Visited the Black Forest open air museum Vogtsbauernhof in 77793 Gutach / Germany. This is a huge areal that has several very old farm buildings, that have been carefully de- and reconstructed on this site. There are often also tours, demonstrations or hands-on activities how people used to live in the Black Forest area but as a half-timber nutter I’m mostly interested in the buildings. These are from various periods starting as early as 1407 (though that’s an often refurbished exception).

Shooting any sort of pictures with my smartphone camera was very hard because the insides of the buildings are unbelievable dark and hardly lit. I guess this is driving home a point in itself. Anyway I did my best to improve the photos somewhat with Darktable (not that I have any idea what I’m doing there). Also the galleries won’t syndicate so you’ll have to check the source for the pictures.

Here are some of the pictures that are very dark in reality.

We also looked at plenty of farm equipment, of course. In fact one of the farms is still operated and has livestock around.

One of the most interesting things I found was a “mini house” that is basically of fridge for milk. It utilizes a water stream to keep milk on the inside cold.

Some of these buildings simply look gorgeous on the outside but my kids were pretty certain that they’d not actually want to life in such a building. Beside the darkness on the inside one could also always feel how air makes it inside. There’s always a slight breeze, which is probably nice in the summertime but not so much in the wintertime. Especially with only a few places around to heat the buildings.

One of their major show pieces is probably the Schlössle von Effringen, which is basically a mini castle that has been remade again and again dating back to ~11C.

This is also where I shot most of my pictures. Sadly we were running out of time and I have to revisit this again so look at some things a little closer. And maybe leave the kids at home too. They don’t really have the required patience.

I also rather enjoyed the various kitchens, that were almost all “smoke kitchens” – means the smoke from the kitchen fire was used to conserve food. This is a very medieval thing to do. Sadly the pictures I made don’t do them justice since they are basically black holes, that cameras struggle hard with.

One of the things I enjoyed most are models of various buildings. I made many photos of these for inspiration. Maybe I’ll come back to recreating such buildings in the Rising World game one day.

And last some unsorted photos in portrait mode (ugh, it happens, mkay?)

Website of the museum is: https://www.vogtsbauernhof.de/en with plenty of more pictures and a 360deg tour. Can recommend. Alas bring food along – the restaurants next to the site are rather expensive. Museum is worth every cent though IMHO.