Lausanne was always going to be a highlight of our visit to Switzerland for Ton. The late king of Thailand King Rama IX lived here for 18 years when he was a boy. Rama IX was born in Boston while his father was studying medicine and his mother was studying to be a nurse. When he was an infant the family moved to Lausanne. It is a long story as he was not the crown prince but the younger brother of the crown prince. He only came to the throne due to the accidental death of his older brother right after he became king. Rama IX was king for over 70 years and is still beloved today by the Thai people. On the 60th anniversary of his reign the Thai government built a memorial in Lausanne in thanks to the city for the years he spent here when he was young. It was our first stop in Lausanne.
The interior of the memorial with a statue of King Rama IX.
The Thai Pavilion faces lake Geneva, so after we finished our visit we started walking along the Lake Front. The views across Lake Geneva are beautiful, though today they were a little spoiled by a pretty thick haze.
A statue commemorating the Olympics, with a hazy view of the French Alps across Lake Geneva.
Lausanne is also the home of the International Olympic Committee. As we were walking down the waterfront we saw a museum dedicated to the Olympics. We crossed the road to take a look. The grounds had a display primarily centered around the Paris Olympics. I didn’t know that this year was the third time Paris had hosted the Olympics, so the historical facts about the previous two were interesting to me. The main museum has an entrance fee so we passed today as it was getting late, but may return later.
The Olympic Museum.
By the time we had visited the grounds of the Olympic Museum it was late enough to head back to François for dinner. Once again we have full access to the local transit system thanks to the Swiss tourist tax, and we plan to take full advantage of it.
Ton took this picture of a young couple having an evening picnic on the shore of Lake Geneva. It is one of my favorites.
After dinner we decided to head back to the Lake for a sunset walk. Right outside the campground is a trail along the lake shore. I was a little surprised how busy it was with people running, there were also several groups out rowing along the lake and in the distance there were 8 or 10 sailboats out for an evening sail.
A pretty spectacular place to sail.
While all of the haze had not cleared it was much better than this afternoon and Ton was in her element taking photos. This time I was following her as she darted from the trail down to the shoreline, on to piers, and thru the grounds of the yacht club. She really enjoyed her walk as did I.
Sunset on Lake Geneva.
We both decided that Lausanne seems to be a place we are going to enjoy and are wondering if three days are going to be enough.
We headed into Bern in the morning to finish exploring the city. A short walk and we were at a tram stop that took us to the city center in 10 minutes. Having the free use of the city transit system as part of the tourism tax for the campground struck us a great idea that should be emulated other places. It allowed us to explore several parts of the city we would not have gotten to otherwise.
The Swiss Parliament building.
I guess I never new what city was the capitol of Switzerland, but if you would have asked me I would have guessed it was Zurich or Geneva. It turns out it is Bern. So I was a little embarrassed by my ignorance when we visited the parliament grounds for our first stop of the day.
Berns town clock with a glockenspiel that performs at noon.
We were heading up the market street towards the train station when we saw a Thai tour group taking a group photo in front of the town clock. Ton overheard the guide telling them to wait a few minutes as they were too early. We thought it was for their bus, it turns out they were waiting for the noon performance of the town clock where dancing figures come out. We heard a commotion, but by the time we hustled back it was too late and we had missed out.
This restaurant sells a local beer, one of our misadventures for today.
We wanted to visit a local brewery and settled on Felsenau Beer. They had three locations in town, but we wanted to visit the main brewery. I put what I thought was the location in google maps, and we were off looking for Bus 21. The first problem was I couldn’t locate the bus stop. The place I thought was the bus stop was across the street from the actual bus stop and I didn’t realize it until the bus stopped across the street and then did a u-turn right in front of us to head off. So we caught the next bus, and rode it to the stop google told us in the suburbs of Bern. We got of in Felsenau, and google indicated that the brewery should be right in front of us, but I didn’t see it. I was frustrated, but figured I had done something wrong. So we headed right back to where we started where we found the down town Felsenau Brew Pub. It turns out that we were only about 100 yards from the brewery when we got off the bus but I somehow missed it. It made me feel like a rookie traveler. But we did get to taste some Felsenau beer and it was pretty good, but cost a whopping 12 US dollars each. Things are expensive in Switzerland.
We stumbled on this event promoting foods and wine from a region in Switzerland, complete with a mens chorus in traditional clothing.
Our main destination for the day was the rose garden of the city. The views of the city were supposed to be tremendous. The problem was that the town was pretty socked in with clouds and Ton wanted sun for her photos. The weather forecast said the sun was supposed to come out around 1pm. By 2:30 it had not come out and we were thinking about giving up. But at 3 the sun arrived so we decided to head up to the rose garden. It took me a couple of attempts to find the right bus stop again (not a good day for me as transit guide), but fortunately the busses run frequently here.
