Dropped of poor Rene at Charles de Gaulle airport this morning...he looked so sad and it was strange to hand over the keys and walk away!

Train into Paris and left our bags in a ridiculously expensive locker and walked along the Seine on an unbelievably warm and sunny day.

In THE used book store of Paris, Shakespeare & Co. we found a Rick Steve's '05 Paris guide book. Not a big deal to most, but basically makes our week. We had a beer and watched the world go by, had a sushi dinner and walked the Latin Quarter, and it is only day one.

Oh yeah, and the meat on a stick...we ate some great sushi and it was sure nice to have different food after so much sameness of European food. At the end of the meal a waitress came over and gave me a skewer of fried meat wrapped around a chunk of cheese, saying it had been forgotten earlier. If it is one thing that screams Japanese cuisine...it is fried meat-wrapped cheese on a stick. Japanese/French fusion cuisine perhaps.

Our tour through Canadian war history continued as we drove from Brugge to Ver-sur-Mer, a small town on the Normandy coast.

We stopped en route in Dieppe and toured both the Canadian war cemetery and the beach, the site of the fateful 1942 attack on the German- held port town. This was a strongly held port, with high, heavily fortified cliffs above the beach... a bad choice for landing, and as it turns out, it was planned that the Canadians take the port, then 15 hours later, board ships and leave again, a plan that sounds a little insane to us after seeing the geography of the place. The Maple Leaf is proudly displayed in many places in and around the town, as the Canadians were also the ones who finally liberated Dieppe after D-Day in 1944.

On to Normandy and our home base to explore the military history of the landing zones and some of the culture too. There is a lot to see in this area. The beaches themselves are absolutely beautiful, with about 30 km of uninterrupted fine golden sands. The main focus here is of course the 1944 landings. This area was the first to be liberated, and each town along the stretch of coastline where the landings took place have erected war monuments. Flags of all the countries that participated are flown everywhere.

One of the most amazing sights is at Arromanches, where the Allies created an artificial harbour in only 8 days starting on June 7th, the day after D-Day. One of the lessons learned from the Dieppe fiasco was that the seizure of a port town with a deep water harbour would not be possible. So Churchill said 'if we cannot have a harbour, then we shall bring our own', or something to that effect. The sea at Arromanches has the remains of this harbour and it is quite a sight - the Allies used it to poor equipment, weapons and troops into France after the landings.. We stayed not far from here and almost every day drove past it along the road up a hill from the coast, and it never ceased to captivate us.

The longer we have been here, the deeper the understanding we have gained about the whole thing. Lots of people died here - more than 100,000 over just a few days, and the longer we have thought about it, the less it has been about the obvious broad strokes (killing and death, but leading to eventual victory) and more about the details and the individuals. You can really feel a heavy presence all around you here and it weighs on you.

We visited the Canadian, British, American and German cemeteries. Each had a unique personality. The American's is bright, triumphant and celebratory, the Canadian and British have a classic symmetry, are orderly, but are quite understated, and the German's are dark and solemn with grave markers made from roughly-hewn grey stone. We also visited the Juno Beach Centre, a privately run museum that was well done and quite interesting, chronicling the Canadian war effort from the early days onward. We also visited Jeremy's Great uncle Barney O'Neill's grave in Cherbourg in an old cemetery overlooking the sea, near where he was shot down in 1942.

Finally, we saw the Bayeux Tapestry, a gigantic 70 metre work that is almost 900 years old that chronicles William the Conquerer's well, conquest of England in 1066. Very cool, and well-presented with lots of contextual information and explanation. Surrounded by all of this WWII history, the connection was not lost on us that this marked the last time that England was successfully invaded.

Incidentally, the weather has been awesome - it was 23 today, yesterday 25, and the day before it hit 26! Blue skies on the seashore - we really couldn't ask for more.

Tomorrow we roll on to Paris where we drop off ol' reliable Rene and hoof it from here on out...where o' where will the food bag go? And the box of wine?

We decided to eat in tonight. We do this once in a while when we can't bear the thought of going out. Oh, and we are also really cheap. It may sound like a simple thing to do, but it really isn't.

First you have to find a grocery store, which is sometimes a trick because most stores in Europe are rarely actually open. But we found one this afternoon. The key, of course, is to buy things that don't need to be cooked, cleaned, or prepared in any major way. This leaves you with a wide array of breads, deli meats, cheeses, and of course salad fixings. But you must buy wisely - since nothing can be refrigerated, there is no point in buying very much of anything. Tonight, for example, we bought 0.07 cents of garlic, 0,24 cents of tomato, but lamentably were forced to buy an entire cucumber at a cost of 0.55 cents.

So with fixings in hand, we headed back to our tiny European room. While Amanda washed socks in the bathroom sink (ah, a smell we just don't get enough of), Jeremy prepared the meal.

Work implements:
- 1 bowl
- 1 small plastic knife
- A cutting board (really, a plastic bag which can then be easily converted into a garbage bag)

Jeremy washed the veggies in the shower (the sink was in use, afterall) and sat at a tiny table in the bathroom chopping and dicing with a skill that only a two month old saved plastic takeout knife can permit. Lettuce, carrots, cabbage, cucumber, tomato, mashed garlic on top (this is a major accomplishment with a plastic knife), packaged vinaigrette, all served with a chunk of cold, store bought quiche and croutons culled from the omnipresent day old baguette found at the bottom of the previously well-documented 'food bag'..

Surprisingly, it turned out alright. Dinner was served in the bathroom, at the tiny table, with a borrowed plate and wine served out of plastic cups. Such elegance, such decadence!

