Oberstdorf and Austria, 6 June

We have been in four different countries today, as every time we crossed a border, Virgin Mobile  texted twice to tell me I could now use my allowances and no longer needed to buy a pass. I knew that!  Plus the fees for out-of-allowance use, which I am unlikely to need to know.

So we started off in Düren, in Germany, and our first stops were in an Edeka to do some take-home shopping (most sausages and bread mix, and Schwäbische Maultäschen!) and at a nearby petrol station for diesel.

Then it was off on the long trek across Holland (the Maestricht peninsula) and Belgium as far as Ghent. For once, all the accidents were on the other side of the motorway, and the jams on our side weren't too bad.  It was the weather that was appalling - heavy rain and very strong winds - and when we parked up in Ghent the thought of getting out of the motor home and finding out way into the city was distinctly unappealing.

The Swan Whisperer did get out and go for a walk, but he said transport links into the city seemed few and far between.  So we decide to drive on as far as Dunkerque, where we stopped for a very good meal.

We half thought of spending the night parked up in front of the rink there, but it is very exposed, so we thought not, and drove the last hour down to Calais and are parked up in the Cité Europe, but, along with all the other motor homes there (it is busy tonight), we are "hove to" with our backs to the wind.  It is very noisy, but because the van isn't badly shaken with every gust, we have known worse!

Oberstdorf and Austria, 5 June

It was supposed to be the day roaming charges ended in Europe, but when I woke up early and grabbed my phone, it was still telling me I had to buy a pass.  I was unimpressed, but decided to give them an hour or so, and to ring them up if it was still saying so at breakfast time.  I went back to sleep, and when I woke an hour later, I had data again.  So that was all right! Was less impressed when I went to have my shower to find we'd forgotten to turn the hot water on and I had to wait 20 minutes, but we were in no rush.

It was a Bank Holiday in Germany, but the local café-cum-bakery was open and doing a roaring trade. I bought rolls for lunch (we had them for supper, too) and a delicious flan with blackcurrants and redcurrants for lunch pudding.

We drove on the motorway in the morning, as with it being a public holiday there were no lorries, but Bank Holiday traffic is the same everywhere, and the Satnav was warning of jams ahead, so we came away and went cross country.

This was only a little better, as we were going past the Nurburgring at the time, where it turned out that the Rock am Ring - Germany's biggest rock festival - had just finished.  What one could see of the place bore eloquent testimony to that - absolutely knee-deep in detritus, with volunteers picking it up and putting it in black sacks. Horrifying - why can't people make sure that they have all their rubbish with them, and that, when they leave the camp site, nobody could tell they'd been there?  Anybody brought up in the country, or who has ever been in the Scouts or similar movements, would know to do that without being told - are we really such a minority?

Anyway, we eventually arrived here at Düren via some hair-raising spaghetti of roads - hairpin bends all over the place, not fun!  The SW went for his usual walk - there is a river here he likes which is why we came here for the night rather than just using the services and then parking up in the station car park, which is cheaper.  I have come awake early as my window was open and I was not quite warm enough, but have remedied that now....

Oberstdorf and Austria, 4 June

The weather broke in the night with thunder and heavy rain, and a gust of wind blew or dustbin out the door and broke it. Oh well...  They are not expensive.

We had 346 kilometres to drive, but German motorways on a Sunday are pretty much lorry-free, and it was far cooler than it has been - almost unpleasantly so, in fact. The first 30km or so was on the B8, and then just before Regensburg we joined the A3 and stayed on it more or less all the way. We are parked up in a car park we have been to before, just outside Hanau; I only vaguely remember it and the SW doesn't remember being under the flight path to Frankfurt airport!

 

He went out for a long walk last night, including to a confiserie we had passed that was open to buy our Pentecost cheesecake, which we had for supper pudding.

Oberstdorf and Austria, 3 June

So we started the long homeward trek today. The worst thing about the van is it doesn't have air-conditioning, and today was very hot. Fine for me, I could, and did sleep much of the time, but the SW has to drive.

We went out to Schonbrunn before setting off, just to have a quick look at it, and we also did some shopping and got diesel.

  We went on the motorway as far as Passau, stopping a couple of times to stretch and once to eat ice cream, and then drive along the Danube to our parking space in the middle of nowhere!  Very peaceful, except for an elderly German gentleman who insisted on making friends while I was trying to get supper, but he was rather a sweetie!

