Germany, Switzerland and France

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Sunday, May 30th:

Sadly, it was time to leave my Bavarian family, and head up north to where my other uncle lives. Normally the drive would take about 5 ½ hours, but we wanted to stretch it out to two days, and drive through and explore the Black Forest (Schwartzenwald), Switzerland, France and Luxembourg. We left late, about 9:00 I think, and it took us about 2 hours to reach our first destination: Lindau, a town on the Bodensee, or Lake Constance. We actually got up to 160 km an hour on the autobahn! That is 100 miles per hour! Whoopee!!! 

Lindau is located very close to the meeting point of the Austrian, German and Swiss borders. The old town is on a tiny 1 square mile island that is connected to the mainland by a bridge and railway. We drove to the main plaza in the middle of town. There were darling little birds flying everywhere! We ate lunch at an old restaurant in the middle of the town’s square. I had spaetzle and a pork roast with brown gravy…the spaetzle was sooo yummy and buttery! I had forgotten how tasty they were! Kenya had some with butter and parmesan cheese, and she agreed…yummo! After we ate, my dad walked back to the car to take a nap (plus his foot was hurting due to a case of gout). My mom, Kenya and I explored the old town and took lots of pictures…the most beautiful building was the old town hall…it was ALL ornately painted in peach, brown and gold colors. I HOPE my camera picked up all the detail!!! When we were walking back towards the restaurant we ate at, earlier, we noticed one of the waitresses bending down and doing something on the ground…we walked over to see what she was doing, and there was one of the little fat birds on the ground with a broken wing! She was trying to feed it some bread and also had a little dish there with water. It looked so small and forlorn and we were kind of worried that someone would step on it!! There was a planter nearby, but we didn’t know if we should move it! I actually think the poor thing was on its last leg anyway, and I told Kenya, who was quite worried about the little thing, that it just may not make it. I felt so bad when her eyes welled up with tears, and she tried so hard not to let them fall! At that moment, my mom had her go over and look at something else to get her mind of it, but for the rest of that day, all of us wondered what befell the poor little chubby bird. 

We also walked over to the famous harbor entry where there was a lighthouse and the Bavarian Lion standing guard. The lion is Bavaria’s “mascot” if you will. A rather large ship was coming into the small entry, and we were surprised how fast it was coming in! We were standing on the top of a wall overlooking the water, and it looked that the ship was coming in right towards the wall…to the right of us…about 25 yards away! It must have had more room than we thought, because it did end up stopping, and not crashing, like we totally thought was what was going to happen! LOL On our way out of town, we saw a tower (kind of like what you’d see on a castle) and guess what was hanging from its tiny window? An enormously long braid!!! Just like Rapunzel!!! Of course, we made my dad turn around and park, so we could take pictures! 

We drove along the shores of the beautiful looong lake…Lake Constance (Bodensee, if you are German). Lake Constance is a lake at the northern foot of the Alps, and consists of three bodies of water: the Obersee ("upper lake"), the Untersee ("lower lake"), and a connecting stretch of the Rhine, called the Seerhein. Three countries border it: Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. We went through the old guard stations where the border was…I was unhappy that we couldn’t at least get our passports stamped! But the booths were unmanned. The day started off a little drizzly and cloudy, but by this time, it was just cloudy and a little windy. We stopped by a park, and watched the wind surfers for a while…there were a lot of them! And there were also kite surfers too! It looked so much fun to see them soaring over the waves and getting airborne!!! Towards the afternoon, we started looking for a nice café to sit at and have espresso. We stopped at one place, and the outside looked really nice, but when we went in, the place was empty except for an old man sitting at one of the tables reading a newspaper…I can’t quite describe why we felt that the place was creepy, but it was! So, on we went…past St. Gallen, Horn, and Hard (funny names, I know!), and when we came to this huge roundabout (about twice the size of ours, here at home), we saw the most unusual building ahead of us! So we went around the circle one more time and we stopped to get a closer look. The building was a two story building, really the only way to describe it, was that it was kind of wavy! None of its lines were straight, and parts of the outside of the building, was decorated in multi-colored glittering mosaic stones. Some of the roof tops on the second story were bright gold! So, we parked in the parking lot, and went into one entrance…it was a high class glass art gallery! The blond lady at the front desk, with a superb French twist, looked us over like, ‘what planet did we come from?’(it must have been our traveling clothes that gave us away). She put her nose up in the air and gave a sniff and we immediately turned around and walked out (hee hee)…well there were a bunch of motorcycles parked there too, so we wondered where all the bikers were? We went around to the front of the building, and lo and behold…a café!! So we went in and had a cup of espresso and cake (are you surprised?)…there were two kinds that looked scrumptious, so we ordered both and split them…they were both apple flavored and delicious! Since we were in Switzerland, when we paid, we paid with Euros and we got Swiss Francs back for change…Kenya thought that was pretty cool to keep for her collection!

We got back into the car and drove and drove for quite a while…through the countryside and the start of the Black Forest. My dad was getting a little cranky because his foot hurt, and my mom was getting a little cranky at him, and I was in the backseat trying to keep it all together! LOL Kenya was oblivious to everything because she was playing her D.S. It was about 6:30 or so, and we had not planned where we were going to spend the night. We were near the border to France, but my parents did not want to spend the night in France, for whatever reason, I did not ask…so we started looking for signs on the autobahn for hotels. Finally, we saw one, and we took the exit. My dad is a little hard of hearing (ok…a lot hard of hearing…), since his and my mom’s car accident a few years ago, and he did not hear us say to turn left at the end of the exit ramp towards where there was a sign to a hotel. My mom got a little crankier, which then made my dad a little more cranky, and we turned around to find the hotel we had seen the signs to. It turned out to be a hotel right on a little airport strip outside of town. My mom said we were DEFINITELY not saying there! So we turned around, got back on the highway, and took the next exit into a town called Donaueschingen. Here there were lots of signs to different hotels, so we made our way to the nearest one, and when we arrived, the parking lot was right next door to the hotel…let me tell you something…my dad is a skilled driver…a VERY skilled driver…he had raced race cars at Nuremburg, he had driven big tanker trucks and propane gas trucks, and semi trucks, in his lifetime too. Now sitting in a car that is really just a small SUV station wagon, and seeing my dad mad, and taking those tight (I mean squeeze your butt tight) turns up the ramp and praying to God he doesn’t scrape the sides of the car, at full speed is not a fun experience! Needless to say, he made it to the top of three stories without a scratch to be found, and I should have known better…he probably could have made those hairpin turns with one of his big rigs! There was PLENTY of paint scraped off of other cars that weren’t so lucky to have a driver like my dad! Anyway, my mom and I took the opportunity to exit the car and go in to see if they had any vacancies. We knew we were in trouble when we caught a whiff of their meditation spa and saw the beautiful waterfall coming around the corner to their lobby. Well the hotel was a Precise Carlton Hotel…probably a 3.5 star hotel, and yes, they had two rooms available for 100 euros a night…each. We did not bat our eye, not once when we said, “yes! We will take the rooms!” So back out to the car we went and got our overnight bags we had packed the night before, and my dad declared he was going to sleep in Kenya’s and I room! LOL After we got cleaned up and settled, in our separate rooms, we went down to the dining room, which was surrounded by ponds filled with koi fish. I can’t remember what I had to eat, because I was just plain too tired to bring my camera down! LOL Good night!

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