Tin Can Travels

29th Aug – 14th Sept 2024

The transition from Southern Germany into Austria is a subtle one. That statement would probably horrify both Bavarians and Austrians, but to the untrained eye and ear there are far more similarities than differences. The terrain was the same, the homes looked the same, the language on the signposts was the same. It was only really the greater proportion of Austrian licence plates on the vehicles that gave it away. Our next stop was Salzburg and our travel distance across the border between camps was about 25km which took only about 25 minutes. A brief moment in time. We arrived fairly early in our campsite, which was essentially a glorified field with an exceptional view of some hills, and a restaurant, about 5km outside the city centre. The recent rains had bogged down several areas of the site, which the owner had cordoned off, but due to our early arrival, and a bit of luck we managed to land a pitch on the edge of the cordon thereby giving us a ton of space. It was still busy on the days that we were here and everyone else was crammed into the central area. We felt like Lord and Lady Muck. Again.

Salzburg is a very impressive little city. It is dominated by its castle which stands high upon a rocky bluff casting shade on the cluster of impressive slabs of architecture nestled at its base, sandwiched between it and the river Salzach. It is a very small, dense offering of Old Sh*t. With its wealth built on the back of its salt mines, it is still a very rich place, reflected in the calibre of its resident’s cars and the shops on the main retail street. One thing that Bavaria and Austria share is their non-ironic love of their traditional dress. Lederhosen for the men and an outfit of a full skirt with apron worn with a décolletage-honouring blouse and bodice combo. There are multiple outfitters selling the garb, which is locally handmade and priced accordingly. A pair of lederhosen, the decorated leather knee-length shorts, will set you back €1500-2000. The outfits are often worn ‘for best’ at formal events like weddings and funerals and are seen as a completely normal part of one’s wardrobe.

Aside from our usual sightseeing routine of ‘walking around’ we did actually pay to go into the castle. The views from it over the city were just too good to forgoe. That and the climb up to it was too steep to squander. Salzburg is a city of cyclists and there was an amazing bike path along the river to deliver us into the heart of the city from our campsite.

The other thing that we did here was to catch up with a person that I have known since 1991, when she was the 12 year old little sister of my best friend in Uni. 33 years later Izzy is an Austrian resident of ten years having married local boy, Patrick, and moved to Salzburg for love. The past decade and some has made her fluent in Austrian German and a mum of two. She has never looked back. Our paths have crossed very infrequently since Katie and I graduated, but we did reconnect two and a half years ago at Katie’s wedding. We met at the local brewery, Steigl, for lunch, which also has a great view over the city by virtue of its location at the base of the castle. A very enjoyable three hours was spent chatting over our meal, getting to know Patrick and their kids better and filling in the yawning chasms in our knowledge of each others lives that the intervening 30 years had created. The kids were delightful and very well behaved. A credit to them both. They shared a particularly exciting event of the previous 24 hours…securing tickets to the reunion tour of Oasis next year. Patrick, a forever fan, was pleased as punch!

The other things that Salzburg is known for: it was the birthplace of Mozart in 1756. There are numerous places of Mozart interest throughout the city. We limited our visitations to a statue. Also it was the setting, and filming location of the 1965 movie, The Sound Of Music, which in its day became the highest grossing movie of all time. If you adjust for inflation, it still holds the number 6 spot today. Interestingly, if using the inflation adjusted metric, Gone with the Wind still reigns supreme, with Avatar in second. Also of interest is that neither Nick or I have ever watched The Sound of Music and saw no need to visit any set locations or museums relating to it. I think we cycled past the villa used as the set location for the Von Trapp family home by accident as it was near our camp site, but that was only on the far more interesting mission to find the vending machine that sold cheese and wine. It is a civilised country that dispenses these items in such a fashion. Forgot to take a photo.

During our stay here I managed to do another Parkrun. The Hellbrun event was in a beautiful park an easy 4km cycle from camp. It was another hot morning and I clocked another snail’s pace time, although the slightly bigger field meant that I wasn’t tail-end-charlie again. My ‘photo with the sign’ was taken at the finish, hence the sweaty strawberry vibe.

There was also this tractor and trailer transporting a brass band around the neighbourhood. They were busking for charity. They got €5 from me, although I have no idea what the charity was!

Our onward trip through Austria took us east to the the utterly delightful Salzkammergut region and Attersee, one of the region’s lakes. The combination of a new paddle board to play with (and to justify the purchase of), a good weather forecast and a sneaking suspicion that this might be a lovely place to spend some time prompted us to head here. Again, we just pitched up without booking anything, beacause nowhere would take reservations for less than a four night stay. The campsite that we chose was right on the lake and, it transpired, very popular. Most of the non-permanent sites were quite small and crammed together, leaving more than half of the camp assigned to permanent pitches. We were lucky in several regards: 1) they had ‘one last space’ for our requested 3 night stay and 2) it was located in a funny triangular ‘overflow’ area that was wedged between three permanent caravans. It would have been very close quarters with no privacy, except that it was mid-week and they were all empty, so we were again, like Lord and Lady Muck, with tons of space, whilst our fellow campers were wedged in like sardines. Also 3) The lake was stunningly beautiful and warm and 4) the weather was magnificent. Somehow this didn’t feel like being in Austria. The water was warm, a stunning turquoise colour and apparently so clean that you drink it directly.

The lake was ringed by hills and mountains covered with forests, dotted with farms and villages and and with suprisingly little development. Attersee is one of Austria’s biggest lakes, and the largest to be contained entirely within its borders, rather than shared with other countries.

The Austrian composer, Gustav Mahler loved it here and spent many a summer on Attersee. It was such an inspiration for his work that he even had a small ‘composing hut’ constructed on the lake shore. Here he would spend the mornings locked away with his piano and he wrote his second symphony here. The hut is still standing and where as it was originally in a random field, it is now a micro museum contained in this campsite.

Our stay here was all about being on the lake. We are conscious as August gives way to September that the ‘bikini days’of summer are coming to an end. All opportunities to labour over a paddle board pump and inflate the boards, slap on some factor 30 and set off onto the blue yonder should be taken where offered. My nice new board has been a great purchase, Nick’s board continues to slowly disintergrate and bulge in odd places but is still hanging in there. His paddle handle broke though, thus rendering it useless. Luckily we had a spare. It was a wrench to drag ourselves away from the lake, but the show must roll on.

We continued north-east, to the northern city of Linz, and found ourselves back on the mighty Danube River. Now we were only 72km from the Czech town of Ceske Krumlov, where we had been 6 weeks ago. Linz is Austria’s third largest city and a centre for the arts and for conferences and congresses and such. It may not suprise you to hear that it is old, having originated as a Roman fort in the first century, been first documented as a place called ‘Linz’ in 799, and granted city rights in 1324. And bla, bla, blah. Now we are here. Why? Because it was on the way to where we were going. Where’s that? Never really sure….

So we arrived and due to the derth of near-city campsites (which normally means that not many campers stop in a place, which usually means that there isn’t a major ‘tourist attraction’) we camped about 12km out of the city in a small neighbouring town called Ottensheim. This was also on the Danube, or Donau as it is known here, and linked to the city by bus/train/river and cycle path. The cyle path is part of the epic Danube Cycle Trail, a cycle route that follows 1200km of the Danube from Donaueschingen in Germany to the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

We had a day in Linz having cycled along the river path to get there, a very leisurely 50 minute journey. The city was in the middle of a week’s long arts festival with the main exhibitions in the modern art museum, but with other pop up installations in squares and churches. We happened upon a few of these, including the one in the main square. This consisted of a tall, free-standing scaffolding tower up which one climbed to find a mirror lined box at the top into which one stepped to be confronted with multiple images of oneself, rather than the quite impressive elevated view. Deep. The nonsensical, self indulgent blatherings that accompany artworks could be scrapped. I’ll do it.

Due to his feeling ‘a bit iffy’ about heights, Nick opted not to make the climb, thus missing out on how the artist created a thunderclap of commentary on modern existance in aluminium and mirrors: We are all very self absorbed. See, I am good at this.

Linz felt like a pretty normal place. There was a handsome old town, but it was functional and not a pastiche. There were trams and bicycles, a boring castle, back streets, shops, a university and freed from the perils of mass tourism, the happy locals seemed to be just getting on with life. Yes, there were some cycle tourers, and yes, the odd river cruise boat stopped here but mostly it felt calm and serene and rather nice.

For lunch we succumbed to another meatloaf sandwich in an eaterie called Leberkas-Pepi that sold little else but meatloaf sandwiches, served simply as a slab of meatloaf in a bun and no condiments. It was doing brisk business with a queue snaking out of the door. Always a good sign. We were not disappointed.

We also purchased a small Linzer torte on our wanderings. This traditional pastry, a form of shortbread topped with fruit preserves and sliced nuts with a lattice design on top, is apparently the oldest cake named after a place, the oldest receipe having been dated back as far as 1653. We were good and took it home to have after dinner, rather than just chowing it down on a street corner. It was a little disappointing. A bit dry.

Our journey home was one of the highlights of our trip so far. Rather than cycle back we booked ourselves onto the small excursion boat that does the 30 minute trip up and down the river between Linz and Ottensheim. This was the closest we were going to get to a Danube cruise for the foreseable future. It transpired that we were only the passengers on our trip, so having lashed the bikes to the railing we settled in to enjoy our journey. The sun was shining, the river was majestic and we had a private cruise. It couldn’t get any better….but wait….it DID get better, because there was a self-service mini bar on board and we could enjoy our voyage with a cold beer in hand. Now that’s a civilised way to get home!

Our camp in Ottensheim was slightly unusual, being in the grounds of restaurant that was co-located with a small tennis club. We sacrificed a scenic outlook for the sake of some shade and parked up close to the outdoor courts in the shadow of the large building housing the indoor court. This meant that we were essentially courtside and our late afternoon entertainment involved sitting on our camp chairs outside Davide watching players of all levels of talent and expertise playing their games. There were some shots that deserved a round of applause, and that’s exactly what they got from us. Not sure how much they appretiated the unexpected ‘crowd’!

Our exit from Linz involved an early start as I managed to sneak in another Parkrun on the way out. This was a very laid back affair with the small field and two officials only really assembling at about 5 minutes before the start. I was pretty sure was in the right place, but it was a bit disconcerting. This event is called Donauradweg – Danube Cycle Path – and that exactly describes the course: Starting under a large bridge it went 2.5km down the riverside bike path, turned around and come back again. It was straight, fully tarmac and very flat. A perfect place to get a PB if one is in that game. The small field seemed to be comprised mainly of lean, lanky, fast looking chaps, so I was entirely expecting to be last again. Which, apart from the lone walker, I was. I am a happy plodder, and that is the beauty of Parkrun, it doesn’t matter.

Further east along the Danube, and convienently along the A1 motorway, was our next stop, the tiny city of Melk. Its population of only a little over five and a half thousand people is small, but its Benedictine monastery is enormous. It was originally founded in 1089 and built high up on a rocky outcrop above the Danube. A small service settlement, now with city status, grew up outside its walls and is a now cute and well preserved old town that services the needs of visitors to the Abbey and the passing cycle tourers.

The monastery was extended over the centuries, acquiring a monastic school in the 12th century and an abbey church in the 1700s. It still hosts the monastery and the school is still a private catholic school of 900 pupils to this day. Its library is world renowned as is its scientifially significant collection of minerals. There is a segment of the magnificent building open to the public and we did actually pay to go in. The library was amazing, but unfortunately photos were not permitted. The tour ended with a walk through the back of the rather magnificent church, which we reached just as a brass band struck up playing, the music being the walk-out accompaniment for a bride and groom who had just got married in this amazing space. We sat quietly at the back, well out of the way, to enjoy the music and the spectacle of the very attractive and well-dressed wedding party leaving the church. Despite the public areas of the building being quite busy and there being a large tour coming along just behind us, we were the only ‘spectators’ for this short moment and it was quite magical. One wonders who one has to know, or whose palm one has to grease, to get married here. We had just one night here, staying in a riverside car park almost directly below the Abbey. This gave us quite the view from our roof window.

I was going to end this post here, and split our Austrian travels into two offerings, but owing to the ever present and ever increasing backlog of my writing, I’m going to push on! So you may take a quick break to to go make a cup of tea/ visit the loo/ walk the dog/ see a patient/ unload the dishwasher, and I’ll see you back soon….

Our next destination was another biggie, the city of Vienna, or Wien to give it its Austrian name. We opted to stay about 10km out of the city in a northern suburb called Klosteneuburg. Here we had found one of those perfectly situated campsites that was both on the riverside cycle route into the centre and right next to a station giving direct train links too. This gave us a couple of good options for getting into the city, whilst being a safe and comfortable place to stay. We arrived in the middle of another hot day and although we hadn’t planned to head into Vienna that day, the forecast for the next day involved an awful lot of rain so we had a quick bite to eat and jumped on to the train into the city centre.

Vienna is another grand dame of a city with handsome imposing mansion blocks lining the streets and countless magnificent buildings from throughout its ages from its Imperial era, through its Art Nouveau years, and into the modern architecture of this milleneum.

We cruised the central old town area, slowly as it was very hot and muggy. We admired the cathedral from the outside, and then followed signposts to The Spanish Riding School. As a horse-mad girl I knew all about this place. One of the world’s four great riding acadamies, dedicated to the art of classical dressage and the breeding and training of the famous Lipizzaner horses. I didn’t need to go in or to watch a performance, we have done one of the other three recently in Jerez (actually in Spain) last year. It was just enough to see the building in the flesh and get a whiff of horse manure. That was all my memory banks needed. What this did do was lead us to a big square called Heldenplatz, home to a range of impressive buildings such as the Hofburg Imperial Palace. Here we were met with an unexpected sight, a row of large John Deere tractors. On venturing further into the space it was obvious from the large array of tents and stalls, the music stage, the hay bales, the autumnal garlands and the large number of folk in traditional outfits, that we had stumbled upon a harvest festival type event. It was the equivalent of a county fair in Trafalgar Square. Surreal. We found the beer tent and watched the world whilst rehydrating. After this we were ready for home and so slowly retraced our steps and public transport route back to the station.

Our back street meanders brought the sound of choral music to our ears and further investigation brought us to a nondescript square where we discovered a small, free open air recital in progress. The acoustics were amazing. It was a reminder of Vienna’s ongoing love affair with classical music following its establishment as a cultural capital of arts and music during the heyday of the Austrian Empire. Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, the Stauss family and Mahler were all either from Vienna, or chose to live here for a significant portion of their lives. The legacy of this era lives on in the blood of the city with numerous and frequent performances of classical music throughout the city, both formal and informal. The buskers here are of very high quality.

That night was hot and sticky and in retrospect, the last uncomfortable heat of the summer. We have had an epic run of amazing weather since we started this trip back at the beginning of May with even the north of Poland delivering lovely sunny days in those first few weeks. In the height of summer there were several weeks of almost unbearable heat making it difficult to do anything but immerse onself in water during the day, and wish Davide was fitted with aircon at night. On these days, and nights we were kept sane by our two 12v mini fans. They create just enough breeze to stave of hyperthermia and we have one each to stop arguments. This night was their last night of deployment. The weather forecast was entirely correct and the next day the building heat and humidity gave way to thunder storms and torrential rain. Definitely a day to sit in, not to tourist. It always amazes me, having had the extended luxury of having all the time in the world, how we have got very good at spending hours and hours of it in a contented, companionable, low energy state, with me trying to write/do some duolingo lessons whilst Nick whitters on at me. Given that the campsite had a laundry room that included a tumble dryer, it was also a day to get some laundry done. Our inital plan had been to perhaps head back into Vienna in the evening for a meal once the rain had cleared, which it did. I had thought that cabin fever and the lure of seeing the bright lights of a big city at night might overcome the apathy of a rain day, but I was wrong. We dined chez Davide and hit Netflix instead.

The next day delivered significant improvement in the weather with all of the sunshine and none of the heat. It was a day to break out the bikes and head back to the city via the Danube cycle trail. The city itself has a fantastic network of cycle lanes with junctions and crossings having dedicated cyclist traffic lights, with just enough trams and tram tracks to add some exciting jeopardy.

In 1850 Emperor Franz Joseph hatched a plan to unite the city and the suburbs and ordered the demolition of the medieval city walls. This set in motion one of the radical urban design projects of its time which involved the building of a great ring road, the ‘Ringstaße’. Nobles and rich citizens hurried to build pompous palaces along this magnificent 5.3 km long boulevard and this created a distinct ‘Ringstrasse’ architectural style (a type of Historicism) in which numerous architectural forms of previous epochs were imitated. (Basically, a lot of money was spent building huge ego-fanning, copycat edifices in order to impress each other. Some aspects of human behaviour are reassuringly consistent.) The Ringsraße is still an important route through the city and this was our first ‘cyclo-touristic’ destination. Being on two wheels is a great way to cover a lot of ground when sight seeing. We whizzed past many impressive piles on our way along the boulevard including the impressive city hall, or Rathaus, the ground in front of which was partly inaccessible due to the travelling circus that was being set up. Can’t imagine the same happening in London somehow. The Ringstraße is also home to the Austrian Parliament Building, complete with armed police, as expected and several museums and the National Opera House. All marvellous and magnificent.

