Where-ever I lay my hat

Sunday was our last day and we had decided to leave a bit early so our drives wouldn’t be as big the next day. We did a bit of work in the moring although they had said we didn’t need too. They have been really generous to us and we have had a fantastic time and it was very sad to leave. We got sent off with a care packeage of farm produce we got away about 1pm after a substantial lunch of leftovers from last night. The liver terrien was great and we also had a chocolate marron cake for dessert which was lovely (and of course some chicken and rice, a fromage course and a salad course!). We drove up past Grenoble and into the mountains to Annecy and it was gorgeous. We nearly decided to skip Switzerland and just stay there. The town on the lakefront looked really pretty and there were mounitans all around the lake and lovely houses along its side and plenty of boats out and a few chateaux on the other side under the mountains. We found a cute little campground run by Gilbert who is an author and clearly just adores having people around. He serves cake in the afternoon around 5pm and it was lovely to have a wee snack. We went for a stroll and a swim in the lake it’s a gorgeous aqua marine coulor and wasn’t too cold. Anyway it was probably still 40degrees and even at 8pm it was still 32 degreees so we needed to cool off. The lakeside is packed with people sunbathing in every available space and if you are female and under 60 you wear a bikini regardless of your shape. I had dressed inappropriately in my swimsuit and got a few odd looks. We had a simple diinner of bread and cheese and farm pate at the tent and Gilbert obviously didn’t see the quality of what we were eating or how much we’d had for lunch because he felt sorry for us and offered us some ratatoille as well. We didn’t have any as we were actually plenty full. We went for a stroll towards town and decided we have the best part of the lake front anyway so it wasn’t worth strolling too far.
On Monday morning we went for a swim and got packed up and said goodbye to Gilbert, who gave us a bottle of local wine and told us to make lovely babies!!! Then we headed for Switzerland. We stopped on the way to get groceries at a supermarket with a view of lake Geneva and then drove along the side of it round the bottom and up the other side past Montreau. We stopped for lunch in Villeneuve and sat on the wall of the lake and watched the scenery and boats go by. The whole eastern coastline is the equivalent of the French riveria and is pretty classy but its much more laid back and more like a real place so actually nicer. Theres a really pretty chateau right on the lake and mountains rising straight up from it. Then we drove over a pretty scary pass and down the other side which was even more scary. However it was really beautiful with mountains and glaciers all round and really cute swiss mountain chalets everywhere and the towns were all built of cute wooden chalets exactly like in the movies. There were wildflower meadows and cows with bells on but they still never coincided for the perfect postcard picture. We drove down into Thun and around the top of the Thunersee to Interlaken. Thun was really cute with the river draining out of the lake through it and pretty buildings along the riverside that were more swiss than other places. Its interesting that its easier to define the differences with swiss architecture than it has been other places. There is a clear difference between Perigord and Pyreennes and Spanish houses but I can’t actually say what it is as they are similar colours with similar building materials and similar design. Hoswever the swiss houses are made of wood for a start and have steep rooves and several balconies on the front under the roofline. The wood is always decorated and there are also lots of flower boxes, which distinguish the swiss wooden houses from French or german ones. Interlaken was pretty but busy and badly signposted and it took us several attempts to get out the other side of it in the right direction but we eventually found our campgound on the edge of the Brienzersee. It is a small campground and we had a site right on the lake wall with our own stone steps going down into the water. The view over the other side of the lake was of the mountains although we couldn’t see the really big ones but we could see a few wee glaciers. The colour of the water was beautiful and we had to have a swim to cool down before dinner. We had aperitifs followed by paella with the Camargue rice and a fromage course and dessert of chocolate. The sunset was fascinating as the sun disappeared behind the hill quite early but then cam out again and shone along the valley and lit up the whole hills again. There was a tiny collection of buildings far up on a really steep hillside opposite us and they got the sun many times – I think they had 4 sunsets! It would have been a huge and very steep hike to get up to them but it was clearly a well established farm or hamlet. What an amazing life that would be – especially in winter.
