Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jog

Typed in Redcliffe on 26 July 2014

Kenny with a German-sized beer

Well we are home and so I have to backtrack to catch you all up on the last week or so of the trip.

When I left off we were about to go celebrate the Helle Nacht festival in Bad Bergzabern

Minstrels wandering to open the festival

.  All the people that stayed in the night before turned out to celebrate White Night (the longest night - the summer solstice).  The weather was not brilliant.  It was drizzling until I walked back to the van to get the umbrellas - after that there was not a drop!!  People everywhere and booze up the ying yang.  We had a glass/stein or two of the local drop.  We were bemused because all the drinks were served in real glass and one could wander throughout the town, glass in hand.  When you returned the glass you got a €2 refund - consequently everyone returned their glasses - great system.  There was street entertainment here and there and a wonderful festive atmosphere.  Those who know me well will be amused to know that we actually watched native dancing as some of the locals got into their traditional dress and performed local folk dances - it is not something that I usually expose myself to for more than ten minutes at a time!  And there were some colourful characters.

Native dancing

Colourful characters of Bad Bergzabern

Having stayed in Bad Bergzabern so that we could participate in the festival, we moved off the next day sorry to see the end of our first small German town.  What do you know - down the road 5kms there is another cute little German town, and 5kms after that and 2kms after that.  This area of the State of Rhineland-Pfalz is very pretty as far as the towns and villages are concerned.  A lot of them are called ‘Bad’ something.  This does not mean that they are awful, but that there is a spa or a spring that the town has been named after - amazing how many ‘Bad’ towns there are when you are looking at an alphabetised list!

Passing through one nice little town after another, we made our way to Karlsruhe and travelled to Neckarsulm where we stayed for the night poised to move on to Sinsheim the next day to revisit the wonderful Auto Technik Museum that we enjoyed so much on our first trip to Germany.  Neckarsulm was quite a big town but we had no interest in exploring it as the weather was not wonderful and the camping park was a ways out of town.  That night we had a big thunderstorm and had to run the heater next morning to dry out our cupboard as the rain had blown in through the heater vent.  Dried out very quickly - love that gas heater - and we were good to go.

Off to Sinsheim where we parked at the Auto Technik Museum (http://www.technik-museum.de) and spent a couple of hours wandering through the exhibitions. 

Concorde and Tupelov at Sinsheim

Replica of the world's first car

Something for the girls at Sinsheim

Check out the web site to get a grasp of the extent of this amazing place, where you can go into a Concorde and also its Russian equivalent, the Tupelov.  Well worth a visit if you are over that way, and its sister museum at Speyer got rave reviews from young Levi who came home with us (more about him later).

Having done our thing at the museum, we then went searching for the Stellplatz for Wohnmobiles in Sinsheim.  This was tricky as there was a great deal of roadwork going on around the museum precinct and it was by a very roundabout way that we eventually found our spot for the night - one of our fellow campers told us that we could have walked to the museum from the stelleplatz!  Well we walked to the shops instead, and actually had some luck in the great hunt for the Mother Of The Bride’s dress - I now have two options at this stage.  Kenny is very pleased as he is a bit over the hunt.  Apart from the shopping success, we quite liked Sinsheim which was a bustling vibrant city with nice treed streets and lots of those wonderful cosmopolitan al fresco wining/dining/coffee venues.

Kenny and half a cheesecake!

From Sinsheim we travelled northeast the next day to Eberbach, a picturesque village (town really) on the banks of the Neckar River.  Whilst the Stellplatz was on the opposite side of the river to the centre of the town, we drove over the bridge and had a stroll through town in a light rain.  We tested the skill of the local pastry cook and enjoyed some local tasty delights.  The servings were so huge we couldn’t eat it all and the price was a fraction of what a smaller serve at home would have cost - tasty and a bargain too!! 

 Because of the weather we didn’t linger in town too long ad retired to the Stellplatz where we stayed for two nights and I caught up with the book-keeping which was well overdue.  This Stellplatz did not have water as advertised, but hey - we had power for 24 hours for €1 and a very quiet neighbourhood

Riverside village near Eberbach

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The loyal wives of Weinsberg

Leaving Eberbach, we meandered beside the river for quite a few miles and spent the next night at Weinsberg.  Our Stellplatz in Weinsberg was across the road from a school and a five minute walk to the centre of town.  This spot had power, water and a toilet dump all for €1 for the 24 hours - not bad.  We checked out the town which was quite nice and in the Office of Tourisme we learnt all about the loyal wives of Wiensberg.  (“When King Conrad III defeated the Duke of Welf (in the year 1140) and placed Weinsberg under siege, the wives of the besieged castle negotiated a surrender which granted them the right to leave with whatever they could carry on their shoulders. The king allowed them that much. Leaving everything else aside, each woman took her own husband on her shoulders and carried him out. When the king's people saw what was happening, many of them said that that was not what had been meant and wanted to put a stop to it. But the king laughed and accepted the women's clever trick. "A king" he said, "should always stand by his word."- Wikipedia)  lots of paintings, statues, etc. commemorating this legend.  Kenny spotted a Chinese restaurant offering a menu de jour all you can eat buffet for €6 so we gave it a try and had a lovely Chinese lunch.  I mention this because we had an interesting experience with a Chinese restaurant in Hungary (they’re everywhere!!) and vowed thereafter “when in Hungary - eat Hungarian!” which has proved to be a good rule.  Weinsberg Chinese was the exception.