Next stop was the over-sold Naschmarkt, a 120-stall food market which seemed to have been flooded with identical stalls selling obviously commercially prepared turkish pastries or industrial quantities of spices. The fresh and local produce was seriously lacking and the tat shops were creeping in. It had no local flavour at all. We were glad to have had the bikes so that our journey out to it hadn’t wasted too much shoe leather or precious touristing energy. By now it was lunch time and our thoughts were turning to food. Not that they much turn very far away at all, ever. Our quest is always to find a small, authentic, off the beaten track, not too fancy place that locals might frequent. Sometimes we have pre-selected a spot and head right there, sometimes we wait until we are good and hungry and have the fighting fever that only famishment can trigger, bitching and squabbling with each other as we try and select ‘the perfect place’ through a haze of hypoglyacaemia. Luckily today Nick had an idea where we were going and I was happy to follow. Apple maps were deployed and we had a seat-of-the-pants journey across the heart of this major capital city, arriving in our requisite two whole pieces at a little place called Gasthaus Pöschel. It was tiny and quite busy but our arrival coincided with a table coming free and we were in! Our lunch consisted of two local delicacies: Weiner Schnitazel, which needs no real explanation, and Tafelspitz, thick slices of tender slow-poached beef served in a broth with potato rosti on the side. Both delicious.

Our route home took us back through the old town, through more old streets lined with lovely buildings and churches and soon we were back on the path home. On the way back we took a short detour off the cycle path and up a hill in one of the urban villages to find a heurige, Meyer am Pfarrplatz,est 1683. Vienna is the only metropolis that grows enough wine within its city limits to make it worth mentioning. Heurige is the Viennese for ‘wine tavern’ and there are about 100 of them throughout the city, in various shapes and sizes, mostly quite rustic in nature. This one is intimately associated with Beethoven, who spent time living here in his summers, probably due to the neighbouring sanitorium offering him therapy for his hearing loss. His 9th symphony was composed here. Whether his creativity was enhanced by the sanitorium treatments, or by the wine, we may never know. (We do know, it was the wine.) Anyway, in homage to our great hero, LVB, and to our well known and well documented love of classical music, we stopped in here to have a glass of wine in the sunny courtyard. It was only fitting. Then we went home.

From Vienna we began our southward trajectory and headed to Austria’s second largest city, Graz. This university town with a population of about 300,000 (60,000 of which are students) has one of the best preserved old towns in Central Europe, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was the European City of Culture in 2004, the European City of Culinary Delights in 2008 and boasts the world’s longest underground slide. (Yes, of course we did…more on that in a bit). We had decided to only stay one night here, so after arriving at our Stellplatz on the edge of town we quickly hopped on the bus into the centre for an afternoon of exploring.

Well, it was delightful. Even taking into account all the previous places of note and significance that we have visited on this, and our last trip around Spain and Portugal, it was one of the loveliest places we have been. The city centre was totally pedestrianised with no vehicles except the trams. It had impressive, wide boulevards and narrow, pretty backstreets, all paved with polished marble slabs, and an interesting selection of shops and eateries. There were some tourists like us, but not an exhausting mob to do battle with. It felt very civilised.

Of course there were the usual cathedral to gawp into, squares and town hall to admire and a fortress on a hill climb up to. There was the Grazer Landhaus, the first and very well preserved, Renaissance building built in Graz, completed in 1557, and the grand mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand ll. Before we hit the hill we stopped for a drink in Glockenspiel Square and waited to catch the highly anticipated 3pm performance of the very kitch and quite underwhelming dance of the couple of figures who appeared from behind their doors to twirl monotonously to an automated carillion sound track. The crowds gathered to witness the second of its three daily shows. We could see it from our cafe seats. It was, like the market, over-sold. We headed off. It was time to climb the hill.

The guide books say that there are four ways to get up to the fortress, and five ways to get down. We eschewed bus, funnicular railway and lift and schlepped up the switch backs through the park to reach the top of the hill on foot, giving us amazing views of the city. The walk took us past the city’s beloved clock tower. This has been standing since 1300 and something and has three bells. One to strike the hours, one to alert for fire and one that rang to announce executions and the start of curfew. Another curiosity about it is that the clock’s minute hand is shorter than the hour hand. Originally it had only one long hand to indicate the hours and with the later addition of a minute hand it was decided to make this shorter, rather than replace the hour hand too. I know. Fascinating.

Having appretiated the view from all sides of the top of the fortress we began our descent….by the fifth method. Some genius had decided to blast a shaft through the rock hill upon which the fortress perched and now there is a 175m slide that descends 64m with multiple steep corkscrews and a couple of near vertical drops giving a 40 second ride enough to make a middle aged woman scream like a child. What a completely random and brilliant way to extract money from people! Graz also has a funky modern constructions,

like this photogenic footbridge-come-cafe-come-exhibition-come-performance space, and the Kunsthaus, nicknamed ‘The Friendly Alien’, an example of ‘blob architecture’.(No, never heard that term before either, but quite descriptive.) Built for the City of Culture celebrations in 2003, it is an exhibition space and art gallery and difficult to get a good photo of from up close, so I have copied one from the interweb for your perusal.

Our afternoon in Graz was coming to an end, but before we jumped back on the bus we popped into a local produce shop to purchase a bottle of one of the local delicacies, pumpkin seed oil. This is a new product to me but I am a complete convert. It looks brown, but is actually a very intense dark green and it can be drizzled over just about any other savoury food stuff to enhance it. Can recommend.

Overnight the weather turned to Custard. Capital C justified. Storm Boris was coming our way and we had a decision to make – where to sit it out. There was no point paying for a more expensive campsite if we were just holed up inside and we needed to get a bit further south-west along the road towards Italy without getting caught in the mountains. A seemingly suitable spot was picked and we headed to it, through the torrential rain. It was a small leisure lake on the outskirts of a town called Sankt Andrä in Wolfsburg, Carinthia, in the foothills of the Koralpe mountain range. This had a few designated spaces for campers with electric plug ins and hot showers, all for the princely sum of €10 per night. The weather remained awful for 24 hours, with the view out of our window being of the swimming lake complete with slides, floating platforms, sun loungers, grassy beach area and ice cream kiosk, all turned cold, dark and grey under the relentless rain. A cruel taunt. Up until two days ago this place would have been swarming with locals and day trippers, swimming and frolicking in the lake, soaking up the sun on its shores. As it was the temperature had dropped from the mid twenties down to single figures necessitating the deployment of jumpers, jeans and thick socks, putting the camper heating on and having a blanket over the duvet on the bed.

The next day the rain stopped earlier than expected and we emerged from our tiny box of existance, blinking in the sunlight, to engage with the world again. The legs needed a stretch so we walked a loop along the nearby river, which was looking decidedly beefed up by the deluge and the biggest suprise was the sight of more than a dusting of snow on the tops of the nearby hills. I think we can safely say that summer is over. We had another night here, in relative splendid isolation and the next day we continued south-west and to our next country, Italy. Austria had been another unexpected delight. Italy has got some tough acts to follow

(Phew. Now rest!)

21st Aug – 29th Aug 2024

We all know how I feel about ‘big ticket destinations’ that create tourist hotspots, the crowds they attract and the antisocial behaviour that can seep out of probably quite normal people when they are frustrated with queuing or unhealthily focused on taking photos and videos of themselves in these places. Some might say that we can be unhealthily focused on the behaviour of others, we might call it a hobby. Despite this, we found ourselves heading for a trilogy of ‘must see’ locations. We took a breath and joined the scrum…

Füssen, in the region of Swabia at the foothills of the Alps, is the town over which presides possibly/allegedly the most ‘fairy tale’ of castles, Neuschwanstein. This was built by King Ludwig ll of Bavaria between 1869 and 1886 as a retreat from his official residence and life in Munich and also in honour of the composer Richard Wagner, whom he greatly admired. Ludwig struggled to combine the responsibilities of monarchical life and the pressure to produce an heir with the fact that he was an eccentric, introverted homosexual who would much rather spend his days doing creative things and being No. 1 fanboy of his hero, Wagner. This pretty castle was his bolt hole from reality, but unfortunately he died in fairly suspicious circumstances along side his doctor, in a lake in 1886, before the castle was finished.

Neuschwanstein is quite the sight from a distance, perched on a rocky outcrop, surrounded by forest and with mountains as its backdrop. Disney apparently used it as inspiration for their Magic Kingdom. It has been open to the public since not long after Ludwig’s demise and has to date been visited by over 61 million people, about 6000 per day in the summer. This is the main reason people come to Füssen, a pretty town in its own right, complete with castle, monastery, church and old town. It also boasts the River Lech, a man-made lake and a rather impressive lakeside festival hall, belying its other identity as that of a music town. The town has a very noteable history as a centre for violin and lute making.

We arrived and slotted ourselves into our reserved spot in one of the three busy Stellplatzes in this area, 2km from the town centre. This was an occasion on which we had been sensible and pre-booked, and just as well. The town was heaving.

The next day was ‘castle day’. In retrospect we should have cycled, but decided instead that seeing as our ‘tourist tax’ levy gave us a free bus pass, we would make use of it. The castle is about 6km out of town, and we were 2km out of town in the other direction. Our public transport experience began in a mediocre fashion as the bus to town was 20 minutes late and when it arrived it was already loaded. The cramped, hot and sweaty ride to town was slow due to traffic and if we had walked in the first place we would have arrived sooner. In town the queue at the bus stop for the hourly bus up to the castle was about 150 people long, with a 30 minute wait until it was due. One look at the line told us that we would not make it onto the next bus. This is when it dawned on us that a) we really should have cycled, b) there was some woeful underprovision of public transport, c) there are lots of people who will patiently wait in a queue for a long time without thinking through their options and d) we were now committed to an unplanned walk.

It was, in fact, a lovely walk along a beautifully maintained cyle path (grrrr) up to the castle and we arrived relaxed and in good spirits an hour later. There are in fact two castles here. There is Ludwig’s lofty and impressive Neuschwanstein and then there is the more modest lower Hohenschwangu Castle. There has been a castle on this site since the 1300s and it went through many hands and itterations until the dilapidated building came into the ownership of Ludwig’s father, King Maximillian ll, whilst Ludwig ll was a child. He renovated it and used it for many years as his summer residence and thus Ludwig and his brother spent many formative years here as they grew up. It was the reason this hill became his happy place.

As expected, the staging area for the castles was a chaotic and busy melée of people, cars, tour buses, shuttle buses and horse carriages. We knew that there were no available tickets for entry into Neuschwanstein today and we had no desire to see around ‘the other one’. The only ways to get up the hill to the main castle are electric shuttle bus, horse and carriage (with electric motor assist and braking-very modern retro) or a 30 minute schlep by foot. We were on a roll, so carried on carrying on. There were a few people on the trail, but the crowds were obviously mostly playing at sardines on the buses.

Now I’m not saying that we were disappointed with the castle when we arrived at the top – it is after all quite a massive monument of well designed and crafted stone work – but up close it is, well, just a bit too new and perfect. That, and just as they say the worst view of Paris is from the Eiffel tower, its beauty is best to be admired from a distance. We arrived, we opined, we descended. On our way down, via the more trafficked route associated with the shuttle bus, a chap motioned to Nick as if he wanted him to take a photo of him at a lookout. Well, that was close. What he actually wanted was someone to take some video of him as he (apparently) nonchelantly wandered up the path whilst looking serenely off into the distance with the castle in the background. FFS.

Having ‘done’ the castles we headed back. Initially we had planned to get the bus but the sun and lack of fluids must have got to our heads because we decided that carrying on walking was a great idea. By the time we got back to camp we had done 14km in normal clothes, merely comfy shoes and 50oml of water between us. Lesser hikes have involved hiking shoes, poles and a backpack containing emergency clothing layers, snacks and 2L of water. Go figure.

Of note, our campsite in Füssen was very close to three supermarkets. Why is it that as natural rural dwellers we are very used to the food shops being miles away and can happily go a week between supply runs. Here we completely lost the ability to meal plan and made SEVEN trips to various of the establishments in ONE AFTERNOON. It’s the first step on the slippery slope to Doordashing ice cream at 9pm.

Next stop, the long-windedly named, alpine ski town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Formed by the almagamation of the two towns of, you guessed it, Garmisch and Partenkirchen, it was the host of the 1936 Winter Olympics, the first to include alpine skiing. Hard to imagine the winter games without it now. In winter the town is a magnet for skiers, hosting one of the Ski World Cup meets, and in the summer there are an almost infinite number of hikes in the area. It is close to Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak at 2962m, and this is really the reason that we, and many other people, make the trip here. Our camp was a couple of kilometers from the centre of Garmisch on a Stellplatz at the base station of the gondala that went up The Wank, a smaller mountain of about 1700m. Obviously here the ‘W’ is pronounced ‘V’, but the purile part of our brains cannot do this. I defy any English speaker to deny that they are any less immature than us.

Anyway. It was a very handy spot and we arrived so early that we had time to pack a picnic and head up The Wank (stop it…) gondola before midday. It was a lovely day, sunny but not too hot, and the views were amazing. We chose a route to hike back down and set off, getting confused almost immediately. Teutonic efficiency had designed a fantastic map of the mountain with accompanying logical labels for each trail and how they intersected to create routes in various different directions. The paths themselves were clearly signposted and also identified with logical labels. Unfortunately the two systems bore no relation to each other whatsoever. This created a bit of faffing about at the top for a few minutes whilst making sense of the situation – which was apparently was mostly my fault – but we were soon on the right path going in the right direction and the descent began.

This time I had the Poleskis, which did definitely help with the tricky and the steep bits, but three hours down hill took its toll on the knees and toes again. No, lessons are rarely learnt.

The scenery was lovely, we had the trail almost to ourselves (which is amazing given the number of people that ride the gondola up) and the obligatory ham and cheese sandwich picnic was delightful as usual. The trail miraculously ended right next to where we were parked up and the rest of the day was spent sitting around, groaning whenever we had to get up out of our seats. Love hiking,me.

The next day, having shelled out a not inconsiderable sum of money for the pleasure, we headed to the ‘Top of Germany’ (their description, in English), Zugspitze Mountain. It was a magnificent bluebird day and the perfect weather for a mountain ascent. The journey consisted of taking a bus to Garmisch station where there is a dedicated Zugspitze train terminal. Here a 7.5km train journey took us along the valley floor to an interchange where we transferred to the historic cog wheel train. This 11.5km section then climbs nearly 2000m up to the Zugspitze plateau, including 4.5km through a tunnel carved through the mountain. Epic.

The plateau was like a moon scape, covered in rocks of all sizes and dotted with ski-lifts in summer hibernation. The sun was blazing and it was hot, hardly feeling like we were at 2500m, until we tried to walk up hill. We wandered around and walked up to the edge of the glacier. This has retreated so much that it is no longer technically a glacier, it is known as ‘dead ice’. This is when a glacier has lost so much volume that it stops moving. Now it is just in its death throes.

We bucked the trend of building stone cairns, building Inukshuks instead and visited the little chapel. Of course one can eat and drink up here to one’s heart’s content and of course we sucumbed to currywurst and chips for our lunch. This we had to eat inside in the buffet restaurant as it was far too hot to sit outside on the terrace in the sun.

Full of sausage, we embarked on the next phase of the trip, the gondola ride up the final 500m to the summit. Below us we could see the multitude of ‘serious climbers’ making their final ascent, crawling like ants in single file up the final scree trail and then along a ridge to get to the top, then queuing for ages to get ‘that photo’ at the peak. Mass tourism takes many forms.

For our part, thus far, the day had seen us part of a very manageable crowd within a well planned system that cannot be over subscribed by virtue of its ticketing system. Made it all very bearable. The views from the summit were unworldly. There were so many surrounding peaks and from here one can see to four countries: Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Eibsee, at the base of Zugspitze, one of the most beautiful lakes of the Baviarian Alps (and our next destination) looked quite discobombulated from up here.

There is an amazing viewing terrace up here (and the obligatory restaurant) and after a slow lap (most of which Nick spent with his knees knocking because he handles heights badly) it was time to head down. This next phase of the journey was in a gondola back down to Eibsee, which is where the train interchange also was. This is quite an epic feat of engineering, featuring the world’s longest unsupported gondola cable span of 3.2km and the highest ascent/decent of any single gondola, of 2km. In fact the whole cable system only had one single supporting pylon on its whole length. Each of the two gondola cars can take nearly 50 people. The cabin effortlessly decended, and it felt like we were returning to Earth.

It was even hotter down here. We walked the short distance to the lakeshore and found the crazy crowds again. The lake itself was gorgeous, a deep blue colour surrounded by thick forest and mountains. It is possible to drive up here and park in one of the large carparks in order to enjoy the lake and about a gazillion people had all had the same idea.

The lake itself was easily big enough to accomodate all the visitors, but the car park was not. It was a one-in-one-out situation, meaning that the queue of traffic coming up the hill was moving very, very slowly. We headed to the station and got the next train back to Garmisch. Along our way we could see that the almost stationary, nose-to-tail traffic extended the best part of the way back to town, at least 5km. All those people who had decided, on a busy summer Saturday, that a dip in the lake would be a great antidote to the heat of the day, were spending at least an hour and a half in a traffic jam, in the heat of the day. I felt sorry for all the people that had done the right thing and opted to take the buses which were also unfortunately caught in the same gridlock, but for the others, those who didn’t assess the situation as untenable and turn around, there was more than an itty-bitty feeling of Schadenfreude. (Did you know that the Germans have no word for Schadenfreude…?) Back in Garmisch we opted to walk the 2km home, hoping to swing through the old part of the town on our way. Somehow we managed to miss it, but by that time we were too hot and bothered to care. It’s not as if we really couldn’t live without seeing more old sh*t for a few days.