Your table for two in the bathroom is waiting.

After Vimy, we drove back into Belgium and north to Bruges (don't ask us how to spell it - the locals certainly can't decide - we saw it spelt four different ways on the same poster in town). The local language is Flemish, which is a variant of Dutch. Our impression after coming from Germany was that Flemish sounded to our ears like German spoken with a French accent. One interesting thing we noticed is that it is much closer to English in the way it is spoken.

Brugge is a pretty cool place. We loved it - hip, livable, with good restaurants and a busy cultural life. The town itself is the same as many other places we've visited, with its cobbled streets, stepped rooves, gothic architecture, lots of beautiful cathedrals and interesting art galleries and museums, but Brugges has a different overall feeling to it - something like 'Yes, we live in this really neat place, and you're welcome to come and look at it, but if you don't mind, we're going to go on about our business'.

Mostly everyone in Bruge either walks or rides a bike. The streets are more likely than not to be pedestrian-only. There are thousands and thousands of cyclists, and there are dedicated bike lanes next to each road (step in the pink-coloured brick at your peril). People live in the core, not far from where they work, shop and eat out.

We spent three days here. We visited the main sights, but mostly we just walked around and hung out. We saw a movie for the first time on our trip - Oliver Twist, in English with Flemish and French subtitles.. Of course we also ate well: double-fried fries with garlic mayo, some great Flemish stews, seafood, Belgian waffles, chocolates, and some local beers each served in their own uniquely shaped glasses.

On a strange note, on our first and second nights we hardly slept because we were being buzzed by mosquitos (you know the high-pitched whine in your ear? Except that Euro-skeeters are more evolved than ours - silent, painless, multiple biters...overall, crappy), and we woke up covered in itchy bites all over us. We couldn't figure out how they were getting in. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that we would have to worry about mosquitos on the northern coast of Europe in late October.

We left Germany and swept quickly along straight roads through the flat expanses of Belgium and into northern France. What a great way to get to France from Germany! So delightfully quick and unobstructed...

So, Vimy...we really can't say enough about this place. It was amazing. The battle of Vimy Ridge was one of the decisive victories of the First World War and was an important 'coming of age' moment for Canada as it marked the first time that Canadian divisions fought as a united force.

The battlefield has been left as it was in 1917, with massive mine craters, shell holes, and zig-zagging trenches cut into the ground everywhere. Electric fencing now prevents people from walking in most areas, and there are signs warning about unexploded ordnance. Sheep now graze the grass - to keep it short (lawnmowers are out of the question), but also to act as sacrificial warning sentinels if a shell should come to the surface (they often do). Vimy is called a monument to a war that keeps on killing.

The large limestone monument itself is undergoing restoration, but the entire site is fascinating. As well as marvelling at the state of the grounds themselves, you can tour the trenches where the distance between the Canadian and German front lines was a mere 10 metres, the deep underground bunkers carved out of chalk stone that acted as passageways to transport troops and weapons several kilometres to and from the front lines, and the three Canadian and Commonwealth cemeteries onsite with row upon row of white headstones adorned with maple leaves.

It was a very powerful and moving experience for us, much moreso than we had expected.. Well worth a trip, and we plan to come back when the monument has been restored.

With our German good luck geese and full bellies from our thankful b&b hostess, we took our last few looks at the Romantic Road and drove northwest to the town of Bacharach on the historic Rhine river.

Another nice b&b awaited us in a surprisingly picturesque village. Many of the spots along the Rhine are tourist traps and quite short on character, not the case for Bacharach however. It is another medieval city (ho hum :) !!) Hidden behind stone walls, with interesting old bridges, houses and narrow streets.

We were upgraded by another in our long line of very friendly and accomodating hostesses to a room with a full kitchen, which let us de-Germanify our colons one night with a leafy salad. A steady diet of schnitzel, bratwurst, spatzle, sauerkraut and beer does not a happy colon make.. But it is so very delicious.

This section of the Rhine river is picture postcard beautiful, with vineyards on slopes running down to a curving river, castles high up on cliffs around every turn, and a road that snakes along the river. This is also a very busy transportation corridor for cars, trucks, trains every 5 minutes on either side of the river, ferries and large transport barges transporting goods from Rotterdam to Basel and back. We could not believe how many castles tower over the river down this 30km stretch, there must be 20 or more. These were all set up around 1200-1400 as giant toll booths for the Rhine. They would string chains across the river so you either paid a toll or the castle took its revenge.

We spent a day driving along this stretch of the Rhine and checking out castles (lots of..."wait, I just need to stop for a picture" moments). We walked around a huge castle ruin called Rheinfels including going into underground tunnels that encircled the castle. These were 3 feet tall max. And had been filled with huge amounts of explosuves to blow up unsuspecting invaders. Fun, let's crawl into a couple of those. Using a guidebook and a tiny flashlight, we ventured into this maze. Claustrophobia quickly set in and it was absolutely pitch black without the flashlight. We followed a course from the guidebook that took us over half a kilometre from the starting point, down a course of slowly narrowing and shrinking tunnels, past many wrong turns and out a different spot than we had begun. Exhillerating, fear inducing and conquered! We could just not beleve there are virtually no warnings, and no path marked, it was so easy to get lost, or have your candle go out and fre!
ak right out. But we made it.

