Messing About on the River(Dusty Springfield) - An Afternoon Watching the Barges in the Locks on the Moselle River,Germany - 18th June 2016

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We had thought of doing the hill and forest walk today but our 9km walk yesterday has given us something in the Bank so we will put that off until tomorrow.

Besides although it is Saturday morning here, it is Saturday night in New Zealand and that means rugby!

Last week when the first test was played between Wales and The All Blacks we were in Lohberg and we only had radio coverage as I hadn’t been able to find a live stream on the computer and anyway we had to move on to the Czech Republic before the game finished on that day.

However this morning I think I might have struck the jackpot and found a YouTube website streaming the game so here I am waiting as the clock on the computer screen counts down to kickoff.

The time came for kick off and still says the screen says the game will start soon. Down the side of screen a chat session is running and there are all sorts of options being typed to find another live stream. So I chose one and hey presto! There was the rugby from Sky TV complete with a Welsh commentator. And it so far hasn’t cost me a cent! Double bonus for the BBA V3!

OK the picture is a little jerky on the large screen but the commentary is in sync with the flow of the game so this will do me just nicely.

As expected we were in line to give the Welsh a spanking and although they did score a couple of consolation tries in the last 10 minutes to make the score look a little more respectable, they were really not in the game once the AB’s put the foot to the floor after half time.

Having breakfast rather than dinner with the night rugby was a bit of a change and one I could easily get used to although I wouldn’t expect the NZRFU changing their time of kick off to morning in NZ!

At the conclusion of the rugby we set about trying to correct an accommodation booking we have near Cambridge in England where we ended up with one more day that we needed due to an error at booking time. We have tried to amend the booking on the website and although it carries you through entering everything you need to when the send it hit the website comes back with a message to telephone them as there is an error in their system.

We had put phoning off until now thinking that the website might by now be fixed and we could do the change with a human being involved. But no such luck we are going to have to phone to get the matter settled and anyway it should be easy once you are talking to a human being! Right! Wrong!

The connection made to Hotels.com by phone we waited while the recorded voice went through all the options including one that said you could change bookings online, Yeah Right!

Then on came a voice with an accent that could have come from anywhere but we were convinced it was sub continent India.

He was very polite and repeated everything we had said and what he was doing at his end.

After 5 minutes he admitted that there was a fault in the system and he would have to cancel the booking to rebook it from 3 days to 2 days. He tapped the cancellation but then came back and said that the hotel was now showing there were no rooms available. He couldn’t seem to grasp when we said that we had 3 days booked so why weren’t those available once the cancellation had been made. He even went on to offer to find accommodation somewhere else. We said do not cancel and we will figure out something later and as the call had already gone on for 5 minutes without achieving anything we cut the call leaving him ‘high and dry’.

We shall take a break and think about a future strategy to get this sorted if there website won’t allow changes online as phoning is a waste of time too.

We had had a late breakfast, 10am, so lunch was something light, soup and toast.

The weather had remained dry with a partly cloudy sky and after lunch we decided to do what everyone local does on a Saturday afternoon......walk down to the river lock and watch the barges go through!

It isn’t actually what the locals do, rather it is the tourists like us who are fascinated by how they get the long barges up to or down from the next level in the river to carry on their way to their destination.

On the way down to the river lock we passed by a local organisation holding a two day event for radio controlled model boats on an oblong artificial lake created using water from the river.

We struck just the right time arriving at the lock as there was a barge that had just entered on its way down the river and there was an upstream barge waiting its turn once the downstream one had got on its way.

There were another 2 couples doing what we had come for and that was to watch how the system worked close up.

The whole process went very smoothly and both barges were through the lock and on their way within about 20 minutes.

On the way back to the apartment we called in at a historic wine cellar that it is at the end of the main street. Not only did they have a huge range of wine for sale but it was all housed in a cellar that was very cool and had that look of being many years old.

A man who had been behind the counter as we had wandered around came forward as we were about to leave and asked in German if he could help or at least that is what we thought he was saying. Gretchen indicated that she didn’t speak German and he came through with some English which was hard to understand to which she replied ‘she was just nosing around’. We think the ‘nosing around’ really had him foxed as he backed off wanting to help and we went on our way home.

We had decided not to cook tonight rather going out to one of the three restaurants we had come across in the main street for dinner.

We chose the one that had the most extensive menu.

Well, it had chicken, beef and pork cooked as Wiener schnitzel in about a dozen different sauces all served with chips and a salad. There were also a few fish dishes and a whole range of pizzas and pastas but we didn’t come to Germany to eat Italian food!

We both chose the beef schnitzel, one plain with a slice of lemon and the other the Hawaiian style with pineapple and smothered in cheese. Both mains came with chips and a salad that had a hint of curry powder in the dressing which actually made the salad just that much more interesting in taste.

The food was good but the service was hopeless!

We had the usual ‘European’ problem in attracting the waiter to bring us the bill when we had finished. And we didn’t even get offered desert and some of them we saw delivered to other tables looked pretty good but may have been too much anyway after such a big main course.

We were pleased we had a 10 minute walk home to help the digestion!

With a good forecast for tomorrow we have rescheduled our hill and forest walk and if we get the full distance in we will walk off all the calories from tonight’s meal.

PS:dear old Dusty singing a rather obscure song that relates quite well to our day down on the river bank,enjoy!As usual available on YouTube

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