The walk home brought us out at the bar/restaurant at the Wank Gondola base station and the inevitable, refreshing and rehydrating beers were consumed. As we sat, sipping our cooling amber brews, surveying the car park and all its comings and goings, we witnessed a man with a food wagon pull up and set up his pitch. He was selling deli items of cured meat and cheese, his main product being speck (a type of cured,lightly smoked ham). Apparently the ‘best speck in the world’. Nick was lured to view his wares as if guided by an invisible and irrestistable force. There was almost no overlap of our German or Herr Speck’s English repertoire of words so with much sign language, mostly pointing if we are to be honest, we set about buying a hunk of speck. The bit we almost bought, the ‘best speck in the world’ stuff, was going to cost us….wait for it…..€200! For 300g! We hastily decided that the average stuff was still going to be quite marvellous enough and that we didn’t need quite as much so ended up spending a more ‘sensible’ €40 on 150g. Still quite a wedge. Pork products still continue to be the guiding light of our travels.

The weather forecast for the next two days was awful and a heap of rain was due. It seemed a waste to spend these days somewhere where bad weather would make mountain views invisible and stop us getting out and about. Also it seemed crazy to pay the higher prices of the more touristy area camp sites whilst twiddling our thumbs inside. We opted to sit out the storm in a very basic Stellplatz in a spa town called Bad Aibling. It was a perfect pit stop and we got some admin done – which is code for ‘I did a blog post’.

From here we headed about as far south-east as one can go in Germany without finding oneself in Austria, to the town of Berchtesgaden. This is a region of spectacular natural beauty and is home to The Berchtesgaden National Park. The town is nestled in a deep, narrow valley, alongside the glacial coloured waters of the Berchtesgaden stream and is surrounded by mountains: the Untersberg in the North, Obersalzberg in the east and further south by the Watzmann. The Obersalzberg gained notoriety in the years of the Third Reich when it became their second most important centre of power after the Reichstag in Berlin. Here in 1937/8 they built a retreat, close to the summit of the 1800m high Kehlstein, known as Kehlstainhaus, otherwise known as Eagles Nest. Here the senior Nazis, and less so Hitler himself, spent time in the summers plotting their strategies, socialising, relaxing, entertaining and impressing guests. There were many properties and buildings on the mountain that were built or compulsarily purchased to create an eclave for the Nazi entourage. Most were destroyed by the Allies after the war.

The trip up to Eagles Nest is another ‘must-do’ and many do. The ‘tourist machine’ has it first staging post about 1/3 up the mountain, from where a fleet of electric buses take people from the vast car parks, up the steep and winding road up to the base of the Kehlsteinhaus. This feat of engineering was completed in a mere 13 months. The road is also very narrow, so four or five buses will go up together, disgorge, reload and then come down in convoy too. Here the Nazis’ famous ‘gold elevator’ (actually with brass lining to the walls, so not golden really) transports people up the lift shaft through 124m of bedrock, directly to the building. It is just about the only ostentatious Nazi era part of the complex that remains, aside from the house itself. The buses are expensive, but entry to the lift and building are free. We obviously did things a bit differently. Firstly we made a ham and cheese sandwich picnic with the usual accompaniments, then we got a bus from our camp, about 5km out of town, to the bus station in town. From here we could catch the scheduled bus that went another 5km up to the staging post area. We apparently weren’t the only ones that had had the same idea and by the time the bus arrived there were about 150 people waiting. A polite scrum to board ensued and we were amongst the lucky sardines that got packed on for the trip. The next bus wasn’t for an hour, so lordy knows what the other unlucky 75 people decided to do. It seemed another rare failure of effective crowd management by the otherwise efficient town management. From the staging post we had decided not to get the bus to the top, but to walk up. The path was well surfaced but relentlessly steep. It took us two solid hours of upwards yomping to get to the top which was a change from relentless downhill trajectories of previous hikes. There were a few other mad people walking, and a few really mad people opting to cycle up (although admittedly all but one on electric bikes). At the top we waited in line for our elevator ride, because, well, it’s a thing to do, and were soon delivered to the Eagles nest.

Up here all echoes of the Nazi past of the building and the summit have been expunged. It is now merely a place from which to admire the view and a place of refreshment. The restaurant was doing a roaring trade, the cluster of blue umbrellas shading diners from the ongoing, unrelenting summer. It was further 200m hike up the hill to the summit and we dodged the masses to find a plinth from which to savour the view and our picnic. It was quite a spot, and it is easy to see why Hitler and his cronies chose it. For those that are interested, the Nazi history of the area is detailed in a museum down at the staging area in a building removed from the main fray, deliberately putting distance between the regime and this beautiful place. Three buses took us home. We are getting quite expert in the mysteries of public transport.

From here, one has little choice but to go to Austria, and that’s exactly where we were headed. Germany had suprised and delighted us. It is all the expected things: tidy, organised, sensible and logical. Most things – except for the trains apparently – are reliable and dependable. The food isn’t fancy, but it is hearty and tasty and consistant, if not a bit pork heavy and plant light. (“What’s the problem with that?!” exclaims Nick. ) The language is decipherable, pronounceable and our Germanglish has come along in leaps and bounds! The weather has been amazing, the scenery lovely, the old towns beautiful, the lakes warm, the cycle paths ubiquitous, and they certainly know how to serve up a delicious cold beer to a thirsty tourist in a scenic spot. The people have been happy, helpful, warm and welcoming and we have come to realise that many very nice Germans have natural ‘resting grumpy faces’ and are quite reserved when out and about. This was after several weeks of us trotting about, calling out cheerful’Guten Morgan!’ to all and sundry that we passed and getting vexed by the lack of any greeting/smiles/eye contact in response. Now we just do it for sport.

The things that suprised us most about Germany were:

1. There is a lot of smoking here. It was quite obvious compared to all the other countries that we have spent time in. A lot of chuffing by old and young alike. There are also tobacco vending machines on the streets, thereby offering no barriers to young people purchasing cigarrettes. Seems weird when most other countries are really making an effort to protect their youth from the habit.
2. There are still a suprising number of places that don’t accept card payments. Cash is still really important here. Compare and contrast the UK when it is all about the plastic fantanstic and unexpectedly offering cash can lead to a expression of panic across the face of a cashier.
3. Not everyone is thundering around at 160 kph on the autobahns. Except us of course. Davide is a Grand Tourer in disguise.
4. There is an infinite number of varieties of sausage.
5. It is fabulous country and one that we hope to return to, especially as we have made some good friends here. You know who you are!!

7th Aug – 21st Aug 2024

We were beginning to fall a bit in love with Southern Germany. This was a little unexpected as we hadn’t paid it much thought when (very loosely) planning this trip. Although more subtle than the big ticket offerings of major cityscapes, gorgeous coastlines and towering mountain ranges, the charms of Baden-Württemberg and Bayern (Bavaria) are multiple and varied. Beer and sausages are a constant, however.

Due to a rather significant ongoing and ever increasing procrastination of blog writing I am going to slightly curtail my ramblings here in order to attempt a partial catch up.

From Stuttgart and the Porsche museum we headed eastwards to the delightful and affluent spa town of Baden-Baden. Originally it was known only as Baden, but this didn’t distinguish it from all the other ‘Badens’ around and about and the double barrelled name was formalised in 1931. The town’s current strap line is “Baden-Baden, the good, good life!” It is a popular destination for many tourists, especially, rather oddly, Italian and Spanish motorhomers. This we discovered as we witnessed the jostle for space in the town’s limited Stellplatz spaces and 80% of our co-campers were from these two countries. We did our usual trick of arriving early and magically scoring (what we considered) the best site in a Stellplatz that was about 3km from the town centre. The place was full by 2pm and people were still arriving at 10pm, hoping for a space. One Spanish traveller gave it a negative review online as ” we arrived in the middle of the afternoon (7pm) and it was already full…” Can I stop you there, Manuel? I think that I can see where you are going wrong…

A pretty and shaded bike path took us from camp into town and we spent some time wandering around. There were lots of designer shops and restaurants, fountains, art installations, many expensive cars and a surfeit of well dressed folk with expensive shoes sitting outside fancy cafés. We also cycled up to the funnicular base station and rode the train up to the top of the nearby hill. Here we admired the view of the town and the neighbouring Black Forest before walking the 4km back down to our bikes. This was a far more pleasant experience than the knee-killing ‘steps-to-hell’ of Heidelberg, although our bike brakes were severly challenged on our rapid free-wheel back down to town. What we didn’t do here was ‘take the waters’, which is code for ‘pay over-inflated prices to stew in hot water with some questionable health benefits’. We also apparently didn’t take any relevant photos. This was the only one that I could find.

After two nights here we headed further into the Black Forest and to the university town of Freiburg-im-Breisgau. This city is dubbed the ‘greenest’ in Europe and allegedly has more solar power than the UK in its entirety. It also claims to be the sunniest, warmest city in Germany, a fact that we could not dispute on this very warm day. We chose a Stellplatz on the outskirts of the city which doubled up as the car park for the football stadium, home of Bundesliga team, SC Freiburg. This was an excellent spot as it had tons of space and also had a tram stop right outside. The major downside was that there was a home game the afternoon after we arrived, so all the (100 or so) motorhomes and campers would have to vacate by 10am. We revised our ‘2 night stop’ into a single night stay and headed into the city by tram in the early afternoon. Freiburg boasts an epic cathedral with an amazing carved spire and the usual array of squares and old buildings and the old narrow streets are criss-crossed with network of streams flowing in narrow, open irrigation channels. These were created by coralling and diverting the natural water courses that flowed through the old city, and were useful for watering humans and livestock in past centuries. Now they provide children with the opportunity of buying small wooden boats on strings made by local craftsmen to float in the streams, provide drinkers sitting at pavement bars a cool place to soak their feet and provide a modicum of jeopardy as trip hazzards for those grown ups not paying attention as they are shopping.

The heat of the day of course led us to discount a walk up hill to the castle and instead seek out a cool place for a rehydrating beer. We found the perfect spot in the form of Hausbrauei Feirling, which had marvellous beer served at tables on a perfect shady terrace, slightly off the beaten track. Again, Lonely Planet’s suggestions are rarely disappointing.

Our enforced decamp in the morning had a plus-side. It meant that I could do another Parkrun on our way out of town. The early start also meant we could be away before the mass exodus. My lagging fitness and the heat made it another 5km of ‘personal struggle’ but at least I wasn’t the tail-end-charlie runner this week. We had a cooked breakfast afterwards and I then had a shameless, bikini-clad wash in the car park with our cold water outdoor shower attachment. I’m all class!

It being a Saturday in peak summer season, we thought that it would be a great idea head to the lakes of the Black Forest to find space in a campsite without having made a reservation. This was both highly optimistic and majorly stupid. As Germany’s only coast is on the Baltic Sea, where the water is, well, baltic, the lakes of the country’s south provide the only domestic warm waters for holiday fun,and as you can imagine, it is very popular. We selected a lake called Titisee (See being the German for ‘lake’) and headed there. The first two campsites we called at were completely full and unpleasantly busy. We felt an impending sense of doom. We arrived at the reception of campsite number three about 30 seconds before it shut for lunch. Yes, they had a space! We didn’t have the usual cares of how good a space it was, we were just glad to be in. Go and get settled they said, and come back after lunch to do the paperwork and pay. We gingerly picked our way throught the busy campsite, everyone parked cheek-by-jowl, looking for our spot. It transpired that our flukey last minute allocation of a site had scored us the most magnificent one in all the campsite. It was massive, grassy, shady, slightly elevated, had a lake view, was off the main path and had only a few neighbours in a discrete cull-de-sac area. What a coup. We extended our planned 6 nights to 8 and could have happily spent the rest of the summer here.

What we learned over the course of this week was that this campsite operated on an entirely anologue, no-reservations occupancy system. Obviously many people knew this and arrived early, queuing down the road, waiting for spaces to be vacated by those moving on/going home. In quieter times of day there was some degree of choice and people could be seen walking around with a map, selecting their preferred site in a civilised manner. At other times it was like the hunger games, with the tense tussle for camping real estate bringing out the warrior in usually mild mannered campers. We watched it all from our plinth of superiority.

The lake here is charming, gorgeous and warm, surrounded by beautiful forest and amazingly underdeveloped. The lakeside village of Titisee, 2km from camp, accomodates the usual array of tourist needs and desires, such as beds to sleep in, restaurants and cafes to eat in, delis to sell local products, an array of ‘fluff-and-stuff’ emporia to flog the tatt, and the all important boat and paddleboard rental outfits so everyone can enjoy the lake. What it didn’t have was a supermarket, but an easy 8 km round-trip cycle from camp to the neighbouring town solved that problem.

How did we spend our long week here? Paddle boarding mostly. It was a leisurely 1 hour loop around the perimeter of the lake, dodging other paddlers,the electric rental boats and the three larger sightseeing vessels. Then we loafed, drifted, dunked and sunbathed, convincing ourselves it was exercise. There was a 6km lake loop path that cut through our campsite and offered a very scenic route for a morning walk. We did this a couple of times, each time stopping at one of the aforementioned delis on the way round to pick up buns and frickadellen for a BBQ breakfast sandwich on our return. (Frickadellen = seasoned pattie of veal, pork, onion,breadcrumbs,herbs = delicious. If you haven’t ever had one, Aldi sell them. Try some). My husband is motivated to exercise by carrots (a.k.a. pork products), not sticks. One day we also walked up the nearest, tallest hill. We had taken the obligatory picnic of ham and cheese buns but as the walk took less time than expected it wasn’t lunch time until we got home. Nothing like unnecessarily lugging a packed lunch and drinks around on a 10km hike, then eating a warm and slightly crushed sandwich back at the starting point, which has a perfectly good fridge. We did swap out the warm drinks for cold ones though. We’re not animals.

The significant event during our Titisee stay was a death of sorts. The unexpected loss of a old friend. My Red paddle board exploded. Well, burst in a dramatic and noisy fashion, anyway. A fatal wound was rent in its side seam. There was no doubt of its permenant demise.

Cause of death?

1a) Failed main side seam. 1b) Being left in a shady spot at 7pm that unfortunately became a very sunny spot by 10am the next morning thus heating up the board to bursting temperature. 2) Old age.

Unfortunately this board was ostensibly the better of the two. It was Nick’s that we have been patching up, trying to eke out its final weeks to get us through the summer. It was an odd experience to throw it away in the campsite dumpster. We headed to town to see what the options were to rent or buy another. Rental was out, it was too far away to be useful, and they had no second hand boards for sale either. There was one sporting goods shop that had one last paddle board, significantly reduced in an end of season sale, propped up outside the door. We made an offer 10% less than they were asking and 10 minutes later were deflating it, packing it in its bag, and heading home with it. Decisions are easy when there is no choice! The new board is nearly 2 foot longer than my old one and even has a viewing window. Just what we needed. We had been a ‘one paddleboard family’ for nearly two hours. Sharing one was just not going to fly.

What else happened whilst we were here? Oh, there was a very exciting, short thunderstorm with a deluge of rain and hail. We were happily safely installed under our (well secured) awning when it hit, luckily not floating around in the middle of the lake. The inclement weather leant a certain frission to the spectator sport of watching the constant stream of new arrivals trying to find a spot to camp. Tension, coupled with saturation led to a few frayed nerves and short tempers. We viewed it all from the plinth of smugness like the critics from the muppets. Yes, the hours do just fly by….

What did we not do whilst we were here? Eat any Black Forest gateau, or Schwatzwälder Kirchtorte, as they call it in this neck of the woods…

Unfortunately it was soon time for us to leave and we vacated the best site in the camp in another rain shower. Who would be the next happy tennants of the plinth I wonder?

Next stop was the town of Meersburg on the shore of Lake Constance. Well, that’s its name in English and the romance languages. Here it is known as ‘Bodensee’. The lake borders three countries: Germany to the north, Switzerland to the south, and Austria has a teeny piece of its eastern shore. It is the third largest lake by surface area in central and western Europe after Lake Geneva and Lake Balaton. So quite big. There is a 273km bike route that circumnavigates the lake, making this a very civilised spot for some easy bike touring, especially when you find out that this whole area produces some very respectable wine. The rain had continued on and off as we pulled into our next stop, a few kilometers up the hill outside Meersburg. This was a Stellplatz co-located with a popular local restaurant. It was very busy too and we were lucky to sneak a space. It was a Sunday. Our food stocks were low, and this being Germany, all the supermarkets were shut. There was only one thing for it. Dinner at the restaurant. Well it seemed rude not too. We had to go in to pay anyway and it was so welcoming on a miserable evening!

Meersburg delivered the usual fayre of castles, churches and old buildings in a well preserved old town with narrow cobbled streets, but with some noteable extras. High points scored for a great lake view and an ancient (est. 1120) town centre winery which offered tastings and wine sales to thirsty tourists. Also extra points scored for having a ferry terminal that had regular boat trips across the lake to many other qually pretty places. But it earned its full bonus points by having a lakeside mini golf, the first we have played on this trip. May it be known that I won by 2 strokes.

So nice (and cheap) was the Stellplatz that we decided to stay an extra day and use it to take a trip out onto the lake on the ferry. We headed over to Konstanz, a German city across the lake, right on the Swiss border. To be honest, all we did was swap a small pretty lakeside town for a pretty lakeside small city for a couple of hours of wandering around, but we did enjoy the boat ride.

What didn’t we do whilst we were here? We didn’t visit the Zeplin museum in the nearby town of Frierichshafen, the birthplace of the airship. They apparently have a full-scale partial replica of the Hindenburg to help convey its massiveness. The Hindenburg, 245m long with a max speed of 130km/h, completed 18 voyages to North and South America before its untimely end. One can take sightseeing flights on a Zepplin from here, the cheapest being €330 each for a 30min flight. Guess what else we didn’t do whilst we were here?! We saw it go over several times though.