This gentleman was giving a concert on this Swiss mountain horn. It sounded a bit like a French Horn, but played like a bugle as it doesn’t have any valves to change notes.
The rose garden did have beautiful views of the city, and was definitely worth the wait. The roses are at the end of our run as it is mid-September, but we enjoyed the views and did take in some of the roses. I think even when the roses are at their peak the views may be the real attraction here.
A late blooming rose.
After the rose garden we headed back to the campground to relax as it had been a long day walking around Bern.
We had arrived in Switzerland with a list of potential places to visit, but no plan on how to visit them. So while it rained outside yesterday I began to punch different places into google maps, it turns out everything is about 100 kilometers from everywhere else, so after looking at some options we decided there was no particular order that made more sense than another, and we could kind of wing the rest of the time we spend in Switzerland.
Our campground in Bern is next to the Aare River.
We decided to head to Bern today because it had a nice campground in the middle of the city and its old town is a UNESCO site. It rained steadily all night and when we woke up in the morning the valley that St. Ursanne is located in was pretty socked in with fog. It was only 106 kilometers to Bern so we were not in a big hurry to get going, but despite dragging our feet as much as we could we were still on the road by 10:00.
The main street in Bern.
The roads are very good in Switzerland with lots of tunnels to keep you from doing a lot of elevation changes. Today they were all limited access though often only one lane, but traffic was light. So despite the rain we found ourselves arriving at the campground in Bern at 11:30. The only drama was we followed a VW camper from Scotland the last kilometer or so into the campground. When they arrived there the people at the campground asked them to move back. As they were backing up it became clear to me they could not see a sign directly in their rear, when they got a foot or so from hitting it I leaned on my horn, they stopped a couple of inches short of the sign, and an irritated Scottish voice shouted over to me “what are you blowing your horn for”, I asked if they saw the sign 2 inches from their rear end, she looked startled and then pulled forward a bit.
The skyline of Bern.
After we settled in, we decided to take a stroll along the river. After walking a quarter mile or so I told Ton we could be in the center of the city in 15 minutes if we took a bus nearby. While the campgrounds in Switzerland are extremely expensive, in urban areas they come with free usage of the local transit system. So since the bus ride was free we decided to check out the center of town despite the weather not being great for photographs.
The founding story of Bern involves Bears, and the coat of arms of the city has a bear on it. So they have a bear pen near the center of the city with 3 bears in it. This was the only one visible.
We spent the next couple of hours strolling down the main street of the town. We accidentally found the bear pen where the mascots of the city are kept near the river. Two of the bears were hiding, but one was nice enough to take his nap in the open for the tourists.
After looking at the sleeping bear for a couple of minutes we noticed a beer hall next door and got a beer. The beer hall was full of British accents and we were a little perplexed until we figured out that an English Premier League soccer team was in town to play the local Swiss team in the European Champions League.
After our beer we took advantage of our free transit pass to head back to François for the night. When we returned we bumped into the Scottish lady who had snapped at us earlier in the day, she thanked us profusely as they had not seen the sign and would have hit it if I hadn’t blown my horn at them.
When we woke up in the morning we decided laundry was the priority for today and after consulting google we decided that we were better off here than in Switzerland to get that done. Yesterday we had talked to the campground manager about our options and he mentioned a washing machine at the Avia gas station nearby.
These parking lot laundry setups are common in Europe. This one is in a gas station near the campground.
It was cold in the morning and Ton was comfortable in our warm bed, so she told me to go off and make sure the washers were in walking distance. I tried to remember the directions from the previous night, but promptly took off in the wrong direction. After going the wrong way for half a mile I doubled back, and realized the washer was only 5 minutes from the campground if you go the right direction. After I returned from my morning meander Ton was ready to go so we returned to the gas station.
Our Sunday morning companions in the Avia gas station. He was much funnier than he looks in this photo, his horse had just blown the lead in the last race and finished out of the money.
After we loaded our clothes I went into the gas station to see if there was anywhere to hang out. In one corner was 4 tables with a coffee machine, some on line gambling machines, and a television showing the horse races at Besancon. There were 4 gentlemen in there watching the horse races on TV. They thought I was looking for the toilet so they started shouting directions at me for the toilet, when I asked if I could sit at one of the tables they laughed and said “bien sûr” which means “of course.” So for the next hour and a half Ton and I were honorary members of the Langres Sunday Morning Horse Racing Club at the Avia gas station. We learned that everyone who came in to chat with the members shook hands with everyone present including Ton and me. It was a lot more fun than I envisioned when we walked up to the gas station to use the laundry. There was a bit of drama when one of the customers started shouting angrily at the clerk, the Horse Racing Club rushed to comfort her and decided he was probably a “connard” from Paris.
