Schwarzwald...The Black Forest

The good part about our adventure on Saturday is that we were able to snowboard for a while before all hell broke loose. The Black Forest is not far from us and we had to go to the southern area to get to a decent area to snowboard. The Black Forest is definitely not the alps, but that was good for me this time as I was unsure of the new gear and wanted something a little easier. It is pretty though, even with morning cloud cover.
Here is a couple of other looks at some of the scenary...

Feldberg is smaller and very busy. With only two chair lifts and some hook lifts and a lot of people, the lines to get on a lift were long and congested. This is where I get very annoyed. I think I have mentioned that Germans are giant cutters in past blogs. Its true...we even read it in books before we got here. Well this is certainly true on the slopes, and oddly it is not usually younger people that cut, and also not usually snowboarders. It is always skiers..and they are usually middle-aged or older. They do this thing where they will straddle your board with their skis so they can get closer and then cut! But what the aggrevating part is that their skis can dull the edges of the board...and one woman even scuffed my board with her damn ski. I have never experienced it as bad as I did on Saturday, and never have experiened it in the US. I think TJ got a little too annoyed with the line and spent a great deal of time in the terrain park. He hit some good jumps...and boarded well as per usual. Here is a little snippet of the terrain jumps and a slope view.

As for me I stuck to riding the slopes as my new snowboard is amazing! It is like night and day in terms of my comfort and ability level. I can't wait to see what it is like in the alps with longer and more interesting runs! We could go this weekend and try it out, however, our boards, boots, and helmets are in our car...and who knows where that is.
One more fun thing about Feldberg, we saw tons of dogs. Most of them were just hanging out, some were sledding with their families, but one was enjoying the slopes herself. It was so funny...she tries to chase her owner's skis as he comes down the hill, and then they ride the hook lift back up and she does it again. I talked to them a bit and they had her on a leash, but were going to take it off and see if they would get kicked out. It was very cute! Here is a photo (although not the best) of them in action.

Could you imagine Tut? He isn't that well behaved and would most likely chase everyone and get in the way. Actually, he doesn't love the cold and fells worse about the snow...he wouldn't want to be there anyway!

As for the car, no one would help TJ yesterday and he officially now hates BMW (its about time). He should get a rental car today and figure out what is happening with ours. That should be interesting. I am sure the car saga is not finished and will keep you posted. Tonight we are planning on watching the inauguration with the rest of the world and can't wait to hear what our new president has to say! I also can't wait to hear from my friend Amy to know what it was like to be there today. She has already posted a little bit on the Rowell Crew link, if you are as interested as I am.

Auf Wiedersehen!