That seems like a good spot to sign off. I’m not sure I ‘curtailed any ramblings’. Perhaps it isn’t possible.

29th July – 7th Aug 2024

Over the course of our travels we have formed many fleeting friendships with people we have met. We have had extended conversations in campsites. Maybe even shared a beer or two. Then it is time to move on. Goodbyes are said. Sometimes contact details are exchanged. Parting words may include ‘It would be great to catch up again in the future’. You know how it is. It never happens…Except in the short span of our first ten days back in Germany, it happened three times. Beware of itinerant Hampsons. We will find you!

Our first stop back in Germany was in the town of Bamberg in northern Bavaria. A visit here was recommended to us by a chap called Christoph who we had met on a campsite in Krakow. He had sold us on the idea of coming to his home town with tales of its beauty and its beer. Doesn’t take much to convince us to include somewhere on our itinerary. “We’ll ring you!” we said as we got his number, and so it was that 7 weeks later we arranged to meet him at a bar of his choosing. Bamberg is indeed a fine town. It sits on the divided Regnitz River and has a well preserved medieval old town, built across a landscape of seven hills, mirroring Rome. Each hill has a church on top and for many centuries the town was the seat of a long line of Prince-Bishops, a religious ruling class until the early 1800s. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site but although it is lovely and has its fair share of tourists it is also a lively universtity town with normal, everyday local people and shops in its town centre. It was charming.

The people of Bamberg have a quirk. For some reason, sometime in the past, it was decided that they could improve their local beer by adding a flavour of wood smoke. This local delicacy is still made in the original way by two of the ten local breweries. The best that we tasted was from the very old town centre brewery, Schlenkerla. Called ‘Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier’, real Schlenkerla smoked beer, it is a 5.1% dark beer with a wood-smoked bacon aftertaste. (They have another speciality which is called ‘Urbock’, original billy goat. This is stronger – 6.5% alcohol- and is only served in the season known as the ,very literally named, ‘Starkbierzeit’, strong beer time, which runs from Oktoberfest through to the end of Christmas, on 6th Jan. Way to go the Germans for an extended party season!) Anyway. Beer with a hint of smoked bacon? It may not suprise you to hear that a taste was acquired for this strange brew!

We had a throughly enjoyable evening with Christoph having met him at a riverside bar on the edge of town. Conversation flowed freely (aided by his excellent English) and it was as if we had known him for years, not mere minutes, prior to this meeting. The evening had started in the warm sunshine with paddle boarders floating past on the river, moved through dusk and sunset with the turning on of twinkly lights and was, before we knew it, quite firmly in the cold and almost dark zone. We had come by bike and without warm clothes, so we said our goodbyes and having made arrangements to meet again over the next few days, we beetled home whilst we could still see and still feel our faces.

Our stopping spot here was another ‘Stellplatz’, a dedicated motorhome parking area with access to water, power and waste disposal. These first-come-first-served places are generally cheap (about €12-15/night) and quite utilitarian, being basically glorified car parks. Bamberg had two areas, both very busy, and we had squeezed into the last space available when we had arrived. At first glance this looked like an awful location, but given the heat and fierce sunshine this spot gave us a private shaded spot under our awning up against the mammoth fence. Another huge plus given the hot weather was that the Stellplatz was also co-located with another amazing municipal swimming pool complex, where we spent a few hours most of the three days that we were here. It was close enough to be able to walk across in our swimmers without feeling like exhibitionsists!

We did indeed see Christoph again, this time for coffee and cake at his appartment and spent another few hours sorting out the world’s problems whilst eating pastries. He offers Air BnB in his place, where people rent one of his two spare bedrooms and share the bathroom and kitchen facilities with him. Very ‘old school’style! A new friendship formed, it was time to move on.

From Bamberg we headed south to a place called Ingolstadt. Car geeks amongst you may know this as the home of Audi. It was not only a convenient place to stop on our way to our next social engagement, but it also a) had a very cheap Stellplatz, b) had an Audi museum and c) had a Parkrun. Everyone’s a winner! Given its location as the manufacturing and management hub of one of the world’s leading car brands, it may not suprise you to to discover that Ingolstadt is quite a wealthy little city, and lots of people drive Audis. We arrived at just the right time to secure a good place before the spaces filled up and then headed into town for the afternoon. The old town was the usual offering of beautiful old sh*t, but we did happen across one unusual gem. This was in the externally unassuming Baroque Asam Church Maria de Victoria and took the form of the world’s largest flat ceiling fresco, an art work of an impressive 42 x 16 metres. It was neck-achingly impressive, and being able to lie down on a pew to appreciate it would have been a lot more comfortable. Not seemly though.

Next we jumped on a bus that took us out to the Audi Forum, the business centre of Audi in the town. Here there is a very stylish Audi museum. This was cool, calm and quiet and a delight to waft around. It had the most epic of car displays in the form of a rotating car lift, loaded with a priceless array of mainly historic Audi race cars. We could have watched it for hours.

The next morning was Parkrun. In the neaby Luitpold, this was an easy 1km walk from camp along the river and the weather was perfect. Sunny and not too warm. My last Parkrun was 25th May in Gdansk, Poland, over 9 weeks ago. Due to the heat of summer and various other factors such as laziness, that was my last run of any kind. So, needless to say, it was a toughie on this day. No PB was set and I was officially the last runner to finish. Only the walkers were behind me. I still had ‘fun’ (a loose term to encompass the technical definition of something that one enjoys doing but causes one to swear quietly to oneself during the activity), although the legs were a bit sore for the next few days.

Our next destination was the small Bavarian town of Vilsbiburg. Here our campsite was the suburban street outside the home of Benedikt and Suzi, a couple that we had met on the very social campsite in Hungary. We had got to know them over the communal goulash and during the hours spent around the swimming pool and dropping in to see them on our further travels seemed like a jolly good idea. They, luckily, agreed! We arrived bearing gifts. A case and a half of Bamberg smoked beer, as requested by Benedikt, something alcohol-free for Suzi, who is still feeding their 1o month old daughter, Hannah, and bubbles and water-pistols for 3 year old, Mateo. Any reservations that we may have had about pitching up at the house of such new acquaintances to spend a whole weekend were instantly dispelled when we a) saw our welcome sign on the door, b) were instantly enveloped into their family and home and c) were fed so much amazing food that we thought that we might burst! Again, there was no sense that this was a fledgling friendship and we got on like a house on fire. Again we were humbled by their excellent English and even more so with Suzi, who is Romanian by birth and whose first language is Hungarian (apparently there are some Hungarian speaking parts of Romania), learnt German when her family moved to Germany at 12 years of age and is practically fluent in English too.

We had a lovely relaxing weekend of eating, chatting and drinking smoked beer on their terrace, interdispersed with a couple of outings. Having Davide parked on the driveway was the perfect way to be a house guest, for all involved! No spare bed to make up or linen to launder. No bags to pack or unpack. No one to disturb or be disturbed by. I can recommend it. It was was sad to say our goodbyes, although they did generously invite us to their wedding next year. Now that would be a memorable third meeting! Thank you Benedikt and Suzi for being amazing hosts.

From here our journey took a slightly illogical but very worthwhile deviation of many hundreds of kilometers and many hours of travelling. Avid readers with good memories may remember our meeting of a pair of sisters, Anke and Meike, on a campsite in Lyon during our stay there for the Rugby World Cup last year. A week later we met up with them again at another rugby game in Lyon, and this trip started in Düsselforf in May in order to see Anke again. Now we had an opportunity to catch up with them both, but it was a bit of a mission!

Meike travels a lot with her work and uses her motor home rather than staying in hotels. She had a job planned near a place called Heidelberg and we arranged to meet her for a couple of nights in a Stellplatz near there. Anke took a day off work and jumped on a train from Düsseldorf to the nearest main station at Manheim to join us for a whole 20 hours. Our planned 4 hour journey took us 7.5 hours due to two motorway closures and the resulting gridlocked sideroads. We arrived at exactly the same time as Meike and set up our enclave of two wagons in an empty corner of the Stellplatz. This was in a sweet riverside town called Ladenburg, about 10km down stream from Heidelberg. Anke was due mid-evening but the German railway system is apparently notorious for bucking the trend for teutonic efficiency and her train was late causing her to miss her connection to Ladenberg. Meike was a very kind big sister and broke camp to fetch her from Manheim. We were all finally assembled on our camp chairs, drinking wine and eating crisps by 10.30pm and stayed up into the wee small hours (ie 12.01am) chatting and laughing, probably being those people that piss us off when we are trying to sleep. The girls had brought gifts from Düsseldorf for us: A bottle of Alt Beer each, a shot of the herbal firewater, Killepitsch each and some special local mustard. We are truly spoilt, especially as our friendship began with them gifting us a washing up bowl, which is named after them. We vowed to buy them lunch.

The next day we headed out on a day of adventure. This began with a cycle into Heidelberg. This was allegedly a ’20 minute’ ride, but a combination of a detour and some relative mis-information expanded this to nearly an hour. This was not a problem as it was a lovely scenic route, but we were quite hot and sweaty by the time we arrived in the busy centre of town. Heidelberg is a city of about 160,000 people, almost a quarter of which are students. It university, founded in 1386, is Germany’s oldest and the city is a scientific research hub. It is another popular tourist destination, the crowds being drawn by the beautiful old town, its setting alongside the handsome Neckar river and its valley, and its fine castle that presides over the town from its perch on the side of Königstuhl, a 567m hill behind the Old Town. The castle and the summit of Königstuhl can be reached by a funicular railway, which carries 2 million visitors per year. This was next on our itinerary and it seemed that most of the 2 million people had opted to ride the funicular on the same day as us. Boy was it busy, and hot, and the long queue meant that it took nearly an hour to get to the top of the hill. The views were awesome, but our minds were distracted by the long line of people at the top waiting to to ride down again.

With all the waiting to get up the hill our schedule had tightened a bit and we were mindful that Anke had a train to catch later so we opted to walk down. The route down was not a meandering path full of swtich backs. No. It was a straight down, uneven, stone staircase consisting of about 1200 steps. 300m of vertical drop over 0.8km. If you are climbing this from the bottom it is called the ‘Himmelsleiter’, the stairway to heaven. Its descent is called the ‘stairway to hell‘, and it was hell on the legs and my 52 year old knees.

We finally reached the castle, wandered around the gardens a bit and then went to find lunch. Meike had selected a fine local establishment called Vetter Brewery which served us very welcome cold beers and some fine local fayre. Our homeward journey took us along the bike path on the opposite side of the river to avoid the long detour and ended with a short chain-ferry crossing back to Ladenberg.

Unfortunately it was soon time for Anke to catch her train and we all cycled up to the local station to deliver her, Meike locking up the forth bike to collect in the morning. After bidding her farewell the three of us (having come prepared with swimwear) stopped at a river beach for a cooling dip. All the dashing about in the heat had cooked us. Back at the ranch we chilled out for the rest of the evening with Meike and we all had a much earlier night. It was time to leave in the morning and we said our goodbyes. Our mega detour had been entirely worth it to catch up with these two, who are great company, and we shall definitely see them again in the not too distant future.

Our onward journey was back in a southerly direction and after an hour and a half we arrived at the second German car manufacturer based tourist activity of our trip, the Porsche museum just north of Stuttgart. This is a striking building slap bang in the centre of an urban area, much of which is occupied by Porsche owned builings and offices, and it comes complete with a trio Porsches on tall sticks to show you that you have arrived.

There is plenty of multi-storey parking for cars, but the motorhome parking was striking by its absence. We drove around in circles for a bit, did several U turns and ended up parking a kilometer away in an unrelated carpark. Unlike the serene atmosphere of the Audi museum, the Porsche museum was a clamorous frenzy of car nuts. They had many beautiful and noteworthy models worthy of drool and we saw them all, but the crowds made spending time here less pleasant than it had been in Ingolstadt.

We headed out and during our walk back to the carpark we dropped into a cafe for lunch. Here we had our first experience of sandwiches, Bavarian-style. No nonsence, dry bun, slab of meat loaf or slab of chicken schnitzel. Delicious. Fed and watered we headed onwards to our next stop.

19th July – 29th July 2024

The Czech Republic, Czechia for short (apparently pronounced ‘Check-keeya’, not ‘Check-chia’, which I learnt late in the game), was historically called Bohemia, an infinitely cooler name all together. This was to be our trip’s last Slavic country with the last unintelligable language and the last to not use the euro. Here one euro is worth about 30 Czech Koruna,meaning more managable numbers than the Hungarian forints. It has been a strange experience to travel through these countries where the languages are all so alien. Road signs, information leaflets, menus, grocery labels all mean nothing in passing and it must be what being illiterate feels like. We have relied heavily on the camera function of Google Translate performing its magic.

We vacated our Bratislavan campsite before the onslaught of the AC/DC fans and headed north, entering the Czech Republic from the south. Unusually for us we had no real idea where we were headed. We had a few days in hand before our next arranged rendezvous and fancied ourselves staying somewhere quiet in the countryside, ideally with somewhere to swim/dunk/paddleboard. We stopped for a lunch break at a motorway service station, made a sandwich and studied our ‘font-of-all-knowledge’ camping app, Park4Night, to see what we could find. We are now in peak summer holiday time, so this fly-by-the-seat-of-our pants technique of campsite organising will likely be less successful for the next month and a half. BUT, this time we were lucky and a phone call secured us a spot in a camp ground that, on paper, seemed to meet all our criteria. Now we had a destination- Vitlek Camping- a rural idyll on the outskirts of the lesser known small village of Opatov, somewhere in southern Czechia. Not to be found in many tourist publications. The campsite was owned and run by a Dutch couple (who spoke perfect English like all their countrymen) who had bought it 20 years ago and been beating it into shape since then. The grass was lush, there were lots of mature shade trees, the site allocation relaxed and free-form, the facilities excellent and it was on the shore of a beautiful little lake that was perfect for all of the aforementioned activities of swimming/dunking/paddleboarding.

Our pitch was in a perfect spot, only meters from the lake and although there were plenty of other campers in a chaotic melée of tents, caravans and campers, the whole place had an air of tranquil contentment. We would be good here. For the next three days we did very little that didn’t involve a paddleboard. We didn’t even make it down to the village to have a look around. The weather continued to be great, in that sweet spot of 26-28 deg C and we filled our time with board inflation, ongoing board repairs, board paddling and board loafing. The lake was rustic but perfectly clean and warm enough to swim in and we did plenty of that. Lazy days, but we could have been anywhere. It was soon time to drag ourselves away and get to seeing some of Czechia.

Next stop, Ceske Budojovice. This is a city of about 97,000 folk, located some 120km south of Prague and the largest city in this region, South Bohemia. It’s main claim to fame is that it is the home of The Budweiser Budvar brewery, makers of the original Budwiser. This is not to be confused with Anheuser-Busch’s far inferior product that is peddled in the rest of the world, where, due to an ongoing trademark dispute, the Czech version has to be marketed as Budvar or Czechvar. Despite its history and high profile, Budwiser Budvar is only the fourth largest producer of beer in the Czech Republic. This country likes its brews. Apart from it having a picturesque, well preserved old town centre, the main reason for our stop here was not the place, but a person. Slightly randomly, our friend and NZ investment chap, Bruce, who lives in our old home town of Kerikeri in NZ was spending some time here that coincided with us passing through the near vicinity. This is less random if you factor in that his other half is from here and they were visiting his mother-in-law. We arrived a couple of nights before we had arranged to meet him and found an interesting but strangely unfrequented camping spot not far from the town centre. This was a grassy area on a small sports facility which had a small bar/restaurant which was close to the river and the cycle path. The power supply was on an extension reel, protected from the elements by an upturned crate and the showering facilities were ‘sports team communal style’. This made showers happen fast whilst one had the room to onself. There were only a couple of other campers here during our three night stay which was suprising given its location and the fact it was only the equivalent of £10 per night. Our neighbour for the first two nights was an Austrian chap who seemed to be by himself. We got chatting to him and discovered that he was travelling with his wife but she was currently in the nearby hospital having been crushed by a falling tree a few days prior whilst they were out hiking. A helicopter rescue, trauma surgery and a medevac back to Austria had ended their trip, but they counted themselves lucky that she hadn’t been killed. Another reminder that a nice life cannot, and should not, be taken for granted.

About 20km from Ceske Budejovice is the very beautiful, and consequently very popular town of Ceske Krumlov. Another UNESCO World Heritage site by virtue of it’s well preserved Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture, it is apparently one of the most visited places in Czechia, a claim that it was impossible to refute given the crowds present on our visit, and pretty suprising given as this is the same country that also has Prague as a tourist destination. Every time we find ourselves joining the throngs of mass tourism we regret it a little, the press of humanity somehow shaving some of the loveliness off the lovely place it has come to see. Despite this, it was indeed still a lovely place. We decided to take the train. Our nearest station was an easy 15 minute walk from camp and despite being only one stop south from the start of the line at Ceske Budejovice main station, all the carriages were already heaving. The sun was beating in through the windows and there was no functioning aircon. We miraculously found two seats and settled in for the sweaty 50 min trip. The train wound its way through a very beautiful valley, stopping at every little town, village and settlement on the way. What an amazing service for the area, locals and visitors alike. We finally arrived at Ceske Krumlov and there was another 15 minute stroll downhill to the town. It is a rabbit warren of narrow cobbled streets, old buildings, churches and the most magnificent castle presiding over it all, sitting high up on a rocky escarpment above the river. We wandered through the rambling castle, seeing as much as we could without shelling out any money and came across a slightly odd exhibit. This was two rather tatty and depressed looking brown bears whose home was the deep old moat. They were attracting a lot of attention and photographs but didn’t appear to be thriving. I don’t think that Ceske Krumlov needed them to attract any more visitors.