Another day trip, in glorious sun, brought us up and out of the Rhine valley, overland past dozens of wind turbines and beautiful countryside, and dropped us into the Mosel valley. We toured a castle that has been owned and inhabited by the same family since 1200, with period furniture and art from anytime between then and now. Very interesting. Dropped into Cochem for lunch, packed with tourist crap, we should not have bothered. We then stopped in Beilstein. A town from our guidebook that had been described as small quaint and unspoiled. Unfortunately the throng of 500+ people standing on the main road into town, from the tour buses and ferries had the same idea. The bad part about guidebooks, everyone gets the exact same unique and different idea and all do the same thing.

The weather continued to be splendid for our first 3 days, cold in the morning, then warming up to 20+ and full sun by afternoon...but all good things come to an end. After a solid 3 weeks of perfect days, our last couple of days were cold and rainy. Undaunted, we took a cruise on the Rhine, past all the castles and ended up meeting a good New York lad that we had dinner and drinks with that night. We shared a drink before dinner from one of the local (read: the hill behind our room that we look at each morning...now that's local!) wineries, had a great meal over more drinks and then thought, what the hell, let's go for more drinks! Since the New Yawker works in a wine bar, we ended up ordering the wine carousel: 15 different glasses of local German wine with the accompanying "follow along at home" overview guide. We ended up closing the joint a good half hour or more after everyone else had left and the lone remaining waitress had put chairs on tables, close windows and!
blinds, shut off most lights, etc. Hint, hint!

Now my darling wife does enjoy a wee snifter of Port at Christmas time, but the equivalent of two bottles of German wine each, evidently did not agree with her (or me for that matter). We spent the entire next day recovering, with some moaning, complaining and generally lying in bed. Despite our sorry state that night, we went out for a good German dinner, since we did not want to miss out on our last night in Germany.

Our 3 weeks in Germany have come to an end. We loved it, with its good food, good beer and wine, unbelievably gorgeous scenery and very friendly people...we will be back.

From our Germans-only area around tiny Inzell we headed back to the Romantic Road to one of Germany's most visited towns, Rothenberg-ob-der-Tauber.

We homebased in a warm and welcoming b&b just outside the medieval city walls for 5 days. Our stay started in a huge room, with a couch and chairs, a dining area and a large bed. When we came down for breakfast the next morning, our hostess asked us if we could move rooms to accommodate another larger group. We moved and didn't realize that this very small imposition had gained us a VERY appreciative host for the rest of our stay. Each day she made us a special treat for breakfast, including going out to find Canadian maple syrop and making us pancakes one morning...heaven!

We walked the intact city walls, toured around the town and took in the sites. Rothenberg is ultra-touristy but like many other towns and cities, after the tour buses leave at 5, the city takes on a more peaceful and pleasant feel. One night we took the Nightwatchmen's tour, an hour long walk through the streets accompanied with history and stories of the town. The tour was interesting but we spent more time thinking about the economics of the tour. He charges 4 euro per person, had 80+ people on our tour (in mid-October), does 2 tours a night (German and English, but he also speaks Japanese) and in the summer gets 500 people per tour. We figured this guy could make 200k euro a year and onlu work 2 hours a day. We were a little jealous!

We took a day trip to Wurzburg through horrible fog and battling snitty moods, only to walk the city for an hour looking for a phone card. Hate to keep harping the same points, but why does the seemingly simple, mundane crap like buying a phone card, take a herculean effort? Frustrating. When finally we found a Chinese market selling the cards, the owner very kindly let us use her home phone so we could call and extend our Renault car lease for the second time. If we had had to use a public phone booth, the 5 euro phone card would not have lasted long enough for us to accomplish this. So of course we have submitted the name of this Chinese woman for sainthood.

Wurzburg was an interesting, if not big, city. We visited the Rezidenz, a former princely mansion, full of opulence, guilding and the like. We toured the required stops for each city...the churches, the statues and monuments, and stumbled upon a model re-creation of Wurzburg just after WWII. The whole centre of the old city was levelled by the Allies in the final weeks of the war, just to make sure the German people got the message. Wurzburg, like beautiful and historic towns and cities in Britain that were bombed, had had no military value.

We took some nice hikes around Rothenburg, some very wonderfully lazy afternoons spent in the sun reading and catching up on laundry and ate some continued good Germanic food made it a very good few days. We even ventured off the tourist path to find a Mexican restaurant. Turns out a family had emigrated from Mexico and started a really good restaurant in Rothenburg. While the food in Germany has been great, it is always nice to vary it a touch.

On our last night, our continued thankful host even gave us a couple of clay geese as gifts, they are a German custom to bring luck on your journey.

We cannot get away from the current McDonalds jingle in Germany right now, but it is followed by "ich leben es!" (which is the German translation of the current McDonalds slogan, "I'm lovin' it!)

Our next 6 days in Deutschland were spent in the heart of southern Bavaria in a tiny town called Inzell. Set between Munich and Salzberg in what we thought would be the middle of nowhere. As it turned out it was right on a big tour bus route and in some of the most beautiful country we have seen anywhere.

We arrived in this town of less than 1000 to find the street our B&B was on to be populated almost entlrely by Dufters, the same last name for our place and almost the whole rest of the street, hmmmm? Our hosts were very gracious and accomodating (they let us use their sunny laundry line several times), but spoke virtually no English. Many hand signals, smiles and copious use of the phrase book followed.

Our sandwich pilfering continued as we made ourselves lunch most days in Inzell. After figuring out a strange egg-boiling contraption, we were also able to add hard-boiled eggs to our lunch repertoire. In the breakfast room we got to see a slice of life in Inzell. On one wall were hanging various pairs of well-used old leather shorts and suspenders, the classic Bavarian dress. (Incidentally, this isn't a thing of the past, this is formal wear and Sunday-best in these parts and we have seen many, many people in these kinds of traditional clothes.) Also on the walls were photos and awards for long-track speed skating. There is a track here that is used for world class events. Anni Friesinger is actually from here. Our hostess was quick to point out that her daughter beat Anni Friesinger as a teenager.

