Balkan Road Trip Day 1: Deutschland to Slovenia via Austria

Stau überall! Traffic everywhere! We are almost on the border of Germany and Austria. It is day one of our balkan road trip, and it also happens to be the first day of summer holidays in all German bundeslander or states.
We left Niedersachsen, Osnabrück at 715am armed with food and drink, our trusty gps app Osman Plus, loaded up with waypoints to our destination - Bled, Slovenia. It is 1070 kms and predicted to take us 10 hrs 32 minutes. It is 1707 now, we stopped for 3 short coffees and toilet stops of 20 minutes each. In the last stop, we picked up vignettes for Austria- 8 euros 1 week validity and Slovenia-- 30 euros 1 month validity and hot stuck in traffic almost at the border.
Thankfully, traffic is flowing again. Just qnother 287 kms to Bled!

Pastel painting

Two Christmases ago, my husband got me art materials for Christmas.  I researched on what I would need for different art media -- pastel, watercolor, acrylic -- and came up with a shopping list.   Pencils, watercolors, watercolor brushes, watercolor paper, pastels, pastel paper, acrylic paints, acrylic paper, frames, an easel. In a huge factory style art shop in Dusseldorf, I stocked up on what I thought I would need.

Two years later, the art materials remained untouched -- my easel unused and holding an empty frame.

Finally, this October, I joined an art class on pastel, watercolor and acrylic painting -- and my art materials came out of hibernation.

The class was such that you could choose what media to work in, what to paint and the teacher would help you out with the execution.

Pastels

I decided to start out with pastels, as it seemed easier to handle.  Below is a photo of my pastel starting set with 15 colors.

We always think that we need loads of colors, but our teacher showed us how to work with just a few colors.  I guess most people know that there are just 3 primary colors -- red, yellow and blue -- and all colors are made from that.  From the combination of 2 primary colors, you can make a complementary color.  Red+yellow= orange, yellow+blue=green, blue+red= violet.

So our first exercise was to make a color wheel of the primary colors.

Notice that the center and left-bottom color wheel has a vibrant bright warm set of primary colors -- for these I used ultramarine blue, permanent red, and light yellow.  You see that the intermingling of these primary colors form the complementary colors violet, orange and green at the intersections of the primary colors.

On the upper right side is another color wheel with another set of 3 primary colors: burnt siena (as kind of red), yellow ocher (as a yellow) and again the ultramarine blue (as that was all I had in my pastel set).  This color wheel gives another flavor of colors -- my teacher pointed out that these colors could be used for more natural type of landscapes, like the beach or so.

In my set were another set of primaries-- as shown in the lower bottom color wheel -- pthalo blue, lemon yellow and again the permanent red (the only red I had in the set).

Basically, the point is that with a few pastels, you can actually make a wide range of colors!  The primary colors are the 3 basic colors, then from them comes the 3 other complementary colors and between them are shades and hues of other colors!  Another point is that you usually would match colors that feel the same so that your painting comes out as harmonious.  We see that the first set of 3 feels like warm colors, the nature colors are on the upper right, the cooler type colors on the lower right, and somehow they belong together.

Next lesson was how to come up with grey tones.  We were told not to use blacks, as the color is too strong in a picture. Instead, what one can do is to combine all the colors to make a grey, or basically, a primary color + a complementary color will give a grey tone, as we can see in the next plate.

Well, okay, my plate is not so nice, but the idea is somehow there.  The combination of 3 primary colors gives a grey/black tone -- i.e red, blue, yellow.  It follows then that a primary color + its complementary color would then also give a grey/black tone -- i.e. red + green (blue and yellow) = grey, yellow+violet(red and blue)= grey, and blue + orange(red+yellow).  I tested that by using a light yellow plus the violet blue pastel in my set, the blue plus the light orange in my set and the red plus the cinnabar green in my set. Again, you can come up with different greys depending on how much of each color you put. I tried putting one color first on top of the other, then the other way around, but my teacher said it really does not matter which one is first as you will come up with a grey.

On our first day, I painted the following pastel of a leaf.  Here it is. :-)

 Next pastel painting day, I redid my color wheels.  Here you see more of the complementary colors. Across the blue is its complement, orange. Across the yellow, is its complement, violet/purple.  Across the red is its complement, green.  On the left color wheel, a combination of the pure primary colors giving a warmer tone.  The right color wheel shows the more nature like colors (although a prussian blue would have been better here instead of the ultramarine blue).

I then painted this apple, which I finished after 2 classes.  Yup, it took me about 4 hours to come up with this picture.  I found it difficult to first, draw the apple, then second, put in all the colors, third, add the shadows, then fourth, put in a background.  It wasn't just red and yellow but all the shades in between!   Putting in shadows also meant thinking about where the light was coming from and what shadow it would cast.  Deciding on a background meant ensuring the major subject comes through.   For this painting,  I did not use any black at all. To get the greys, I used the technique of adding the complementary color on top of the primary -- so I added a green on top of red at the bottom edge of the apple to achieve the shadow effect.  More of the complementary color made it darker, almost black.  Again, our teacher cautioned against using a black (which I did not have in my pastel set anyway), and suggested using the complementary colors.  This was also a way to make the painting more harmonious looking, unified and together.  My teacher suggested the nice background of light ultramarine blue with touches of yellow ocher.  I would never have thought of that!  

