Barenfels, Saxony

The guesthouse we are staying in is a family run business.  The owners and staff are very friendly and helpful.  Lucky for us Inga speaks very good German so we are able to make ourselves understood as we have our personal translator.  English is not widely spoken in this area which was in the DDR (East Germany) until the 1990s.  There is still plenty of evidence of the austerity days of the DDR regime although most of the infrastructure and buildings have been rebuilt.  Where there are run-down buildings this is often because there is still a dispute over ownership.  There are some empty factories around too where these businesses could not compete with the businesses from West Germany following reunification.  Barenfels is a small village.  The buildings are designed to cope with the cold snowy winters with their steep roofs, small windows, thick walls and low ceilings.  Everything is very green here and we look out over hills covered in fir trees.

Monday is a rest day for us after our travelling day on Sunday 1^st July.  We are still waiting for our luggage to arrive and clean clothes will be very welcome.

After breakfast we went for a walk through the nearby woods.  There is an education trail which we can follow which has interpretative signs explaining the different birds, plants and animals that we might see on our walk.  This area is the home to several species of owl, deer, boars, badgers, red foxes, martins and many other species of wildlife.  There are wild berries – strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and elderberries – along the way too.  After our walk through the woods we went looking for the Glockenspiel.  Inga and Phill have been looking for this on their previous visits here and we don’t manage to find it until after lunch when we are driving around.  The Glockenspiel is located in a park on a track off the road.  It consists of a number of different sized bells made from Meissen china with a striker and they play a couple of musical tunes on the hour.  We have managed to hear them a few times now.

In the afternoon we go for a drive through nearby Alpenberg which is a tourist hub in the ski season with ski-lifts and ski hire businesses.  Then it’s on to the border with the Czech Republic.  This is now an open border but there is plenty of evidence of the days when it was heavily controlled.  There are large carparks and administration buildings which are now in disrepair and are generally unused.  We venture into the Czech Republic a few hundred metres and turn around at the first roundabout.  Only Inga and Phill have their passports – ours are in our hotel room.  Shortly after returning to Germany we are pulled over by the police we had seen on our way into the Czech Republic.  They checked Inga and Phill’s passports and Phill’s driving licence and weren’t too worried that we didn’t have our passports (we did have our driving licences if they were needed as ID and we told them our passports were at the hotel).  They seemed to be pulling over all non-German registered cars coming out of the Czech Republic and they did have a good look in the back of our station wagon.

Our package here at Gasthof Barenfels includes all meals except lunch and the food is plentiful with lots of variety.  We have a continental breakfast with cold meats, cheeses, eggs, fruit, cereals, yoghurts, juices, tea and coffee.  Afternoon tea is accompanied by delicious fresh baked continental cake.  Dinner is 3 courses with an entrée of soup or salad followed by a choice of 2 main courses- we’ve had various dishes of meat, fish, noodles, vegetarian etc to choose from – followed by dessert – usually fresh fruit or pudding with icecream and cream. All meals have been delicious.  We’ve made a habit of skipping lunch.  Definitely no chance of starving here.

The guesthouse building has been here for several hundred years.  It has been completely renovated and it is very comfortable.  The dining room is light and airy with windows all around it and an outside area where we can sit in the sun or under large umbrellas in the shade and relax.  Our room is spacious and is well furnished and we have a large, modern bathroom.  Great value!

In the evening we are joined for dinner by Rolf and Dori, German friends of Inga and Phill, who live about 2 hours drive away to the north.  A very convivial evening as we all eat, drink and be merry.  The evening was made happier by our luggage arriving just before our dinner as Lufthansa managed to just beat the 24 hour limit before they would have to pay us compensation for lost luggage.