The Moulin Gate into the town. If you look carefully you will see the British and US flags on the gate next to the French flag.
After our laundry was done we returned to the campground for a lazy afternoon doing a little cleaning, and Ton cooked up a pot of rice for dinner and future meals. The campground had emptied out considerably so we relocated to a spot that had a nicer view.
Our new view from the front window of François. Not bad at all.
After dinner Ton and I took an evening stroll along the walls of the town and back thru the center. We returned to find the campground had again filled to capacity. While today was not a day of journeys or spectacular sites, the Sunday Morning Horse Racing Club made it a memorable one.
We are on our way to Switzerland, but todays stop is about 2 hours short in a beautiful region of France between Champagne and Burgundy. We were on the way early and managed to escape Paris with a minimum amount of stress. We then drove for a couple of hours on the nice but very expensive French Autoroute to Langres.
Part of the ramparts of the city walls. The walls still go all the way around the town and according to one of the signs are the longest still remaining in Europe.
Langres was originally settled by the Galls a long time ago. When the Romans conquered the Galls Langres became the center for Roman administration in the region. The town reached its heights in the 12th to 15th century when it was the center of the Catholic Bishopric for the area. During the 14th and 15th centuries the region was very unsettled so the fortifications that the towns tourism is built around today were built.
The cathedral originally from the 12th century when Langres was the major city in the region.
The campground for the town is incorporated into the walls of the town. We are sitting on the edge of one of the walls looking down into a moat that made up part of the fort. These kind of places are part of the fun of camping in Europe.
Looking down from the walls of the ramparts into the town.
After a stop at the local grocery to stock up on French food (the word on the internet is that food is very expensive in Switzerland) and wine (because no where in the world is wine as cheap and good as France), and diesel (because French diesel is cheaper than Swiss diesel) we headed over to the campground to check in.
An interesting painting from the inside of the cathedral.
When we arrived 1:30 the office for the campground was closed but that is typical in France as the two hour lunch is part of doing business. What was unusual was the sign said they would open at 5:30. We took that to mean that we should grab a spot and come back and register at 5:30. It is a good thing we did because by 5:30 the place was full, and more people were arriving until night fall which the operator managed to jam into various nooks and crannies of the place it was fun to watch the hustle and bustle of all of the arriving RV’s from all over Europe.
The interior of the cathedral. Many of the churches we have visited have undergone major renovations. This one probably looks a lot like it did 100 years ago which we appreciated.
Once we were settled in we had a nice stroll around part of the walls of the fort and down the main street of the town. Langres is like a lot of small towns in France full of history in the past, and kind of a side show today. Often the setting is spectacular as it is here with the town built on top of a giant granite outcrop that commands the surrounding area. They look like they are working hard to get on the tourism map, and based on the full campground having some success.
The most famous person from Langres Denis Diderot an 18th century philosopher.
After our walk Ton prepared a nice meal and we settled in for the evening. We are debating whether to stay another day before moving on to Switzerland. I think it is going to depend on if we can find a place to do the laundry nearby.
Today we are visiting the ultimate palace in Europe. As I mentioned yesterday we have visited many palaces that advertised themselves as the Versailles of . . ., so today was my first time to see the model for palaces thru out Europe.
The view of the palace from our bus stop as we arrived.
Ton visited Versailles a long time ago when she was a student in England. She spent the bus ride over wondering if the second visit would wow her like the first visit did. She remembered thinking she had never seen so much gold before.
A gold fountain, one of Tons memories from her first visit was how much gold there was.
These days you are only guaranteed entry if you buy a ticket on line with a scheduled time of entry. In our case we choose noon. We arrived about 10:15, and headed to the gardens to start our visit.
Part of the gardens of Versailles.
The gardens are immense, the scale and variety of types of gardens is hard to take in. There are several large man made lakes and forest trails that make up parts of the grounds. The gardens made a huge impression on me.
A trail leading to the Trianon Palace on the grounds. Part of the immense trail system of the palace.
We had just begun to explore a small portion of the gardens when it was time to head to the line to get into the palace itself. The only disappointment was that because it was late in the season a lot of the flower beds had been pruned back in preparation for winter.
A statue of Louis XIV near the entrance to the palace.
