May in Switzerland and Germany

Holiday day for the French on the 1st May. Patrice, one of the caretakers of the house, told Andrew that on this day he is supposed to pick me a ‘Lily of the Valley’ flower from the garden. We’re not sure why, as he didn’t speak much English….needless to say, Andrew forgot!

The main reason for staying in Nantua was so that we could visit our Welsh relatives, who Andrew and I haven’t seen for 15 years (Alison and I were bridesmaids for them 30 years ago!). Brian, Gaynor and their 2 girls, Rebecca and Abigail, moved to Champagne-en-Valromey about 2 years ago. We met up with Brian and the girls on Tuesday at their house, caught up with family stuff, played boules and stayed for tea. The girls speak great French: and both sound very French to us! Abigail found it very amusing that my Mum couldn’t pronounce ‘frais’ (strawberries) properly (she couldn’t get the right ‘r’ sound): Madi can do it great though! Gaynor still works in Wales for 2 weeks, then comes home for 4, and didn’t arrive back home until Wednesday teatime, so we met up again for tea at our house that night. It was lovely to see them after so long: hopefully it won’t be quite as long before we see them again. 

3rd May

We decided to get the train into Geneva today, as it is nearer to us here in Nantua, than it is when we actually stay in Switzerland. The trains are of course first class, and cheap (cost us 45 Euros for us all, return). Geneva is home to180,000 people, one third of which aren’t Swiss and are from 150 other countries: very cosmopolitan! We spent the day wandering around the city, the girl’s heely-ing around the streets, and it has a lovely feel to it.
Touristy must sees were: • Jet d’Eau, which is Europe’s tallest fountain, shooting water 140m into the air at a speed of 200km/hr. It is now the symbol of Geneva. • Top of the Cathedrale St-Pierre to get the panoramic view of the city, and Calvin’s chair, which is reputedly the chair from which Jean Calvin preached during the Reformation in the 16th century. • Parc des Bastions with the enormous monument, Mur de la Reformation, built in 1909 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin and the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the Geneva Academy (Protestant school). It is an amazing monument, 100m long, full of reliefs, depicting the history of the Reformation. The main parts of the monument are the 5m high leaders of the movement: Guillaume Farel, Jean Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, and John Knox. When we were there there was an enormous crane standing in front of the monument blocking us from getting a good photo. Later on in the train home I read a local paper which showed a picture of the monument on May 1st: covered in red paint being cleaned by said crane! The University is also next to this park and is definitely where I’m going to study next time round! There are also several large chess sets in the park, which attract quite a crowd. You’d have to be quite good I think to play in front of such an audience. • Jardin Anglais, with the floral clock, the Horloge Fleurie, built in 1955 as a tribute to Switzerland’s tradition of clock making. 

4th May

Dad’s leg was still hurting today (he fell over on Wednesday, and has pulled/ torn his muscle) so we avoided a mountain walk (the climb to the top of the cathedral yesterday was very painful for him), and instead headed for the very flat Dombes. It is an area gouged out by a glacier and is covered in marshes and ponds. We headed for the Parc des Oiseaux, an ornithological park, but when we got there it was really a zoo. Not very natural as they had penguins etc. we gave it a miss and decided to find our own birds. After spending ½ an hour trying to find a footpath, we arrived at Ste. Olive and set off around a marsh that had first glance had very little wildlife on it How wrong were we! After a couple of hours we had clocked up Little Grebes, Squacco Heron, Cattle Egrets, Purple Heron, Grey Heron, White Stork, Cuckoo, and a Kingfisher. Neither Dad nor Andrew had the ‘right’ lens so the best photos we could manage were taken using either Madi’s or my significantly cheaper cameras looking into the telescope. Here is Madi’s kingfisher and my Squacco heron. We also saw these creatures: at first we thought these were beavers, but when we saw the tails we realised they weren’t. They look like marmots (but I don’t know if marmots can swim). Dad thought they could be coypu (spelt wrong).  

 Well, it had to happen sometime, we just weren’t expecting it so soon! Our first accident!

We said our goodbyes to Mum and Dad who headed off south to continue their holiday, and set off for Switzerland. We needed diesel, so after about 20mins we signalled to turn into a garage which was on the other side of the road. As we waited in the road for the on-coming traffic to pass, indicating to turn, Andrew could see someone coming up behind us far faster than they should have been. We were hit! It was a 76 year old French woman in a Peugeot 106 and she had managed to right-off all our bikes (which took the brunt of the impact), a bumper + light cluster, the bike rack and spare wheel cover. Fortunately the old lady and all of us were OK, although the lady looked a bit shocked and probably had a bigger jolt than we did. The garage attendants came out to help and between our phrase book and all our very basic inter-language skills we managed to call for the police (who said- call for your assistance), fill out the European accident form with both parties details, and call for recovery. The lady wrote (in French) that she had seen us indicating, had braked, but skidded on the wet road. As you can see from the picture, she hit us with the driver’s side corner as she tried to miss us, but the other side of her car, which is staved in too, didn’t happen today. She’s obviously had another accident recently too!

