Day trips from Gengenbach

Month of the year and Year?

I liked Freiburg, which does not have a "big city" feel, but lots to do and see. You don't mention walking one way from another town's trailhead back to Gengenbach. (Have to look at the trail maps at the TI, of course.) I enjoyed both the light and intermediate walks, in sneakers.

I will be there from May 4th to May 8th of this year.

The walks sound interesting - I'm not much of a hiker, but I do like to walk as long as it's not too strenuous.

Konus gives free regional train travel in most of the land of Baden-Württemberg, even as far as Basel Bad Bf in Switzerland.

It is NOT valid on any ICE or IC train, so you can't change at Offenburg to the fast train to Freiburg im Breisgau or Basel, you have to change to a regional (RB, RE) train which takes more stops at a slower speed. Plan if that is too slow.

There is everything you need to know on the Konus flyer: https://bw.tourismusnetzwerk.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/KONUS-Flyer-PDF-Download_GB.pdf

If you are getting there on the 4th and leaving on the 8th, then you really only have 3 full days (5th, 6th, & 7th). You also have two partial days; how much time depends on when you get there and leave.

I hope in addition to Haslach and Gutach, you also plan on taking the Black Forest Railway down as far as Triberg. It's actually the steep gorge well south of Gutach that is the scenic part of the BFR. The station for Triberg is a little over a mile north of the town, but there are regular buses into town (about 15 min).

I've spent time north of those towns in Alpirsbach and Freudenstadt. These towns are accessible from the rail line the goes north up the Kinzig from Schiltach. Alpirsbach is the home of Kloster Alpirsbach, where they brew the Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu beer. Freudenstadt, often called the capital of the northern Black Forest, has one of the largest town squares in Germany, a large open area in which a Margrave was going to build his castle, but never did.

Freudenstadt also has a traditional (ie, Textilefrei) Therme, Panorama Spa.

If you are willing to travel even farther north, Calw, on the Nagold river, is the hometown of Hermann Hesse, and full of Fachwerk buildings.

Freiburg is fine. I also like Triberg as Lee suggested.

Are you planning on visiting the Vogtsbauernhof Museum in Gutach? The alpine coaster ( sommerrodelbahn ) near it is a fun diversion.

Nigel, thanks - I've been checking schedules on DB till I'm blue in the face and I THINK I have most of it figured out now. I do know how to use the DB site to access local/regional trains (for example, I used the DB site to calculate how to get to the Gutach Open-Air museum using the local Ortenau network). That's a good point about Freiburg - I have been getting in the habit of checking the "regional trains only" box on DB to make sure I'm getting the ones in the local network, but it doesn't hurt to have reminders.

Lee, I do realize that 4 nights does not equal 4 full days, but I get to Gengenbach fairly early on the 4th, so it's really almost 2 days for Gengenbach and the other small towns on the railway line. That gives me 2 more days - one for Strasbourg and one for ??? I had planned on heading further south on the railroad line to the scenic section but had not planned on going to Triberg - I'm not really interested in cuckoo clocks. I did plan on getting to Freudenstadt and Alpirsbach, though, as they are on that route.

Stephen, yes, the Vogtsbauernhof is my main reason for going to Gutach. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm still on the fence about Triberg - I really don't have any interest in buying a clock or seeing hundreds of them.

Unfortunately, no alpine coaster for me - I have a bad fear of heights and can't do things like that.

If you actually have five full days, Baden Baden is close by. It gets mixed reviews here. We had a nice day there, weather-wise, and enjoyed walking around. There is an easy trail through a park to the next village over, Lichtental. Lichtental had a market day when we we visited (Saturday?). It has a nice feel to it, attractive residences on the side streets, an abbey with small grounds. I'm pretty sure we had lunch there.

I'm giving thought to staying in Gengenbach or Staufen next year. I'll have a car but will also use the train service. Here's a thought, outside of your travel time range, but this should be a relaxing day, and I stand to be corrected about the train service. Take an early train to Donaueschingen (part of the Black Forest Railway mentioned by Lee?), then

A) catch a train to Freiburg (Höllental Valley Railroad?) to spend the day. The core area is flat with nice buildings and, as Tim says, does not have a big city feel to it. There was also a busy outdoor market around the cathedral on the day we visited.

