Ludwigsburg & The Black Forest

We're pretty lucky to be living close to the largest pumpkin festival in the world here in Germany. Only about an hour and a half away in Ludwigsburg.   It's a perfect place for a fall visit if you've started lighting your vanilla pumpkin candles and are sipping on your favorite pumpkin spice beverage (and maybe eating a pumpkin scone...or two?). I'm so happy we got to go to the festival!  This year it was a woodland theme, and we were ready to explore all things pumpkin.

 Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin yippie!

 ~Seriously, how cute is MY little pumpkin~

We started off with a snack...because we're Hatch's and we love food!  A pumpkin roll with pumpkin seed brats.  Yum for the win!

Over 450,000 pumpkins on display; so if you've imagined them, they have them: smooth, pimpled, skinny, chubby, edible and decorative!

Hold up, I love this warty Cinderella pumpkin 

They had some of the fattest pumpkins I've ever seen! This one was roughly 926 pounds!  I remember as a kid a contest at our local grocery store where if you could guess the weight of the pumpkin you could have it...I wouldn't know what to do with this one!  What does anyone do with it?!? Pumpkin soup for a lifetime if you ask me. 

This may be the most legit pumpkin patch I've laid my eyes on!

Bode had a blast climbing in!

Jordan snapped a great picture of me if I may say so myself!

We tried some really good organic pumpkin ice cream.  It was nice and creamy with pumpkin seeds inside too.  We both liked it!

I love this feeling of fall 

They had quite a display of woodland pumpkin animals all around the fest

There are also events going on every weekend (so check the calendar of things you don't want to miss) like: giant pumpkin carving, pumpkin weigh-offs, pumpkin regatta, smashing pumpkins etc. Here were some of our favorites from the pumpkin carving.

How can you go to a festival and fully enjoy it if you can't taste your way through it with some of your favorite pumpkin dishes? Pumpkin strudel, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin burgers, pumpkin everything! And yesssss, pumpkin soup!  As I write this I am currently chowing down on chocolate toasted pumpkin seeds that I bought at the fest... Anyways back to festival food, to taste it means to fill your tummy with goodness.

Pumpkin Beef Ravioli

Pumpkin Kasespatzel (which is like a pumpkin Mac n cheese) So good!

We had a great rest of the afternoon walking around the Grimm's Fairytale land before heading into the Black Forest.  We saw little Red Riding Hood's house, Repunzels hair, and the Seven dwarves!

Hello look at this hair!

We headed to the town of Triberg famous for waterfalls, clocks and cakes.  We strapped Bode into a hiking backpack  and started off with a hike! 

The Triberger Wasserfalle is one of the highest in Germany, plunging water down from 163 meters.   This may be the "longest" waterfall in reality because it isn't as high as the waterfalls in the mountains.  Nevertheless, it is still very scenic and worth exploring. You can hike all the way up and make a loop, walking back down into the cute little town.

The hike is not challenging and can be done with young kids, older friends and family members, dogs and strollers, although I don't think I would take a stroller. 

We checked out the clocks and had some cake.  The House of 1000 clocks is WILD! My head was going bonkers when I got out of there from all the cuckoo-cuckoo clocks ticking away.  They are detailed in their artistry and can be very expensive.  Cool to look at, but getting a clock magnet was all we needed to satisfy our clock craving.  For Black Forest Cake check out Cafe Schaefer.  The cake is good...well if you like Black Forest Cake; moist and fluffy it is, but too much kirschwasser for our liking.

After a good nights rest we made it to one more town before heading back home.  The cute little Black Forest town of Schiltach was where we ended up, and they were having a town festival which was super fun.  I think we were the only Americans there... definitely the only English speaking people. 

A charming town with two ridiculously good lookin guys

We couldn't find Bode's mittens, and I'll never admit that I forgot them **cough cough** so we did make-shift mittens out of socks, which worked pretty well!

I'm not entirely sure what these are called, but these ladies were making dough balls (very similar to a garlic knot minus the garlic) stuffed with bacon and cheese... We waited in a line that was well worth it for them to come out of the firewood oven piping hot!

We walked the main street looking at all the vendors selling local goods.

What really caught our eye were the people making fresh pressed apple juice. Take a look at all the apple rinds!

Couldn't say no to a nice fresh glass.  And Bode LoVeD it!!

His first time trying juice...sweet sweet nectar

If you're interested in the whole process check it out!

With all the people enjoying the food we tried their local sausages.  They were good!  The sausage men kept trying to talk to me in German, to which I responded with a lot of head shaking :)

We finished off our trip with some delicious fluffy cake!  We had such a great time in the Black Forest.  We felt like we were in traditional towns and enjoyed ever minute of the sunshine and cool air!

 Onto the next adventure!