Falls just outside Germany (we were in Switzerland), spent the night in Karlsruhe and then went to the Black Forest on Sunday. Although it rained nearly the whole time, I still thoroughly enjoyed the trip and all that Europe has to offer as far as natural beauty goes.The girls had purchased a 10 day Eurail pass and did not want to use one of their weekends up yet so they got a Happy Weekender pass which allows two people to travel endlessly for one day on local transit trains...which meant we couldn't take any fast trains to get there. It took us nearly 5 hours to get to Schaffhausen by train where we hopped on a city that took us to Rhine Falls (the largest
waterfall in Europe). Where we first saw the falls we were on the side so we walked around the side and were able to look at it straight on from the bottom. Then we saw that there were boats going to this huge rock in the middle of the waterfall and that people could climb to the top of the rock (by stairs) so I said "I wanna do that!" I found out that the boat trip only cost 4.50 Euro and excitedly paid to get on the boat. I had to drag one of the other girls to come with me because they were all too chicken and hadn't prepared for walking in such wet weather. The boat drives as 
straight as it can straight at the waterfall and docks at the base of the rock. (the one with the flag on it) the stairs are twice as tall as a regular stair and are so steep it felt almost like I was climbing a latter. It was incredible, looking around from atop the rock you were surrounded by tumbling water on all sides, but felt completely safe in the stronghold of the rock. After congradulating ourselves for getting to the top we had to climb back down...we thought the stairs were bad getting up, they 
were worse coming down what with the steps being so wet and slippery from the water and them being so upright and tall.After returning to the giftshop outside the boat station we got hot chocolate with legit chocolate at the bottom of the mug. I bought a few suivineers including a bar of chocolate that looked like it was cherry filled by the picture on the front...oops it wasn't just cherry filled, but filled with kirsh (a really strong alcohol) it made up 8.5% of the entire bar...it felt like taking a straight shot according to the other girls who've actually had alcohol before. The worst part was having hard core alcohol breath after having one piece of chocolate. It was ridiculous!
After our trip to the falls we boarded the train to get to Karlsruhe where we were staying for the night. We arrived in Karlsruhe around 9pm and spent an hour trying to figure out where our hostel was. According to the kind woman at the train station we talked to the place we were trying to find was so far out of town it wasn't even on the regular map they gave people...yikes! Another person told us we could take bus # 73 out to that part of town so we searched for the bus stop...no bus stops in sight! So we asked a man wearing a vest saying "info" on the back and he told us to get on tram S4 and to get of at such-and-such stop...so we got on the tram...got off at the stop he told
us to get out at and landed in residential Karlsruhe! We had no idea where we were, how to find where we needed to go and it was 10pm and getting really dark. Luckily we found a grocery store that was just closing and the manager was nice enough to point us in the right direction...down the freeway that had no sidewalk...great! So we found a neighborhood road that ran parallel to the freeway and began walking towards the hostel. It was dark, kinda spooky and the further we walked the more paranoid we were all getting. The neighborhood road ended and we chose to 
take the right and ended up at an outdoor restaurant where a waiter looked at us 4 lost American girls and asked us why we were out. We showed him the address and he knew exactly where it was, but didn't know how to explain it in english very well. He walked us out to the freeway were they was now a sidewalk and pointed down the road telling us it was on the left next to the electric lights. Well there was about 4 different types of lights down the road so we walked to the stop light and looked to the left only to see bus 73 pull up empty...irony! But no hostel. We walked to the next neon sign and looked left...no hostel...then to the next light and lo and behold our hostel appeared! We weren't kidnapped or anything, we made it! 
We were all very relieved and couldn't wait to sleep. We got our keys and and went up to our rooms only to find that the handles wouldn't turn no matter which direction we turned the keys...so we went to the front desk and asked the man if there was a trick to them. He told us there was no trick but you had to pull on the handle...so went back upstairs to report that we needed to pull on the handle...well this technique wasn't working so we thought that perhaps the man got his directions mixed up and tried pushing...again no progress.
I went back downstairs and asked the man if he would just come up an open the doors for us. In no time at all he turned the key, tugged on the door and the doors opened just like magic. We felt stupid for not having been able to figure it out, but we didn't really care we just wanted to sleep. Thank heaven the beds were really comfortable and I slept like a rock for most of the night...all except for when my bedmate began dreaming about putting her CDC kids down for nap and began calling me Adori and stroking my face...Awkward!!!!
In the morning we decided not to mess with the trams or busses to get to the train station. We spent another 5 hours getting to Aha, Germany (yes it's pronounced just like it looks aha!) From Aha we walked around Schlushee Lake to Schlushee in the middle of the Black Forest. The walk was about an hour but we spent more time than that playing on the lake shore and enjoying the scenery. Unfortunately it was raining for the first half of our walk, but it finally cleared and we were able to enjoy the walk without looking at everything from underneath hoods and umbrellas. The lake was beautiful, the forest looked like any other forest in Washington or something...it wasn't even really black in color...but it was really beautiful.
When we got to Schlushee we went to the restaurant by the train station and ordered hot chocolate, goulash, and black-forest cake. The hot chocolate was really good, the goulash was a little spicier than I was used to, and the black-forest cake...like the chocolate I tried the day before had alcohol in it. Unlike a regular cake where the alcohol would be cooked out by the time it's served, this cake felt like it had been drenched in alcohol...we were all getting a little sillier by the end of the day.
Pictures from top to bottom: Rhine Falls, the rock in the middle of Rhine Falls I stood on, going to the falls in the boat, the dock on the rock, the falls from the rock, trying to stay dry in my Camp Adventure coat while being misted from the falls, the steep steps down the rock, Schlushee Lake, on a rock at Schlushee Lake, trying to take a "senior picture", Schlushee, getting silly off cake
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