Thanks to a good friend for the recommendation to visit this small, but bustling town. Staufen is a mere 30 minutes Southwest of Freiburg and our visit happened to be on harvesting day. The day began with a trip to explore the castle ruins and then onward through the vineyards and neighboring "mountains".
Later in the day we walked through the downtown, which was quite the happening place despite the small size of the town. When it's harvest season the local farmers offer opportunities to sample the new wine of the season. Apparently this goes back to a long standing tradition in which the harvesters had to give a portion of their new harvest to the burgermeister as tax payment. Of course we had to take part in the tradition and found a place offering new wine from the schlossberg. Our best understanding is that the new wine isn't 100% fermented, and it certainly didn't look like wine, but rather looked and tasted more like fresca. To go along with the wine Zwiebelkuchen (onion pie) is offered, which was absolutely delicious. I can now say that I've had a taste of all the local dishes.
A view of the castle ruins. The exploration of the castle ruins also resulted in my unfortunate finding of stingweed. It was too late by the time I was warned about what plant I was standing in. How in the world can the simple brushing up against a plant cause so much pain?
As we headed towards the mountains for more hiking we were able to get a taste of the harvesting process. The tractor drives up and down the grapevines and somehow it collects the grapes, leaving behind everything else.
Perhaps these little towns have the most character. The houses were all beautifully adorned with flower boxes in every window. It was picture perfect.
1 comment:
those window box flowers are very, very cute.
hope you're having a great time! when you start regular classes, will you still be able to travel around as much?
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