Oberstdorf and Austria, 2 June

Yesterday was All About Vienna.  We knew we would have to pace ourselves, so didn't set off until about 9:30, giving the rush hour a chance to get over, too.  The camp site is about 800 metres from the U-Bahn (there is a bus, but only every 30 minutes on weekdays and we had just missed it), and it didn't take long to get into the centre of town, where we wandered through the parks and past the Hofbrunn palace complex (I'm sure you used to be able to walk through it, but we must have been in the wrong part to do that).  And so into the old town where we had coffee, and then walked past the Stefansdom (Mass was being said, so we couldn't really visit it).  We caught a bus to the Naschmarkt, more of a tourist trap than ever, where we had lunch.  We could probably have walked, but I had a blister which was getting sorer by the minute.

Then a visit to an apothecary for blister plasters (oh, the relief!), and a bus to where we could change to a tram.  We wanted Line 1 of the U-Bahn, to take us out to Kagran, where we had been some years ago now to watch friends skating.  The ice rink, of course, is closed for the summer, although they were still advertising their hockey team outside.  There is also a large shopping mall, the Donauzentrum, but it seemed tiny compared to Westfield, and even to Cité Europe, and the ice creams we scored there were not very nice.

We had seen there was a bus that would take us down to "our" U-Bahn station, so we took it, and I regret to say waited 25 minutes to go all of one stop on the next one, which dropped us outside the campsite.  And a nap, a cool shower, a light supper, and a very early bed!  I was very, very tired!

Oberstdorf and Austria, 1 June

Today started off in Graz. We found you could buy a day-ticket for public transport for €5, so we went over to the tram stop and hopped on the nearest tram, only to go off again a couple of stops later to go back and lock the side door of the van! Fortunately either nobody had noticed, or the homeless gentleman with whom we had shared our breakfast had kept an eye on it, as all was well.

Then back into town, this time right up into the centre and beyond, to go up the funicular to the Schloßberg, which was full of school children (all of Graz was, it was some kind of children's day).  So we came back down, after admiring the view,

and walked round the Old Town for a bit, but it was mostly rather Euro-high-Street and very much designed for tourists, so we came away and caught a tram to the central station, had coffee, and then caught a bus back to the P&R.

I did some shopping in the local Lidl, and then we set off for Vienna, stopping to have lunch in the first service area and then later when the SW needed a break. The traffic into the city was dreadful, although the SW says he reckons the M4 is worse.  Perhaps he's right.

We got to the campsite in the end, and very nice it is, too, and near the Métro. We have a full day to explore tomorrow, and I expect we'll make the most of it.

Oberstdorf and Austria, 31 May

The storm continued unabated during the first part of the night - at one point, enormous hailstones landing on the roof made it impossible to hear ourselves speak!  And the last loud bang of thunder was just that: "Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!" like that, before dying away. And so we slept, as the rain gradually petered out, too.

In the morning, it was still a bit cloudy, but we went out to explore the local Schloß on an island in what turned out to be the Traunsee. 

You had to pay to go in, but there were two museums, one about the history of the place, and the other about climbing, and mountain rescue on, the Traunberg. 

After that, it was time to move on so we drove to Graz down a rather hairy motorway with lots of tunnels, which gave the sat nav indigestion!  What slightly annoyed us was that yesterday we had bought our vignette to entitle us to drive on "All the motorways in Austria", as it says on the back, but twice there was a tollbooth where we had to pay again!  Ah well, I suppose they have to pay for the tunnels somehow, but they might have warned us!

Anyway, eventually we got to the place in Graz where we are going to spend the night and found that, as we had been warned might happen, it was full.  It is a Park'n'Ride, so we assumed it would get empty later (it hasn't much, so far), and decided that, because we were within reach of the Slovenian border, we would head down that way and visit the town of Maribor (Mauberg, in old money) before coming back.  

We realised that we would have to buy a vignette for Slovenia, too, and we agreed we had rather "had" motorways for one day, so we came off at Leibnitz (which, alas, was not home to the eponymous biscuit, but was still rather pretty), and then continued on the slower roads to Maribor.

And a slow, and thundery, journey back - had to flash our passports at the frontier - but we found a parking space in the P&R and have parked up for the night.