Day 18 – Mandrake

Konstanz was not bombed during the war. It’s on the Swiss boarder and they left all their lights on to fool the allies. It’s the birth place of Ferdinand von zeppelin, and dates back to the stone age. It was settled by the romans in 40AD and later named after some roman dude, Constantius. It also houses one of nine most successful uni’s in Germany. Of course we knew none of this when we closed our eyes and put our finger on the map, nor did we leverage such knowledge while there – but Pete will like it.

From our point of view, it seems to be a melting pot of cultures, a shopping Mecca for the Swiss (favourable FX) and attractive to immigrants of many cultures – but particularly, as it turns out, Albanians.

Gorgeous sunny day, morning views out over the lake. We breakfast in the massive La Alhambra styled dining room that serves dishes, seemingly, from all nations, then head to the streets.

Plan A was to take a brief promenade and hit the road for Munich. This was rapidly replaced by the far more attractive, ‘living in the moment’ plan B, that saw as soaking up the winter sun on the banks of Lake Constance and taking lunch in the some rustic looking restaurant in the old town. Living in the moment has it’s consequences.

We strolled quite some distance around the lake with many other morning walkers, their dogs and one tiny kid that wouldn’t stop screaming and sounded for all the world like a plucked mandrake root from Harry Potter.

Eventually we circled back, off the lake to the old town, which was really lovely. The oldest building we saw dated back to 1322 but they’re all renovated, rendered and painted. There’s a sense that the tourist dollar has generated considerable wealth in the town.

We see a young bloke on a piano accordion bash out Vivaldi’s four seasons (winter) – it sounds awesome and a sizeable crowd gathers. You know, the pictures don’t show it, but if you’re familiar with Vilvadi’s ‘winter’, this guy was doin some high speed squeezing.

We stop at Chez Lion for a bite, realize it’s 3:30pm, and bugger off before our ‘frei’ parking becomes 24hr’s charge instead of 48.

The GPS takes us down the southern edge of the lake instead of back the way we came and we navigate five billion round-abouts before hitting the autobahn.

We’re getting used to them now (autobahns), although being passed by a delivery van when you’re doing 130kph is still a little disconcerting. At some point we were overly enthusiastic in our response to a ‘bare right’ command and found ourselves in the backstreets of some berg, fahrt, schtick or other. This provided opportunity for a comfort stop but lead us, unwittingly, onto the ‘road of death’, …

No street lights, open farm land and a hundred cars behind us, we read, bewildered, as the signs say, road narrows, road narrows, road narrows. ‘surely this is one way now?’. Nope, a car comes the other way and we edge as close as possible to the sheer, meter deep gutter on our right, as our wing mirrors all but kiss on the left.

I’m thinking, ‘this can’t go for much longer’, and look up, through beads of sweat, to catch a glimpse of headlights wending off to infinity through the forest beyond. Shit!

I don’t recall how long it took to get back to the autobahn but I do recall Di saying the scenery was really lovely.

It’s too late now to regale you with the hire-car return adventure but here’s some traveling tips for future reference:

• Never attempt to refuel in the CBD of a major city
• Never assume GPS maps are up-to-date with respect to hire car company drop off points
• Never assume 24hr drop off means, well, 24hr drop off
• ‘about 30min walk back’ in an unknown city in the dark means – ‘an hour if you’re lucky….sucker’.

We found, and checked into, our new accommodation with no problems, enjoyed an awesome meal at the hotel restaurant (duck in pinot noir sauce and venison stew with mash potato dumplings – yum) – lucky they were open till 10pm, and crashed.