Our last stop in Germany saw us in the far southeastern tip of Bavaria, a place called Berchtesgarten, and our first real taster of the Alps. A well chosen campsite with panoramic views of the mountains, but most importantly for our first proper sunny day in some time - an ice blue swimming pool. Very clean too after the grumbling chap in Lederhosen had finished swirling it clean of alpine twigs for what seemed like hours. At last, unadulterated swimming and a much-needed sunbathing afternoon. Bliss. The next day, prevailing sunshine saw us heading off on bikes for Konigssee Lake; the largest of the lakes in this area, the coldest - certainly not one for swimming in, but unfortunately the most popular...cue the usual tourist shops and ''gasthauses' attempting to loosen the purses of those that visit. We headed away from this, climbing our way to a viewing point some way up the mountain behind. Totally worth it, a completely peaceful spot which had such a beautiful silence. Until the rain started of course. It was a very long and wet cycle home...
And so we headed further into the Alps, to Austria, and a free night at a restaurant car park. It's actually the first time we have pulled up at an aire and found no other campers to share our space with, probably as there were no facilities to speak of (although Michael procured some water from a well-spotted outside tap) and it really was in the middle of nowhere. Rather unexpectedly the owner of the restaurant shot off home herself at 8pm leaving us completely alone. Now this is a completely manageable experience, in fact quite perfect, in most instances. Were it not for the weird behaviour of a few cars pulling into the car park and shining their lights directly on us, seemingly circling us. Obviously everything was fine, the cars left - it was most probably something very innocent and they were unaware we were even there (certainly not the heist, nor the dropping off a dead body we had convinced ourselves of!), however it was a quick reminder that we need to pick our free spots carefully.
The next morning brought a day we were both quite excited about - Eisriesenwelt caves. It's been on both our lists from the start of the trip, and is considered one of Europe's natural wonders - a 42km cave, discovered in 1879, of which the first kilometre is riddled with the most fantastic ice formations. This place is truly vast....and very high up. It required us to leave the van at the bottom of the hill - too much for him that's for sure, and catch a bus (which it's worth noting played the Benny Hill 'chasing girls' theme all the way up), hike for 40 minutes and get a cable car up the last 500 metres. It was really wonderful to be this high up in the mountains anyway, but the ice caves were the true incredible experience. They stay at a temperature of 0 degrees, whatever the weather outside, and some of the formations have been building and changing shape over the last 90 years. We were left a little speechless by it all - I was rather gutted that photo's were banned within the caves, so just have the eerie one of the entrance which is attached here. Go if you have the chance though. We ended this day staying on a campsite just north of the many toll roads/bridges/mountain passes that we needed to negotiate to reach the south of the country - we are starting to find that driving through the Alps can be very expensive! The campsite in question was quite literally our idea of hell; rows and rows of caravans looking in on each other, the oddest facilities that played music throughout your shower, and once again we were really mixing with the retired crowd! This prompted a bit of a 'moment' where we realised that so far we have not really found the kind of chilled out travelling experience we hoped for, none of the campsites seem to have likeminded people but we are hoping this will come. It's probably mainly to do with the time of year, or perhaps the countries we are in. Anyway, it was a good moment in re-focussing our minds on seeking out something different as we go forward...there are more real experiences out there, we must just find them.
Needless to say we stayed just the one night! We headed for south Austria, choosing to put the van on a train through a mountain tunnel. Yet another reason that our small van is perfect for a trip like this - you wont find any of the big touring vans fitting on this train! An extremely hairy drive down the other side of the mountain (brakes VERY hot and stinking!) found us in the kind of beautiful setting I had imagined Austria to be, really breathtaking. Onto a charming place called Granz for a few days of walking, cycling and beers, which is where you'll find us now - preparing to go into Slovenia tomorrow. So Austria - really quite the beauty and definitely expensive...you genuinely hear the sound of cow bells everywhere you go...but personally I'm a little disappointed not to have had a fondue.
Monday 28 May 2012
Sunday 27 May 2012
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Krauts-Rock! Week Vier
What an amazing, mental week we've just had in Germany. I'm not sure if any words, or pictures, will do our last week justice but its been awesome and exhausting all at the same time, brilliant fun and what we came away for. We started off doing a u-turn and heading back into the Black Forest and for Titisee. Ended up spending a couple of nights in a place in the Forest, next to a lake. Day one saw great weather and we got the chance for some decent cycling with a climb up to 1100 meters, not bad for a couple used to the flat, albeit challenging, Peckham High Street. Day 2 and we headed off into Frieburg on one of those cool double decker trains and it was bloody free!! They give visitors free access to public transport in the Black Forest. Can you imagine? "Welcome to London, we hope you enjoy your stay and by the way, all the buses, tubes, trains etc are free". Frieburg was a great city to head to for a day, not least because it offered ample opportunity for a bit of the old 'zwei hunde' action, which Hooper duly endulged in.