We joined a line of a couple of hundred people for the noon entrance to the palace. It looks like they allow a few hundred people to enter the palace every half hour. It is a big place, but even a palace the size of Versailles has a capacity that it can handle daily.
Part of the crowd gathering near the entrance to the palace.
The interior of the palace is immense, and the opulence is impressive, and also unsettling. Ton told me that if the palace was built today it would cost the equivalent of 30 billion dollars. The majority of the palace was built during the reign of three kings over about 100 years. The last king Louis XVI was executed during the French Revolution.
I think this is one of the Louis’ responsible for Versailles.
These days it makes an impressive museum and the French are rightly proud of it and how it reflects French culture. The art and statues inside are indeed superb.
A small example of some of the thousands of pieces of art on display in the palace.
The room I really wanted to see was the hall of mirrors. I had read that it was one of the most impressive rooms in the world. Several important treaties have been signed there. As we got closer to the hall the rooms just proceeding it were jammed with people. We have not felt this crowded since the Vatican so that was kind of a bummer.
The hall of mirrors in Versailles.
The room was impressive and very large. The art work was extensive and of very high quality and the chandeliers were beautiful. But I was expecting a little more.
The kings bedroom.
We wrapped up our tour of Versailles Palace in another large hall full of paintings of battles won by the French for 600 years. The last battle included was during Napoleons reign.
A famous portrait of Napoleon by the artist David. Apparently this was one of Napoleons favorite painting of himself.
When Napoleon took over as emperor about 15 years after Louis lost his head, the palace had been ransacked. While he had himself crowned in the palace, the cost of restoring it was going to be very expensive, so he moved into one of the minor buildings on the grounds called the Trianon Palace.
The exterior of the Trianon palace from the gardens.
We had a bit of a walk to the palace because we had entered the gardens earlier in the day we could not reenter the gardens thru the same gate. The young lady told us there was another gate quite close we could use to reenter and gave us directions. It turns out quite close was about half a mile away, and when we got to that gate the nice young lady discouraged us from entering there but told us to go directly to the palace along the street. She said the palace was also quite close, which apparently in France means half a mile because I checked my watch when we got to the palace and we had walked a mile since we left the palace.
The family room in the Trianon which during Napoleons time was used for evening entertainment and meetings with his senior officers. We both liked the yellow.
We enjoyed the palace as the scale seemed more human after Versailles even if it is quite a large home. It was busy with visitors but not teeming like the main palace.
The garden at the Trianon was beautiful.
The gardens here have an annual theme and this year it was Provence. The flowers had not been pruned back so Ton really enjoyed walking thru and taking in the different types and colors.
Another fountain in the main garden of Versailles.
It is an amazing place, but in the end our ambivalence remained about the cost of the place, as a palace it is a scandal, as a museum of French culture it is a treasure. Later in the evening we were talking over palaces we have visited in Europe. We have visited many at this point, and Versailles is the model of many of them, but the one we really thought was the most beautiful and interesting was the Alhambra in Spain. It is also immense, but while Versailles feels like it is built to overwhelm the senses, the Alhambra feels like it embraces the senses, and we think that is harder to pull off.
Last night we purchased tickets to visit Versailles on Friday after consulting the weather forecast and seeing that it was supposed to start raining at about 1 pm today. With nothing special planned we slept in and tried to knock the last of the jet lag out of our system.
The Notre Dame Market in Versailles.
With an open day in front of us we decided to go to the local market which is supposed to be one of the best in Paris. By the time we got going it was almost 11am as we walked down to the bus stop to catch a ride to the market. The sky was bright blue and there was not a cloud in the sky. I wondered if Ton’s weather forecast was accurate, but she stood by it.
Another view of the market with nice puffy clouds in the sky.
We took a turn around the surprisingly quiet market. We began speculating with the paralympics just ending last weekend that Paris may be getting a little lull in tourism. We had the market almost to ourselves.
Ton liked this advertisement.
After a turn around the market and Ton enjoying the sight of a lot of good food both cooked and uncooked we decided to take a little break for a coffee. While we were touring around the market the bright blue skies were giving way to clouds. We decided to jump into a cafe for a coffee and to plan the rest of the day. Since we were only a few hundred yards from the palace we decided to walk over and get a look at the palace.
While we were getting coffee a shower passed thru. Ton really liked this ladies umbrella so she took off after her to get a picture.
It was a short walk to the palace, but just as we were getting there the rain really started coming down. Ton asked me what time it was and I told her 5 minutes to one. She looked really proud of herself as her forecast for rain at 1pm was almost perfect.
A statue to a local hero. He was commissioned into the army at 17, became a general at 25, and was killed at 29.
