They speak German!
You know, we could get used to this two duvets on a double bed thing. No fighting. (always a good thing) independent choice as to how much duvet covering is required and we could even have his and hers togs. (13 tog for me and 2 tog for Kate)
Anyway, a great German breakfast. Bread, no nonsense cereal, ham, cheese and when we asked for coffee, a huge urn of it was deposited on our table, free for us to refer to at any point. I think we drained it...
The lady serving was humourless but efficient. Not the first time we have experienced that, thus far.
We were up and off by 9am. Pretty good, seeing as 9am was 8am only yesterday.
We rejoined autobahn 3. The 3 took us to within 6 kilometres of Passau, our destination. That was the easy bit. The motorway was jammed and bonkers as yesterday but today an extra frisson of excitement was added in the form of rain. This was the sort of rain where you set your wipers to panic mode. The sort of motion you imagine someone making if they are on a deserted island and spy a ship and want to draw its attention to your plight.
Most of the cars did actually slow down. After passing a stretch of road where planes landed beside us for Frankfurt airport and trains ran along the other side of the road, little excitement was to be had for a while. (Probably just as well because it took Kate some time to recover from the thrill of that scenario)
However, the scenery became more and more attractive with hills, valleys, huge viaducts, long tunnels and artfully placed coffee stops.
Sat nav was behaving and even if it hadn't, we would have reached Passau with little problem. This is very much in contrast to the last time we drove anywhere near here. It was 1995. The kids were three and nine. We stopped at a Restplatz and lost the paper with all the directions for how to get to a friend's house in Slovenia. This might sound trifling, but this was before the days of Internet. The paper had telephone numbers on it so that we could call them if we got lost...
We had a paper map wich was two pieces of A4 which depicted Europe in its entirety. We spent two days, driving from the top of Germany to a house in Slovenia armed with nothing but this map and we didn't get lost. If that sounds miraculous, there's a simple explanation. It was.
It has come as a bit of a shock to us that in Germany, they speak German. Not English! We have tried the usual English person's approach of just speaking very loudly and slowly but it doesn't always wash. I have now learnt "I'm sorry but we don't speak German" in German. (Which sounds rather oxymoronic)
After the rigours of the autobahn, we have arrived in a beautiful place, up the valley of a tributary to the Danube, near Passau. In a sense, we are now ready to begin our holiday. The tandem is ready to go. We are sitting in hot sunshine, eating schnitzel and drinking a beer in the garden of the hotel which is wedged into a narrow wooded valley.
It's difficult to believe it but the forecast insists that the next two days are filled with torrential rain. Solidly.
Have we really got to start the ride as the Caped Crusaders?
We're not thinking about it now. We're enjoying these perfect surroundings while we can.
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