We soon had worked up a thirst and felt the need to find a quiet little place to escape the melée and get a drink. A riverside bar entirely fulfilled the remit, served us very respectable decaf coffees (often a tricky thing) and gave us a prime perch from which to observe the other popular activity in Ceske Krumlov, river rafting/kayaking. I don’t know where they were setting off from or how far they were going, but there was a constant stream of them floating by. To be fair, it looked quite a pleasant way to spend some time. Suitably refreshed we hit the streets again. There were no more specific sights that we felt the need to make a beeline for, more it was the general feel of the place and its setting and so we did our usual thing of just wandering the streets whilst avoiding the multitude of tatt shops. How can so many shops, all selling exactly the same sort of rubbish, all stay in business. It is a mystery. Thoughts of our next meal were starting to pervade our mind and given the also ridiculous number of restaurants, making a decision became a bit overwhelming. After a few laps we decided on a lower end establishment, called The Travellers Restaurant, which served us good beer and medicocre, (but entirely appropriate for the price) traditional, hearty meals that involved meat, dumplings and goulash. The goulash was acompanied by a bizzare bread ‘loaf’ which was a compressed amalgamation of chopped up bits of (quite stale) bread, served in slices. An acquired taste that we did not acquire. With stomachs full of food we decided that our sightseeing batteries were depleted so we opted to catch the earlier train home.

The next day we saddled up and cruised down the cycle path alongside the river into the old town of Ceske Budejovice. This boasts a very fine central square, one of the largest in the country, with a large central fountain that apparently used to supply the town with its drinking water. Loads of lovely old buildings border the square with some nice shady arcades, a welome relief from the on going heat of summer.

We killed a bit of time with some mooching then it was time to meet Bruce. A rendezvous by the fountain had been arranged- code name Red Fox. Very ‘Cold War’. It was great to see him – we agreed that we all had acquired some more grey hair in the past 5 years – and bizzare to meet in such a random location. We had a long, and in the end quite boozy, lunch at a local brewery, catching up on the intervening years and doing just enough ‘business chat’ to justify him putting in a claim for expenses having kindly paid the bill. Whether or not his company honour the claim, being in Czech Koruna and during his holidays, is yet to be seen. We may owe you a future return lunch, Bruce, somewhere equally left field!

Our next stop was Prague. Another great European city, some would say one of THE great European cities. Another splendid, gorgeous and ancient arrangement of impressive buildings, squares, cathedrals and churches, bridges, cobbled streets and parks. Here again all is overseen by a stupendous castle complex on a hill, looking down on the old city and the Vltava River that carves through its centre. This was not a city centre to try and camp anywhere near the centre of so we found a very well appointed and secure camp located on the site of an old farm in one of the western suburbs that was serviced by the very efficient and extensive tram system. I know that I bang on about the provision for cycling in much of Europe, but I am also highly impressed by the public transport,especially the trams, in and around the bigger cities. It’s cheap, easy to navigate, reliable, and clean and tidy. A delight to use.

We gave ourselves a couple of days to sample what Prague had to offer, which was our usual foot tour of the exteriors of the main sights, a walk through any church or cathedral that wasn’t charging an entry fee (not many), and many a back street (to escape crowds, to escape the sun and to escape logical navigation). If we had thought that Ceske Krumlov had been busy and crowded, that was a mere gentle warm up for a Prague experience in late July. We just had to grin and bear it…like it or lump it…put up or shut up…swim with the tide…bite the bullet…. so we joined the throng and then winged mercilessly about the scourge of over tourism. According to my all-knowing Apple watch we walked an impressive 23km over the course of our two day jaunt. All in 30-32 deg C heat. Not quite the insufferable ‘pushing 40 deg C’ heatwave temps that make everything impossible, but hot enough to make the whole endeavour difficult whilst being cool enough to convince us that it is entirely reasonable behaviour.

On the first day we joined the river of humanity and tackled the steps up to the castle. From here we appretiated the elevated view of the city, wandered around the outside of the very impressive St Vitus cathedral (Czechia’s largest and most important church which is within the castle complex) then descended back to the old town again. To dilute all the Old Sh*t that it impossible to escape on our wanderings, we like to add in visits to more esoteric attractions, often sourced from Atlas Obscura, a great source for alternative sightseeing. In Prague this included the ‘Lennon Wall’, a wall opposite the French embassy that was adorned with a portrait of John Lennon and some of his song lyrics following his murder in 1980. Many other Beatles and Lennon inspired artworks and writings joined the wall following this which was added to with anti-communist, resistance and general anti-establishment grafitti. It has been painted over and re-decorated so many times that almost no John Lennon inspired artwork remains. Now it just looks like a mess. The latest additions pertain to the conflict in Gaza.

We saw a sculpture of Franz Kafka’s head which is outside a town centre shopping mall. Erected in honour of the surrealist novelist, one of Prague’s famous sons, this does a funky rotation of its slices every hour on the hour. I am sure that it would have appealed to him. We missed the show by 50 minutes.

We schlepped up to the new city to the impressive National Museum then cruised through the long rectangular Wenceslas Square, complete with statue of emponymous saint on a horse. This is a popular venue for mass gatherings and celebrations and it can apparently accomodate up to 400,000 people. We continued down the long boulevard that seems to be being entirely dug up and renovated, past lots and lots of shops and eateries, back to the old town. Here we ran out of steam and got the tram home.

The next day we did a version of the same thing. Once in town we happened upon a craft type market in a large courtyard. Every second stall was selling lovely linen clothes of various designs and styles and there was a frenzy of middle aged women sorting through racks and trying on items. I resisted the urge to join them as a) I have sufficient clothing for my current needs and space available, b) quality linen items and commercial laundrettes don’t mix well and c) I am a tight wad. Onwards we shuffled.

It was time to brave the main square. This is the epicentre of the crowds, especially at lunchtime. There were a bazillion restaurants, all full, and thousands of people all heading in different directions whilst not looking where they were going. Here is another popular tourist attraction: the astrological clock, found on the side of the Old Town Hall. This was made in 1410, making it the third oldest astrological clock in the world, and the oldest still in operation. It also apparently does something fancy on the hour. We arrived at half past. So we photographed and then we escaped.

I decided it was time for another Atlas Obscura offering, a clever ‘infinity’ book sculpture in the municipal library. I confidently navigated us across the sun-baked, crowded square, dodging the selfie takers, the blitherers and the stop-in-the-middle-of-the-way-ers until we were at safety. Then a quick check of the map revealed that we had come entirely in the wrong direction and we had to retrace our steps. My over-heated, starting to get hungry, slightly foot weary travelling companion and (contemplating-his-life-choices 24 years ago) life partner showed the first glint of irritation and followed behind, grumbling more than audibly. We found the (correct) library, eventually. It was shut. Contrary to interweb information. The grumbling notched up. It was time to feed and water the man. Luckily our prior selected late lunch venue was a mere hoppity, skippedy, hoppity, skippedy, hoppity skip away and we (soon) arrived.

U Medvidku is billed as the oldest restaurant in Prague, founded on its site in 1466. Also a brewery, it serves traditional Czech fayre in traditional, slightly gloomy surroundings, and it was a perfect spot from which to hide from both the heat and the hoards. No umbrella festooned, fancy outside terraced seating area here. Just solid wooden furniture, wood panelled walls and aggressive cast iron light fittings. We ate sausages, chips and fried little fish. A light lunch. (Well it would have been if it hadn’t been for their very quaffable ‘NZ-style’ beer. ) Our prompt for coming here was our other travel director, the late, great Antony Bourdain. His travel shows have guided us on many an ‘homage visit’ to eateries on our journeys, and this was another of those. Our ethos of ‘if it’s good enough for Bourdain, it’s good enough for us’ has not let us down yet. Lunch restored humour and energy levels back to normal, and so risked requesting one final tourist activity before we headed home.

At the centre of Prague, gracefully but purposefully spanning the river, is the Charles Bridge. Construction of this medieval stone arch bridge took from 1357 until 1402 making it quite an epic civil engineering project. It was originally known as merely Stone Bridge, or Prague Bridge until 1870 when it received its new moniker, named for Charles lV who had laid the first stone. It is decorated with 30 statues and until 1841 was the only means of crossing the river in the city. Now it is pedestrianised and walking across it is a ‘must do’ activity during a visit to the city. We had avoided it until now. It had to be done. We braced ourselves and headed over. There were a lot of people on the bridge, but also many sellers of souvenir rubbish and slightly oddly, a multitude of portrait sketchers. I can’t imagine strolling across the bridge, admiring the view, taking photos of city, dodging my fellow sightseers and then saying to myself “You know what I need? I need to sit for half an hour in the heat on a small stool under an umbrella on this historic bridge and pay someone to draw a slightly mediocre likeness of me in charcoal. I can give that to Mum for Christmas.” To be fair what the bridge crossing did give was a vantage point for great view of the castle and an opportunity to watch the many pedaloes buzzing about on the river. Then we went home, via these babies. No, no idea either.

Two days was more than enough to sample the delights of Prague and the next day we headed to (depending on your point of view and love of beer) another jewel in the crown of Czechia, the city of Plzen. Seemingly lacking a vowel, kindly inserted by us English and the Germans in our name for it – Pilsen – this is the birth place, and on going home of, that fine golden brew, Pilsner lager. There was a dearth of formal campsites close to town so we opted for a rare night ‘freewheeling/freeloading’ in a car park. Our selected spot had good reviews on our app for quietness, lack of undesireable visitors, proximity to a nice park and access to the city. We like there to be a couple of other campers for ‘safety in numbers’ but it to not be too busy so as to attract attention from locals and police who might decide they don’t want us there. As it happens we had this delightful spot all to ourselves without any problems.

The reason we were here was to do the tour of the Pilsner Urquell brewery, and having arrived at lunch time we booked places on an English speaking tour at 4.30pm. This left us with a few hours to kill, so we decided to walk the 3km to the city centre to check it out. It may not suprise you to discover that it had a nice square, an impressive old church, lots of nice old buildings and some lovely green spaces. We severely over estimated the time that we needed to survey the Old Sh*t, so had to kill time within our killing time activity. We ate ice cream, we had a coffee and we spent almost enough time sitting on a bench in the square to risk being moved on for vagrancy. In fact one of the local vagrants did clock us and approached us for some loose change to buy some food. We declined, but then felt guilty afterwards and took him a couple of slices of pizza from a nearby kiosk. Good deads done, it was Pilsner time.

The Pilsner Urquell Brewery has been brewing here since 1842 when a novel technique of beer production first created its characteristic pale lager beer. This proved so popular, and so much copied, that now this style of beer acounts for about 2/3 of global beer consumption. All the world’s Pilsner Urquell is produced here in Plzen and it is Czechia’s largest brewery, now owned by Asaahi Breweries. Our tour took us through both the original old and the new modern brewery areas, both sporting gorgeous copper tuns. It was beautiful.

Then we visited a small section of the vast network of tunnels under the plant. These were dug by hand and are used for barrel storage and maturation of the unfiltered/unpaturised version of their beer. We had a very generous sample of this, poured directly from its barrel, drunk in a troglodyte tasting room. Fresh from the cow, so to speak.

Back on the surface we ‘exited through the gift shop’ and the tour finished with another free can of beer. This was apparently as compensation for the tour being slightly curtailed because one area was closed. We took our beers, bought nothing and sat on a bench in the sun outside the shop to drink them. Were we metomorphising into alcoholic vagrants like our friend that had accosted us earlier?? We were alone with our thoughts for a few minutes before we were aggressively befriended by a group of five very drunk Czech chaps. There was a fairly large language/sobriety gap but we think we ascertained that they were two middle aged brothers-in-law with their three grown up sons. They had just completed their tour and were absolutely plastered. This may have been due to the 12 x 500ml beers EACH that they consumed in the pub in the two hours prior. They were very amusing. One of the younger blokes even trotted back into the shop and bought us a gift of another bottle of beer for us to share, and another (not entirely necessary) one for himself. His Dad then politely and quietly vomitted behind a nearby wall. We finally extracted ourselves, bid them farewell, and headed to the brewery’s on-site pub for dinner. Who knows what they were up to next. It was only 6.30pm.

The pub here is apparently the biggest in Czechia, but it did not look it from the outside. That is because it is like an iceberg, mostly under the surface. We left the sun drenched upper courtyard, filled with drinkers at picnic tables and decended into the vast depths of the establishment. It became increasingly obvious from the garb of many of the other patrons that this was a pre-match staging post for football fans. A quick interweb search confirmed that the top division local team, FC Viktoria Plzen was due to take on visitors Hradec Kralove, kick off in an hour, at the next door stadium. The brewery had embraced its geographic advantage of being ‘closest beer to the match’ and even put in a back gate and built a bridge over the river that separated the two venues. Genius. Our minds drifted back to our five drunk friends and we are pretty sure that one of them had said that they lived in a town called Hradec Kralove….Wonder if they made it it to the match?

Anyway. Back to dinner. Nick ordered a significant section of a pig. And ate it all. And was happy as a pig in sh*t because it was tender and moist and delicious. No stomach space was wasted on vegetables. I had some chicken with bacon drizzled spätzle, an egg noodle pasta dish,common in these parts. Also delicious. There was also some more Pils drunk, because…duh!…and we then slowly wandered back to Davide, slightly wishing that we had cycled instead.

Our car park was delightfully empty and we slept well in our splendid solitude. The next day signalled our exit from the Czech Republic and on the way out we spent up our remaining Koruna on fuel and groceries, leaving our final remaining coins in a charity box. We were on our way back to Germany, nothing but euros needed all the way from here.

9th July – 18th July 2024

Our meanderings thus far have been fairly logical, but now a degree of back tracking was upon us. There was a very good reason for this. We were heading back towards Budapest to take advantage of a fortuitous happenstance of geography. My Mum and step-dad, Cliff, who live in Australia, were flying into Budapest on the 13th July in order to join a Danube river cruise two days later. As we were going to be ‘in the area’ we had organised our route to meet them there and spend a day or two pottering. Although we had seen them in Australia only four months ago this was an opportunity too good to be missed. They were booked into a smart hotel in the centre of town on the river and we had booked a space for five nights at a city camp site that was only a 15 minute ride away on the door-to-door tram line. Perfect!

We had a few days in hand and it was still roasting hot. There was only one thing for it. A few days on the banks of Lake Balaton. This is enormous. The largest lake by area in Central Europe, measuring 77 x 14km at its greatest dimennsions. It is not very deep having an average depth of only about 3m and a maximum depth of only 12m. It takes two years for water to move through the lake. At this time of year it is warm and murky but in winter it freezes and is covered with up to 20cm of ice. Hard to imagine. We were recommended a visit to the lake by my brother, Jon, who had come here on a European interailing camping trip as an 18 year old school leaver. We trusted his nearly three decade hence, youthful, possibly not too sober recollections and were not disappointed. We found a camp site right on the lake shore in a place called Badescony and settled in.

The mercury was consistantly 34-36 deg C in the daytime so the urge to do anything that didn’t involve water was non-existant and the most we exerted ourselves was to inflate the paddleboards (which to be fair, is quite hard work). We spent the next three days sitting, sweating, walking the 20m to the lake, soaking in the lake, walking back to the van, drying off, sweating again, carrying the boards to the lake, paddling up-wind, floating down-wind and generally just loafing about on the boards. Lather, rinse, repeat. It was a perfect spot to be in the oppressive heat. Apparently there are lots of interesting things to see and do around here and an great cycle route that circumnavigates the lake, but we wouldn’t know, and didn’t care. Too hot. The most we managed was a 500 meter 9am shuffle into the village to buy a watermelon.

After 3 nights here it was time to drag ourselves away and head to the big city. The forecast showed no signs of the heat abating, in fact it was going to get hotter. We contemplated our options and came to the decision that it would be a marvellous idea to book an air conditionned room in the city for a couple of nights respite. We found a decent sized studio room in an old building only 100m from Mum & Cliff’s hotel for only €120 for the two nights. A (possibly too-good-to-be-true) bargain. It was going to be our first ‘dry land’ nights since the 3rd May and we were very excited!

The Budapest campsite was a rare slice of prime real estate that had been preserved for the utility of city centre camping rather than earn real money from housing or commercial building, and long may it last. Getting to it involved an urban thrash through traffic in Davide, dodging trams and roadworks, but we arrived in one piece and then for the major task…finding a spot with some shade. This campsite had a ‘park where you like’ policy, so it was all a bit free-form, but we managed to secure a place tucked into the northern shady side of a massive cypress hedge. Some respite from the melting death rays of the sun. There was no pool, but there were some strategically placed outdoor showers visited by a constant stream of swimsuit clad campers dousing themselves with cold water. Us included.

The campsite had a busy, chaotic tent area, filled with a mixture of car tourers, bike tourers, walkers, and school groups and next to that was a small bar. We were lured here on our first evening by the music from a Hungarian folk band. This was a group of five gentleman of a certain age and dimension who, despite the persisting heat were throwing themselves into seemingly limitless, well practiced, energetic numbers. And the beer was only 990HUF, £2 for 500ml.

