Day 17 – E856

“We’ll play a little game I invented. One of us opens the atlas at random, sticks a pin in the open page, wherever it lands, that’s where we go.”
Rex Harrison – Dr. John Dolittle

By a friends example, and some experimentation, we’ve found traveling in the middle of the day to be best. Time for a leisurely breakfast and a wander through town, the massive bulk of the cathedral gold in the morning sun, and on to the station and across into Germany (hire car one way France to Germany, two days, $3700, same car from Offenberg, 15 minutes from France, $250!). The train to Offenberg, Germany, is full as the French transport strike is still cutting services considerably – and it’s a little two-carriage diesel that sounds like a bus and pumps fumes into the crowded carriage.

The couple sitting knee to knee with us hold hands and laugh a lot trying to open and peruse massive walking maps.

Europcar is a short walk from Offenberg station and we’re loaded up and ready to go before the train fumes are fully exhaled from our lungs. There’s an Australian family getting a car as well, with two teenage kids and a mountain of luggage. Their first choice, ‘economy’ sized car would have their luggage, or kids (behaviour dependent) on the roof and they opt for a Range Rover. Papers signed accepting all responsibility for driving at high speed on the wrong side of the road, family and luggage loaded up, and a six hour drive to Lugano ahead of them, the Australian guy turns to me and says, “good luck”.

We grab coffee and nuts and a map from the servo and use their facilities – as apparently they’re good for snacks, fuel, ‘…und ein guten fahrt’. So that was nice. (cheap humour I know)

If you’re looking to buy a cuckoo clock we know just the place. Not unlike Samatha Eggar and Rex Harrison in “Dr Dolittle”, Di said, “this lake might be nice for an over-nighter”, and we headed off south-east – through the black forest and cuckoos.

It’s a lovely drive following a fast, cold, grey-green flowing river through a rapidly narrowing valley of steep fur covered hills. Once out of the flatter, more industrial areas, each new village is book-ended by timber yards and cuckoo clock shops and, seeing the massive piles of rough sawn pine, we marvel at just how many cuckoo-ing little wood-house-clocks these buggers must whittle.

Heading south from Hausach we pass the Hornberg, then rise up steeply from Triberg through the winter holiday and sports area of Schonwald Im Schwartzwald (black forest). It’s early in the season and not high or mountainous enough for downhill skiing but still there’s some snow pushed up on the road side, the temperature drops to a couple of degrees and we pass some olympic size ski jumps and lots of timber and stone built ski-lodge looking places.

Triberg (sorry I’m back tracking), was bubbling with tourists heading toward a waterfall we could see cascading down through a forest. There was a cuckoo looking shop with a massive wooden Pinocchio like mountain climber climbing a rope. We stop high above the town, above the crowds, to catch the view and listen to the waterfall cascade down through the forest.

Eventually narrow winding roads make way for the autobahn and we’re holding on to the steering wheel with white knuckles as vehicles pass us at breathtaking speeds. The car shudders from the air pressure impact as they pass you. Joy has mentioned this to us. You pull out to pass a bus, all-clear in your rearview mirror only to find, at next glance, a BMW or a Mercedes right up your clacka.

We get into Konstanz in the late afternoon, only the GPS location for Konstanz is apparently an orienteering course through a national park ending in the driveway of a random suburban home. We reset for Konstanz “Zentrum” and find ourselves in thick Friday evening traffic, driving around city blocks, Di searching for hotels on the phone and me resorting to a now archaic and seldom used visual search method. We park illegally down an alley to catch our breath and decide what to do – perhaps we should head out of town where’s there’s more hotels and less cars? – but we’re both busting to go to the loo.

Sitting in comfortable lounge chairs, sipping wine in our warm and welcoming hotel bar it’s clear we made the right choice! We’d parked in a car park down the alley with a friendly green “frei”. Turns out this means ‘vacancy’ not ‘free-parking’ and we learn another expensive traveling lesson. Behind the carpark was the tradesman’s entrance to a hotel and we duck-in to see if we can use the toilets. Apparently you need a secret toilet code relinquished only upon transfer of certain sums of money i.e., guests only. What’s a person to do, road weary and bladder worn? We orchestrate the quickest guest registration in the history of human kind, and sprint to the loos desperately repeating the door codes to ourselves over and over, (a return to reception would have been devastating). E856 will forever be etched in our minds.

At the bar we learn how to say, ‘faleminderit’ (fella man dare it), Albanian for thank you, and head out for dinner, culturally enriched and confident in the knowledge that ‘faleminderit’ will likely never pass our lips again.

At dinner, a short walk from Halm, our Albanian waitress explains the menu and we struggle to respond, ‘fillet-man-diti’, ‘sully-man-do-it’. Another traveling lesson learned. Apparently many Albanian’s cross to Germany for work and for non-mafia lead politics – good to know.

After dinner we walk five minutes to cross into Switzerland (because – well why wouldn’t you), then head home to crash. Tomorrow Munich.