Mummies, Musicians, and the amazing Miniatur Wunderland!

Heading for Denmark, our journey through northern Germany took us to three places which really stood out; Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck.

Bremen has some beautiful buildings around its central square and we spent a few hours seeing the sights. Charlie is now so used to being tied up outside buildings while we pop our heads in, and nine times out of ten there’ll be someone cooing over her when we get back!

The city is famous for its beer (Mmm, Becks!) and the musicians from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale – the donkey, the dog, the cat and the cock. There’s a statue of them in the city’s square, stood one on top of the other, and it’s traditional to hold the donkey’s legs and make a wish. David tried this but he’s still not the 6th member of Take That!

One of the city’s more curious attractions, if it can be described as such, is in the Bleikeller (lead cellar). Eight mummies including a Swedish general, a careless roofer, and a student killed in a duel have been gawping up at visitors from their glass topped coffins for over 300 years. Creepy!

We then had three fantastic days taking in Germany’s second city, Hamburg. The city has a great feel and there’s plenty to occupy tourists for a few days while remaining a big working city and one of Europe’s largest ports.

Many of the historic buildings in Germany’s towns and cities were destroyed during the Second World War but most have since been rebuilt. The St. Nikolai Church in Hamburg however has been left a ruin as a memorial to all who’ve died as a result of oppression and war.

The small museum in the old crypt features some pretty startling pictures and facts about the destruction, not just in Hamburg, but Warsaw in Poland and Coventry in the UK.

All that remains of the church is the blackened spire and a glass lift now takes you up the centre of it for some great views out over the city, the lakes, the river Elbe and the docks.

During our time in Hamburg we managed a boat tour of the waterways, a trip up another church tower for the views, the Elbe tunnel, and a couple of nights out. We also took a stroll down the famous red-light district, the Reeperbahn, but the prostitutes seemed more interested in the dog than us!

It’s hard to describe the gob-smacking excitement on entering Miniature Wonderland. So hard, that it’s perhaps best just to take a look at a few photos and the promotional video - none of which really do it justice.

It’s named quite appropriately, and having calmed down a little after being there for a couple of hours it was amusing to notice that every visitor was wearing a grin from ear to ear!

It’s billed as the world’s biggest model railway but it’s so much more than that, with lorries that speed along the roads and an airport complete with planes which take off and land.

We loved our time in Munich and Cologne last year but we’d have to say that Hamburg beats them both. We’re now very much looking forward to tackling Berlin in the autumn.

From Hamburg we moved onto Lübeck, one of the few German towns not to be completely destroyed during the war. It has a beautiful Alstadt (old town), with towering green spires on its churches and a particularly impressive town hall.

Marzipan is big business here; in fact they claim to have invented it. One slightly bizarre attraction is the Marzipan Salon above the Niederegger Cafe. The life-sized marzipan statues are particularly (and unintentionally) funny!

We’ve heard that Scandinavia can be eye-wateringly expensive, so we took the opportunity to stock up while in Germany. It was quite a job to fit it all in and we’ll probably be fishing cans of kidney beans out from behind the water tank for months to come!

Breakdowns, blimps and beer halls

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We said our goodbyes to David’s parents on 11th August and set off for Lake Constance. We ran out of petrol 10 minutes later! We were mortified! We were on a fairly busy main road and only able to half pull onto the verge, so we were a bit of an obstacle to the lorries that came roaring past. Luckily we’d come prepared, and our little red warning triangle was quickly positioned a few hundred yards back along the main road.

Having called international rescue, a German RAC wagon soon arrived and towed us to the local petrol station. The driver, a rather large and abrupt German chap, gave David a good telling off on the way for driving in the red! Which you’re not supposed to do apparently! Anyway, it turns out we were lucky. The engine started first time once we’d filled up, so we managed to avoid any further work. Phew!

Soon after, we arrived at Lake Constance and headed along the northern banks. Three countries have a border along this lake – Austria, Switzerland and Germany. It’s huge and feels more like the sea, with ferries criss-crossing the lake between the major towns along its shores.


We stopped at Friedrichshafen to visit the Zeppelin museum. Count Zeppelin developed, manufactured and launched his airships from here between 1900 and around 1940. The town became a departure point for international travel with people flying to Rio de Janiero for example, in just 12 days. The best part of the museum is a mock up of a section of the Hindenburg. You climb up the boarding ladder to enter the main lounge and guest rooms which were like those on a cruise ship. Airships fell out of favour after the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, but the American navy continued to work on them right into the 1960s after developing the technology during World War 2.

