Visiting Germany is a little bit like coming home - speaking the language and visiting friends and my host families from my time here as an exchange student. It was so good to see everyone again, and of course I have grand plans to be better at staying in touch than I have been in the past - and I'm always thrilled to have visitors and e-mails, so please visit or write.....
We started our (second) Germany leg with a drive towards Europa
Park in Rust (near the French bordertown of Strasbourg. On the way we stopped at Titisee (Rob likes the name) - a ski town with big frozen lake, which we took a very pleasant stroll on. The kids found it fascinating (and so did we!) to be walking on water, and took great pleasure in running and sliding along on the surface, and found it amusing to see an apple frozen just under the surface of the water. Black Forest Cake was a must, and of course we visited the local cuckoo clock shop as well, but no purchases.Arrived at Europa Park campground late afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed the luxuries of real showers (although they never seem to have them hot enough with the push button versions!). The campground is part of Europa Park, so next morning was just a stroll to the gates, and the fun began. Europa Park is set up with themes around various countries or regions, so it was a good chance to see whether the stereotype version matched the real version we had seen, or to visit the countries we hadn't managed to get to in real life! Of course the rides tended to dominate, but we did enjoy the "typical" buildings and food - Greek souvlaki for dinner, and not too far off the real thing. Despite poor weather, we had a great time on the rides, our only problem being that we did not have enough time to do everything. Did fit in some gluehwein and some delicious sour cherry liqueur tasting (and buying) at the German Christmas market, and it was great to see a Christmas market (even if it was staged) since we had missed out on doing this pre-Christmas in Germany.
A quick visit to Strasbourg next morning meant the kids could tick off France on their list of visited countries, and it was well worth the visit - really pretty town, and I bought the obligatory baguettes and croissants to make myself feel that I was really in France. Signposts were often in both French and German, making things a bit easier, as my schoolgirl french was somewhat lacking.
Headed towards Moehrendorf, (near Nurnberg) in the afternoon on the kind invitation o
f the people we met at the Grossglocknerstrasse - see the earlier blog post describing how one entertains and copes with 10 people in a tiny campervan. Seemed to take forever to get there, but we were rewarded after the long drive with a delicious dinner of typical Nurnberg fare - our hosts Till and Anke had gone out of their way to make us incredibly welcome. Their house is absolutely gorgeous - an old "Forsthaus" which means it was originally lived in by the person who looked after the kings forests (I think - correct me if I am wrong Till!). Till and Anke had done an enormous amount of work on the house and it was so interesting to see the photos and to hear how they had made an effort to work with all natural and original materials in the renovations. Their children seemed to enjoy having us as guests, and played well with our kids despite language differences. Our kids didn't want to leave the wonderful comforts that they had been looking forward to after Till made his invitation particularly enticing with promises of wonderful facilities of sauna, hot showers, bath, washing machine and internet access (all the things that are very much missed in the campervan) - not to mention good company and great food.We spent a few nights there and visited the town of Nurnberg - I had very good memories of Nurnberg from my teenage years and it is still as pretty and pleasant as I remember it. We watched a multi-media show of the history of Nurnberg at the museum - I certainly hadn't realised what a central role it had played in much of recent history. We also went walking in the Frankische Schweiz area and had both a delicious afternoon tea and dinner in the local eateries - again focused on sampling the local delicacies.
Went through Bamberg after leaving their home (and being told that croissants are known in the region as Bambergers). The significance of this town to me is that this is where I bought the bottle of wine that Rob and I drank at our wedding. Anyone who was there may remember me making a bit of a big deal of that in my wedding speech, and it tasted great in spite of having been rather poorly cellared and frequently moved in the 9 years since I had bought it.
After that was a brief stop in Bad Kissingen (after some serious navigational errors making us very late), where we had lunch with people we had met in Salzburg. Lovely to see them again and of course Breanna and their girls thought that the visit was far too short (although it was Liam that really didn't want to leave their Nintendo DS!!)
And then on towards Duelmen where I had spent much of my year as an exchange student. Got to experience a serious traffic jam and diversion on the way, so ended up spending the night somewhere on the side of the road, and then got to Duelmen next day. Lovely to see my host family (von Luettichau family) with the added benefit of catching up with my host sister and brother who happened to be visiting - they were only 3 and 2 years old when I lived with them - we looked back on the photos and the original entries in the guestbook. I was the first of quite a number of exchange students they had hosted over the years, so it was interesting to read the guestbook comments of the other students (and good to know that I didn't put them off hosting exchange students, with being the first!)Also had a lovely afternoon with another host family, the Eing family in Gescher - this time managed
to catch up with 2 of my 4 host brothers and sisters, and it was so great to see them and to meet their kids (or some of them anyway!)Then back to Holland and into the packing up time - so sad to be saying goodbye to the campervan ready to head home - can certainly recommend campervan travel, and also BW Campers, Netherlands as a great company to rent a van from.
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