Tuesday morning started off lovely and the mountains were really clear and the sun shone on us while we had a swim. But during breakfast it clouded over and the haze came across the mountains and the wind came up. The colour of the lake change every 5 minutes depending what the weather is doing and it can be anything from brilliant aquamarine to deep blue to grey and every shade in between. I think every time I looked at the lake it was a different colour and the light on it was different. We had a fairly slow start with a leisurely breakfast and a sudden flurry of packing up when it threatened to rain and we got away from the campground at 9am. We headed up into the mountains to Grindelwald and the scenery was stunning. We got lovely views of the Eiger, the Jungfrau and a dozen other peaks and a few glaciers. Grindelwald is also a gorgeous town and we would happily go back for a weeks holiday to go walking. Most of the walks were from gondolas or trams and the parking and tram preices were really expensive so we just looked and then carried on back down the mountain and off towards Luzern. The road was uneventful although we passed a few pretty lakes and the mountains stayed very hazy all day. By the time we got to Luzern the haze extended to the lake, which was a dull grey brown colour despite the sun shining, and the mountaitns could barely be seen. The centre of Luzern though was really pretty with gorgeous old buildings and an amazing bridge across the river. The traffic was awful and we didn’t stop as we just wanted to get out of the big city. There were a couple of lakes on the way north that we tried to stop at for lunch but it looked like school holidays and the parking was expensive and the lakeside packed with people so we eventually gave up on lunch. We just carried on driving into germany then back into Switzerland then back into germany again. We passed through Brug which also looked rather gorgeous with old buildings built right up to the riverside and a pretty bridge over the Aare river. The Aare drains most of Switzerland and is not very small. We had actually crossed it just after we came into Switzerland from draining the small lakes east of lake Geneva. It starts by draining the two lakes at Interlaken and two other huge rivers join it just after Brug that have drained the lakes around Zurich and Luzern. Then at the border it flows into the Rhein and that is the end of the Aare but the Rhein is already huge before it gets that water. Our next stop was the Rheinfalls near Schaffhausen, which is upstream of the Aare junction but rather a lot of water falling off a rather big ledge – actually about 600 cubic metres per second! We spend ages just strolling round looking at all the different views of it and went up onto the top to see it from above. There were trout at the bottom waiting to go upstream and we saw a couple attempt it but you have to wonder if they ever actually succeed because its so huge and so fast and the waves at the bottom are huge too. When we had taken every photo imaginable we decided it was time to find somewhere to live for the night and drove into the black forest. The drive was really pretty and we could actually see in places why its called the black forest.because its pretty dense in parts and you really can’t see far in. It may have been enhanced by the time of day althoguht the sun was still quite high, nad by the fact we were wearing sunglasses, but it was black in a few places. We found a campground on a lake at Schulesee that was also very pleasant and quiet. It was a bit bigger than the last two and we didn’t swim in the lake because it was 7pm when we arrived and we just cooked dinner, relaxed and had a brief stroll to the lake.
We had a very gentle start on Wednesday morning as we only had a short distance to go and no fixed plans. We wanted to walk somewhere in the Black Forest and go to some terrible touristy towns. Its great to be back in a civilised country that thinks bread is sufficiently important that you can get fresh rolls at the campgrounds every morning and they don’t charge tolls for the decent roads. We had fresh bread for our breakfast and had a very brief swim in the lake but its not that lovely blue colour of the mountain lakes but a brownish colour, probably from the tannins in the trees. Even knowing its clean and a good swimming lake, its just not as nice to swim in a brown lake as a blue one. I guess that’s our modern conditioning about clean water being blue. We got away from the campground about 10am and headed towards Titisee but got sidetracked by signs for the Naturhaus and ended up at Feldberg, which is the highest peak in the Black Forest. We had a stroll up it and it was a really nice walk through lots of wildflower meadows and it was the walking in mountain meadows that I’d wanted to do in Switzerland, only there were no actual alps. Feldberg is 1493m high but we only had to climb the last 150m and usually you can see the swiss alps but not today. However the sun was out and we both got burned having forgotten about the altitude difference in the sun. There were also cows with bells on which I love. We have tried to look for bells for our goats but can only find touristy ones which are really expensive and tacky. The farmers must shop somewhere else. The flowers in the meadows were beautiful and slightly different in each place with lots of colours blue, purple, white, yellow, red, pink and lots of different greens. The backdrop of the forest was also lovely and as we got above the tree line we could layers of hills of different blues and just scattered little pine trees around us. We were actually one a ski slope for most of the time and it would be neat to come back and ski in the same place in winter. Its was funny to see what would be lovely gentle ski slopes just covered in wildflowers. We eventually got to Titisee and bought some local cheese and pretzels and strawberries and a thing called a snowballs which was like a shortcake biscuit crumpled up into a ball. We sat on the waterfront and ate our lunch then had a look around the town. There were lots of tacky touristy shops and it was nice to look around them for a bit but we got quickly tired of it and got on the road again. We were planning to stop at Donauschingen to see the source of the Donau river but we couldn’t work out from the town map what we needed to look for so just carried on to Dieter’s house. It was further than we thought (although we didn’t know since we didn’t have a map) but on the autobahn it was quick at last. We arrived just after 5.30 and had a lovely evening just chilling out and chatting and catching up and meeting Hieke at last. We had a lovely dinner with salad and great bread and lots of cheeses and meats. The semifinal of the football was also on and germany was playing turkey and every time something happened in the game we could hear half the town cheering and setting off fireworks. Germany won and for several hours afterwards there were fireworks and shouting and tooting of car horns. It was an interesting experience but one that it was better to be indoors for.