I bought 3 more pastels to have a wider range of colors -- a carmine red, a prussian blue and a lighter yellow ochre which my teacher suggested would be good for a flesh tone.

From here, I decided to set aside my pastels for a while and venture a bit into watercolor.  Coming up next...

Schwarzwald Sampler -- Car-camping in the Black Forest of Germany

My husband and I realized that we hardly ever went to destinations close to where we live and that is how we decided to go to the Schwarzwald for our 2 week holiday.

Schwarzwald is German for Black Forest (black = schwarz, forest = wald) -- a magical place where forests are dark and deep. One can imagine this landscape as home to Grimm's wicked fairytales of little red-hooded skipping girls lured by big grey wolves with glinting eyes.

The plan was to see the Schwarzwald from the North to South, from Baden-Baden to Freudenstadt via the Hochschwarzwaldstrasse (High Black Forest Avenue), stop by Freiburg, then work our way back up through the wine region of Germany including Kaiserstuhl, the Alsace region of France and Straßbourg, then back home.  We also decided to forgo booking any hotels, and take our chances with campsites, and go with the flow.  To be able to do that,  we would go car camping! Car-camping in Europe means that you stop at paid campsites. It is generally not possible to camp in the wild as in some other countries.

We loaded up our car with our hardly used 3-man tent, camp stove, food, and enough clothes for 2 weeks so as not to have to do laundry.  I borrowed all possible travel books with advice for hikes, bike tours and even city tours.  We planned to do small hikes, as well as bring our mountain bikes to get around.  We were able to do all of that, but did not count on the weather being as rainy as it was. We had rain for maybe 12 out of the 14 days on the road, but that did not stop us. :-)

First stop: Baden-Baden

I was in charge of making all the plans for where to go, and I happily pointed our gps to what I thought was a campsite in Baden-Baden.  Oops!  Although it was close to the center of Baden-Baden which was why I had chosen it, it turned out to be an RV or Wohnwagen place, where one pays to park one of those big camping caravans.  

I immediately realized my plan was not too efficient, and thought, hmmm, there must be an app for that (i.e. to find German campsites). And there was! We decided at that instant to buy and download an app that would tell us where the campsites were, and went with the ADAC Camping/Stellplatze 2014 Android app since we were ADAC members and it looked good.  I had thought twice about paying for it, since it cost about 8€, but in the end it was well worth it.  Great buy! It saved us quite some time and effort.  This app can tell you the ADAC certified campsites and caravan parking places in Germany and in most European countries, like France, Switzerland, Italy.  (ADAC is Germany's top car club.)  It also has ratings for the places to make your decision easier.  You can also get a camping card to get discounts on your stay -- although I think we only remembered to show it twice to claim our 10% discount.  Another important app was Osmand which provided offline maps as well as navigation. They really fixed the navigation options for this app with voice directions!  You will need the Baden-Württemberg map for this area.

Our first stop was a 4.5 star rated campsite close to Baden-Baden -- the Freizeitcenter Oberreihn. My first German campsite! It was almost at capacity, but we were able to get a place to camp for about 40€ per night for a car, 2 people and a tent -- not very cheap, but the place was huge, with 2 small lakes and quite nice facilities.  We even paid for electricity at our campsite although we only used it to charge our phones and tablet. Baden-Baden was 20 kms away so we just decided to take it easy for the first day and get settled in the campsite.  We biked around and even took a dip in the lake.  We realized that it would have been tons more comfortable to eat had we brought along camp chairs and a camp table (which everyone else around had). We had to bring out a picnic blanket and ate our dinner in front of our tent. That night, there was a beautiful full moon to go with our dinner!  It was great to be outdoors.

Next day, we had fresh brötchen or bread rolls from a shop in the campsite. Yes, some campsites have these nice amenities, sometimes even a restaurant.

First off, we went for a short hike.  We parked at an extremely expensive spot in the city center of Baden-Baden, and walked to the trailhead.  We found that it would have been possible to park at this area for free.  The hike started at the Caracalla Baths, went up through a hill to a great view of the city, and up to the ruins of the Altes Schloss (or Old Castle).  We had lunch at a restaurant there, I had Wurstsalat (sausage salad), a German classic, washed down by their local beer. The castle was truly fascinating and had great views! We hiked around a bit more to try to follow the Panoramaweg, but we also wanted to go to the baths so after a bit we went back down.

Baden-Baden is of course famous for its thermal baths, and we had to try that.  They have two baths, one the traditional bath, the Freidrichsbad, and the other a more modern affair called the Caracalla Therme.  First off, you have to know that German saunas/baths are usually mixed -- meaning males/females in the buff are together in one sauna.  So was it in the Friedrichsbad.  It was supposed to be a traditional Roman bath with several stations. First, a warm air room, then a bath, another Roman style room and so on. Then, we opted to get a body scrub with a brush -- I chose a hard brush, but I recommend the soft one as it was honestly too hard. Then so on for several baths. Interesting experience.

We were not able to go to some other places since we decided Baden-Baden is pretty close so we can just go there anytime, and next day, left for our next destination. (to be continued)