Just as we got to the front of the palace the rain began coming down in buckets. So we cut our day short and made a dash for the next bus back to the campground.
The name of the cafe is “The smoking dog”. If you look carefully you can see the pipe in the mouth of the dog.
We spent the rest of the day listening to the rain and occasional thunder, and coming up with a more detailed plan for the rest of the trip. Initially I thought we were going to Vienna, but Ton thinks it would be nice to visit Tuscany during the harvest. It is a good thing we don’t have to make reservations when we travel!
Yesterday at the Bastogne Military Museum there was an exterior display commemorating the 35th anniversary of the Berlin Wall. There were three Trabant Cars that had been converted into art, and several chunks of the wall itself which had been used as canvas for art.
Pieces of the Berlin wall used as canvas for street art.
The second place on our list of places we wanted to visit that we have kept missing is Versailles. Ton visited about 45 years ago, and she wanted to have another look, and she felt like I should see it. Several of the palaces we have visited on our other trips claimed to be the Versailles of Spain, Latvia, or Bavaria etc. so we decided to put it on the itinerary and see the original.
The other motivation was to visit the Costco nearby to replace some stuff that the mouse got into as well as add some new American essentials to our cupboards. The drive from Bastogne was an easy three hours, until we hit Paris then the big city traffic kicked in. The main reason we had skipped Versailles in the past was my reluctance to take on Paris traffic. While it was busy and occasionally slow it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.
The Paris Costco, everything looks the same except the signs. The Hotdogs are €1.50.
We ended up spending an hour and a half at Costco and the biggest issue was deciding on what to buy based on the limited space we have to store things. A lot of stuff was left on the shelf, and the stuff that made the cut is really the essentials or the luxury item that will make us happy. I also filled François with the cheapest diesel in France, though I have to admit the last station we saw in Belgium had diesel slightly cheaper.
We are now parked up at a very expensive and mediocre campground in the city of Versailles. The weather is iffy the next couple of days, so we decided to stay three nights so we have the flexibility to see Versailles at its best.
Tons idea to switch to Gouda cheese to tempt our Dutch mouse worked out. So we believe we are now mouse free, but are going to leave the traps in place in case he has a friend.
Today was a maintenance day for François. We needed to have the oil and filter changed, so we asked for some references from the storage yard and were directed to a local garage. The people there were very nice. The work was done quickly. We spent the time talking to the owners wife who is a nurse, and a customer who is a security guard at the US Embassy in the Hague. The time passed quickly.
When I found out they didn’t take credit cards I had to find an ATM nearby. When I told them I was going to walk to the ATM which was about a kilometer away, the security guard insisted on driving us. In addition to getting some cash, we found the location of two more grocery stores close to where we store François. So thanks to everyone who helped us today.
We arrived back at the campground around noon and just as we settled in it started raining pretty hard so we decided that was a sign that we should just relax and try to get over the jet lag for the rest of the day. Tomorrow we will be off towards Bastogne in Belgium.
The mouse was quiet last night, but he did not end up in any of the mouse traps so we assume he is still with us.
We battled jet lag last night and while we had a couple of nice conversations in the middle of the night we were not up and about very early. We did hear our new nemesis the mouse rattling about a couple of times so one more stop was added to our plans for the day.
About 11 am we joined the Sunday exodus from the campground but instead of heading on we were just heading out. The first stop for the day was a nearby Praxis (the Dutch equivalent of Home Depot) to purchase a couple of mouse traps.
One of the benefits of Amsterdam as a starting point for our trips is there are several Asian Groceries. We visited a couple of them nearby so are well stocked with essentials for Ton.
The disadvantage of Amsterdam is the conventional groceries (Lidl and the local chain Albert Heijn) are difficult to access in a motorhome compared to other cities. We picked a location that had both a Lidl and Albert Heijn, but when we got there about a third of the parking lot was dug up so parking was impossible. Ton remembered there was an Albert Heijn near the campground so we headed over there. The parking lot for the store was full, but we were able to find a parking lot a couple of hundred meters away, so we have adequate food for the next few days.
We arrived back to the a much emptier campground and had our first proper meal of the trip and relaxed for the rest of the day.
We went to sleep during a huge thunderstorm and then slept somewhat fitfully until after 11am this morning. I made our coffee and was sitting outside while Ton lingered in bed.
I had tried listening for mouse noises, but had heard none so I was hopeful that the mouse had moved on before we arrived. It turns out I was wrong. He is still in François and it turns out is a bit of a jerk. During the night he gnawed his way into a packet of cookies that had passed inspection yesterday, and to taunt us dropped a piece cookie in the bed during the night to announce his presence. Ton woke up to find the cookie under her in bed.
