After a month at Richard’s parents house in The Netherlands, we found ourselves ready to visit some other parts of Europe. And so commenced a little tour of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France! First stop was Cologne in Germany to visit Katharina and Rainer, my friends from university in Canada.  Since last seeing them in Trier in 2007 a lot had happened:  they’d gotten engaged and then married, moved from Trier to Berlin and eventually Cologne.  And then at the start of this year they had their first baby, a girl named Sofia.

UVic Reunion! I went to university with Katarina and Rainer in 2005, a long time ago!

Cologne is famous for its Dom church which took more than 600 years to complete the building of.  It’s certainly impressive in that the sheer size of the church dominates the skyline of Cologne City, but otherwise it didn’t really do anything for us.  Pollution means that a thick layer of grime covers the entire exterior of the church.  While standing in front of it I tried to imagine how it looked pre-pollution:  I think it would have been rather grand in a sandstone colour, a shining light amongst an impressive city.  We didn’t do much in Cologne aside from catching up with Katharina and Rainer and having a wander around the city centre which was very busy (lots of people in a small pedestrian area).

Cologne’s ‘Dom’ Church.

Walking Love Locks Bridge into the centre of Cologne. Sofia got fed up with her stroller so I pushed it while Katharina carried her!

The start of eating yummy German bread!

After two nights we pressed on and headed south to a campsite half an hour south of Frankfurt.  I should mention here something about driving on the autobahn in Germany.  It can be a wee bit scary sometimes! You’d think that having three or four lane highways would mean that everybody has enough space to get on with the job of driving from A to B.  However we found that there was an aggressive and self-righteous attitude from some of the faster cars while on the highway.  We find it more relaxed to just cruise along at 100km/hr but the Germans we encountered weren’t very relaxed about our ‘slow speed’ and we had lots of fast BMWs and VWs ‘skimming’ us.  Skimming is when the car in the lane next to you enters your lane deliberately and swerves close to you to make a point that you shouldn’t be on the highway because you’re going too slow for them!  In summary driving in Germany was surprisingly not as straightforward as in The Netherlands.

In the evening we drove to Goldbach, to visit Steven and Martina.  Richard met Steven while travelling in Central America and they had had a great time travelling around in Richard’s old Subaru.  Steven and Martina have a one year old named Vincent, and when we arrived they’d gone all out for dinner, having made a delicious vegetarian saag curry complete with homemade naan bread followed by a delicious berry sorbet!  We spent a pleasant evening with them talking about travelling and jobs and the world in general.

The next day we drove to Friedrichshafen in the south of Germany on the edge of Lake Constance (Bodensee). Looking straight out over the Lake you can see the mountains in Switzerland.  We arrived mid-afternoon on a Friday, just in time for the start of the weekend.  With a couple of hours to kill before going to Sabrina’s apartment we decided to park the car and find a grassy spot to sit with the picnic blanket and our kindles. But first we had to find a cold drink!  We walked around for at least 30 minutes before finding a little stall on the waterfront that sold drinks, and after walking around in the sweltering heat we also felt like icecreams.  A lovely grassy patch to lay out the picnic blanket was found and we were both promptly ensconced in our books while also doing some interesting people watching on the side.  A group of three teenagers with a portable wooden closet on wheels was the most entertaining.  They had beer inside the closet, as well as beer glasses, opener, and best of all a fully decked out sound-system, sub-woofer and all.

Perfect spot to kill a couple of hours on the picnic blanket reading our kindles on the  Friedrichshafen waterfront.

At 6pm we were back at the car, and very quickly arrived at Sabrina’s house.  Sabrina is a good friend of ours from Wellington.  She moved back to Germany a couple of years ago, and visiting her in Germany was something agreed upon a long time ago. Upon arrival we fell back into the same rhythm of talking, talking and more talking while enjoying a couple of chandy drinks (beer with lemonade) on the balcony.  It was a great weekend, fun yet also relaxing.  On the Saturday morning we slept in while Sabrina went to Austria for the day to run a half-marathon.  We had a great morning eating yummy German bread and reading our kindles.  (There was some serious kindle reading going on during these weeks)!  A run along Friedrichshafen’s waterfront in the late morning kicked off our day and was a great way to see some of the town. The waterfront was pumping on a Saturday, with lots of restaurants and cafes very busy on such a sunny day.  We hadn’t realised how touristic the area is, but having seen it I can understand why people go there.  Very pretty, gentle scenery with lots of things to see and do!

On the Sunday we took a catamaran to Konstanz, which is close to the border with Switzerland. Because of its close proximity to Switzerland the town escaped being bombed during World War II.  It was nice to see all the old buildings and the very old church.  We followed up some sightseeing with a long lunch of traditional German spaetzl (egg noodles with cheese and fried onion). After some more walking around, and feeling the sweltering heat we decided a swim in the lake was in order which cooled us down nicely.  So far, nowhere have we swum during our whole trip has been as cold as the water temperature in Wellington.

Konstanz has a pretty pedestrian area.

Spaetzl – traditional German grub: egg noodles with cheese and fried onion.

A perfect day with friends! With Sabrina in Konstanz.

Our week of visiting friends and little bits and pieces of Germany came to a close and it was time to start the exploration part of our little tour of Europe.  A special thanks to our friends who hosted us whether it by letting us crash on their couches or eat some of their yummy food.  It made our week in Germany so lovely.  We hope we can return the favour and host friends once we are settled again!

Next stop, a few days taster of the Vorarlberg region of Austria!