We relaxed and had some wonderful hikes in the long and relaxing time in Inzell. The weather was sublime and after almost 2 weeks of cold and rain, waking up to bright sun and 20+ degree days was wunderbar. We did a lot of driving while in Inzell and have now passed 5000 km on the car.

We drove back into Austria to Salzburg, for what I knew would be a search for Maria, precocious kids, "alive hills" and that dasterdly Rolf. We walked around Salzburg, enjoyed the sights, Manda got pictures on the steps and by the fountain from the "doe a deer" park and we got a good feel for the city. We were humming songs from the movie all day. A drive back on the autoroute brought us back to Inzell. While it is a total lie that there are no speed limits on the German Autobahn, there are some fast movers. Many times have I been doing 140+ and have been passed by someone doing 200 easy, like I was standing still. And you feel wrong being on the Autobahn in little Rene the Renault, since every car is a powerful and sleak BMW, Audi or Mercedes. How exactly does everyone afford these cars here?

A day trip north of Munich brought us to Dachau, the first concentration camp the Nazi's built and a well preserved reminder of the past. What we thought would be a couple of hours look turned into 4 and a half. They have put lots of recent work into the museum and while the entire experience is powerful, it doesn't use the 'easy- shock' approach and you don't leave feeling like something like a packaged horror show has been forced down your throat. The foundations of all the old barracks still stand and seeing the sheer size of the camp is of course powerful. Perceived enemies of all stripes were imprisoned here-there was a barracks here devoted only to house German and foreign Catholic priests who questioned the complicity of their church in the Nazi cause. We saw the various religious monuments, and found that the Jewish monument really is so understated and powerful. We saw the crematorium and the gas chambers (never used at Dachau), and were appalled and confused by tourists smiling and getting their pictures taken in front of the crematorium, not something that one would want to be pictured with.

Another day trip brought us south to Berchtesgaden and the Obersalzburg. Though it is part of Germany, it is an area that was basically overtaken by the Nazi party in the 1920s and 30s to build a summer retreat for Hitler. Hitler loved this place so much he threw all but the Nazis out and set up shop as the second German centre of power. One farmer who had refused to sell his land to the Nazis ended up in Dachau. There we saw the Documentation Centre, which was an incredible museum that documented the rise of fascism in Germany following the First World War, and the factors that led to Hitler's takeover, and inevitably, to the Second World War. The museum also featured discussions of the techniques used by the Nazi party (threats, intimidation, propaganda, use of mass media and the hijacking of the Constitution and the judicial system, the list goes on...) that were really fascinating, especially given the eery similarity of these techniques to the stuff happening in the US right now. We toured a section of the vast bunker system inside the mountain and saw graffiti from the American soldiers who overtook the property just a few days after WWII ended in Europe. We had also planned to go up to the famous Eagle's Nest, a lookout over this part of the Alps, but unfortunately for us and many pissed-off American tourists who had made the trip especially, the road up to it (a feat of engineering, apparently) was closed because of rock falls.

Our planned day trip to Munich fell victim to tired legs and no desire to commute the 120 km so we had a first true down day in Inzell too, the first, we figured, in about 6 weeks. We had a nice hike on a perfect fall day, with a crispness in the air and the smell of fall leaves.

Overall, we absolutely loved southern Bavaria. The food is absolutely fabulous, the countryside is spectacular, the people are friendly and ridiculously hospitable, and the living is cheap.

The Amazing Race, Mannaiz style:
"Five countries, many supermarkets, one food bag"

Through thick and thin, the food bag may shift and morph, but it is always by our side. Here are the current contents:

• Two boxes P'tit U brand chocolate cookies (F)


• Two tetrapacks soy milk (F)


• One pack Fry's chocolate cream (UK via CH via dad A)


• One bag partially enjoyed M&Ms (G)


• One box assorted salad dressings in individually wrapped portions (S)


• One box Jordan's Special Fruit Meusli (F)


• One free sample Nescafe Cappucino (S)


• 12 'bio-cafe rahm' (cream) portions (UHT) (CH)


• One box instant soup packets 'sopa de verduras' (S)


• One three-quarters consumed Asterix themed jar of Nutella (F)


• Two 2 week old mini Babybels, pilfered from a B&B breakfast table (G)


• One large tetrapack "Isabel Active' Diat Multi-Vitamin 12 - Frucht - Nektar (G)


• One tin mexican flavoured tuna and beans (F)


• One bar Zartbitten-Nuss Schokolade mit ganzen Haselnussen, half eaten (G)


• One tin 'ensalata russa con tuna' (S)


• One bag assorted items: packets of jam, mustard, honey, one oatmeal bar (Canadian), one tiny capsule of leberwurst


• One camping utensils set


• One bag assorted plastic utensils


• One metal spoon of forgotten origin


• One stale bag of chips, mit paprika geschmack (G)

During our French days, also normally contained one half-eaten and quite stale baguette

We are nothing if not a little frugal and large planners. No more perfect place have these two traits collided than in the pilfered sandwich.

Each morning for the past month, breakfast has consisted of cold meats, cheeses and buns - the key building blocks of a good sandwich. Sometimes we get lucky and can spice up the sandwich...some butter, some cream cheese perhaps, or Amanda's killer app, the strawberry jam. A nice thin coat can add that certain 'je ne sais quoi'.