We debated whether to go shopping today for a mouse trap, but by the time we had eaten breakfast and gotten organized enough to get going it was 2pm, so we decided to go tomorrow. So the mouse gets one more night before we start hunting for it in earnest.
The pizza machine at the campground.
Ton has been fascinated by the pizza machines we have seen near roads and in shopping centers around Europe. Since we last stayed at this campground they have installed one. One of the highlights of Tons day was studying the operation of the machine up close. The machine here delivers either a cheese or pepperoni pizza for about €13. It looks like you deposit your money, and about 5 minutes later a hot pizza appears already boxed for carryout. I asked Ton if she wanted to try one and she laughed and said only if I have not had any food at all for about 3 days. So fascination with the machine does not equal consuming the product for Ton.
The trip was off to a good start. Our flight on Delta was on time and uneventful. As normal neither one of us managed to sleep much if at all on the flight. Immigration was a little slow, but that meant our bags were waiting for us when we came out.
We arrived at the storage place for François at 11am and he was waiting for us in front as promised. A quick look around and everything seemed ok. We turned on everything and it worked. So far so good.
The next stop was a local grocery near the storage to pick up enough food to last a couple of days while we recovered from jet lag. Our shopping was a little disjointed as we were pretty jet lagged, but after about 30 minutes we had a slightly weird selection of food, but adequate for a day or two until we got out for a proper shop.
The drive over to the campground was stop and go, the worst traffic we had seen in Amsterdam so what should have been a twenty minute drive took a little over an hour. We checked in and had our spot by 12:30. Everything was going exactly to plan.
The plan for the rest of the day was to unpack our bags, have a light dinner and relax to try to get over the jet lag. When we opened the closet where we store the cleaning gear and things like spare paper towels and toilet paper our plan came to a screeching halt.
It was clear that François had been occupied by a mouse while he was in storage. All of the paper products had been shredded. Opening other cabinets, different food products and plastic packages had been gnawed thru. We had a couple of boxes of milk products that in Europe can be stored as dry goods until opened. The mouse had gnawed thru those containers causing the milk to leak out all over the cabinet.
The next three hours were spent emptying out all of the cupboards, sorting thru all of the dry goods we had left in the cabinets to see which ones had been chewed thru. We ended up throwing out quite a bit of food we accumulated . Interestingly the mouse preferred rice products over noodle products! We finally gave all of the cabinets a good scrubbing and washed all of the dishes and pots and pans.
Finally about 6:30 Ton decided that things were clean enough. By then we were both too tired to eat, and just crawled into bed. The only question left is the mouse still on board, or has he moved on.
Today we slept in a little as we had only one chore to do before dropping François off for the next 3 months. Ton was worried about the weight of our bags so she went thru and took a couple of things out of the bags and left them in François.
About 10 am we headed off to a truck wash that the owner of our storage facility had recommended. We pulled in to a giant bay designed to take a semi-truck and the trailer. 3 guys swarmed François while we sat in a waiting room and drank a cup of coffee. 20 minutes later François was cleaner than he has been in years including the roof. The cost was about €20 more than if we had gone to a self service carwash and I had fed in coins while doing it myself and getting soaked, so I decided it was worth it.
We dropped François at the storage and moved to our airport hotel. Tomorrow we have an early flight to Portland.
Today was packing and cleaning day in François. Ton does most of the packing and cleaning and I do a lot of sitting around interspersed with some lifting when required.
I always have mixed emotions on these packing days. I am excited to be going home to see friends, and our boys. I look forward to having the space of the whole house, and to have a routine. It is nice to have water close by, and not wonder whether we will have hot water to wash the dishes in. It is also nice to be fully literate when we go shopping.
On the other hand I miss the adventures Ton and I have. I miss how close we are when we travel and the routine of setting up and living in a very small space. I miss the freedom of the road, and the ability to plan our trips on the fly. I miss the new people we meet and the new experiences we find when we are on the road including holding up a package of food and trying to decide if it is pork, beef, or chicken based on the clues we can discern from the packaging. The good news is we have a few more years of travel in us and we will be able to experience a few more trips around Europe and who knows maybe somewhere else.
We were off early towards Amsterdam and with light traffic and minimum construction we arrived in the small village of Achthoven near the University town of Leiden around noon.
Our neighbors for tonight.
We are staying in a campground on an old cattle farm. In front of the farm is a large canal with some industrial sites. We are going to spend the next couple of days preparing François for storage. To put it more accurately, I am going to hover around François while Ton does most of the work to prepare François for storage.
