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.