But the true art comes not in the making of the sandwich, but in its concealment and pilfering! Under the ever watchful eye of the house Frau (or serveuse, etc). we need to create a diversion while the two sandwiches are quickly transfered to the large serviette waiting in the lap. A few quick folds, and all that remains is the getaway. This is where what has come to be known as 'Jeremy's sandwich pocket' really shines. A quick slight of hand, a shuffle for the door and lunch is served.

Today we took pound cake. Today was a good day.

Some haikus:

Blue handheld device
Where would we be without you?
Oh how we love you

A travel work toy
Our connection to the world
Who loves us today?

Beep in the morning
We have a bed for tonight
Kaloo! cocktail time

After our minor freakout and trip redesign, we left Innsbruck, travelled over the mountains to Garmish and into Germany.

Actally we passed into Germany to see Garmish, then back into Austria (Only one road through that mountain pass and it happens to go through several countries) before entering back into Germany to end up Schwangau.

Garmish was on our list because Rick Steves had raved about it and he had served us well through southern France. When we arrived we went straight for the tourist office as has become a useful exercise (a bank, internet access and where can we buy a phone card please). Unfortunately it was closed. It was 12:30 so we gave them the benefit of the doubt that they were closed for lunch. As every single store was closed as well, we decided on finding lunch and waiting till 2 when all would open again. A good goulash mit brot and a hearty beer and we were back on our way, anxious to do a little shopping. All was still closed, everything! Have we mentioned our confusion at opening hours and European apparent disregard for the almighty buck? We want to spend now...so open up. We left town, foiled again, and arrived in Schwangau.

We were a little nervous of this place as our nonexistant German and the apparent bad English of our b&b hostess had left us all confused as to whether we had a reservation, what the dates were, etc. We did indead have a room and it was a good one, affording us a balcony view of Mad King Ludwig's Disneyesque Neuschwanstein castle.

In the 1870's, well after ther was any real need for a castle, King Ludwig of Bavaria built 3 ridiculously opulent castles throughout southern Germany. This one is his most fairy tale like and looks like something out of Walt Disney's dreams. We toured both this fairy tale castle and the older, more modest Hohenschwangau, where he and his family grew up and resided in the summers.. Our views of the two were quite different.

Hohenshwangau (translates to:land above the town of the swans) is set between two lakes, is built on a former 12th century monastery and is quite understated with rooms you could actually see people living in. We toured the castle over an hour period, with a group of about 20 people and a very informative guide. We enjoyed the tour and liked the castle. So that was in the morning. We had some fastfood for lunch and then walked up a large hill to the more showy Neuschwanstein (literally new swan stone). The combination of Jeremy's choice of curry-wurst for lunch, spicey and rich sausages cut up in an even richer and spicier curry-cream sauce (so tasty...so evil), mixed with a surprisingly tough 45 minute uphill hike right afterward to the castle did not go over well with Jeremy's inners. They were doing an German-Indian rumba by the third room of the tour. They packed us in a group of 70+ people and a new group started every 5 minutes so we we packed in so tightly we felt like sheep to the slaughter and a little claustrophobic for such a cavernous castle. While the guide for the other castle was interesting and interested, the guide for this tour was bored silly, reciting her lines in a monotone voice and herding us from room to room as fast as possible. All in all not an enjoyable experience, with the castle was opulent and fun to look at such an over the top dispay of wealth.

We really had to fight our way through the Japanese hordes decending on Fussen/Schwangau and the castles by the bus-load. These castles lie at the very end (or start for us) of the Romantic Road, an old highway that links up many cute old Bavarian villages. There must be a lot of tours that sell this romantic road trip based on this final stop to see the Walt Disneyesque castles. Our first clue about the majority of tourists should have been that all along the Romantic Road, the official signs are written in both German and Japanese , and nothing else. Hint, hint.

The weather throughout our stay was cold, rainy and overcast, very, very dreary. Finally on our last day the sun shone through as we ate breakfast. We decided to take a cable car up a nearby mountain and hike back. On the walk to the cable car we passed a working saw mill cutting the most beautiful timber beams and wide planks, still using a water wheel and drawing power from the river. The cable car gave us a great view of the surrounding area, quite a sight. But the clouds quickly moved in again and we got only a view of the mountain peaks, above a white blanket of cloud. What we thought would be a 2 hour hike or so back down, turned into a 5 hour hike. By the end our feet and legs were pretty tired, as the whole time and been spent pounding downhill. That was nothing, however, compared to the stiff and sore legs that greeted us the next morning.

After 4 nights in Schwangau, we packed up and drove into the true Bavarian countryside east mof Munich close to the Austria border and "the hills are alive" area around Salzberg.

Stay tuned.

A sample dialogue:

"At the Hairdresser's

Hairdresser: What can I do for you?
Client: A haircut, please.
Hairdresser: How would you like your hair?
Client: Long in back, but a little shorter on the sides.
Hairdresser: Fine. Would you like a permanent too?
Client: No, but a shampoo and set, please.
Hairdresser: Fine. Take a seat here please."

Hahahahahahahahahhahahhahah omg too much.

Okay, but actually this permed mullet haircut was all the rage in Spain, where we found this little nugget of useful dialogue in our Spanish phrase book:

Making conversation at a soccer match:

"Tourist: Which team is the better team?
Local fan: (.........) Que?"

To which we added these useful translations:
Tourist: why does your team suck?
Tourist: Your team appears to play like a bunch of old women.
Tourist: You hit like a girl.
Tourist: Nice permed mullet, Pepe!
Tourist: Which way to the exit?
Tourist: Help! Police!