A boat going down the canal in front of the campground.
My only contribution was a long hike to a Lidl to get some snacks to take home, and a couple of beers for tomorrow. We did get out for a short walk in the evening when Ton took the pictures for today.
The large house next to us, I couldn’t decide if it was abandoned or still lived in from the road.
We planned on going into Munster today, but when we woke up it was cold and grey. We lay around in François the morning and at noon we decided that if we were going into town we had better get moving.
The Market Street in Munster.
We had forgotten how completely Germany shuts down on Sundays. The French have a reputation for taking it easy on Sundays but the Germans have them beat. All of the stores are closed and most of the restaurants are closed until 5pm. Even the breweries are shutdown.
Walking in we saw this sculpture commemorating the reunification of Germany in 1990.
When we got to the center of town the streets were empty, and the only thing open was the church. We were inside the church when I heard some sirens and a lot of engines on the main street. I stuck my head out and saw two motorcycle cops leading a couple of hundred motorcycles down the market street.
Part of the parade of motorcycles celebrating the finale of Motorcycle Week in Munster.
I asked one of the motorcycle cops what was going on and he told me that the parade of motorcycles was the finale to Munster Motorcycle Week. It was a good day as they had the downtown pretty much to themselves. We spent a little bit of time looking for an ATM, Germany does not charge a transaction fee to buy Euros, only the exchange rate. We were going to buy some for our next trip, but it looks like our debit card is suspended. Our bank has ended their 24 hour help line and directs you to their website which is manned by AI which does not understand, my debit card does not work in an ATM. So we finally gave up and went back to the church.
This pot was hanging from one of the columns of the church, we think it is for incense.
While we were in the church I checked the Sunday schedule for the bus and it said the last bus was in 12 minutes, so we cut our visit short and hustled to the bus stop. The time came and went but there was no bus 22, the board showed a bus 11. Ton and I were trying to figure what to do when a young German lady came up and asked us about bus 22. She was also confused that it had not showed up. We were planning alternative ways to get home, and she called her mother to look for a ride, when about 10 minutes late good old bus 22 pulled up and we happily jumped on board. The Germans have something to learn from the Poles about how to run a transit system.
A cool clock in Munster.
We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the campground.
Woke up early to see Fred and Denise off, and since we were up we decided to get an early start also. As we were saying good by to Fred and Denise we made preliminary plans to meet them somewhere in Europe next year.
We picked Munster as our next stop as it was most of the way to the Netherlands, and Denise gave it good reviews. The drive was relatively busy, and there were a couple of big construction sites, but we still arrived around 1:30. When we pulled in to the campground it was teeming. There were signs welcoming us to the summer fest, so I had already begun mentally thinking about alternative stops. But when I found someone he quickly assigned us a spot and told us to join the festival at 2:30.
We joined this table of Germans, but it turns out one of them was a Scot in disguise.
We headed over about 5pm and got a couple of beers and asked if we could join some Germans at their table. After we had been sitting for a few minutes one of them asked if we were from the UK. When we replied US she said she was a Scot. It turns out she had moved to Germany many years ago and was happily married to a nice German guy. We enjoyed chatting with them but Tons allergies are really bothering her so we had to decline their kind offer to join them for dinner and head back to François for the night.
Lubeck had let us down the day before. On our last visit we left loving this city. But our experience the day before made us wonder if this was a case where you should not go back to a place because it will not live up to your memories. After an easy morning where we washed the linen of the bed, (another sign that the trip is coming to an end), Denise and Fred wanted to go back into town to check a couple of sights.
The salt warehouses on the river. A collection of really cool building fronts.
Denise really wanted to check out St. Marys church because of the astronomical clock. We covered a lot of the same ground to get to the church. The interior of the church was very interesting though. Like many of the large churches in Germany it was originally built as a Catholic church, and then converted to Lutheran after the reformation. But the interior of St. Marys was interesting because the Catholic influence was more pronounced than in other churches that I remember visiting. It took me a few minutes to confirm that it had indeed been converted to a Lutheran church.
The astronomical clock, our main motivation for visiting the church.
The church was largely destroyed on good Friday in 1942 when the British fire bombed the city. This was the first instance where the British planned a bombing to try to cause a mass fire and they succeeded.
The church bells from 1942 were left as they were found when the Germans were removing the rubble to repair the church.
The other interesting thing was a large mural that alternated figures from the middle ages, with skeletons representing death. Death was a very big theme in this church, including skeletons in the stain glass which is another image we have never seen anywhere but here.
This very interesting mural is illustrating the poem that runs in a scroll below it. The mural was very large and contained multiple figures from kings to peasants all with a skeleton next to it. The death theme is carried over to the stain glass windows in the church.