Thursday morning was fine again and we had a nice gentle start with a leisurely breakfast on the deck. We had a search on the internet for some cow bells and just chatted a bit and finally got going at 11am to go to Dieters parents place. It was fantastic to see them again and we had a great lunch and then went to a lake nearby for a swim. It was very pleasant and we swam a couple of times and lay on the grass and chatted with Dieter. We went back to his parents and ended up having dinner there and then had to say goodbye, which was very difficult for me because they are unlikely to come to NZ and we are unlikely to come back to Europe so it was like goodbye forever which makes me very sad. We drove back to Dieters and had a quiet evening chatting and looking at pictures with him and Heike.
Hieke had the day off work on Friday too so the four of us went out exploring together. But first we had a very leisurely breakfast that lasted till nearly 11am again. We went to hohenzollen castle which is still in the same family that are the swabian line of the family of the kings of Prussia. Hieke is really interested in history so we learnt lots from her and it was really interesting. The castle was also very beautiful and up on a high hill with high turrets so it looks like a fairytale castle. Then we went to castle Lichtenstein which is very small but very fairytale and perched way up on a tiny rock. On one side it can be reached by a drawbridge over a gully that is only about 10m deep and there are other buildings on that side of it too, across the gully. By the time we’d had a stoll about at both places it was time to head home for dinner. We had pflammekucken, which were delicious – ham and onion first, followed by a bread and cheese course then apple pflammekucken for dessert. We sat up till late just chatting and it was really nice. The four of us get on really well and its very relaxed and comfortable.
We had to leave fairly early on Saturday morning and got on the road after another great breakfast at 8.15. we had to stop in Heppenheim to buy bells for the goats and it took ages to find the shop as it was fairly well hidden and not quite where the map said it was but we finally got our goat bells and they sound lovely. We arrived in Cochem just after midday and met up with Hella, Paddy and Esther at their B&B. we had some lunch from bits and pieces we all had and then went for a stroll around the town. We stopped at the campground on the way to set up our tent and it’s a fairly busy camp and not one we’d normally choose but its close to Hella so its easier. The town is really nice with classic german architecture and plenty of nice shops. We also went up to the castle but didn’t go in. its intereseting just to walk around the outside as it has a lovely gatehouse on the spiral road up the hill to it and some interesting statues like the frog prince beside its main entrance. Esther had to get a train back to Koln at 5pm and after we dropped her off we stopped for a couple of wine tastings which were really nice. We bought a couple of bottles of Mosel Reisling for our dinner and went back to the campground and very slowly cooked dinner. It was very pleasant with just the four of us chatting, despite the slightly noisy girls who had set up next door and were singing rather badly to some fairly decent music. They left early evening and it was peaceful for the rest of the evening. we went for a stroll back towards town again to see the castle all lit up and reflecting in the river then Hella and Paddy went back to the B&B. we were woken at 3am by the girls next door coming home and they continued to party rather loudly so we eventually gave up and moved our tent at 4am. We could still hear them an hour later but only because we were still awake.
We slept in a bit on Sunday morning to try to catch up and we just finishing packing up when Hella and Paddy arrived at 10am. We all set off for a drive along the Mosel and stopped for a couple of photos then got to Berncasel Keus. It ia really gorgeous with a tight central town square with half timbered buildings all round. We had a nice stroll about and had some wurst and frites and fantastic icecream for lunch and then said goodbye and we got on the road as we had a long drive ahead. It was a fairly dull drive as it was on motorways in germany, Luxembourg and a bit through Belgium then fairly straight roads in france. We arrived in Pierry, outside Epernay in Champagne about 6pm