It’s pretty awesome. Enough said. With my second day in Freiburg I had originally planned to take a trip to the town of Todtnau (toad-tuh-now, pronounced quickly) deep in the heart of the Black Forest, and that’s what I still planned to do today, and after a lengthy bus ride, (about 90 minutes) I made it to the small valley town, going up and down hills and mountains getting beautiful views of the open forest. They say it’s called the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) because it’s a darker green, but I really just don’t see it, to me it’s as green as any other forest! Or maybe I just wasn’t in the right area.
The main attraction of Todtnau however is the town’s famous Rodelbahn. Now what the hell is a Rodelbahn? Well, it’s a personal down hill sled rollercoaster. And there’s a bunch all over Germany and Switzerland, and possibly in other places. You take a chair lift to the top, or ride in the cart getting pulled up by a chain. (This one taking a very, very long and exhaustive chair lift to the top) you sit down, buckle up and put your hand on the brake! Each little cart has a hand break with a heavy spring always pushing into the brake position. You can release the brake and zoom down the track fast and get sick, or you can brake strategically around curves, or just ride the brakes the whole way down, which nobody likes, because then it forces the people behind you to slow down as well. Don’t be that guy. You know who I’m talking about… Bob from Accounting. This particular one is fixed on a track and you cannot fall off the track, unless there is a catastrophic failure and the track breaks. Some of the other Rodelbahns however are merely just carts on wheels going down bobsled type tunnel and is quite possible too fall off and out, and even get really injured, so breaking on curves on those kinds is really importamt! You can see one of my other videos with this kind, near Neuschwanstein Castle. For this most part I went full speed ahead on this one, though braking around some curves is definitely way to avoid some serious g’s.
Anyways, I did it twice, it was so awesome and fun. The one in Todtnau is 2,9km/1.8 miles, making it one of Germany’s longest and fastest. (I think the longest one is 3km) It was a perfect and clear sunny day which was great. I got quite lucky today, as beforehand I read many reviews, and many of them complained out incredible wait lines for the ride, taking upwards of an hour and a half just for one ride. Today there’s only 2 people in front of me the first time, and nobody in front of the the second time, I just got right on. A major reason for the wait is people want to go down fast, and some want to go down slowly, so if you want to go fast you need to wait a long time for the person in front of you to get far enough away so you can speed without worry of running into them.
Also nearby is the Todtnau Waterfall, one of Germany’s taller waterfalls. I didn’t go see it though, it’s a lengthy walk to see, and I didn’t feel like taking the bus again. Now back in Freiburg as I write this it is raining pretty hard. The clouds must have moved in fast. After that I spent some time just walking around the town, and shopping a little bit. Then took a long bus ride back to Freiburg and just walked around a little bit more. Link to my super video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hf8txo9ei0
Once again, sadly on Imgur, the rest of the images:
jonsjourneythroughgermany.com 