Please report in.

At the start of the trip, the whole month of October was basically left unplanned. The idea was to plan on the way, setting up hotels and sightseeing as we went, and basically travel through Austria and Germany as the wind blew us...

As much as it may sound incredibly romantic to travel the open road with no fixed plans, it really isn't! As we have discovered, doing simple tasks like finding a telephone or an internet connection can take vast amounts of time, energy and patience, and turn the the most rational person completely bonkers. As it turns out, we don't like a blank schedule and the open road with no fixed plans and having no reservations (nowhere to sleep) scares us! We tried this a couple of times and each time the "show up somewhere, go to the TI office and find somewhere to stay" approach has landed us in true sh*tholes. We really don't recommend this.

With no fixed plans and the possibility of driving south into Italy, north into Germany, east into Austria or west into France, we basically had a bit of a freak-out. We were also at this point influenced by 1) sheer physical and psychological exhaustion from having gone non-stop since August 24, 2) daunted, as described above, by the massive amount of planning required to fill the gaping hole of October, 3) the prospect of leaving 4-star luxury in Switzerland for a month of potential unknown accommodation crappiness and 4) indescribable frustration with being unable to find affordable telephones or Internet resources in order to go about solving these problems.

In our first minor freak-out of the trip (we never told you about this one) we were in Catalonia and totally confused about the way to drop off our rental car in Lyon and then get somehow to Switzerland by train. In the end, we decided what was really bothering us was the prospect of being without wonderful Rene the Renault, what with his spacious interior, a trunk in which to stow our possessions, our 12 bottles of water, our revolving case of wines, and the ever-expanding portable pantry, now famous as "the food bag". And of course that 'back of your mind' comfort of knowing that, if all else failed, we could always sleep in the car. So we extended our lease on the car by a month and took the hit on cancelling our Eurail Passes.

We decided to drive for Innsbruck, Austria. For the Olympic sites? For the old buildings? Hearty Austrian food and hospitality? Nope! This decision was made because we could make it there in one day, it was generally in the direction of Germany (where we still hadn't been), it was the closest big-ish (non Swiss) city, and first and foremost ...we were betting on reasonably priced and available INTERNET ACCESS! We ended up staying in a crappy boarding house for 2 nights, didn't find any internet access (unbelievable, isn't it?) but loved Innsbruck nonetheless - really nice, beautiful place. Highly recommended.

Okay so, what to do? We decided to recruit outside assistance. We asked Mum A to look for places to stay for us, given her ready access to cheap and unlimited internet. Who knew that we would leave our desk jobs, come and see the wonders of Europe, and the thing we would miss and need the most would be the World Wide Web?? Mum came through for us (thanks! We couldn't be doing this without you!) And found us places to stay for the first part of our stay in Germany.

Within 24 to 48 hours, we reserved over 2 weeks of BandBs and planed an itinerary through Germany.

NB: 1 SFr = roughly 1 C$

• McDonald's combo meal: 13 SFr


• 500 mL Coke 4 SFr


• 1 hour of Internet usage 18 SFr (average price in France and Spain 2€)


• Small size take-out pizza 29 SFr


• Small size cup of coffee 5.70 SFr


• Cough drops 9.90 SFr


• Bag of chips 6.50 SFr


• Basic lunch menu consisting of soup, main, and dessert 59 SFr (with a glass of wine, 72 SFr)

Being away and listening to strange languages can do funny things to a person. We can write a thesis on the various pros and cons of each European country's radio.

First of all, let's not worry any longer about CanCon at home or the survival of the Canadian music industry, because Europeans have pretty strict CanCon regulations too. We have heard a ridiculous amount of Canadian music...Celine (in both official languages), Alanis, Brian Adams, Shania, Avril, Nickleback, Daniel Powter, Shawn Desman, Nelly Furtado, etc, etc. And they play the same songs a lot!

In terms of style, French radio is far and away the crappiest. The French love the "pop-rock" (not good, all French, and the only English-language music is Canadian, without exception). The Spanish love the "pop-pop", and seem to be stuck in 1989. Right up Amanda's alley as she was invariably bopping along to many songs. Switzerland plays pretty much only Shania Twain. And then there is German... German is not what could be described as a soft, melodic language, so German "ballads" scare us. German rap and metal music works better...but still scares us.

And then there is James Blunt! We have heard his song "You're beautiful" everywhere. And going through Austria, something in me snapped. I started singing this song with changed lyrics for the 1939 Annexation of Austria by Germany (a little wacky), since we have heard the word "anschluss" everywhere and it means annex but must mean something else...or the Germans are annexing many everyday items like towels, milk and bread!

So James Blunt became " Germany Blunt" and the lyrics became:
"You're Anschlussed
You're Anschlussed, it's true
Well I saw your land, and I wanted it
So I rolled my tanks at you
You're Anschlussed...."
Etc.

As stated, travelling and being away from home can to strange things to you.

Our four star luxury treated us well. We had a wonderfully relaxing and recuperating week. We slept in every day, and after the days' planned activities, managed to work in a siesta each afternoon and a pre-dinner cocktail hour. Breakfast and dinner were served each day in the restaurant of the hotel, which we loved for the 'old time' feel of a real resort hotel from an earlier era. The guests at the hotel were all from that era - we were the youngest guests by far. As a result, we were also the rowdiest and loudest table at meal times, either because we were the only ones talking to each other, or because everyone else was too engaged in listening to our conversations! The seniority system is alive and well in this hotel too-the longer you stay, the closer you inch, table by table, to the picture windows overlooking the lake. Each table has a name card. Ours started in the back and by the last night we had earned a spot by the window. However, our spot was slightly separated from the rest of the room by a short wall, leading Dad to exclaim "We've been banished!!!!"

