We’re on the Road to Nowhere. Now we lost our guide.

Steve:

We headed out of Freiburg on a course plotted by my intrepid navigator, Dawn. The roads to the World’s Largest Cuckoo Clock were necessarily going to be of the two lane variety. While driving around Europe I have learned to expect heavy traffic and gaggles of bicyclists riding three and four abreast on the secondary roads. I was blessed that day with relatively light traffic and no gaggles. There were opportunities, however, to test Rolland’s incredible passing power by overtaking semi tractor/trailers and long lines of cars with ease. Dawn was a little nervous during the first couple of maneuvers, thinking there was not room enough to complete the passes. But she soon became confident in my and Rolland’s ability to overtake slower traffic quickly and safely. It is a treat to drive such a responsive automobile. 

Dawn:

Steve has always been a driving master. I feel very safe with him at the wheel. Mostly.

Thank heavens for that because just as we made it to the main road, things started to go cockeyed and wrong. Drastically wrong – in a hurry. This was truly worrisome as we relied on my phone nav as a safety net for Rollwronga’s side trips. I had selected several attractions for us to visit in the quarantine times, but without my map o’Dots, I was hard put to recall the numerous locations we had found intriguing. 15 minutes later STILL with no dots. What would we do?

The Silberkönig Schwarzwald Hotel was not far from Freiburg; we knew we could take our time to get there. When I told Steve my nav system was offline, he shrugged and said, let’s go see The Biggest Cuckoo Clock. There was even a sign up the road five minutes later.

The rain continued as we eagerly awaited the Cuckoo Bird. A lovely waterfall next to the building entertained us with its rushing roar. –Eble Uhren Park, Schonach im Swarzwald, Germany

Steve:

Back in the car we headed for Furtwangen im Schwarzwald to visit the German Clock Museum. 

The drive there was uneventful. Until we got into town. We had some difficulty locating the museum. After a couple of dry runs passing the place where Rollwronga said it was, we figured out that Rollwronga wanted us to pull into an area that was blocked to traffic.

Dawn:

Clearly, Rollwronga did not know one couldn’t drive on their platz. Finally, after our third time round the tiny back streets of Furtwangen with Rollwronga telling us we had arrived at our destination, I saw it.

There! There’s the building. Plan B find parking and walk. Experienced European-parking finders can tell you that it’s more about luck than anything.

Steve:

There was a small admission fee and we had the place almost to ourselves. Every exhibit was well displayed with English and German descriptions. The collection is quite extensive. There was an interesting variety of clocks and time pieces from the early history of timekeeping to Rolexes. There was everything from an antique time clock to a sort-of big cuckoo clock. This cuckoo, while big, looked like the baby brother of the Worlds Biggest Cuckoo. The family resemblance was remarkable.