have been from the crowded rest areas in the UK the next day. In 2024 we did two trips to Switzerland so that is four stays in Arras. I tried a country hotel near St Omer - horrible. Then I tried the Mercure in St Omer - fabulous hotel but the town is scruffy and it was a good 20min drive from the autoroute. On the second trip we stayed at the Ibis in Arras both ways. It is located closer to the autoroute but is on a busy road. So now we are back to the Mercure and all is forgiven.

On previous trips we’ve stayed in Amiens and Abbeville for our first/last night of the trip, but they add 30 minutes to the drive. Amiens is bigger than Arras and Abbeville is smaller. Both are nice towns.

Wednesday May 28
Overcast and some rain on the drive

In the morning we walked out to a nearby artisanal bakery and got a baguette and croissants for breakfast. We have a small fridge in the car, very small, 9 liters, and I brought butter and jam (then transferred them to the room fridge). The baguette and croissants were incredible. Worth the drive.

Another long day of driving on the autoroute. We left at 10:30, arrived at 6pm, with many stops.

We got a new car earlier this year and this was our first driving trip with it. We had a VW Golf and upgraded to a VW T-ROC which is a mini-SUV with the same footprint as a Golf, so it fits in our garage, but is slightly higher up, so is more comfortable for me (I’m tall). It went well except that the cruise control changes your speed! Down when it detects a lower speed limit, but up too which is shocking. I need to read the manual for this.

We arrived at the house we rented in Steinbach, a small town outside Baden-Baden, at 6pm and again were too tired to go grocery shopping. I had expected this so had brought some vegetables and noodles with us.

The house is beautiful, perhaps too beautiful for a holiday rental. Black tile floors merging into stairs that you can’t really see. A dining table for eight, when it is a rental for two. Bad lighting, but that is typical. The main level is spacious and lined with floor to ceiling windows. Two nice sitting areas. The bedroom is downstairs and is cool and quiet. The house has heating, which we used the first night, and AC which we’ve needed since then. The outside area is lovely. A huge terrace and lawn and trees. A field of vines is beside the house. There is another house on the property and that is also a rental. It has its own terrace.

The house has very fragrant sheets and towels. I had to change to the sheets and pillows we brought with us and take the scented covers off the duvet. I had asked when booking about fragrance and she said she uses regular laundry soap, which is too fragrant for me, but the scent airs off quickly. It doesn’t. I at least got it under control.

This is the main downside of holiday rentals. Hotels use laundry services for sheets and towels so they are not highly fragrant. But now there is an annoying trend for hotels to pump fragrance into the lobby and halls. I wish we had never invented synthetic fragrances.

Thursday May 29
Sunny and warm

We walked into town on a footpath that runs behind the house. A 10-minute walk. Everything was closed! There were people and trucks in town setting up for a weekend wine festival. I stopped someone and asked - it was a holiday, Ascension Day. I had been counting on shops being open.

The town, Steinbach, is small with a cute historic center. It almost merges in with Neuweier, a wine-focused town surrounded by steep hills covered in vines. Above the vines is thick forest, the Black Forest.

I can’t remember much of our first day. I think we spent it reading and recovering from the drive. The downside of being older for us - we don’t have the energy we used to have. I am pretty much recovered from my illness (still on one medication to prevent it from coming back) but I haven’t returned to the fitness level I was at before. Also I’m 70 now! I was 66 when it all started.

Back of the house. It is a restored barn. Vineyards on the hillside.

Lawn cutting robot! He cut all day long, then after a few days drove into the bushes and hasn’t moved since. I can’t figure out where he “lives”.

Looking out the driveway.

 

[JMichael]

The area looks beautiful. I can sympathize about energy levels dropping at 70 and the wish to make the world free of artificial fragrance. It's disheartening to open the door and be hit with Fabuloso or some other product. It's good to know you're winning your four year fight to health. Have a lovely trip.

 

[Jim Zurer]

Hi Pauline. Glad you made it to first stop. Looking forward to hearing more about your trip.

>>Lawn cutting robot!<< I was fascinated by the lawn cutting robot I encountered in a park in Padova last month.

 

[Pauline]

Hiking in the Black Forest​

Friday May 30
Sunny and hot. High of 80F.