Perhaps he was right, given our general enthusuasm for dinner conversation, but we preferred it nonetheless. The weather was a bit cloudy and rainy during much of our stay, but we chose the perfect day to take the cog railways and cable cars up to the high villages of Wengen, Mannlichen and Kleine Scheidegg. We had a beautiful hike along the ridge which gave us glorious views of the three highest peaks in this area of the Alps: the Eiger, the Monch (Munch?), and the Jungfrau. We contemplated going up even further to the "Top of Europe" on the Jungfrau, but our timing was off. The clouds started to roll in, and we decided against it given the 170 SFr price tag per person. A good decision as it turned out as the weather did change for the worse. We felt bad for the load after load of tourists who had prepaid their tickets as they began to make their way up the mountain side only for a view of the inside of thick clouds.

We visited the town of Interlaken, where we wandered around, contemplated buying Swiss watches, decorative cowbells and chocolates, and had a coffee at the Schuh hotel in the town centre. We also visited the town of Grindelwald where we had a perfect Swiss lunch of sausage, rosti and beer. Just up from Grindelwald we tried to walk up to see the lowest accessible glacier in Europe, the Obergletcher, only to turn back when we reached the wooden staircase (of about 2000 steps) - not because of the climb, but because there was a charge of 6 SFr each to climb it! We then went in search of a footpath to reach the glacier, thinking that surely that must be free to use, but found that they wanted 4 SFr to use that too. These Swiss have really grasped capitalism.

Another day we visited an interesting place called Ballenberg, which is very much like Upper Canada Village, except much more extensive. Old houses have been brought and reconstructed from all the regions and cantons of Switzerland and you can tour them and learn about the various traditions and ways of life of the Swiss over the last few hundred years. The area is also a giant farm with cows, goats, sheep, donkeys and various bizarre-looking species of chicken. (If we still had a way to post pictures we would put one up of one particularly crazy chicken that had the fuzziest pants you've ever seen. And he was strutting around like he knew it). While we were there, we were also treated to an extended air show of fighter jets courtesy of the Swiss Air Force. They practiced formations and low flight for hours through the valley. We also heard several low booms, either the sound of them breaking the sound barriers, or them brealing up snow on the peaks to prevent avalanches.

On our drives through this area of Switzerland, we saw the devastation of the recent floods that struck after days of steady, heavy rain at the end of August. Water came pouring down the mountainsides and collected in the river valleys or created their own rivers and their own paths. The strength of the water must have been huge, as we saw piles of massive boulders, trees and mud everywhere. There were also large areas of hillsides that had completely given way and had come down as landslides, often into the villages. At Ballenberg, measuring sticks showed the height of the standing water and in many places, it reached well over the second story. In Brienz, the cascading mud and boulders had destroyed piles of cars and picked and chose which houses to destroy. Some houses were ruined, while its neighbour hadn't been touched. The floods also affected our plans; we were meant to stay at another hotel in Interlaken, but it had flooded and had had to close until Spring. The new hotel had had water from the lake up to its top front steps, but was spared. Luckily for us, the new hotel was perfect and in an idyllic spot much nicer than the place where we were meant to stay.

All in all, a great week, lots of laughs and excellent food. Thanks again Dad for an awesome time!!!

With a large degree of trepidation and a certain queasiness in our tummies, we departed Switzerland to begin our Austrian and German portions of The Grand Tour. With vague ideas of where we wanted to visit and not a single place booked, we hit the road again.

After a few rest days at our favourite B&B in Vaison la Romaine, we set out for our next major stop: the town of Interlaken, in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland, where we would meet Dad Aizlewood and Jandy for a week of Alpine fun..

The day we left Provence the weather was a bit rainy, but we still had an amazingly spectacular drive east and then north towards Grenoble. The Alps in this area are beautuful, and neither of us expected to see such high peaks in France (incidentally, this surprise can be extended to most of our travel through France, including the number of deep gorges, river valleys, wetlands, vast forests and oodles of wildlife that we saw).

The city of Grenoble itself is set in a valley surrounded by high, rocky mountains - perfect for skiers. After seeing the setting, Jeremy regretted not choosing doing a university exchange here. After Grenoble, we drove through (actually under) Geneva, and into the countryside of Switzerland. When we had crossed the border, the guard waved us over to stop. At first we thought we had been chosen to be searched, but all they wanted was to ensure that we purchased an autobahn pass for our car at a no-choice cost of 30 Euros or 40 Swiss Francs. This was our introduction to the expense factor of Switzerland. The Swiss have definitely embraced commerce; as we discovered, there isn't an inch of the country that hasn't been commodified in some way.

