pink breweries and flesh-eating ants

[kaffeesuchtig]

Today I discovered a part of the Black Forest I hadn't yet been to. I took the train to Seebrugg at the far end of the Schluchsee. There were tons of people out on boats, sailing, and windsurfing. The weather was perfect! Strangely there were no nudies out sunbathing. I hiked to Grafenhausen, a little nest high atop a hill, and could kinda see the Alps. They were obscured by the atmosphere or smog, I don't know. It was odd because the air quality everywhere else was really good. From there I took a winding little road past a lot of cows and a creepy collection of deserted vacation bungalows. I ended up in Rothaus, where my favorite beer is brewed. The brewery is this cool, sort of postmodern pink fortress, sadly closed on Sundays. On my hike back I saw armies of ants crossing the path every hundred feet or so. I followed their progress straight into these enormous hives (do ants make hives? or what are they called?). A couple of them were nearly as tall as I am, huge brown mounds of what appeared to be pine needles, earth and wood chips, seemingly innocuous until I looked closer and realized the entire surface was teeming with millions of ants. This discovery has since led me to reconsider my plans for a multi-day backpacking trip through the Forest to Lake Constance. I do not want to be sleeping anywhere near that many ants, especially not if they are voracious, flesh-eating beasts.
I feel refreshed, ready to face another week and to return to some unfinished writing projects. And now to my lovely bottle of Rothaus Pils Tannenzäpfle and a phone call to my dad.

And let me just add that I love Mozilla Firefox.