In the morning the next day we shuffled to the nearby shopping centre for a few supplies. Here I saw a hair salon that looked okay, so I jumped on the chance to book a haircut. With short hair a gap of ten weeks between trims means that there are some serious ‘sasquatch’ weeks. A date with some scissors was long overdue. The receptionist spoke English and an appointment made for a few days in the future. Later we packed our overnight bags, locked up Davide, and headed into the city centre to find our accomodation on the very convienient tram.

We were still a little sceptical that it was all kosher, given it’s bargain price, but we had all the details for the address and lockbox code. We killed a hot and hungry half hour before check-in time in – don’t judge – Macdonalds, (it was an oasis of cool, iced drinks and a snack burger each), and happily we successfully got into our room. It was exactly as advertised. A spacious, comfortable studio with a kitchenette, great wifi, a clean bathroom and AIRCON. It was delicious. We chilled (literally and metaphorically) out for a few of hours then went to meet Mum & Cliff at their hotel for drinks.

I love meeting people I know in random places. A rendezvous with antipodean-based parents at a hotel terrace bar on the banks of the Danube entirely fits the bill! They were tired,as expected, Mum was feeling a little digestively challenged, which was a shame, but on the whole they were doing ok seeing as they had been travelling for 48 hours and only arrived six hours previously. Long haul travel is a b!tch at any age, but it is definitely not one of the things that gets easier as you progress through life. It was so great to see them again and although modern technology means that connection with far away loved ones is easier and almost free, it is no replacement for seeing them in the flesh and giving and receiving big hugs. We chatted, had a few drinks and then had dinner at a traditional Hungarian restaurant around the corner. This was hearty, comfort food that in Western Europe we tend to eat in the cooler months of the year, but which the Eastern Europeans seem happy to chow down whether it is 3 deg C or 33 deg C. Summer goulash soup, anyone?!

The next day we had imagined that we would have a day sightseeing together. Mum and Cliff have visited Budapest before, but there is always something else to see, or to see again. It was very apparent that we were not going to be going very far from our hotels as the temperature was headed up to 37 deg C that day. We came to this conclusion halfway across Chain Bridge, one of the oldest connections between Buda and the Pest side, where we were staying. We did an about turn and then the main focus was to find a spot to have a cold drink out of the sun. We were successful in our mission and killed an hour whilst rehydrating in our individual chosen ways sat outside a grand old dame of an establishment, Gerbeaud. Here cakes and confectionary are the thing, but we resisted. I then forced a short walk on my companions to see the impressive St Stephens Basillica.

The route there took us past the slightly odd Michael Jackson Memorial Tree, and once we arrived the crowds and the entrance fee kept us outside and heading back to our airconditionned private Idahos. Mum and Cliff had run out of steam and we were happy to hole up in our room and watch the Martin Freeman show that we were in the middle of.

In the evening we repeated the routine of hotel apperitifs and then had another meal at another very nearby restaurant that did traditional food with a modern flair. It was only 6pm, but we were the only customers for almost the entire meal. An unexpected private dining experience. The food was amazing and served in enormous quanties. We were happy piggies! After dinner we headed up to the rooftop terrace of their hotel which had a fantastic view over to the grand buildings in Buda. There was a welcome breeze up there and the view just got better and better as the sun set. It was a special spot. After a digestif or three we said our goodnights.

At 10.30am the next morning we found the folks who were being hurried onto a waiting bus to be taken to their vessel. A very brief farewell but the Danube waits not for sentimental goodbyes. Afterwards we vacated our place, stored our bags for a few hours and went for a wander. It was still very warm, so this was a super slow paced affair. We found the main tourist drag and followed it down to the market hall, found an amazing gin shop, then wandered back along the river.

On our way along the river we walked past a river cruise boat of the company that I knew Mum and Cliff were using. I messaged Mum, yes, it was their boat. They were just finishing lunch and waiting for their room to be ready. Mum popped out onto the gangway and we had a final little catch up and a better goodbye. Another random rendezvous!

By now we were getting heat fatigued and so headed back to the campsite via collecting our bags. Gone was the aircon, we were back to outdoor showers to stay cool. The next morning was haircut day. I realised that I had forgotten to ask the English speaking receptionist if the stylist spoke English too. Perhaps a rather important detail. The answer was no, not really. It is a testatment to a glorious combination of her cutting skill, bilateral sign language, some translation by the receptionist, the searching for images of hairstyles on line and a bit of Google Translate that I walked away with a pretty darn good haircut. Latest in a long series of ‘half decent haircuts in random places’. Long may it continue!

We decided that no more sightseeing was needed, but instead we needed to find some water to cool down in. One option was to head to the grand Szechenyi Baths, one of Europe’s largest thermal spa complexes. It has an amazing Neo-Baroque building housing 15 indoor thermal pools and 3 large outdoor pools. This is Budapest’s most visited attraction. We did not go there. Instead we headed up the river to Margaret Island, via tram and bus, and visited a more municipal version, Platinus Pools. Here there were some cooler pools and a bit more elbow room. It was also half the price. It was still understandably busy although as we exited our respective changing rooms and surveyed the expanse of water in front of us, we noticed that all the pools were empty and everyone was sat around on the grass and loungers. What? It then became apparent that there was a dark, ominous cloud in the sky complete with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. We were possibly in the direct path of a storm and the lifeguards had evacuated the pools until they knew which way the cloud was going. Hmmm. This was a long way to come to LOOK at water and then get rained on. We filled the next half hour with another junk food lunch from one of the many concessions by which time the cloud moved on in another direction, the all clear was given and the mass of humanity was able to re-float itself in the waters. As did we. We lasted an hour, which I think was pretty good for us!

On the way home we stopped off at the very impressive parliament building, which apparently was modelled on our own Houses of Westminster. It stands alone on its own concourse rather than being crowded out by lots of neighbouring buildings, making it appear bigger and better. Security was very scanty compared to what I perhaps was expecting, but I imagine that parliament is not sitting at this time of year, and we know that the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is currently on his one-man diplomatic tour of dictators. So not much to defend here at present.

Just south of parliament is a very thought provoking memorial called ‘Shoes on the Danube Promenade’. Installed in 2005, this series of metal cast shoes, positioned on the wharf-side as if left there by their owners – men, women and children – is to commemorate the massacre of 3500 people, 800 of them Jews, by a facist Hungarian militia belonging to the Arrow Cross Party between Dec 1944 and Jan 1945. Here the victims were lined up on the river bank, ordered to take off their shoes (of value and saleable), leave other valubles and then they were shot. Their bodies fell into the river and were washed down stream, thus saving the executionners the task of disposing of their remains. Another unbelievable tale of human depravity.

This was our last night in the country and our thoughts turned to the complete spend up of our remaining forints, a currency of no use to us beyond Hungary, in too small quanties to be convertable to Euros. We did a pretty good job, leaving ourselves with, when all coins counted, 1930HUF. Just over £4. Where could we spend this loot? The campsite bar, that’s where! Unfortunately the cost of two beers was 1980HUF, so we had to shamefully negotiate with the bar tender to serve us a short pour on the second beer to compensate for the 50HUF (11p) shortfall. The embarrassment of this exchange could have been avoided entirely as I have since discovered a rogue 100HUF coin in the depths of my handbag. Typical.

So my thoughts on Budapest? It is an epic city that we unfortunately we didn’t get to explore fully as it was roasting whilst we were here. The public transport system was amazing and cheap, all supported by a fantastic app. The buildings we saw were massive and grand and gave the city an air of solidness and permenance. The river is magnificent and is the heart and soul of the city. It is busy with tourism, but has the space to accomodate the crowds. It can be expensive, like any major city, but bargains are to be found. Would we come again? Definitely, but perhaps in the depths of winter. This feels like it would be a great city to wander around in a big coat and a thick scarf.

Next stop? Back to Slovakia, my good friend! It must be a good few days since we crossed a border, wrestled with another currency and learnt/relearnt a few local words. Our last visit here had unfortunately been scuppered by 4 or 5 days of awful weather and we hadn’t really seen the best of it. Now our trajectory was to take us to Bratislava and the weather was glorious. The capital of Slovakia, a direct neighbour of Austria and Hungary -it is the only national capital to border two other sovereign states- and a budget flight destination for many-a UK stag do. We found a campsite on the edge of the city that was co-located with a large, municipal, recreational lake, complete with a wakeboarding park, peddalos, a large protected swimming area, a beach and a large grassy sunbathing area. There was also a large Tescos and a tramstop on a direct route into the city within 5 minutes walk. AND there were shade trees. All in all, a pretty darn perfect spot. On checking in the chap at reception said, yes, we could stay for two nights, but not three. It transpired that in three days time the campsite would fill up with over 500 AC/DC fans, the band playing a gig within walking distance of here at the weekend. He also encouraged us to check out early on that day to avoid the melée. I’m not sure what the collective identity and behaviour of hundreds of camping rock fans is, but I imagine it will be messy and likely noisy. We filled the remainder of our (peaceful) afternoon with a lake-side sunning and some swimming.

The next morning we headed into the city centre on the tram. A ticket buys you ‘ride time’ and the system is manually policed by inspectors. We bought 30 min tickets and this got us exactly to the far side of the old town. Just as we were trying to get off an inspector got on and made a beeline for us to check our tickets. There was a 10 sec window for us to find our tickets, present them, him to calculate our ride-time, give us the all clear, and us to exit the tram before the doors closed. Phew. A close run thing!

I thought we’d start the day with a climb up to the castle. Note the first person singular decision making, a fact that was mildly held against me as we trudged up the (must have been close to) four million steps in (what felt like) 439 deg C to get up the hill where said castle was located. Described by Lonely Planet as ‘magnificently rebuilt in Reneissance style, (it) looks as though it has been transplanted from a childrens picture book’, the castle is very photogenic and handsome from down below, but I forgot to take photo. This is the picture I got of it. Not so picturesque.

From the castle wall there were some good views of the funky bridge that has a restaurant that resembles a UFO at the top of its single pylon. It is apparently the world’s longest bridge to have only one (single plane) cable-stayed pylon. I know. The facts just keep coming.

We obviously didn’t spend any money,or time, touring the inside of the castle, but headed back down to the old town centre to blather about, as is our forte. There were the usual offerings of narrow cobbled streets, churches, old houses, ancient apothacaries, multiple restaurants and drinking establishments and the less usual attractions of sculptures of sewage workers emerging from manholes and stone carvings of well endowed munchkins in wall niches.

Bratislava is also on the Danube, and is the next stop after Budapest for most of the river cruises going in the up-stream direction. Consequently there are lots of tour groups roving the city and it was funny to think that Mum and Cliff had themselves done a tour here only yesterday. After a very tasty lunch at a small and classy place that we happened upon down a back street we caught the tram back to our lake-side idyl and spent another couple of hours sitting in the sun and dunking in the very pleasant water. What a place!

The next day it was time to escape the camp site ahead of the AC/DC chaos and exit Slovakia again, next stop the Czech Republic. Time to get the phrase book out again….

1st July – 9th July 2024

There are a few places in the world that seem to be situated in a sweet spot of location, climate and geography. Where seasons deliver reliable summers and manageable winters, geography delivers beaches on which to enjoy the sunshine and mountains that make the most of the winter snow. Where landscapes of beautiful forests bathe the eyes and where thermal springs warm up alpine lake waters so that one may bathe the body in comfort. Slovenia is this place. It is smaller than Israel in land area and has only a 2.1 million population. It is affluent, the people delightful, and, in short, it is a thoroughly nice place to spend some time. This, of course, given the perils of mass tourism, may also be its ruination in the future.

Yet here we are.

Ljubljana, its capital city, was about 180km from our coastal starting point at Rovinj, in Croatia. The border crossing into Slovenia was the only place so far where there has been an official checking passports. Despite being a member of the EU and Schengen Area since 2004 and borders technically being defunct, the traffic was slowed to single file and we had to wave our passports through the window. Not sure what this achieved, or who they were looking for, but it obviously wasn’t us. We continued our trundling, enjoying the increasing mountain vistas as we approached Ljubljana. Our mission for the day was to see if we could get Nick’s paddleboard repaired before we got to our next lake stop. The only chap in the city who I could find that did repairs was too busy, so we dragged around a few outdoor/watersport type shops to see if we could source some glue. None found. We ended up in a hardware store and purchased some adhesive that looked like it might do the job. The boards are elderly now and it is obvious that they are on a limited lifespan. We just need to coax them through this summer without spending too much money on them. It will be a DIY job.

Our stop in Ljubljana was about 6km out of the city centre in a combination motorhome storage and overnight stay facility. It was basic but cheap and there was a dedicated cycle route from here into the heart of the old town. Suited us fine. The camp was quiet as it transpired that there was only us and one other van over-nighting.

The next day we cruised into the city on the bikes, which was a pleasure. The cycle lanes were well marked and separate from the pedestrians. Traffic lights controlled the flow of cyclists as well as vehicles, everyone was courteous and patient and lots and lots of people were on bikes. This is evidence that ‘build it and they will come’ works when done well. A half arsed attempt to cordon off some bits of road to make cycle lanes that don’t link up or don’t go anywhere useful does not encourage folk out of their cars.

Ljubljana is a very pretty city. It has its fair share of castles, churches, old buildings, a scenic river, handsome bridges, and squares in the old town, but it also has some great modern architecture which dilutes the enevitable communist brutalism building of the Soviet Era. The man responsible for much of the design of Ljublijana is the renowned architect Jose Plecnik (1872-1957). He also designed a lot of buildings in Vienna and Prague and his influence here is comparable to Gaudi in Barcelona. It is also sits at the base of some mountains, offering a handsome backdrop, and handy ski slopes close by for winter fun.

We had our usual day of mooching around the city. We climbed up to the castle on the hill, admired the view, then walked down again. There were lots of bridges that criss-crossed the River Ljubjanica, most noteably Plecnik’s Triple Bridge, as the name suggests, a bridge with three spans. For some reason.

There was a Dragon Bridge. Legend has it that that Jason (of Argonaut fame) was the founder of Ljubljana, and that he and his Argonauts killed a dragon. This is one of the four dragon statues that flank the bridge. According to other local legends, when a virgin crosses the bridge, the dragons will wag their tails. There were several fountains and even a ‘rain machine’, which created a small zone of inclement weather in one of the squares. For some reason.

There was a market, lots of restaurants, icecream shops and winebars. We obviously weren’t the only tourists in town and around every corner was a city tour guide leading a gaggle of disciples, preaching amplified teachings in various languages. One Spanish group engulfed us as we were stopped by a bridge, Nick trying to chat to one of his brothers on the phone. They relentlessly filled the gaps as he tried to distance himself from the group so he could hear himself think. Otherwise it is a very charming and civilised, and an utterly pleasant place to spend a day.

Our Ljubljana warm and fuzzies may have been enhanced by our wine intake on this day. We had a very delicious shared lunch of sardines and chips and mackrel and naughty, buttery potatoes that we washed down with a very drinkable 500ml carafe of house white wine, then for ‘afternoon tea’ (not that long after lunch if I was to be very honest) we stopped to sample some of the famous Slovenian ‘Orange Wine’. In my ignorance I thought this had to do with its flavour, but my learned friend educated me that it is to do with its colour, which yes, is orange. This orange colour is caused by white grape varietals being left in contact with their crushed skins and seed for one to six months. This exposure to the tanins of the seeds and skins gives the wine its colour and a really robust flavour, more like a red wine. We tasted a couple on the recommendation of the chap in the winebar that we stopped at, and then had another glass of the best one. The ride home, with a detour to check out a local park, was both warm, and may be a bit fuzzy!

Our next destination was a stop-gap. We had a night to fill before our next booked campsite and we had the paddleboard to mend. We found a glorified car park on an industrial estate that was designated for motor homes, and arrived early enough to find it empty and able to bag the best spot. This gave us a space next to the grass to do our work. After setting up we inflated the board, much to the bemusement of the Post Office workers that were arriving and leaving from the depot that was right next door. We spent the next 4 hours slowly peeling off the rest of the deck using my travel hairdryer as a heat gun, cleaning off the residue with white spirit and then re-gluing it down. It felt like a job well done! We rewarded ourselves with a trip to the nearby ‘camping supplies’ shop and bought a bunch of things we needed: camping toilet paper (twice as expensive as normal loo roll, designed to disintegrate just with the power of thought), loo chemicals (designed to make living with a cassette toilet bearable), replacement elastic rope (designed to attach things to paddleboards), mozzie candle (designed to keep Sara from being eaten alive by blood-sucking pterydactyls) and a second small -rechargable- fan. This, I thought, was not entirely necessary, but I was proven so very wrong in the coming weeks. Fan (designed to stop humans living in a tin can during a heatwave from melting and to make wife grateful that husband sometimes ignores her).

Our next stop, only one hour away, was the iconic Lake Bled. You may not know the name of this place, or where it is, but many will be familiar with it from its photos. It is a very popular place for a very good reason. It is gorgeous. The pristine waters of the 2.1 km long lake, set in the Julian Alps, are heated by thermal springs, making it much more pleasant to swim here than it should be. There is a very picturesque island in the lake, apparently Slovenia’s only natural island, upon which is built a church and there is a castle perched atop a rocky cliff, overseeing the lake and the town. A 6km walking/cycling track around the lake gives a perfect way to experience the lake from all angles, with several swimming beaches on its perimeter. There are walks up into the surrounding forested hills to lookouts and all the usual tourist activies of boat trips, SUP and rowing boat rental. The lake also is the site of the Slovenian National Rowing Centre, being just long enough to accomodate a regulation 2000m course, the lanes marked out with bouys.

