March 21st-26th - Germany

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Within an hour or two of being on the road we were in Germany surrounded by hills and forests which were missing in The Netherlands. We had programmed in the address of an old friend Deborah from NZ who lived near Bonn. Unfortunately we programmed the wrong Gruenerweg so ended up in the wrong place! Never mind, we were only about 7km out and found it easily the second time. Deborah has a lovely place surrounded by forest and field and we had a great time over the next day and night walking through the forest and catching up. We hadn’t seen each other for about 18 years but apart from the obvious maturing over the years it was just like old times. We would have liked to stay longer but we needed to catch up with Hannes further south at Nening near the Luxembourg border. Hannes is another ex-Hotel du Vin employee and, as is typical for the industry, has a Monday/Tuesday weekend. He now works at a hotel in the Moselle (Mosel) Valley where the Mosel River forms part of the border with Luxembourg, an area famous for it’s wine. It’s a beautiful area with the steep sides of the winding Mosel River covered with grape vines. Unfortunately the weather gods were not kind over the next two days as it was cold and wet most of the time and even started snowing for a bit. The first afternoon we drove to Trier, touted as Germany’s oldest town, and the old town gate, the Porta Nigra, dates back to the 2nd century. The massive (and massively restored) Romanesque Dom also has a 1600 year history. The most interesting part of our visit was to a little restaurant near the Dom where in recent years they wanted to dig out a cellar underneath, only to discover 3rd century Roman buildings and artifacts right beneath their feet. I never liked history at school but it’s amazing how things change when you can actually touch it. We had dinner before heading back to the hotel for the night; unfortunately the hotel was way too flash for us to stay in so we had to sleep in the bus, which was OK.
The next day Hannes had planned a private wine tasting for us at Markus Molitor, an exclusive winery specializing in making wine using all the old techniques. Despite not being huge white wine fans we found their wines most delightful and bought a couple of reasonably priced bottles to savour later. That night we had dinner across the river in Luxembourg, took a walk through the town and then called it a night.
In the morning we decided that we should make tracks back to Austria to get our warrant for the bus renewed as it had expired over three weeks ago and if we left it too late we may not get it before the weekend. So after having lunch with Hannes we dropped him off at Trier before hitting the road again. We had not been travelling more than 10 minutes before we were up in the snow but the roads were good and we travelled comfortably. We had a hard time figuring out on the map exactly which route the GPS was taking us on and it wasn’t until later that we realised that it wasn’t exactly a direct route. We discovered that when it calculates the fastest route it assumes you will travel at the speed limit on all the roads, and as I hadn’t programmed in a top speed it assumed we would be doing 256 km/hr on the autobahn! We therefore arrived at our stopover point near Stuttgart sometime after 8pm, luckily we knew exactly where the campsite was and by the time we had showered and eaten we were ready for bed.

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Photos

Germany
The Mosel River, grapevines and Luxembourg on the other side.

Germany
Victors Hotel near Nening, Moselle Valley.

Germany - Trier
Porta Nigra, The Black Gate.

Germany - Schwangau
Hohenschwangau. Where King Ludwig II lived as a boy.

Germany - Schwangau
Neuschwanstein. Supposedly the inspiration for Disney's Fantasyland castle.

Germany
Up in the mountains 300m from the Austrian border.

Comments

[Simon]

What? Can dobbie not do 250? lol.