Heading east we reached Bavaria’s most spectacular scenery and home to some of its most popular tourist destinations. We started by rocketing down a hillside on Germany’s longest summer toboggan run at Alpsee! Great fun!


Our next stop was Fussen, and the famous castles of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. These fairytale castles were built by ‘Mad’ King Ludwig II in the 19th century and are perhaps Bavaria’s most iconic images. Neuschwanstein, with its turrets and stunning mountain setting, provided the inspiration for Disney’s famous Cinderella castle.


To say they were busy would be an understatement. We parked just outside the village and cycled up to the castles past the massive queue for tickets (we’d decided by this point that we wouldn’t go in). Just beyond the castles is Marienbrücke, a footbridge which crosses the gorge above the castles and provides some amazing views. The little bridge was packed so it made for quite a hair-raising experience!


Munich is Germany’s third city and regularly tops surveys about the best place to live on the planet. We spent four days there and loved it. We really enjoyed wandering around the city centre with its fantastic architecture, and sampling the tasty German food sold at the outdoor market. The campsite there was great; close to a Metro station, a 15 minute cycle from the city centre, and surrounded by parkland and canals.


Munich was the home of the Nazi party, so it was completely destroyed during World War 2. The city has since been completely rebuilt and its amazing 19th century buildings returned to their former glory.


The nightlife is renowned so we felt we had to sample a few of the bars. To mark 6 months away we had a night in one of the oldest and most famous beer halls, the Hofbrauhaus. It’s a great experience. You sit at long wooden tables and share them with whoever turns up. The hearty German food is great – not to mention the beer. The problem is that the beer is available in 1 litre glasses and it's very difficult to resist them! It’s a jolly good job we didn’t get drunk before cycling back to the campsite!




We hopped over the border into Austria then to visit Salzburg. Famous for its architecture, Mozart, and The Sound of Music, we came to hunt down Sachertorte! If you’ve never tried it, you must! It’s a rich chocolate cake with apricot jam filling which takes its name from the hotel in Vienna where it was invented. There’s a recipe for it in our guide book - if only we had an oven!!

The best place to stay was just over the border in Germany so for a couple of days we hopped back and forwards over the border. Salzburg is a city with a beautiful historic centre which we really enjoyed investigating for a couple of days.


At this point we started our journey south, heading for Italy. Obersalzburg, a tiny village in the German Alps, was our first stop. One of the most scenic areas of Germany and a popular tourist destination since the 19th century, it’s now infamous as the site of Hitler’s holiday home. In fact, the locals were all driven out so the area could be developed, with holiday homes built for a number of the Nazi elite.

Most of the buildings were destroyed during or after the Second World War. The area was only handed back to Germany by the USA during the 1990s, and a museum now occupies the site which graphically documents the rise of Hitler and the Nazi movement. The final sections of the museum are underground, in some of the surviving bunkers that once ran through the whole hillside.

Buses leave the museum and head up a steep mountain road for the Eagles Nest, a building which only avoided the American dynamite because of the work of the local Mayor. After a stunning ride, you’re dropped at the entrance to a tunnel in the mountainside. This leads to a lift that whisks you up into the building which sits at 1,834 metres on a rocky ridge and has glorious views of the surrounding countryside.


The Eagles Nest was a tea house built by the Nazi party as a gift for Hitler on his 50th birthday. It was rarely used by Hitler himself as he was scared of heights and aerial attack. The building is now a restaurant which left rather a bad taste in our mouths. While the museum at the bottom of the hill was very quiet, the restaurant, which bears few reminders of its history, was full of people laughing and enjoying a meal. It all felt just a bit wrong to us, although there’s no doubt that the setting was amazing.


Another thing that seemed completely wrong to us was the use of Nordic walking poles!! Everyone we saw walking in Germany and Austria seemed to have a set of the bloody things. Why? Mountaineers, we could understand. Fat women in awful leggings on their way down the high street, we couldn’t! And generally speaking, the walking pole bearer has no spacial awareness and will quite happily take an eye or chunk of leg out of anyone who happens to be passing! On the other hand, we did pass a couple of boards displaying walking pole exercises which we found quite amusing!


Our last stop in Germany was the fjord-like Lake Konigsee, one of the most photographed lakes in Germany. We took a boat ride to the far end of the lake and then walked on to Obersee, a small lake beyond it where you can see Germany’s highest waterfall. During the boat trip one of the crew blew his horn at a mountain to demonstrate the amazing echo. Quite impressive!