A quiet night then off to the town with the fabulous name of Schwäbisch Hall - we really only went there because I liked the name!.  But what a quirk of fate.  Schwäbisch Hall turned out to be an absolutely beautiful town full of 16^th century buildings set in a deep valley bestriding the river.   It is known for its musical productions, and in fact, one was in (public) rehearsal on the steps of the Cathedral whilst we were there.  We sat and watched for a while before strolling through the narrow streets taking in the atmosphere of this gorgeous place.  As Fiona (the van, don’t forget) came down the very steep road into the town I was having a fit because I thought “we will never get back up this hill”, but she took it in her stride and got us up, up and away with no problem. 

Beautiful old buildings in Schwabisch Hall

16th century fountain in Schwabisch Hall

Lovely street in Schwabisch Hall

Old buildings by the bridge in Schwabisch Hall

From Schwäbisch Hall we turned south to Schwäbisch Gmund - again a destination picked because of its name - all of 30-50kms away.  This town did not come close to its similarly named predecessor.  The Stellplatz was large with all facilities, but full and very close to a road used (all day, all night) by heavy, noisy trucks and also close to the railway line.  It was full of motorhomes because, as we discovered from chatting to neighbours, Schwäbisch Gmund was host that weekend to a Blumenfest - a gardening Expo.  We thought that could be interesting until we also discovered that they wanted €16 each to get in - pass Tony, we were not that interested.  Managed to get a good night’s sleep though despite the surrounding noise.  On our way out of town we saw great evidence of the popularity of the Blumenfest as there were people everywhere.  This was not really surprising as Europeans are wonderful gardeners and every home has a great veggie garden and the streets and public spaces are aglow with floral displays - really lovely.

Enclosed mobility scooter - loved it!!!

This was to be our last night on the road as our next and final stop was Filderstadt (to Stuttgart as Redcliffe is to Brisbane).  This is where Manfred and Marianne live.  They are the parents of Bea who was to take over ownership of our van - the (not so) lovely Fiona.  Bea, a friend from home, lives in Australia where she married an Aussie guy - now amicably divorced.  As we approached Filderstadt we realised that we would miss her and the leisurely, stress-free (well almost) wandering of the past four months.  This trip has been the most relaxed of any we have done and we have enjoyed it more than any other I think.’

When we arrived we were made very welcome and next day joined in the Christening celebrations for two of the family’s children - Levi and Leonie.  We walked to the local church (whose bells had already made an impression) and enjoyed the experience of a robust service in German that we didn’t really understand word for word, but got the gist, and listened to the locals sings familiar hymns with foreign words.  Then we all retired to a nearby restaurant where we were treated to a lovely lunch of traditional Schwäbian food of the region.  Lots of sausage, pork and turkey schnitzels, lentils, and spetzle (spelled something like that) (sort of homemade noodles but more like omelette strips rather than pasta) with lots and lots of salad.  Lots of wine was consumed, after which we repaired to Bea’s brother Dominic’s home for more wine and desserts.  We left earlier than most as we are getting old and finding it hard to hack the pace.

Kenny gone native

Over the next few days we cleaned Fiona and handed her over.  Only hiccup was the gas cylinders.  We had a English cylinder that we inherited when we bought the van, and a French gas cylinder - we had to buy it when our English cylinder ran out, because in France you MUST use a French cylinder.  The day after we arrived in Filderstadt our gas ran out and we discovered that the German system was different again!!!  And all the gas plumbing in the van, legal in the UK, was verboten in Germany and had to be redone.  I bit of a nuisance but we got a gas fitter to fix it for us and got a German compliance certificate.  We can’t believe that in an area as small as Europe, that there are so many different systems  - can’t the EU make everything standard across the board?

Anyway Bea and Peter (her boyfriend) were very pleased with their new little touring home, and Bea’s family are all lining up for a turn.  It was lovely to see that they were all so excited about our ugly little Fiona.

So after almost a week in Filderstadt, Bea drove us to Frankfurt to catch our flight and escort her little boy, Levi (8 years old) home to his Dad in Australia.  She and Peter will stay on for a few more weeks.

Levi is a very bright little boy and kept us on our toes for the trip home (we are out of practice at looking after kids for any length of time) but was very good and easy to manage.  The flight, in three stages  - Frankfurt to Dubai, Dubai to Singapore, Singapore to Brisbane was long and boring, but we arrived home in one piece and 5.15am last Sunday morning, handed Levi over to his Dad and caught a taxi home from the airport. 

Our cat was enraptured to see us, although he made it very clear he was unimpressed by our extended absence.

It is lovely to be home where one has guaranteed good internet (good old Telstra), a piping hot shower in a good sized area with a shower rose that has lots of holes in the right places and good pressure, guaranteed toilet seat and paper - aaah the simple pleasures!  Now all we have to do is get over the jet lag.  A week later we still have not gotten our sleeping patterns back to normal and are dropping off at odd hours during the day and waking up at 2am.  Got to get some more sleeping pills!

Well, this is the end of the blog for this trip, and I can’t say that I am sorry.  Mum is going to have to talk real hard to get me to do it on the next trip - whenever that may be.  Thank you to all who have followed us and paid us some lovely compliments on the blog - Kenneth actually read it once and was surprised and impressed, apart from that his main contribution has been to say “have we updated our blog yet?”  Thanks heaps.

As Bugs Bunny says “Duh, That’s All Folks!!!”

Wendy Griggs Over and Out.