Now I love Germany, always have done, but we discovered something about it as we prepared to depart Titisee that chilled us to the bone... it snows, quite heavily, in May, and it caught us completely by surprise. This is called 'Eisheilige'; a random three day period of freezing weather that comes at some point during May. We found out the name for this down a big hole from a lovely young guy called James who despite living in Germany most/all of his life spoke with a perfect RAF flying squad accent. We left the snowy hills of Titisee and had a quick stop off to look at the source of the Danube, or Donau, and continued on to a Stellplatz for a night in Mossingen. Nice stop, nothing calamitous happened, which was good for a change.
A new day, and we'd heard about some caves that were on our route towards Munich and we chose 'Nebelhole'. Awesome place to visit if you have even a passing interest in geology, and if you don't, you can always laugh at the phallic shaped stalagmites. We'd gone to a huge stunning old cathedral in Frieburg, which had that 'huge stunning cathedral' atmosphere and the caves had the same look and feel, but were way more impressive. One made by man over probably 100 years, no easy feat, and had huge organ tubes that hung like bats, but the other carved and shaped naturally over millions of years. At a 'mere' 450 meters long and some 30 or so meters down from the woodland surface Nebelhole is probably no more than a hairline crack compared to other caves but it was quite surreal not having been in something like that before. We ended the cave day at Friedburg (not far from Munich) on our way for a fun day out at Dachau Concentration Camp. A free stop in Friedburg at a Stellplatz which saw more hills and another lake - they do hills and lakes really well down here. Sun, beers, water skiers going around the lake not pulled by boat but by some impressive pulley thing and water dripping rapidly into a cupboard from our kitchen taps; Vanhassle number 2. We've learnt 3 things are important when doing a trip like ours to help maintain acceptable levels of personal hygiene, a healthy relationship and, ultimately, van harmony; heating, taps that expel water and that said expelled water should be at least warm, if not hot. We left with none of these. So we awoke to a conundrum. Do we take the opportunity to sort out the taps, hot water and shower whilst in the home of VW or do we head to Dachau? We decided to get the shower fixed rather than go to Dachau which, if you think about it, has a certain irony! Trying to sort stuff out like this when you speak the language is hard enough but we had a hectic day getting this all sorted diving in/through/around Munich with Gav-the-Satnav freaking out at roadworks or new roads. If you've ever seen Clockwork with John Cleese it wasn't far off that. First place we came to, lovely German fella, all calm and helpful said he could fix it all, but not until 2nd week of June. Nah we'll leave that, so he sent us off to other side of Munich to someone who could do it all, no problem. Got there, VW place. Didn't do that kind of work and laughed at us, a lot. In between laughing they did print us off a load of information and addresses of places that specialised in this type of work. Priority eine was the boiler so headed straight to the manufacturer's service centre not too far away, they'll sort this out in no time. Got there, really impressive place, home of our boiler and it was the special service centre, amazing, sorted. Except that it was closed, between April and October. What business closes for 6 months? Off we go to the next place on the list, Intercamp. Took ages to find and was only a few miles away. Our bus is quite demanding to drive so we were both a bit overheated by this point but we eventually found it. Even without speaking a word of German we both recognised a 'we have moved' sign pinned to the closed door of the now empty premises as we pulled up to it. Lots of Hooper expletives and Helen's calmness and we set off for Intercamp's new place. We pulled into odd van nirvana when we got there, really cool place and loads of bizarre and rare vehicles, proper place to be. We met Herrn who looked like a 70's kid's TV presenter. Big hair, bright t-shirt and dungarees. He asked us to show him the problem with the boiler - which is that it doesn't stay on long enough to heat anything, been doing this for months and months. We pulled into the garage, Herrn got in, we switched on the boiler, it came on then... it stayed on, for ages. Herrn said he was a Zen master and that he'd just had to think it better, didn't charge us anything, we bought some stuff and off we went, headed for South Bavaria. It was around this time, perhaps before as events get jumbled up when you don't have a routine, that we saw what could only be described as a wall of solid shadow that were the Alps in the distance, looking both unconquerable or go-aroundable in our van.