B) take the train to Bad Krozingen, then walk along a creek to the fabulous little village of Staufen – it's a flat walk of about an hour, surrounded by farmland once you leave Bad Krozingen. This was one of my wife's favourite vacations days of all, so we had to repeat it.

The falls walk is the best thing about Triberg for me, not overly keen on Triberg itself. Re Schiltach, the day I was there the Café Bachbeck Konditorei had a Bienenstich cake which is nothing like I've tasted anywhere before. It was loaded with cream, hardly any sponge, had a crispy top.

I also plan on taking a day trip to Strasbourg.

The KONUS card will get you to Kehl, the last German town before the border; from there you need a separate ticket. Best bet:
the Europass 24h mini pass, which covers the route to Strasbourg and back the same day for €6.80. Buy it from a ticket machine in Gengenbach or in Offenburg (where you change trains for Strasbourg.)

Read about the Europass here - scroll down to the very last ticket offer: https://www.cts-strasbourg.eu/en/online-store/fares/tickets/

With the Europass in hand, your 2nd train from Offenburg will take you straight to Strasbourg. Return the same way you came, with both your retained Europass and your KONUS card in hand for inspection.

If you use the Europass, it also works for transportation in Strasbourg. Use it for the tram from the train station to the old town

I will add a vote for Alpirsbach for the Kloster museum. It has a collection of artifacts from the pre-seminary school there for older children and young teens from six centuries ago. I thought that was pretty cool. https://www.kloster-alpirsbach.de/en/visitor-experience/the-monastery-museum

Triberg... I agree with Gundersen that Triberg the town is not particularly noteworthy. The waterfall is indeed great, but it's at the other end of town from the train station. More noteworthy in Triberg to me is the Schwarzwaldbahn Erlebnispfad, a hiking trail that takes you to sites/vistas related to the Black Forest Railroad. Watch a train go flying by. Sit under a small concrete bridge as a train goes over it. Look out from impressive vistas to see tracks and stations. Experience why the Black Forest was called the Black Forest. If you are not much of a hiker (or railroad enthusiast), though, that activity won't appeal to you much. And the trail is a little steep in places.

I love almost every place I go, but Freiburg is one of the few places that underwhelmed me. I visited late afternoon/early evening after a day of hiking and wandering at Schluchsee, so maybe I was tired or perhaps having a city invade a nature day made me grumpy, but Freiburg just didn't do much for me. To me, Freiburg is no Chemnitz, a former DDR city which some describe as Germany's ugliest city, but one I found remarkably interesting.

if you do wind up in Freiburg im Breisgau you'll be happy to know that the Konus card, while it isn't issued in the city, is valid on all Freiburg buses and trams.

"The towns along the Black Forest Railway route, like Schiltach, Haslach and Gutach..."

Schiltach is actually situated on a different railway, the Kinzig Valley Railway (Kinzigtalbahn), which meets up with the BF Railway in Hausach as the linked map shows. You may want to include a visit to Alpirsbach and/or Freudenstadt along with Schiltach since they share the same set of tracks. Conveniently, there are direct trains between Gengenbach and these towns every hour.

Haslach is a stop on the way to these 3 towns. But it is also a stop for the RE trains which continue along the Black Forest Railway toward Triberg and Donaueschingen. With the extra train runs, Haslach sees 7 different trains from Gengenbach between 8:00 and noon. It's an attractive town, and the costume museum there is interesting. The Vulkan Memorial Site is a fair distance from the town center, not too far from the old silver mine.

Gutach: The "Gutach Freilichtmuseum" stop is what you want. It's not shown on the linked map above but it's shares the BF Railway with Gengenbach and Haslach. From either town, you need to ride the train to Hausach and change there.