We decided to break our journey to Interlaken by stopping for the night in Lausanne at the northern point of Lac Leman. Again, we chose the affordabilty of a Formule 1, a cheap and (we thought) predictable place just off the autobahn. Twice the price of the French version we stayed at (thanks to the generally high costs of Switzerland) and while everything at the hotel looked the same...it was not! Dirty, run down, parties that kept us up all night, did I mention dirty. We did venture out to find a bank machine and dinner, but since it was Sunday...everything was closed. You would think that in Switzerland, land of the banks, it would be easy to find a cash machine, you would of course be wrong. It took us an hour of searching and when we did finally find one, it spat out one single 200 Franc note. Where, we thought, are we going to find a place that takes 200 Franc notes...? McDonalds of course! The only thing open on a Sunday in Lausanne. 13 bucks for a "meal deal" qui!
ckly dissuaded us, so we withdrew, feeling a little defeated, to our hotel for any food we could scrounge from our ever increasing food bag (We have expanded the bag twice now and it just seems to increase as we go, now heavier than our packs! We have added French mustard, a box of salad dressing packets, an exciting assortment of cutlery and to top it off, an earthenware bowl that weighs about 6 pounds that we bought for a dollar!). At 8:30 SHARP the next morning, easily a record for getting a start, we hit the road. We tried McD's for a coffee but it was closed. Of course McD's is closed for breakfast. In a pathetic display of desperation mixed with cheapness, we ended up sharing a Coke and a stale oatmeal bar from home as our breakfast. Incidentally, that 200 Franc note we were so worried about? Yeah, well the woman at the roadside shop where we bought the single small bottle of Coke broke it without batting an eyelid. This was a warning.

Feeling a little sorry for ourselves, it was a sharp contrast to the luxury awaiting us in Interlaken. We drove through a long tunnel with French town names and road signs at the entrance, and when we came out the other side, suddenly all of the road signs were in German only! We were plunged into the zany world of the German language, complete with geschlossen ausfarhts (closed exits), shlassenstradens (slippery shoulders), umleitunggevarhts (detour warningss), and Geschwindigkeits (speed limits). Needless to say, we were at a loss, but also in near-constant hysterics (I mean, where to begin? J: "well...probably with ausfarhts").

We stopped in Bern for a couple of hours and while there saw the famous "Bear Pits" - where bears are literally roaming around in sunken pits in the middle of town. It was like being at the zoo, except...not. Big bears, too. Also, as our pictures will attest, we enjoyed a very strong Starbucks coffee and made it the centrepiece of our Bern visit.

Arrival in Interlaken was easy enough. We found our hotel (4-stars, no less!!!) on the western shore of Lake Brienz (the eastern of the two lakes Interlaken is sandwiched between) in the village of Bonigen. We settled into our luxurious room, complete with all the amenities and a postcard view and balcony overlooking the lake and framed by the Alps on both sides. Two hours later, Dad A and Jandy arrived. Our week of eating and sleeping well and breathing clean mountain air could begin!

With heavy hearts, we furiously cleaned Marc's apartment (Our fabulous Barcelona spot) and hit the road north for France.

We stopped in Figueres, the home of Salvador Dali. It is some small town with a wonderful and bizarre Dali museum in the centre. His museum is quite an interesting site, very...Daliesque! The outsite is adorned with thousands of porcelain excrement pieces. The inside is just as interesting. An old Cadillac, with Marilyn emerging from the hood, an angel, and an opening and closing umbrella 20 feet up, sitting in a row boat, on top of. large column, was the focal piece of the courtyard. There were lots of interesting pieces throughout, but we both enjoyed the doodles and sketches with Dali's strange footnotes in French, Spanish and English, like a sketch of a war with one army all on stilts and a caption about how the war was rather even till the one army pulled out all the stilts, nobody every expects the stilts attack. It would take hours to see it all, but our Dali metre peaked about 3/4 of the way through.

We drove the super fast (140) and super expensive (15 euro) autoroute for the border and stayed in Beziers on the French side in an interesting place...a Formule 1 hotel. It is run by the French Accor hotel chain, which runs a whole bunch of other brands of hotels across Europe. These places have to be seen and experienced to be believed. They are absolutely no nonsense and have been so precisely designed that it becomes clear why they are called Formula 1 hotels!

Thr hotels are found on the sides of the autoroutes, and cost only 28 euros a night for a room that sleeps up to three people. You can pay at a machine outside and not deal with a single human being. There are no room keys, only a code you enter on a terminal outside your door. The costruction is interesting: the whole hotel is modular, with blocks of rooms cut into "pods", and each section is colour coded. The industrial deign for each room is fascinating: there is a double bed, with a single bunk above, a corner sink, and one fluorescent light to light both the sink and the room. There are two small towels, one plastic glass, and one corner table that is built into the wall with a chair that slides underneath it. Above it is a shelf with a television. The bed is built into the floor and the sides are carpeted, The "closet" is 3 hangers hanging below the bunk. The sheet, bottom sheet and pillow cases are all one long sheet folded over, presumably to minimize laundry. There is no soap, and no other extras. The room's dimensions are exactly how small they can be given the furniture that they must hold. Each room is identical.

The bathrooms and showers are down a short hallway and are separate and modular units, each colour coded to your pod. They have green lights above the door meaning empty and ready to use. A red light means that they are occupied or in a cleaning cycle. They are one solid piece of moulded plasic that can be easily washed out. After every use, the unit locks itself and "disinfects" when you leave...creepy. The shower is similar: one half is for showering, with a push-button shower that stays on for exactly 8.1 seconds per push. The other half has an industrial dryer that could make a jet engine jealous! This, we presume, explains the need for only a very small towel.

Breakfast again was no nonsense and heavily engineered: you take a tray with one paper serviette on it. Don't bother looking around for plates or coffee cups, there aren't any. If there were, that would necessitate dishwashing. You have a choice of toast or rolls, orange juice, coffee or tea, and a selection of jams. It costs 3,80 per person, which must have been a fabulous deal given the van-loads of Hungarian labourers and construction crews that were pouring in and out of the place.

The industrial design and cost effective planning that went into this hotel chain is truly impressive: low cost, no wasted space, time or energy, good bed, shower, TV with sports channels, solid, predictable breakfast and you're back on the road.