We really enjoyed the church and were glad that Denise convinced us to go in as we had not visited it before. Fred wanted to try lunch at a very nice restaurant that we had visited on our previous trip. So after leaving the church we headed that way.
The interior of our restaurant reflects the nautical theme you would expect from a meal in the old Sailors Guild Hall.
The restaurant has the great German name of Schiffergesellschaft and is located in the old Sailors Guild Hall which was built in the 1500’s. The interior is really impressive full of dark wood, interesting paintings on the wall, and models of different ships hanging from the ceiling. We had a charming waiter who had us smiling throughout the meal, and the food was elegantly served and delicious. When you throw in good company we had a wonderful time.
This statue represents the devil who was conned into helping to build one of the churches in Lubeck by the workers who told him they were building a wine bar.
After a disappointing day yesterday, Lubeck redeemed itself today by giving us interesting places to see, excellent food, and friendly and funny people. I was personally glad to have my positive view of the city restored.
Ton really likes the stories around these buildings on the market square. The dark one in the center has bricks that were produced locally, but then shipped to Italy to have a dark coating put on them, before being returned to construct the building. The upper wall on the left side with the three copper towers has two large circular holes built into it so that during the fierce gales here the wind can pass thru the walls and reduce the stress on the building.
We ended the day by sitting outside our motorhomes for happy hour and sharing stories from our travels for a couple of hours. To complete our very good day, we learned that our appeal of the fine we had received in France that we had spent 2 days preparing and 2 days driving to submit was successful.
Our good friends Fred and Denise Cook were in Lubeck so today we were up early and on the road to meet them. After a easy trip on the Autobahn from our place on the Polish border we arrived in Lubeck around one in the afternoon and parked up next to their Expedition Vehicle.
The gate to the old town in Lubeck.
It had rained a bit on the drive, but luckily when we arrived the rain had backed off for a while and we were able to head into the city for a walk around. Lubeck is one of my favorite cities in Germany, the first time we came here I really liked it.
The Trave River in Lubeck.
We walked thru the old town for a bit trying to decide whether to have dinner tonight or lunch tomorrow. Since it was nice today we decided to get our walking in, and save eating for tomorrow when it is supposed to rain.
Fred and Denise enjoying some Marzipan desserts.
We did pop in for some Marzipan which is a local specialty in Lubeck. Despite being very disappointed with the service we did enjoy the food and Fred and Denises company.
The main cathedral in Lubeck with an art display consisting of colored umbrellas suspended above the market.
After our lunch of Marzipan, we headed back to the campground where Denise and Fred treated us to a delicious dinner in their camper. We spent the rest of the evening telling stories of our travels. It was a great night of friendship that we really enjoyed.
We are not actually in Szczecin nor in Poland, but in a small German village just over the border called Mescherin. It is about 10 kilometers outside of Szczecin but we really wanted to use Szczecin in the blog. Nothing gives a better feel for the Polish language than a place name whose first four letters are SZCZ. By the way Szczecin is a major port. The picture above is Poland taken from our campground in Germany.
We are unfortunately at the stage in the trip where our goals are traveling to Amsterdam and not seeing cool places. Today we programmed over 400 kilometers of travel. The first 200 kilometers were on 2 lane roads paralleling the construction of a new freeway, so a lot of the time we were in construction zones. Luckily we got to use the new freeway section that has recently been completed for most of the last 200 kilometers and it was quite nice.
The road Greta picked for our last 2 kilometers to our campground. It was cement blocks with hooks built into them. I would have turned around, but before I could do it two cars including a new BMW had pulled in behind me. So we decided it was a road and carried on. Luckily our little parade didn’t run into anyone coming the other way.
We arrived at the campground and the manager did not speak any English, but after some effort we got everything sorted. We also forgot we are in Germany, surprisingly Germany is the least credit card friendly country in Europe. After some digging around we came up with enough Euros to cover tonight, but one of our first stops will be an ATM tomorrow.
After we got settled in we waived to our neighbors and they waived back and shouted over “Are you Americans?” Stephanie and Perry are from Colorado and have been driving a rental RV around Europe for the last 6 weeks. This is their first experience in Europe and are loving it. We spent a couple of hours exchanging stories. As much as it is nice to meet people from all over Europe while we are traveling, it is always nice to run into Americans as the conversation is different because we are all strangers in a strange land. The stories always go to ways we embarrassed ourselves by not quite getting how things work here, and things that we see that we wish we had in the US, as well of course to things that we do better at home. We really enjoyed their company.