After a false start that was the full campsite we were headed to we pulled into the first one we saw, next to Chiemsee Lake, good choice. Another stunning lake and we were surrounded by the now much closer snow capped peaks of the Alps, which looked much higher than before. We had a great few days here. Beautiful cycling along mainly tarmac tracks off road, saw a full on Bavarian wedding - we thought it was fancy dress but they all wear that get-up down here, all the time! Highlight of this particular stop, aside from the awesome scenery, was going to an outdoor public viewing of the Munich-Chelsea game, in Bavaria, by a lake, surrounded by the Alps, full on German food - not as bad as people think, especially if you like meat - men in Lederhosen and styled tache's and to cap the whole thing off, an Umpa Lumpa band, awesome. Not often you want a German football team to win but we met some great people there and they were gutted at the end. We were less gutted, more pissed. Schnaps and big beers, lethal. One particular old lady we met, with her kindly husband, sat next to us for part of the game. Lovely she was, we communicated through smiles, thumbs upsis, a bit of very broken English, having a great time with her we were. Until she tapped me on the arm and said 'So, tell me. How many black boys are there in this English team!? So gobsmacked I was I actually started counting the black Chelsea players for her, in German. Huge hangovers the next day, we chilled out in some lovely sunshine and planned our next move.....we're off to conquer the Alps!! NB - Apologies for the huge bank of text, we can't work out paragraphs on blogger so if anyone knows how to do them, I.E Matty G, can you let us know. Also, as soon as we settled at Chiemsee Lake we switched the boiler on. Needless to say as Herrn was not in the van, it didn't work..
Now I love Germany, always have done, but we discovered something about it as we prepared to depart Titisee that chilled us to the bone... it snows, quite heavily, in May, and it caught us completely by surprise. This is called 'Eisheilige'; a random three day period of freezing weather that comes at some point during May. We found out the name for this down a big hole from a lovely young guy called James who despite living in Germany most/all of his life spoke with a perfect RAF flying squad accent. We left the snowy hills of Titisee and had a quick stop off to look at the source of the Danube, or Donau, and continued on to a Stellplatz for a night in Mossingen. Nice stop, nothing calamitous happened, which was good for a change.
A new day, and we'd heard about some caves that were on our route towards Munich and we chose 'Nebelhole'. Awesome place to visit if you have even a passing interest in geology, and if you don't, you can always laugh at the phallic shaped stalagmites. We'd gone to a huge stunning old cathedral in Frieburg, which had that 'huge stunning cathedral' atmosphere and the caves had the same look and feel, but were way more impressive. One made by man over probably 100 years, no easy feat, and had huge organ tubes that hung like bats, but the other carved and shaped naturally over millions of years. At a 'mere' 450 meters long and some 30 or so meters down from the woodland surface Nebelhole is probably no more than a hairline crack compared to other caves but it was quite surreal not having been in something like that before. We ended the cave day at Friedburg (not far from Munich) on our way for a fun day out at Dachau Concentration Camp. A free stop in Friedburg at a Stellplatz which saw more hills and another lake - they do hills and lakes really well down here. Sun, beers, water skiers going around the lake not pulled by boat but by some impressive pulley thing and water dripping rapidly into a cupboard from our kitchen taps; Vanhassle number 2. We've learnt 3 things are important when doing a trip like ours to help maintain acceptable levels of personal hygiene, a healthy relationship and, ultimately, van harmony; heating, taps that expel water and that said expelled water should be at least warm, if not hot. We left with none of these. So we awoke to a conundrum. Do we take the opportunity to sort out the taps, hot water and shower whilst in the home of VW or do we head to Dachau? We decided to get the shower fixed rather than go to Dachau which, if you think about it, has a certain irony! Trying to sort stuff out like this when you speak the language is hard enough but we had a hectic day getting this all sorted diving in/through/around Munich with Gav-the-Satnav freaking out at roadworks or new roads. If you've ever seen Clockwork with John Cleese it wasn't far off that. First place we came to, lovely German fella, all calm and helpful said he could fix it all, but not until 2nd week of June. Nah we'll leave that, so he sent us off to other side of Munich to someone who could do it all, no problem. Got there, VW place. Didn't do that kind of work and laughed at us, a lot. In between laughing they did print us off a load of information and addresses of places that specialised in this type of work. Priority eine was the boiler so headed straight to the manufacturer's service centre not too far away, they'll sort this out in no time. Got there, really impressive place, home of our boiler and it was the special service centre, amazing, sorted. Except that it was closed, between April and October. What business closes for 6 months? Off we go to the next place on the list, Intercamp. Took ages to find and was only a few miles away. Our bus is quite demanding to drive so we were both a bit overheated by this point but we eventually found it. Even without speaking a word of German we both recognised a 'we have moved' sign pinned to the closed door of the now empty premises as we pulled up to it. Lots of Hooper expletives and Helen's calmness and we set off for Intercamp's new place. We pulled into odd van nirvana when we got there, really cool place and loads of bizarre and rare vehicles, proper place to be. We met Herrn who looked like a 70's kid's TV presenter. Big hair, bright t-shirt and dungarees. He asked us to show him the problem with the boiler - which is that it doesn't stay on long enough to heat anything, been doing this for months and months. We pulled into the garage, Herrn got in, we switched on the boiler, it came on then... it stayed on, for ages. Herrn said he was a Zen master and that he'd just had to think it better, didn't charge us anything, we bought some stuff and off we went, headed for South Bavaria. It was around this time, perhaps before as events get jumbled up when you don't have a routine, that we saw what could only be described as a wall of solid shadow that were the Alps in the distance, looking both unconquerable or go-aroundable in our van.