We’ve arrived. We’ve had a rest day. Now to start this holiday. We drove into Baden-Baden (11 minute drive) and missed the turnoff to the parking lot I had picked out. We ended up driving right into town and found another lot. I had wanted to avoid driving into town.

A few years ago Jonathan told me that I would like Baden-Baden and the lovely walk along the river. We spent five nights here last October and did not do that walk because it rained almost all the time and the one perfect day we had we went up into the forest.

Today we walked the Lichtentaler Allee from the start by the Tourist Office and Casino. The path goes along the river heading east towards the abbey on the outskirts of town. There is a separate path for bikes. The walk is beautiful. The river is lined with big houses, gardens and parks. It was busy at the start but by the end it wasn’t. Most of the path was in shade which was good on this hot day. It is just over a mile long; we walked out and back.

We walked through the town center, which is pedestrian but was very crowded, and did some food shopping. There is a good natural foods shop and a wonderful upscale food shop at the top of a department store. We had lunch at an Asian restaurant we had failed to get into on our last trip, Happy Kitchen. This time it wasn’t busy. Excellent noodles!

On the way home we stopped at the Steinbach supermarket which is at the end of the street where we are staying and got groceries for the week.

Saturday May 31
Sunny and hot, 89F.

Hot today! I downloaded several hikes from the tourist office website into my Outdoor Active hiking app. One of them was in the forest between our town and Baden-Baden. A six minute drive to the start.

Fischteich Hike, 4.5mi, 574 ascent, 2hr9min

I was worried that the car park would be full because we never get an early start, but there was only one car there when we arrived at 11:30am. We did not see many other people on the trails. I could not figure out our route from the hiking signs, so we followed the map on my phone. It was a gentle uphill through beautiful woods. We missed a turn and did some extra uphill but realized our mistake after 15 minutes.

At the top of the hike where you start to come back down the trail was closed and there were people cutting down trees. We took another trail that climbed higher and were able to go around the closed off area. There was a bench at the top so we stopped and had our lunch.

Then we walked back, past a winery (Weingut Nägelsförst), rows of vines, a large picnic area with a big family gathering and back to the car. We cut off the last bit of the hike because we had already done 5 miles and extra climbing.

It was cool in the woods but very hot out. We headed back to the supermarket and bought more juice. Our house has AC and we used it. Different parts of the terrace are in shade at different times so we sat outside when we could.

I was reading a German novel in translation. Eternal Summer by Franziska Gansler. It is set in the future when climate change is worse, in a fictional spa town in the Black Forest, Bad Heim which is supposed to be Baden-Baden. The book is about the heat and the smoke from wildfires close to the town, which was good to read on such a hot day. No wildfires here though.

When I finished that book I moved on to Maggie O’Farrell’s Instructions for a Heatwave, set during a hot summer in England in the 1970s.

There are a lot of trails and signs.

There is a “Camino” marker here, a religious trail.

Sunday June 1
Sunny and hot, 80F.

Today we went to the forest again, to escape the heat, but on an easier hike.

Geroldsau Waterfall. 2.2mi, 269ft ascent

This hike was not far from us, in a higher part of the forest between us and Baden-Baden. Again I worried about parking on a sunny Sunday and a popular hike. This time the car park was getting full at 11:30am but still a lot of spaces.

There were a lot of people on the trail but it was manageable. The trail went close to the river and was rooty and a bit muddy from last night’s rain. The trees, moss and running water with mini waterfalls was beautiful. There were a lot of families walking, stopping to let the kids play in the water.

There was a restaurant at the turnaround point (one mile) and many were headed there. The path continued up the river so we walked further, found a bench and had our lunch, then walked back on a wider trail on the other side of the river. We turned it into a 3 mile hike. Much easier than yesterday’s.

Signs at start of trail.

Look at that gorgeous trail!

Small waterfalls but pretty.

 

[Pauline]

>>Lawn cutting robot!<< I was fascinated by the lawn cutting robot I encountered in a park in Padova last month.

Our one is big, in two parts, because it has to go up hills in the garden. The owner has a smaller one in her flat garden.

At home we have a small, flat garden and could use one of these but I really like the guy who cuts my grass and would hate to replace him with one of these. I do have a Roomba for cleaning in the house and I like it.

 

[Eleanor]

Those walks look wonderful!

 

[Pauline]

Monday June 2
Warm and raining.