And so ended a great visit to Germany - we hope to be back next year to explore some more of it. Next time – the Grossglocknerhochalpenstrasse! Try saying that after a couple of beers!

Ellis Week

The Ellis parents joined us for a week at the beginning of August. We were really looking forward to seeing them, and it had nothing to do with the boot full of English goodies they were bringing with them! Enough PG Tips, Marmite, and Birds Custard to see us through to Christmas!


We stayed in a holiday flat in Riedern in the south of Germany, not far from the Swiss border. The area, which is just on the edge of the Black Forest, is prime farming land full of rolling hills dotted with tiny villages. Not really a prime tourist spot, but nice and quiet.


The flat was lovely, and quite homely... if not a little mid 80s in style and decor! There were paper butterflies everywhere! But who goes to a German for advice on style?! The lady who owned the flat only lived up the road and couldn’t do enough for us – she was only too happy to provide us with a cake tin so we could make a Dr Oetker cake!

Raymond and Linda arrived a couple of hours after us – just long enough for us to get the washing machine cranked up for the first of a dozen loads!

We decided to head to Freiburg for our first trip as the weather didn’t look too good. But it just got worse as the day wore on; and that was after a long traffic jam on the way there! We did enjoy a sausage in the main square, and coffee and cake, but didn’t linger long in the end.


The following day the weather was much more promising so we went to Titisee, a pretty little lake and town with quite an entertaining name! David has taken school groups here several times but thankfully this time came without study packs and coloured pencils! Having walked around the town and stopped to watch a huge cuckoo clock, which was somewhat underwhelming, we took a swanky boat (complete with fridge) out on the lake for an hour.


We enjoyed several meals out in local restaurants over the course of the week but we often forgot the phrase books, so weren’t always sure what was going to turn up! There was a good bet it would be pork based! Although on one occasion, Mum’s salmon turned out to be something Captain Birdseye would have turned his nose up at! We also cooked a roast chicken dinner one evening, complete with crumble for pudding; our first since January and all the better for mum’s stuffing!

We decided that a trip to Lake Constance would be a good idea, although the journey there wasn’t the best! Lady Tom Tom took us over windy roads and through Switzerland – a bit worrying as Dad didn’t have a vignette to travel on Swiss roads - see previous post re road tolls. We got away with it and after a lovely picnic on the banks of the lake, we took a ferry out to the island of Reichenau. A food festival was taking place on the island so the main square was filled with food and beer stalls. Radish with salt is the traditional accompaniment to beer in Germany and we were quite amused to find that someone had adapted an old sewing machine especially to slice the radishes.


We decided that a trip on the cable car at Belchen would be nice, as the guide book said it provided the best views for miles around. Our experience was rather different as the cable car ascended straight into thick cloud and rain. There was a nice cafe at the top though which did, of course, have a great selection of cakes!




The Rothaus brewery was a couple of miles down the road from the flat, and their beers were the only ones served locally. So it was only right that we visited for a tour! Despite it being in German, and David’s rather vague interpreting, it was really informative and showed us the different processes in the factory. The huge bottling room was the most interesting. Crates of used empty bottles come in at one end, they’re sorted, cleaned and refilled before leaving at the other. A large percentage of their beer bottles are recycled. It was quite amazing to see, and hear, thousands of beer bottles rattle along the production lines at high speed.


There’s a famous old German law about beer ingredients called Reinheitsgebot. This means beer can only contain water, barley and hops. This ensures the purity and quality of beer across the board, and apparently less of a hangover. The Rothaus tour ended with a meal and of course, a couple of beers, after which we went home to eat our Dr Oetker and watch one of the DVDs at the flat. Whatever you do, even if you’re in Germany, don’t watch the George Clooney film ‘The Good German’! It’s scheisse!

Our final day was spent in the lovely little town of St. Blasien. The town’s claim to fame is that its church has the third biggest dome in the world. Now, we’ve seen so many towns claiming to have the biggest of this, the longest of that and the deepest of the other that we’re getting rather sceptical! But the church with its stark white interior was admittedly pretty impressive.



Although the weather was mixed, we had a great week in Germany with Mum and Dad and it was a very picturesque and friendly area. After a bit of van cleaning we said our goodbyes and headed for Lake Constance. 10 minutes later we were sat at the side of a busy A-road as lorries roared past our little red warning triangle...