After a false start that was the full campsite we were headed to we pulled into the first one we saw, next to Chiemsee Lake, good choice. Another stunning lake and we were surrounded by the now much closer snow capped peaks of the Alps, which looked much higher than before. We had a great few days here. Beautiful cycling along mainly tarmac tracks off road, saw a full on Bavarian wedding - we thought it was fancy dress but they all wear that get-up down here, all the time! Highlight of this particular stop, aside from the awesome scenery, was going to an outdoor public viewing of the Munich-Chelsea game, in Bavaria, by a lake, surrounded by the Alps, full on German food - not as bad as people think, especially if you like meat - men in Lederhosen and styled tache's and to cap the whole thing off, an Umpa Lumpa band, awesome. Not often you want a German football team to win but we met some great people there and they were gutted at the end. We were less gutted, more pissed. Schnaps and big beers, lethal. One particular old lady we met, with her kindly husband, sat next to us for part of the game. Lovely she was, we communicated through smiles, thumbs upsis, a bit of very broken English, having a great time with her we were. Until she tapped me on the arm and said 'So, tell me. How many black boys are there in this English team!? So gobsmacked I was I actually started counting the black Chelsea players for her, in German. Huge hangovers the next day, we chilled out in some lovely sunshine and planned our next move.....we're off to conquer the Alps!! NB - Apologies for the huge bank of text, we can't work out paragraphs on blogger so if anyone knows how to do them, I.E Matty G, can you let us know. Also, as soon as we settled at Chiemsee Lake we switched the boiler on. Needless to say as Herrn was not in the van, it didn't work..
Wednesday 16 May 2012
Germany-bound
This week saw us heading towards our second country of the trip, Germany. Not before driving across the breadth of France, a task which seems to fit into all of our holidays somehow - she's a big country France, full of long straight roads... However, what a surprise we had waiting for us in Eastern France - no-one ever really mentions Eastern France do they? It is truly beautiful, all alpine mountains and fields of brown and white splodged cows. A perfect place to stop for a few days and gather some energy for Germany. A campsite in Corcieux, run by a chap from Huddersfield and his French wife was our pitstop. The sun finally came out for a couple of days, and we filled our days with lots of mountain cycle rides, which are as challenging and beautiful as they sound. By the time we strapped the bikes to the back of the van and headed off, we were truly relaxed. Onto Germany then. We managed to drive through the Black Forest and ended up at a town called Tuttlingen. Rather than go back we thought we'd stay the night and found a great aire by the river in town. Now for a beer; the change of country had left us feeling a little strange, and let's face it beer helps with that. Only thing is that we are finding that with the exception of the UK, the whole of Europe shuts down on a Sunday, so we are left wandering the streets of Tuttlingen getting thirstier with every step. Turns out the only place open in the whole town is...yep you guessed it...an Irish bar. What can I say we were desperate. And anyway, this place was about as Irish as my accent. Thankfully, the next day Tuttlingen came alive - we had a very early walk and stumbled across a fantastic market, where we stocked up on lovely fresh food for the week ahead...and the obligatory pretzels of course. Now for the Black Forest...
Thursday 10 May 2012
Precipitation Across the Nation - Week 2
Captain's log stardate 080512; We, seem to have landed, on a strange, grey, sunless world, where the only weather system is one of continuous precipitation. The world beneath our van consists of a gelatinous substance that once imprisoned in, is hard to escape..
