Germany 9 - Zweibrucken - From Peruwelz to two bridges/The Rose Garden and the Archimedes Screw

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Gabby the motorhome is parked at the Rosegarten stelplatz at Zweibrucken. This was not our first choice of stelplatz but it turned out to be a good one. A touch farther than our first choice making for less driving tomorrow. It looked good on Google Earth and had rave reviews on Camper Contact. Rewind a few hours though and we are still parked by the canal in Peruwelz eating our breakfast. Our noisy Dutch neighbours are fast asleep . Four abreast in a tiny Surfer Dude campervan. There can be no room to swing a cat inside and I wonder how they sleep. Top to toe and very intimately. We never saw our neighbours to the other side. The elderly lady sat in her Captains chair with her eyes glued to the TV for the whole of our stay. She moved not an inch.

Silly got a little muddled up and hadn't woken up by the time we left Peruwelz but gradually we are getting used to her telling us that we are going too fast. The weather wasn't kind to us with constant rain sometimes just short of the monsoon. It has felt rather cold and the sun is putting nothing in the way of power into our solar panels.

So the journey continued south in search of the sun. We soon hit traffic jams. No clues Katy the sat nag had no idea they were coming up and we were unprepared for them. No road signs to warn us of impending delays . We joined the back of slow moving traffic a slow move that took us almost two hours to extricate ourselves. A frustrating two hours moving inch by inch forward getting nowhere. We watched the scenery change slowly from the flat farmland to the forests. Green conifers as far as the eye could see. I tried to peer over the motorhome in front of us, I tried to peer round it to see what was happening up ahead and failed miserably . Other than seeing lines of standing traffic there was little to see. We tried to amuse ourselves watching the van in front where the young girl was sitting in the front with her legs perched on the dashboard. A recipe for disaster if they stopped suddenly and the air bag deployed breaking her legs and her hips and causing untold internal damage. She got up, made herself a sandwich and ate it . As we inched forward she went into the back of the van , made another sandwich and fed her partner. Her final move was a trip to the toilet . It whiled away a few minutes watching her.

Eventually the reason for the delay was evident - three lanes went into two and two into one. We were on our way and arrived at the very interesting town of Zweibrucken.

Negotiating getting into the stellplatz was interesting. The barrier was down and access denied to us. The sign suggested that I had to walk over the walking bridge to the Hotel Rosegarten where I could pay and they would then let me into the stellplatz. It was a pleasant walk and I managed it in between the showers. It cost 11 Euros for a small plot and 14 for a larger one plus a 50 euro deposit for the sanitaires. All plots were edged by trees and the stellplatz charged 60 cents for 1kwh of electricity plus a small charge for water and dumping. We were behind the biergarten and the river. After a bit of tea we set off to find the town. We found the river which was fast flowing with the weir overflowing with excess water. There was a white water rafting and canoeing course on the river . Walkers were everywhere . Walkers with dogs , without dogs, joggers and runners plus us. The rose garden was free to townsfolk and looked lovely behind the locked gates. Tulips of every colour , pansies and flowering cherries . Dogwoods and wisteria hanging from pillars. It was an asset to the town. There was a horse jumping arena similar to our Badminton with cross country jumps. A Baroque white castle and a music school but no shops . We never found the shops however hard we looked . It was all clean, tidy and without litter . The Paradise swimming pool with saunas and hot tubs was shouting to me - come on in and have a swim. I wish I had given in to temptation .

We headed back along the opposite side of the river where the beautifully manicured lawns of the houses fell down to the river. I really felt that Germans led a very peaceful contented and full life in a place like this. On the way back this time we heard the thunderous roar of the river . The weir was now peaceful and the water had been diverted through an Archimedes Screw. It was loud but wonderful to watch the screw producing the towns electricity supply from the water. I envied the life of the townsfolk of Zweibrucken. They even had their own out of town shopping centre. They lacked nothing. It made me realise just how poor our quality of life has seemed to become in the UK compared with Germany.

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