We had pre-booked our site for 3 nights here, the only place with lake access, and just as well, because it was a’jumpin’. Despite that the campsite was spacious and didn’t feel overcrowded. It was expensive but from here we could walk our paddleboards down to the beach and then had the whole lake at our disposal, which was priceless. It is an amazing spot, and is now peak season, so ya gotta pay the money!

So what did we do here?

A lap of the lake on foot. Our campsite was at the opposite end of the lake to the town of Bled, which to be honest, wasn’t the most beautiful of places. Mid to late 20th century town planning hasn’t been kind to the aesthetic of the waterfront here which is a shame. I guess when you are looking out of the window of an ugly hotel, the view is still gorgeous. So we walked through Bled and back to camp again, which as I mentioned before, was a very pleasant 6km stroll.

We walked up to Bled castle. This sits atop a rocky precipice, looking down onto the lake and is apparently one of the most visited tourist attractions in Slovenia. First mentioned in 1011 it is obviously very old, like a lot of stuff in this neck of the woods, and must have some amazing views… I say that as if we didn’t see them. Which we didn’t. The climb through the forest up to the castle is steep and definitely a cardiovasular work out. To tackle it on a 30 deg C day also makes it super sweaty. We arrived at the castle entrance to find that the only views were from inside the walls, and the entrance fee was a hefty €17 each. We assessed this as ‘too expensive for a view’ seeing as we had no real interest in seeing the castle itself, or all the old sh*t inside, so we opted out and walked down again. My erstwhile travelling companion may have uttered some profanities on the pointlessness of the whole episode and was not comforted by my pointing out of the beneficial effects of the exercise that he had had.

We walked up to a proper lookout. This 1.5 hour round trip was another hot & sweaty endeavour that we undertook having omitted to take any water with us. It was silly steep and treacherous underfoot in parts and it was quite a surprise to get back in one piece. The view was, however, very worth it.

We did lots and lots of paddleboarding. Our repairs to Nick’s board were not brilliant as our chosen adhesive was obviously not the right stuff, but it was usable and that was good enough for now. Bled Island is a massive draw for most people that come here and one can get there by either taking a trip on a traditional wooden boat called a ‘pletna’, which is rowed forward from the rear by a standing oarsman, or by hiring a row boat or paddleboard. At peak times it is chaos and the island is mobbed, so we just dodged the other craft, did a lap and paddled on without making landfall.

The prevailing wind was against us going up the lake, which was ideal. We powered our way up towards Bled town and then after a loaf, ‘sailed’ back downwind. There were some very cool beach clubs with protected swimming and grassy sunbathing areas and some impressive large lakeside houses but on the whole the lake shore is underdeveloped and unspoilt. Nearer home we tied up to a buoy and soaked up some sun, had a swim and watched the world do a variety of the same. The water was lovely. Clear and a beautiful temperature. Give me lake swimming over sea swimming any day! Another day we did a similar route but the wind turned through 180 degrees just as we turned to head for home, meaning a significant workout both ways. Life can be so cruel!

Football was everywhere. A small band of tiny, soccer mad kids were relentlessly kicking balls around, loose shots bouncing into all surrounding sites. They were more interested in playing than watching the Euros games, and they were in equal measure amusing and annoying. Hard to chastise them when they were very cute and overtaken by such immense passion, but it would have been better for them to be using their own families’ camping equipment for their rebounds rather than everyone elses, and if their parents had actually paid attention to the fact that they had been told many times to go and play elsewhere by many people. There was a large bar/restaurant on the lakeshore that was playing all the games and many people around the site were streaming the games. Most of our fellow campers, as usual, were German and Dutch, so there were two important games for them whilst we were here. There were many simultaneous audible groans as Germany were knocked out by Spain, and the Dutch had a camp-wide, co-ordinated celebration of their late game equaliser winner against Turkey.

We sampled the local delicacy, kremna rezina or kremšnita. This is a vanilla cream pastry slice of which there are similar itterations in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Romania and The Balkans but this one was designated a protected dish of designated origin in 2016 by the Slovene government. The current ‘official’ local receipe was created in 1953 by the manager of the Hotel Park in Bled and its in-house patisserie has made an estimated whopping 12 million slices of kremšnita over the past 60 years. There is even an annual festival to honour it. Can confirm: is delicious.

Being at Lake Bled was like inhabiting a reality version of a land of fairy tales. It is just so achingly beautiful. The tourism here is just about under control and I hope that it stays that way otherwise the magic that is here will be lost.

From here we continued east, driving through the mountains to our next stop, the city of Maribor. This is Slovenia’s second largest city and sits on the Drava River. It is another place with a long and complex history, changing hands between various empires multiple times, being the site of fires, plague, seiges and many conflicts. Now it was a well located stop for us and we found a river side place to park for a couple of nights. This was the carpark of a restaurant which was happy to provide free overnight stops to customers. It was a lovely scenic spot but although the river was so close, it was not swimable here. This was shame as the weather was starting to get very hot, reaching the early to mid 30s. The car park was on a riverside cycle path so I did a satellite view search to see if I could see a swimming beach further up or down the river from where we were. I didn’t find a beach but what I did find was this….. An open air swimming pool complex on a river island only 500m away! We packed a bag and after a short five minute walk, after paying only €4 each, we were immersed in cool water. Admittedly surrounded by half the population of Maribor, but it was Sunday afternoon in a heatwave so what could we expect?! It was an unexpected treat.

We ate in the restaurant that night. A long and arduous 20m walk away. It was wholesome, robust, unfussy food as is their forte in this part of the world and we ate far too much. As is our forte.

The next day we headed into Maribor on the bikes. The heat was bearable whilst we were rolling, thus creating a slight breeze. but when we tied up the bikes on the edge of town and strolled around on foot, it was less bearable. Of note in Maribor is ‘the oldest vine in the world’. It still produces fruit every year from which they make wine and it has been ratified by the Guiness Book of Records. There was a massive long square (so, I guess more for a rectangle) with a marble monument in the middle. This is the Plague Column, the original one was errected in 1680 to celebrate the end of the epidemic that killed a third of the town’s population. This one is a 1743 replacement. Maribor had a limited array of things to see, so we had lunch in a shady spot (very good turkish wraps) and headed home. Our route was a bit circuitous as we detoured via another hardware store to get some better glue for the paddleboard re-repair. A nice employee offered to help us, but then realised that our Slovenian and her English weren’t up to the job of working out what we needed. A random customer offered her translation assistance and eventually we walked away with four packets of two-part epoxy adhesive and some sandpaper. I think this will be far superior! By the time we got home, although it was still hot, it was a bit too late to consider a trip back to the pool, so I set up the outdoor shower, we put on our swimmers, doused ourselves with cold water, pulled out our camp chairs and then sat in the shade on the riverbank. All overlooked by the early doors restaurant customers. Aren’t we classy!

We headed off the next day, back into Hungary. We had by no means seen all the good bits of Slovenia, but enough to know that it is a special place. Can recommend.

21st June – 1st July 2024

We had another ‘long’ day on the road (ie, nearer four hours than the usual two) and moved out of Hungary and into Croatia. Our border crossing felt the weirdest of them all so far. In most of the Schengen Area the formal border posts are so long abandoned that they have either been fully dismantled or are boarded up and covered with graffitti. Croatia is the newest member of the EU and Schengen Area, only having formally joined on the 1st of Jan 2023. The border infrastructure is all still in place and looks pristine, but it is entirely unmanned. The signs say “Free Passage” and there are no barriers but it was as if all the staff were having a simultaneous tea-break and would be back any moment. Driving through without stopping felt somehow naughty. Croatia also took on the Euro when it joined the big European club and so we put away our remaining Forints and got the Euros out again. We were back to sensible money again. The day was destined to be the hottest of the summer so far as we headed to our next stop, Zagreb.

Given that this is a major European capital city, most of the campsites are on the outskirts of the metro area and seeing as this is a major European capital city there are great public transport links so that is not a problem. Our place was about 14km from the centre with a train station a short bike ride away. As the thermometer climbed up towards a high of 37 deg C we were grateful for the large shade tree nearby. It was busy and we were also glad to have pre-booked. This was not a day to be serching for somewhere to stay. Up until now we have not had to do much planning ahead with regards to booking places to stay, but we realise that the summer season is in full flow and if we want to go to popular places we have to be organised. I don’t like it as much as ‘winging it’. The campsite was on a small lake but not the swimming kind. That was a shame as it got unbearably hot and humid in the afternoon. We did very little, drank gallons, ate a cold dinner, had cold showers and sat outside until about 11pm, when finally we could even consider going to bed. As I said at the beginning of this trip, weather matters when you are camping. Cold and wet: bad. Cold and dry: OK. Wet and warm: OK. Warm and dry: excellent. Searing hot and humid: not good. Apparently the whole area was suffering and there were widespread powercuts at the coast and in the nearby Balkan nations as the simmultaneous firing up of air conditionners broke the electricity grid.

Three nights here gave us two full days in the city and the next day being fractionally cooler, only 32 deg, we could consider peeling ourselves off our chairs and going to see some sights. We unleashed the bikes and whizzed down to the local station to get the train into the city. The station was a bit shabby and apart from a small group of daytime drinkers, fairly deserted.. The only other bikes left here seemed to be old and rusty and definitely not electric, so as we chained ours to a railing we weren’t entirely sure that they would be here when we returned. We took a photo of them in situ to aid any potential insurance claim/police report and caught the train. It was a Saturday, but we soon discovered that the day was a public holiday: Anti-Facist Struggle Day. (‘Observed on the 22nd of June in rememberance of the formation of the First Sisak Partisan Detachment, a Communist-led guerrilla unit during World War II in Yugoslavia on 22 June 1941, and in general the uprising of the anti-fascist Croatian wing of the Yugoslav Partisans against the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and their puppet state―Independent State of Croatia’. Thanks, Wikipedia) What this meant practically was that most of the shops would be shut.

The train took about 20 minutes, cost peanuts and soon we were in downtown Zagreb. It is a bit discombobulating to visit so many epic places in such a compressed time frame. The names of these big cities are so familiar to us, yet we know very little about the places themselves. If I didn’t keep a daily journal and write this blog there would definitely be a blurring and overlapping of the memories of all the ‘fine, historic, European cities’ that we were seeing. So Zagreb? Capital city of Croatia, about 1 million population in metro area. Very old. There has been a settlement here since those blimin’ Romans were all over Europe like a rash. Made up from from the almagamation of two separate original neighbouring settlements of Kaptol (est. 1094)and Gradec (est. 1242) the City of Zagreb was only formally established in 1850, thus bringing to an end many centuries of conflict, squabbling, frequent looting and the occasional massacre. Fire and the plague caused devastation in the 17th and 18th centuries, It became an important transport hub in this part of the world in the late 19th century, as well as suffering a large earthquake in Nov 1880. This destroyed many buildings but apparently only one person was killed. The, now rebuilt, old town is divided into the upper and lower areas, linked by a funicular which of course we only discovered after walking up the hill and steps to get to the upper old town. We saw the main square, site of the city’s main football Fanzone for the Euros, and which sports a statue of a chap on a horse.

Here we happened to be in the right place at the right time to witness a small parade of historically garbed soldier types which I presume was a re-enactment of something to do with the Anti-Facism Struggle Day. They looked hot. We were entertained by watching the ‘selfie brigade’ jostling at the front of the rapidly amassing crowd, trying to get themselves, pouting and posing, into photos with the parade in the background. I’ve never understood the school of thought that dictates that EVERY SINGLE ONE of your holiday snaps of something worth taking a photo of needs yourself in the foreground, sucking your cheeks in, pulling the V-fingers, or looking whistfully off into the distance, but perhaps that’s just me being excessively Gen-X.

Next we saw the ‘colourful and bustling historic daily open air market’…. Obviously not trading on Anti-Facism Struggle Day.

We opted not to visit the Hangover Museum, The Museum of Broken Relationships or the New Wave Rock’n’Roll Museum, but it seems there is something here for everyone.

We took in the cathedral, apparently its twin spires make it the tallest building in Croatia, but currently it is shrouded in scaffolding as the spires are being rebuilt, the recent 2020 earthquake having damaged them, and many other heritage buildings in the city.

Old town meanderings past towers, decorated churches and bits of old city wall continued but the heat and resulting thirst prompted a mid-afternoon pitstop for a re-hydrating beer/water/Coke Zero in a shady bar/cafe slightly removed from the madding crowd. We descended from the upper town to the lower town and scouted out a restaurant for late lunch the next day. Although town was quiet from a retail point of view as all the shops were shut, the eateries all seemed open and busy and we booked one that looked good and had good reviews. The heat was sapping so we called it a day and headed back to the station, a 1km slow stroll. Perhaps we should have checked the train times, perhaps we should have walked just a little bit faster, but we missed our train by about 30 seconds. We killed the hour until the next one with a cold beer at another shady bar just next to the station, so perhaps it didn’t matter after all. Our fears that the bikes would have been purloined were unfounded and we headed home.

Back at the ranch Nick talked me into cutting his hair for the first time ever. I have resisted his requests to shear his tresses with his beard trimmers for years. Even in the long, shaggy-haired months of lockdown I didn’t cave. My worry was that I would stuff it up and that he would hold it against me. But for some reason I acquiesced this time. Perhaps it was the heat that addled my brain. I prepared the salon and set his expectations low. The final result was suprisingly acceptable. He has definitely had better haircuts in the past, but by the same store, he has had worse too. Apparently I am now his personal travelling hairdresser.

We repeated our voyage into the city centre the next day and started with another trip to the ‘ vibrant and bustling open market’ that surely would be a feast for the eyes on a Sunday, having had a day off for the struggle against facism, or is it the struggle against anti-facism? That would be a matter of emphasis and punctuation. Alas, not. There were only about seven stall holders, so no eye-feasting for us. Having seen most of the main sights yesterday we decided to head a little way out of town to see the Mirogoj Cemetery. Given the heat, and the fact it was 2km up a hill, we opted to get the tram. This was the princely sum of 53c each, our tiny paper tickets bought from a stern looking lady in a tiny kiosk next to the tram stop. The tickets needed validating on board the tram, but we could not for the life of us work out how to do that. There were only machines to validate modern travel cards and we had arrived by the time we had decided to stop worrying about it.

The cemetry park is built on a huge swathe of land that was purchased by the city in 1872 from the estate of linguist Ljudevit Gaj after his death. Because it was city owned, not church owned, it permitted interrment of people from all faiths and is the final resting place of many noteable Croats from all religions. The orignal design features a chapel and a majestic 500m long expanse neo-renaissance arcades topped with 20 domes. These were also damaged in the 2020 earthquake and were sadly cordoned off. There are over 300,ooo graves here ranging from grand family mausoleums to simple headstones. There are several war memmorials, sculptures, beautiful mature trees and a maze of paths and avenues. It would be very easy to get disorientated here but I can think of worse places to get lost. We finally found our way back to the main entrance and ( I having braved a porta-loo in the 32 deg C heat) we set off on foot back down the hill towards the city centre again. We took our time, hunted out shady sides of the street and arrived slightly hot and thirsty a good hour before our restaurant booking. This time vacuum was filled quite admirably by another trip to our well situated, shady bar of yesterday and imbibing some rehydrating fluids.

Our lunch was at a small, but perfectly formed, blissfully airconditioned restaurant called Ficlek which served a small-plate menu of Croatian classics. The unexpected standout dish was a bowl of the local delicacy, cottage cheese, served with some very delicious bread and sliced pickled onions. Yum. Stomachs full we rolled back to the station, successfully caught a train, happily retrieved our intact bikes and returned to base for another slothful evening.

The next day we moved to the beach. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Croatian coast and it seemed the obvious place to go. The drive was a bit arduous as the traffic was bad, mainly due to roadworks and a couple of ‘ghost hold-ups’ where nothing seemed to be the cause. We finally made it to the Istrian peninsua and a campsite just south of a town called Rovinj -prounced Rovin-y(a). This was a Lonely Planet recommendation and turned out to ba a perfect little spot. Our camp was a small, family-owned place about 150m from the ‘beach’ at Vesta Bay. Anyone that has been to this part of the world will know that there are no wide, sandy beaches here. A 3m strip of sharp pebbles is the closest approximation to one, and many places just have a rocky coastline. Sunbathing involves padded matressess, or finding a flat rock, or floating around in the sea on something inflatable. The bay was also the site of a much larger campsite that had loads of amenities, seemed well run and tidy but was very, very busy. A review of number plates showed that most people here were either Slovenian or German. In fact we were wondering if there were any Germans left in Germany currently because they are by far and away the predominant nationality of travellers that we have come across on our travels. We were glad to have found our little oasis of peace and calm even if it meant a short walk to the sea. There was also this nice little beach bar.

It was about a 6km cycle along a well used coastal path from Vesta Bay up to the town of Rovinj. This ran alongside some beautiful shoreline, rocky coves dotted with shade trees, beachgoers cycling to their well distributed, favourite spots, haphazardly parked bikes replacing acres of parked cars. There were the occasional beach clubs, food huts, beach bars, porta-loos and simple changing booths. It felt like a masterclass in understated, low impact tourism.

The old town and fishing harbour of Rovinj itself are gorgeous. Apparently voted in the past as ‘the Meditarranean’s second most beautiful port town’, the old town was built on what was originally an island, a hilly rabbit warren of narrow, criss-crossing lanes and steps with the church of St Euphima sitting atop it.

The perimeter is punctuated by waterside bar terraces and rocky swimming platforms and around every corner there was either a tiny restaurant, a clothes shop selling floaty linen dresses or an artisan craft shop. It was charming, and although reasonably busy, easy to lose the crowds. The fishing harbour is now mostly given over to pleasure craft and tour boats, but still had the essence of its past life.