So, week two, weather still not up to much and we thought we'd be over in Germany by now but just about leaving Brittany. Had a funny night in a place called Quiberon in an Aire (a place to park your camper for those not in the know). Pulled up next to a heavily dribbling, recently divorced guy from Belgium called Harry, who liked to talk, and also managed to get ourselves locked in the Aire. Normally they are free but this one had those rising, falling bollards. We got in OK, but the machine that was supposed to give us our code to exit konked out just as the bollard rose behind us meaning we were stuck, never mind, we'll deal with it in the morning. Dribbling Harry left his code in his van window, should we get up early and take his code leaving him trapped? Thought of it but he seemed on the edge anyway, didn't want to finish him off. We ended up having to walk to the next town, find the Office de Tourism (that's French for Tourism Office for anyone who doesn't speak the language) to seal a release. We got out in the end, after having to run back to the Aire to meet the guy who put up our bail.. we saw another property, good place but not much land and generally bobbed about Brittany meeting Notaires (who look after property sales) and going through towns to get a feel for where we want to live. We also saw a shop called 'Fanny Boutique' but it was too wet to go inside... we then headed back to Wendy and Graham's for sanctuary, good food, warm showers, jazz and van repairs! Van all sorted now and in return for all the hospitality and van stuff we had the opportunity to help them prepare a boat for sail, which was awesome. So we had to actually go to work, on a Monday. The 'office' was the stunning Port du Foleoux (or something like that)and rather than answering e-mails we polished the hull, tied ropes but didn't hoist main sails (we missed that bit). A brilliant experience watching 'Alondra' being lifted into the water worrying if all our hard polishing work would be lost to the sea, but all ok. We're now on our way to Germany for week 3 and will post again next week, in the meantime here's a picture of a dog..
So, week two, weather still not up to much and we thought we'd be over in Germany by now but just about leaving Brittany. Had a funny night in a place called Quiberon in an Aire (a place to park your camper for those not in the know). Pulled up next to a heavily dribbling, recently divorced guy from Belgium called Harry, who liked to talk, and also managed to get ourselves locked in the Aire. Normally they are free but this one had those rising, falling bollards. We got in OK, but the machine that was supposed to give us our code to exit konked out just as the bollard rose behind us meaning we were stuck, never mind, we'll deal with it in the morning. Dribbling Harry left his code in his van window, should we get up early and take his code leaving him trapped? Thought of it but he seemed on the edge anyway, didn't want to finish him off. We ended up having to walk to the next town, find the Office de Tourism (that's French for Tourism Office for anyone who doesn't speak the language) to seal a release. We got out in the end, after having to run back to the Aire to meet the guy who put up our bail.. we saw another property, good place but not much land and generally bobbed about Brittany meeting Notaires (who look after property sales) and going through towns to get a feel for where we want to live. We also saw a shop called 'Fanny Boutique' but it was too wet to go inside... we then headed back to Wendy and Graham's for sanctuary, good food, warm showers, jazz and van repairs! Van all sorted now and in return for all the hospitality and van stuff we had the opportunity to help them prepare a boat for sail, which was awesome. So we had to actually go to work, on a Monday. The 'office' was the stunning Port du Foleoux (or something like that)and rather than answering e-mails we polished the hull, tied ropes but didn't hoist main sails (we missed that bit). A brilliant experience watching 'Alondra' being lifted into the water worrying if all our hard polishing work would be lost to the sea, but all ok. We're now on our way to Germany for week 3 and will post again next week, in the meantime here's a picture of a dog..
Wednesday 9 May 2012
Tuesday 1 May 2012
Vantastrophe - Week 1
Well well well, here we are then, week 1, and what a week we've had thus far. Naturally we left in very high spirits only to be dampened by the French version of 'drought'. I.E pissing it down rain and gale force winds. Nevermind, these things happen, at least we have the shelter of our trusty, reliable van.. until we caught sight of the underside and heard the brakes squeal as we tried to stop. A BIG shout out to Andy at Campervans4u and EMG Motors of Ely for letting us head off into the (not so) sunset with a rusty tin can as an exhaust and the braking system of an oil tanker..
We've stuck it out in Vannes to get it all sorted by a local genius and luckily we are in the unbelievably beautiful Gulf de Morbihan, sun is out, beers sunk, skin burnt.
In between we have been looking for our French home (see below picture of our 'dream'). Not as bad as it looks although you should bring an umbrella, wellies (and a bucket for the obvious) when you come and visit. Lots to consider..
Excuse the look of the blog for now (Matt), it WILL look better soon.
Tune in for another excruciating instalment next week (or so)!
We've stuck it out in Vannes to get it all sorted by a local genius and luckily we are in the unbelievably beautiful Gulf de Morbihan, sun is out, beers sunk, skin burnt.
In between we have been looking for our French home (see below picture of our 'dream'). Not as bad as it looks although you should bring an umbrella, wellies (and a bucket for the obvious) when you come and visit. Lots to consider..
Excuse the look of the blog for now (Matt), it WILL look better soon.
Tune in for another excruciating instalment next week (or so)!
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