Four lakes, one huge gorge, and some Alps!

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After a week in the lap of luxury in a proper house, we headed on to somewhere that Alex’s dad had recommended - the Gorges du Verdon. This area of Provence is full of colour at this time of year, with fields of lavender and sunflowers dotting the countryside and making for a stunning drive.



The Gorges du Verdon is sometimes referred to as Europe’s Grand Canyon, and the area is simply breathtaking. The river Verdon has cut a huge tear in the limestone hills which runs for 25km and is some 700m deep in places. You can drive all the way around the rim on some of the best roads we’ve seen. They’re spectacular and a little hairy in places especially if, like Alex, you suffer from vertigo!


At the end of the gorge the river flows into the Lac de Sainte-Croix, another beautiful sight with its striking turquoise-green water. It’s a popular spot, and for good reason. The warm water in the lake is great for swimming and messing about in boats. We loved it and spent a few days in the area. After driving around the gorge and taking a huge number of photos, we hired a canoe on the lake and paddled part of the way up the gorge (along with hoards of other holidaymakers in brightly coloured pedelos, canoes, and motorboats).


From here we started our journey north, heading for a rendez-vous with David’s parents in Germany. Our route skirted the French Alps and some magnificent mountain scenery. We passed through the area last summer and agreed that we had to go back to explore it properly.

The city of Grenoble is situated at the confluence of 2 rivers (the Drac and Isere) and a fortress looks out across the city from the hill above. We’d heard that you could wild camp just next to the fortress so we headed up the very steep and narrow access road. There was a bit of a panic when we thought the van wouldn’t make it up the hill, but we arrived safely and were able to get the cable car down into the city centre.


Grenoble was at the centre of the resistance movement during the Second World War, and today it houses the Museum of Resistance and Deportation. The museum tells the story of the small resistance groups in the region, and the bravery of those who risked their lives to fight the Nazis. It was only towards the end of the war that they began to receive air drops from the allied forces to help them in their missions.

While in Grenoble we made a concerted effort to expand our rather limited menu! We don’t have an oven or a microwave in the van, and we’re on a tight budget so eating out is a rare treat. So far we’ve managed quite well on a menu of light, summery, Mediterranean dishes like leak and potato soup, bangers and mash, and shepherd’s pie! So, having put the word out for new easy recipes, we tried out Simon’s Paella and Mum’s Liver and Bacon. And we still can’t work out why we’re putting on weight!


We headed north from Grenoble and past Lac de Bourget, the largest freshwater lake in France near the spa town of Aix les Bains. From here it was on to a place we visited last summer and fell in love with - the little town of Annecy and the lake with the same name.

Surrounded by mountains, the lake and town are typical picture-postcard alpine scenes, and even the large number of tourists can’t spoil the wonderful atmosphere. We drove around the lake on a hot Saturday and it seemed that anywhere big enough to lie down was good enough for a quick sunbathe, even the pavement!

The town centre is a maze of alleyways, canals and historic buildings, it’s a great place to wander or to sit and watch the world go by. We found a spot to camp next to the lake with a view across to the town. Unfortunately the road we parked next to turned out to be a little busier than we thought, and it was only at 3am we realised we were quite close to the local nightclub as well!


We seemed to leave the good weather behind us as we passed from France into Switzerland. Driving along little country roads, we didn’t even realise we were in Switzerland at first!

We headed straight to Lake Geneva and found a good place to park for the night just outside the city on the banks of the lake. It was Swiss national day so a huge fair was set up in Geneva and we had a great view of the fireworks displays taking place around the lake that evening. The only problem was the weather - it rained constantly! After a very soggy walk into the city the following day, we decided to cut our losses and move on.


If you ever drive to Switzerland it’s worth knowing about the vignette. Rather than road tolls, to drive on the main roads and motorways you have to purchase a sticker and place it in your windscreen. The only issue is that there’s only one year-long pass available costing 30 euros. So if you’re passing through and only in the country for 2 days (as we were) it’s a bit of a bugger!

From Switzerland, it was on to Germany and the lovely city of Laufenburg. A small town in reality, Laufenburg faces a similar city of the same name across the river Rhine in Switzerland. Laufenburg was in fact one city until Napolean divided it and made the Rhine the border in the 1800s. The two cities are connected by a bridge so it does feel like one town, but the national flags remind you exactly which country you’re in.

Next time –Ellis week!