The linked map above for the Black Forest Railway shows the eastern part of the Hell's Valley Railway (Hoellentalbahn) from Donaueschingen (the source of the Danube River) to Titisee (tracks continue west into Freiburg.) It also shows the Rhine Valley Railway or "Rheintalbahn" south of Offenburg, continues south to Freiburg.) So this rail triangle provides plenty of territory for hop-off, hop-on travel over the course of a full day with your KONUS card. The map below shows the Hell's Valley Railway in greater detail.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Verlaufskarte_H%C3%B6llentalbahn_2.png

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Gundersen, I really only have four full days (I'm counting the first day as a full day since I get there around 10 am). I think that Freiburg will be a good choice for me, and depending on how I feel towards the end of the day, it would be interesting to visit Staufen. And I will definitely look for that Bienenstich cake at the Konditorei! That sounds delicious!

Russ, thanks for the reminder about the Europass mini - I think you gave me details before so I've bookmarked everything and have it all in my travel notebook, but it's good to have the info again.

Dave, good to know about Alpirsbach and the Kloster museum. I saw Lee's note about it and planned on going there, but that museum sounds fascinating! Thanks for the link - I love monasteries and churches and history so will definitely make a stop there. I get what you're saying about Freiburg, but I spend several hours on their tourist website last evening and I'm liking everything I see so far. I love cities, both large and small, so I think it will be a fun place to spend the day in.

Nigel, I'm hoping to walk around Freiburg mostly, but I may use the tram to and from the train station so the KONUS will come in handy. It's always nice to have that option.

Russ, thanks again for the details - I do have all the info on the museum stop. Their website is pretty clear about what trains to take and what stop to get off at. I am planning to visit the costume museum - I worked for years as a theatrical costumer before I became an attorney so it sounds very interesting. And I'm hoping to visit the Vulcan memorial - I found their website and it gives a lot of details about getting there. I think I heard about it when I was doing a search on this site for Haslach, and you posted something about it.

I was thinking about it last night as I was watching the last episode of Band of Brothers (first time I've seen it - I can't believe I missed it before, but it was when I was in law school so probably understandable). At any rate, the episode showing them finding the concentration camp was very emotional, and it made wonder how many camps like this were out there and hidden (or maybe not so hidden) from the towns.

So I was looking at what Lee was saying about the rail line from Schiltach to Freudenstadt. At the same time, I came across this 2013 article from the NY Times, touting Baiersbronn (about 6km north of Freudenstadt) as a culinary paradise. Evidently there are three restaurants there with Michelin stars - two with 3 stars, and one with 1 star. Pretty impressive for a small (11k pop.) town.

I was thinking it might be wonderful to go there for dinner, but logistically I'm not sure it's possible. At first, I thought I could go there after my visit to the small towns like Schiltach, Haslach, the museum, and so on, which certainly is possible but I'm worried about coming back. Everything I'm seeing puts the train ride at 2+ hours from Gengenbach. The restaurants don't open till 7 pm for dinner, so after a 1 1/2 to 2 hour meal I just don't know that I will be able to find a train back at that time.

Lee or anyone, when you went to Freudenstadt, was it that long of a train ride? I've tried it on several of the networks and the DB regional and can't come up with anything less than 2+ hours.

The two 3-star places in Baiersbronn happen to be the only 3-star places in the entire state of Baden-Württemberg (14,000 square miles)

I suppose that if whatever they have on offer is the only thing that will do, maybe it's worth arranging to spend the night there.

There's one 1-star mention in Baden-Baden, where at 21:36 you could return to G'bach in about half an hour. Note that in Baden-Baden, a lengthy bus ride is always required to reach the station from in-town locations.

But I wonder whether the two Gengenbach places in the Michelin guide wouldn't interest you.

https://guide.michelin.com/en/de/baden-wurttemberg/gengenbach/restaurants

Lahr has 3 Michelin mentions, including a 1-star. Return trip to G'bach by train is also possible after 9:30 in about 30 minutes, as for Baden-Baden - but maybe one of these restaurants would be convenient to the Lahr station.

Russ, I did not even think about looking in Michelin for other closer restaurants! The ones in Gengenbach look very nice and I love that I do not have to take a bus home after an evening with food and wine. I love eating in nice restaurants and will really look forward to this. Thank you so much for taking the time to look this up!

I love Freiburg and it was just named one of lonely planet’s top cities for 2022.

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/best-in-travel/cities

Thanks, Carrie! Glad to know that - I'm looking forward to visiting there!