We had a couple of forays into Rovinj on the bikes, passing the swanky new superyacht marina overlooked by the very James Bond-esque Grand Park Hotel – a black, plant-bedecked delight of low impact modern commercial architecture. During our wanderings we had to go barefoot as we nearly killed ourselves exploring the streets which were surfaced with large ancient cobblestones, hightly polished from centuries of wear and deadly slippy in a pair of flip-flops. I’m suprised that there weren’t piles of broken people at the bottom of each street. We had a lunch at a waterside bistro where Nick might have declared the star of the meal was the the large salad of tomato, cucumber and feta, not the shellfish medley. It apparently looks amazing at sunset, but after a sunset comes darkness and that makes a coastal path bike ride (after wine) a bit of a liability, so we just had to imagine it!

Otherwise most of our time was spent paddle boarding. Having spent nearly two months driving the blessed things around we finally had chance blow them up and use them. They are entering the twighlight phase of their existance, having given us years of good service in NZ, but are still a fabulous way to get out onto the water and loaf about. There were lots of boats and moorings in the bay and a small island a few hundred meters off shore, so plenty to see and somewhere to head to. A mooring bouy is a great place to tie up to and watch the world go by whilst catching some rays and keeping cool by swimming. Highly recommended. The combination of age and the heat is causing the glue on our boards fail, and by the end of this week, Nick’s was in need of some serious remedial work.

Our campsite was amazing. Run by a local couple who live on-site and were on duty for 13 hours a day, seven days a week for the whole 5 month season, it was friendly, sociable, had a central bar area, live music at the weekends and felt a million miles removed from the gargantuan campsite down the road. Our host, Zoran, definitely ran his business on his terms, valuing quality over quantity when it came to accepting guests. He had no interest in accepting single night stays and anyone that turned up without a booking was instantly vetted and he would make a decision on the spot whether or not there was a free space. Got to admire that. We had a week here, pre-booked, happily acceptable to the management. Zoran was also a polyglot, switching between Croatian, English, German and Italian. Very humbling.

One of the highlights of our stay here was a(nother) evening meal out at a local ‘restaurant’ recommended to us by Zoran. Arka was a 2-3km cycle inland, down a dusty gravel road and I use the inverted commas because it wasn’t so much a restaurant as it was a collection of picnic tables under a pergola in the garden of an older Croatian couple’s garden at which they mainly served only fresh fish, fries made from home grown potatoes and salad from the garden. Bookings can only be made within 24 hours of the meal when they know if there is fish available from the fishermen, A small hand painted sign gave us a clue that we had arrived and we hesitantly made our way into the garden area, being the first to arrive for dinner, calling out our hellos to make sure we were in the right place. We were. Madam was a delightful tall, thin, wryly stern lady of somewhere north of seventy who spoke excellent German and Italian, but no English. Luckily for us she did have some functional French, so that is how we communicated and the evening unfolded to be one of the most memorable moments of our travels to date.

The menu was another (badly) handwritten sign hanging from a bush. Wine, red or white, was sold in 500ml carafes. We were presented a selection of fresh Dorade fish on a plate by Madam and chose our specimens to be grilled up by Monsieur, whom we never saw. She then disappeared into the vegetable patch and emerged brandishing a courgette and we agreed that we would have some of that too. Chips- pomfrits- of course. A simple salad. And why not some salty anchovies with fresh baked bread to start? They will make you drink more, she joked.

By the time we were tucking into our dinner two other groups had arrived. Italians, with whom Madam spoke fluent Italian, and Dutch, with whom she spoke in German, but with whom we spoke with in English, their menu explanations with Madam definitely requiring less sign language than ours had. The food was simple, fresh and delicious and at the end of the meal we were ‘forced’ to try some shots of the local schnapps and a shot each of a honey based liqueur that was sweet and sticky and ‘for the children’, Madam advised us, with a glint in her eye. After settling our bill (that did not feature any charges for shots) and saying our goodbyes, to her and our co-diners, we headed back along the rural gravel lane towards camp in the fading light. This only involved one missed turn and a 1km back track, but who cared? This evening had epitomised all that is great about international travel.

This is a magical part of the world, although we only saw a very small slice of it (because we are lazy travellers and don’t need to do lots of daytripping to enjoy somewhere). It is definitely on the short list of places we would come back to, perhaps to stay in that big swanky hotel next time!

13th June – 21st Jun 2024

Not long after leaving Spiš Castle we entered northern Hungary, with yet another language and more funny money. Here the Hungarian forint (HUF) is worth about 0.002p, or conversely £1 is about 460 HUF. This makes numbers quite big and scary at first glance. Our first stop was the small city of Eger. This charming town had a great mix of architecture in its well preserved old town, courtesy of its various inhabitants over the centuries and a couple of big aces up its sleeve.

Ace Number One: Eger sits on a thermal spring area and has utilised these to create an amazing thermal bath complex. The original facility is a Turkish Bath where the oldest pool was constructed in the early 1600s during a spell of Turkish rule. The’medicinal waters’ here are lauded for their radon content, which apparently can benefit rheumatic and chronic inflammatory conditions if one marinates onself in it. One can even get subsidised treatments on the health service here. This is contrary to the fact that chronic exposure to radioactive radon gas is widely accepted to cause cancer and its discovery in bed rock below homes can slash the value of a property. Go figure. The Turkish Baths are co-located with a huge outdoor facility with numerous (radon-free) hot pools, a lap pool and a leisure pool with a slide. Interdispersed between the various pools are numerous food trucks and icecream sellers and large grassy areas with shade trees and rentable loungers. It felt like the pool area of a large mid-budget coastal mediterranean resort hotel, not the city centre municipal pool of a land-locked small Hungarian city.

We set aside an afternoon to ‘take the (radioactive) waters’ and having walked the 2km from camp to baths (very slowly, as it was quite warm) we paid the princely sum of 3500 HUF (£7.50) for a three hour visit to the Turkish Baths. We opted against the myriad of massage options available and headed to the pools themselves. The largest, and oldest, pool was beautifully decorated with mosaic tiles and sat under an impressive gold embossed dome. It was also empty, and not very hot. We spent about 30s in that one then explored the five other smaller baths to see if we could find an actual ‘hot’ one. Only one could be described as anything slightly toastier than luke warm so we spent a whole five minutes in that one, at the end of which we still had the place to ourselves. We came to the conclusion that the Turkish Bath experience wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and perhaps the cool radioactive water had put off everyone else too. Luckily our ticket gave us access to the outdoor baths too, so we headed outside through the connecting door to check it out. Here was everyone else! And here were some actually hot pools. We found a shaded area in a pool that was in the Goldilocks zone and spent the rest of our time soaking, sunning, soaking, sunning. At one point our general ‘people watching’ revarie was punctuated by the sight of a pair of face painted soldier, armed with machine guns, one dressed in fatigues and the other in camouflage gear, patrolling the pool area. This seemed a little extreme given the fact that we were pretty sure that there were no increased national security levels, and also slightly odd as they stood out like sore thumbs amongst the swimwear clad crowds. We thought it was unusual that they were happy to pose for photos with all and sundry until we went for a walk and discovered that the pool complex was hosting a ‘Military and Emergency Services Community Fun and Exhibition Day’ that included local TV coverage. It was all coming to an end as we discovered this, so no idea what else it involved. I was too embarrased to ask for a proper photo, so got an ‘on-the-hoofie’ instead.

Ace Number Two: The Valley Of The Beautiful Women, aka The Szépasszony Valley. Not only does this small wine region produce some of Hungary’s finest wines but the small picturesque horseshoe-shaped valley which hosts the cellars is situated an easy 1km walk from town (and fortuitously, only a mere 200m stroll from our camp). There are 200 cellars in all, carved into the rock sides of the valley and nearly 50 are open to the public, offering a myriad of wine tasting, wine drinking, wine buying and food eating options. The mature trees and steep sides of the valley offer shade on a sunny evening and it is perhaps the most genial and accessible wine tasting experience I have had to date. It was also a bargain. Six 100ml glasses of wine and three bottles to take away cost us only £30. The famed wine of the region is Egri Bikavér, aka ‘Bulls Blood’. This bold and robust red wine is always a blend of multiple varieties with Kékfrankos (no, I’d never heard of it either) as a major component. The ‘Bulls Blood’ name apparently originates from when the Hungarians unexpectedly and miraculously won a 16th century battle against the Ottomans. The legend says that the soldiers got their strength from drinking wine into which their womenfolk had mixed bull’s blood, and the name stuck. They also do a mean rosé.

The old town area of the city was very lovely and again was another place that was clean, tidy and well cared for. The city’s grandiose cathedral basillica, completed in 1836 and sporting some impressive Corinthian columns is apparently Hungary’s second largest religious building.

There was also a well preserved 17th C minaret, one of the three left standing in Hungary and one of the most northern remaining minarets left from Ottoman rule in Europe. Its associcated mosque no longer exists, but in 2016 a Turkish Muslim resident of Eger was permitted to call the Muslim prayer from its balcony, 327 years after the last call. Eger also sports the requisite castle on a hill. In 1552 it famously managed to resist attack and seige by a Turkish army of 35,000-40,000 soldiers. Despite being defended by a mere 2,100-2,300, the siege failed and the Turks suffered heavy casualties. A total of 1,700 of the defenders survived. After that Turks besieged the castle again in 1596, resulting in a Turkish victory. They had to have the last word, obviously. On our wanderings we criss-crossed the main square a few times and on one occasion happened upon the tail end of some sort of ceremony that I think had something to do with the high school graduating class. All the boys were in white shirts, black ties and black trousers, the girls all in white ballgown-style dresses. They had been doing some sort of dancing, which we missed, and then there were some speeches and many photos taken by proud parents. All around town there were USA-style ‘Class of 2024’ framed photo boards proudly displayed in various shops and office windows. It was great to see this milestone observed and celebrated by the whole town.

We had a very delicious meal out at a nationally renowned restaurant called Macok (pronounced Mah-chock, so not smutty at all). It is apparently Hungary’s 12th best restaurant yet our meal only cost the same as a decent pub dinner. There is a lot to love about Hungary.

After three nights in Eger we headed south to a place called Tiszaszölös. There was a National Park near here, Hortobágy, but it had limited camping and was more the sort of place one drives to and through to appreciate. There was a heatwave forecast for the next 4-5 days, so with temperatures between 32 and 37 deg C expected we decided to find somewhere to stay with some access to water. What we found was not a rustic lakeside or riverside camp, but a tiny private campsite with a very beautiful swimming pool.

It was not really close to any major attractions but we thought that a couple of days sat by the pool whilst it was uncomfortably hot would be a splendid way to waste our time. Owned by a Dutch couple called Rueben and Aneta, who had a very adorable dog called Benke, the property was about 2 acres, space for five vans, three B&B rooms in their house and two glamping trailers.

The place definitely had a ‘camping-in-Rueben-&-Aneta’s-garden-during-a-lazy-house-party-weekend-where-you-arrive-knowing-no-one-and-leave-two-days-later-than-planned-with-some-new-friends’ vibe. Our first evening on site co-incided with our hosts’ weekly Goulash Soup Evening.

Cooked over an open fire and served with bread at a long table, it was a great opportunity to meet our fellow campers. It was an international affair with Dutch, Belgians, Swiss and Germans as the other guests. They all spoke excellent English, the Dutch also spoke German, the German-speaking Swiss also spoke French as did the Flemish(essentially Dutch)-speaking Belgians and the conversation gloriously swirled around multiple languages, jokes being told several times in different tongues with us all appretiating the variously repeated punchlines. Sign language and wine helped too, of course. We managed to struggle out for a bike ride on our first day, taking in some of the epic paved bike path loop that circles the nearby Tisza river and lake.

The sleek surface of the path was to be commended, but there was a 2km, pot-holed, gravel road to get to it which majorly rattled the teeth given our suspension-free machines. After that outburst of activity, and with the heatwave established, we opted out of all physical activity/sightseeing/exploring and opted to sitting by, and in, the pool for the next few days. It was bliss.

Rueben had discovered a ground fridge cellar in his garden when he bought it several years ago. This brick built, bunker style room, half underground and covered with sod and grass would have acted as the family’s cool room in the past. He had restored it, converting it into his wine cellar where he also hosts wine tasting evenings. This was a thoroughly marvellous place to spend an hour or so at the end of a hot day, sipping wines and sharing stories. Rueben had learnt that, when she was a very young girl, his neighbour’s mother had been one of about 100 local people that had used the bunker as an air raid shelter one night to protect themselves from a Russian bombing raid. She was too old to visit it now that it had been restored, but she was very pleased that it was being looked after given how much it meant to the people of the village.

As well as the pool area, the site also had a great communal area for socializing, equiped with fans and mosquito nets and a beer and wine stocked fridge with an honesty system of payment. To (mis)quote Kevin Costner’s 1987 movie, The Field Of Dreams, “Build it and they will come”. Our hosts built it, we came and enjoyed it, we struggled to leave it. But eventually all good things must come to and end, so armed with the contact details of some new friends: Robert and Christine from The Netherlands, and Benedikt, Susanne & family from Germany, we said our goodbyes to everyone on site and begrudgingly drove away.

Our next stop was Pécs (pronounce Pay-ssh), Hungary’s fifth largest city. We had made this a long driving day (for us) and schlepped the 350km to the south west of the country. In doing this we had come close to, but not stopped, in Budapest. We had plans to return here in several weeks for a rendezvous with my Mum and Step-Dad, so we bypassed it this time. Our stop in Pécs was pinned on one important factor. Two weeks ago I had semi-randomly chosen the main post office here as the postal address for our 4th of July UK general election postal ballot papers to be sent out to. Bums we may be, but bums with a good sense of civic duty are we. We only had one night here, so our ability to vote rested on the efficiency of the UK and Hungarian postal systems….

We finally arrived at our campsite mid-afternoon, heatwave ongoing, and melted whilst we checked in with the grand-daughter of the family run business, Katinka. Luckily there were lots of mature trees so we selected a shady site and got settled, whilst continuing to sweat. The city centre was only a few km away so we opted to cycle in as this was going to be much cooler than walking or faffing around getting a bus. We easily located the post office, which was actually a rather grand old building called the ‘Postal Palace’. It was beautifully cool inside and devoid of any other customers. A variety of inactive clerks were sat at various windows which were arranged in a huge semi circle of counters. We approached one, had a difficult initial conversation using Google Translate, and were told to take a ticket at the entrance. Ticket taken we waited 30s then were called back to the same window that we had first approached. Comforting to know that idiotic beaurocracy reigns supreme wherever you are! We then attempted to have the same conversation with the same clerk, who then disappeared and returned with a colleague who could speak a little more English. After 10 minutes of us trying to explain that we had had two letters sent to this address post restante (a fairly internationally recognised concept) they advised us that we could arrange to have letters sent to this address to collect. Bingo! Now we just had to explain that we had done that 2 weeks ago. Finally, we understood each other and they disappeared for ten minutes to a back room with our passports in hand to check if the letters were there.

No they weren’t.

Oh well, we tried.

We then spent an hour or so exploring the centre of Pécs which was quite delightful. The ancient Old Town was another unexpectedly lovely mix of architectures, squares, old buildings, churches and mosques. The country’s oldest university is here as well as it being one of Hungary’s cultural centres. We went up to the cathedral which was another picturesque offering of pale, newly cleaned, stone overlooking a small square. We arrived just as a service had ended and as the cathedral emptied the square filled up with another batch of young people with their families. Everyone was dressed in their Sunday best and many of the girls were carrying bouquets of flowers. Again it looked like something to do with high school graduation. We waited for ten minutes or so for the crowds to clear before going inside. Unfortunately the man with the keys was turning lights off and ushering the stragglers out before he locked up, so we got no more than a quick peek of the interior before we were evicted.

We continued our wanderings a’bike but it was too hot to do much more than find a bar with shady outside spot with some breeze and sample a glass or two of something cold.. So we did that instead. Compared to the offerings in Germany, Poland and Slovakia, the Hungarian beer had been a bit underwhelming. Until we got to Pécs, where the local brew was very refreshing and revitalising. This late afternoon pit-stop gave us time to reflect on our failed attempt to vote, the unexpected beauty of this lesser known place and the opportunity to do a bit of people watching. The bar was hosting a book signing (genre unknown) whilst we were there and this seemed to attract an influx of student-types. They congregated self-consciously in a loose large group near us (despite oodles of space elsewhere), moving chairs, moving positions, moving tables, in fact doing anything except seemingly buying drinks or buying books. Oh, to be young!

We whizzed home with the warm wind in our hair and stopped at Lidl to get stuff for a cold platter dinner. No way any cooking was happening in this heat. In the morning our previously shady site had become a roasting inferno of morning sunshine so we ate our breakfast under a tree nowhere near Davide and awaited the arrival of the boss, her Grandma, whom Katinka had advised us yesterday would be around to collect our dues before we left. Grandma apparently spoke good German, as well as her native Hungarian, but no English. She did indeed arrive and then tried to charge us more than Katinka had quoted us, which was 500 HUF more than the exact money that I had brought to the office. I fixed her with a steely stare, showed her my fistful of Forints and said “Katinka” to her. That seemed to get the message across in a very un-British and brusque way and she aquiesced. Looking back, I realise that I was quibbling over £1.08, which is a bit tight, so I hope I didn’t get Katinka in trouble!

Pécs is quite close to the Croatian border, and that is where we headed next. It seemed a short stay in Hungary, but to paraphrase the well known words of Herr Schwarzenegger: ‘We’ll be back”.