It rained most of the day so we stayed home. We sat out on the terrace when the rain stopped.

Tuesday June 3
Overcast in the morning, sunny and warm in the afternoon, 75F muggy

We drove 20 minutes to get to this hike on the east end of Baden-Baden. As the crow flies we were not far from Sunday’s hike at the waterfall.

Oostal Circular, 5 miles, 825ft ascent, 2hr23min plus a stop for lunch

I could not find this car park on Google Maps or Waze so we drove towards Gaisbach where the hike starts. We found the car park signed just before the town. No cars! So much for my worrying that hiking car parks will be full!

The hike was fantastic! A gradual uphill along the western side of a valley, then at the top you cross over to the other side and return downhill on the eastern side. The sun was mostly out and it wasn’t too hot but it was muggy. We passed two other hikers who had parked after us but had set out quicker who were having difficulty with the humidity and stopping frequently. They must have turned back. The only other people we saw were a family in a truck hauling logs and a maintenance truck.

On the way back we stopped at a picnic area for lunch. A perfect hike.

The landlady came over today. She had been away when we arrived. She was really nice. When she was changing a lightbulb in the bedroom she didn’t even bat an eye when she saw I had stripped the room of its many pillows and sheets (all too fragrant) and piled them in the hallway. I used our sheets. She was surprised that I thought the bedding fragrant. People get used to these scents. The bedroom is much brighter now.

Good trail in and out of the forest. There is a herd of longhorn cattle in this photo, under the tree.

Many trail markers along the way.

Walking back down.

Wednesday June 4
Pouring rain, 70F

It is raining all day again on Wednesday. The landlady said they had a very dry spring and everyone is happy with this rain. Except me. It is frequently a heavy rain so not worth going out in it. Yesterday, after a very nice day, there was 20 minutes of lightening and a heavy downpour at 5pm.

Today I sat in the car and tried to figure out its features but can’t find a setting to stop it from speeding up when the speed limit changes.

 

[Pauline]

German Borders​

People entering Germany are now being stopped at the border to have their vehicles searched for illegal immigrants. We were not stopped when we crossed in from France last week but our landlady has been stopped twice recently. There was a 30 minute wait when she crossed from Austria (coming from the Dolomites) on Sunday. The border people looked in everyone’s cars. Recently she crossed into France when returning from Cologne and was stopped re-entering Germany.

On Monday the courts stopped the turning back of asylum seekers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/world/europe/germany-asylum-seekers-border-eu.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

NY Times: German Border Police Barred From Rejecting Some Asylum Seekers Without a Review, June 2, 2025
A Berlin court ruled that officials must investigate the claims of those arriving from neighboring E.U. countries, dealing a blow to the government’s attempt to reduce land migration.

From the article: The German border police can no longer reject asylum seekers who arrive from neighboring European Union countries without investigating their claims, a Berlin court ruled on Monday, dealing a blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s attempts to control such migration.

 

[Pauline]

Thursday June 5
Overcast, some sun, 70F

Our last day! We drove into Baden-Baden (10 minutes) and parked at the closer lot that I missed the first time we drove in. The road to it took us along a lane full of mansions sitting above the town.

We walked the Lichtentaler Allee again, and came back a longer way to make it 3 miles instead of 2. There are many walking opportunities from the center of town. Baden-Baden sits in a valley and tree covered hills surround it. There are many parks in town, footpaths going up the hills to neighborhoods, then into the forest. It is a beautiful town. However the historic center is way too crowded, but easy to avoid as we did today.

We are loading up the car and driving to Lenk tomorrow (4hr drive).

We’ve seen two cats here at the house. One beautiful grey tabby who sniffed everything then left. The other one of the most gorgeous cats I have seen. Beige, thick coat, very round face. He rolled about on the terrace but would not come to me. I looked him up and I think he is a British Shorthair. Beautiful. We don’t have a cat now. We had cats for 24 years, but none since Buddy died 9 years ago. We live in a house that would be good for a cat but in England people seem to complain a lot about cats. The bird slaughter, the garden “digging”. I bet British Shorthair kittens are fun!

There are many bridges like this over the river on the walk.

Look at that very small brick house (yellow, almost attached to the white house)!

We walked around this large park where children can run free (there were none), but dogs can’t (we saw several on leashes on the footpath).

The river is lined with beautiful old buildings.