St. Blasien

Bonus field trip!

(ooh and this is my 500th blog post! I don't know what that means but it sounds cool?)

This year's edition of the Eco Summer Camp took place without me, which was probably for the best but I was bummed that (1) I missed seeing the friends I made when I went in 2024, (2) I didn't get a week away from home, and (3) the place they held it this year - St. Blasien in the the Black Forest - looked interesting and I wouldn't get to visit. I made a deal with myself that I could at least do something on that last front, and so yesterday Daniel and I adventured out to St. Blasien. Getting there takes an hour on the train to the German border and another hour on a bus from there, not at all bad. And what's there? A striking church (once part of a Benedictine monastery and then a factory and now a Jesuit boarding school). Charming touristy dining options. A former sanatorium. Which is to say, just enough to entertain us for a few hours, and although I would not have in any way minded staying for a week and going hiking or something, our little visit, complete with delicious Greek lunch, felt relaxed and lovely and...just generally like the vacation that we did not have this summer. And we were home in time to grill things for dinner with our hard-working son (who brought home an enormous steak from the butcher shop but decided our grill was not good enough for it lol).

The river Alb, presumably not always this low.

St. Blaise Abbey

Inside - it is huge and very white.

Except for the choir, which somewhat inexplicably gives wooden and square. Literally keeping the students in line, maybe?

Looking up.

Extra bits under the stairs, as one does.

Black Forest Cake, of course.

The town was getting ready for the annual "International Sculpture Symposium" in which invited artists carve logs and the resulting sculptures are sold at auction. I bet this is super interesting but I was not entirely sorry to be there at a time when the town was relatively empty and there were no chainsaws running.