Prost

Saturday 3rd October


Salute – Cheers from Germany

We left Interlaken and travelled over the Swiss Alps reaching an altitude of 2460 metres with some spectacular scenery over glaciers, snow covered mountains and little skiing villages. We travelled into Lichtenstein which is the sixth smallest country and famous for being the world’s largest producer of false teeth, we had thought we would stay here but after looking for a car park we realised we were about to cross the border into Austria – oh well that was Lichtenstein – blink and you miss, to be fair there was nothing that looked really exciting for us to look at! We drove through the bottom corner of Austria and then back into Germany to Lindau. Lindau is a little island on Lake Constance. We biked into the town but first we had to bike into Austria, just to say that we biked from Germany to Austria – albeit 800 metres! Lindau is a small harbor that has a grand looking entrance into it, with a large lion statue on one side and a lighthouse on the other. We climbed the lighthouse for a view over the town. We then decided to leave Lindau and headed further north up the Lake to Langenargen, we also biked into the wee town and had look around – a really peaceful town with beautiful lake views and a big marina. All told for the day I think we biked about 18km which isn’t too bad for us!

We left Langenargen and travelled through to Munich, where we found a parking place for campervans about a 20minute walk to Oktoberfest (well a 60 minute walk when you get lost). We arrived at Oktoberfest about 1.30pm – my goodness!!! It is a huge area covered with huge beer halls and in between the beer halls there are food stalls and fun park areas – very similar to Dreamworld only bigger!! Oktoberfest attracts 6 million people over the 16 day period. We had heard that the festival would be full of young kiwi’s and aussie’s - well we didn’t meet any other kiwi’s or aussie’s, we sat with Swiss, German and Dutch people and we were about the average age – certainly nowhere near the oldest. At the place where we camped we were surrounded with Italians – think the Kiwi’s go for the opening and the Italians for the closing and everyone else in between. You can only get served if you are seated at a table – lots of the tables were reserved but we managed to prop ourselves down at the end of tables. The only way to buy a beer is in a 1 litre stein – and yes we did see the ladies carrying 7 at a time!! The stein is so heavy you can hardly lift it up, but Rae did manage to do so several times but drew the line at lifting 7 of them at once. Every beer hall has an oom pa pa band playing and is all very lively and exciting. We thoroughly enjoyed our day and were home tucked up in bed by 11.00pm.

Yesterday we left Munich about 10.00am and after stopping for a greasy brunch (it was needed) we drove to Bad Konigshofen which is a little village similar to Hanmer with the thermal pools – this was just what was needed after the big day at Octoberfest. We had a good soak in the pools and then this morning we walked into the village. Have decided to stay another night here just relaxing today and will have another soak in the pools later.

We have driven a bit on the autobahn which of course have no speed limits – very interesting!! Rae didn’t want to drive on them at all but they are just everywhere so no choice. We had just got onto the first one when a wee sports car went past us – we were travelling at 120km and the wee car really shook the 7metre 3.5tonne camper. Many of the autobahn are only two lanes each way with barriers down the centre – we both thought that they were going to be big 6 lane motorways! Some of the cars would have to be travelling in excess 200km – in saying all that the traffic is all really well behaved and when you see a sign telling you to slow down to 120km because there is a corner, everyone obeys. Definitely not what we are use to.

We are now travelling towards Hamburg, North Germany, where we are meeting up with the people we met in Florence and travelling a few days with them, hopefully to show us up around the North Sea.

Hope the weather is warming up for you all at home!!

Auf Wiedersehen