We were recovered to a garage near to Nantua, where we waited for a taxi to take us to Annecy (1.5 hours away) to get a hire-car to take us on to Switzerland. We grabbed what luggage we thought would fit into a normal sized car and left everything else at the garage. By the time we had got to Annecy, sorted out the hire car, and got on our way again it was 5.30pm. With very low spirits we drove to Brig, arriving at 10.30pm, 12 hours after setting off! We had enough supplies for a brew and supper and called it a day. 

 The last few days have centered around sorting out what happens next with the car. Monday was a bank holiday in England so the overseas team weren’t at work, Tuesday was then a holiday in France, so we wait for Wednesday to hear anything else. The insurance company agreed it looked like a no-fault claim by us, so we’re sending the forms and photos in to them. Our biggest problem now is one of timing. The car is at a garage which may or may not be able to fix it, so we have to wait and see who will do the work, get a quote, and then get the Ok from the insurance. How long it will then take to fix it is anyone’s guess. We don’t think it will be in the next 2 weeks at least, by which time we move on to Interlaken for 1 week. If it isn’t fixed by then we have to make serious changes because we were planning to move to Germany after that, which is taking us even further away from the car. As it stands now, if the car gets fixed whilst we are still in Switzerland, it’s a 5 hour drive back to Annecy to drop the hire car off, a 1.5 hour drive to get the car, and then a 5 hour drive back again to Switzerland. We’ll have to stay overnight somewhere and try and claim all of this extra expense (and the bikes etc) as uninsured losses. It’s a logistical nightmare!

Anyway, we’ve tried not to let it spoil our first few days here. We are in a lovely traditional Swiss chalet, overlooking the town of Brig. The view from our lounge and bedroom is spectacular (see photo), but we also have mountains behind us too. Brig is very pretty and we have heely-ed around much of it. It has been awarded the title of ‘Alpine town of the year for 2008’, and is ideal for exploring the Valais and Northern Italy. We’re planning trips up to see the Matterhorn via cable cars, Mont Blanc, Bern and Italy over the next 2 weeks.

Our first proper outing was on Tuesday, to the St. Bernard museum in Martigny. This was really interesting and we found about the legends and the truths about the role of the St. Bernard dogs as mountain rescuers. We also went to the gorges of Durnass, but couldn’t walk up the entire 1km walkways as last year a few large boulders crashed down and wrecked everything. Glad we weren’t there at the time!

Did you know that cows don’t sleep! At least we don’t think they do, and if they do they don’t keep still! On Monday, several cows appeared in the field in front of us. Not a huge problem you might think. Except that each one has an enormous bell on it. As the cows move the bells ring continuously. We thought it would stop at night time as the cows slept, but, oh no! The bells continue all night. Fortunately the girls are at the back of the house so can’t hear it as much. I’ve resorted to sleeping under my pillow. I suppose it’s the price to pay for living in the real Switzerland, and it’s the rural equivalent of urban car noise. Have a look at the movie and listen to the noise!!! 

 9th May –walk down to Brig: Photo above is the 17th century Stockalper Castle, built by Kasper von Stockalper. There are three of these tall square towers, each with a cupola, and they are named after the three wise men, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar.

On the 10th we caught the train to Zermatt in order to get the cable car to the Kleines Matterhorn. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies. The forecast for temperatures was 26ºC at 1000m, cooling to -5 ºC at 4000m: which was where we were heading, so we carried our ski jackets with us…boy, did we need them!
Zermatt is closed to cars, using electric shuttle taxis, or foot-power, instead, therefore it makes for a very peaceful environment. The walk through the village, towards the cable-car station, takes you past all the touristy shops and cafes and we stopped numerous times! Zermatt is at 1620m and the route to the top needed three cable cars: the first to get us to Furi at 1867m, the second to get us to Trockener at 2939m, and the final one to get us to the highest cable-car station in Europe at 3883m. We took the lift to the viewing platform on top of the station and took in the panorama. It was quite breath-taking, and, because of the clear skies, we could see for many miles around. There were far more mountains then we could have imagined and we managed to pick out Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. We also walked down underground into the Glacier Paradise, a huge cavern dug out of ice, where inside there were many ice statues, which were incredible in detail.

We were all feeling the effects of the altitude and the cold, so headed back down to the warmth Zermatt, ate a lovely meal, and headed back on the train home. A truly memorable day for us all!
 

 We’ve finally had enough of the cows! The bells make such a racket, they literally leave your ears ringing, and combined with the weird mooing noises it is a nightmare, 24:7. After careful tactical considerations regarding how easy it would be to execute a night raid to cut off the cowbells, we opted for the easier approach, and at 3am, Saturday morning we carried our mattresses into the girls room and spent the rest of the night there! We discussed moving accommodation, but knew this would end up costing us a fortune, so we decided we’d better put up with it, and sleep in the girl’s room for the rest of the week. After all, we have chosen the budget accommodation so you get what you pay for. When we spoke to the owner, she told us that the local people have complained to the authorities via a petition, but nothing has been done about it. I asked her what the bells were for, and she said nobody knows. The farmer says they are ‘special’ cows and need the bells. During April and May there are several cantonal cow fighting championships to find the ‘Queen of the Valais’. Our best guess as to the purpose of the bells is either to deafen the cows so that they can concentrate on fighting in the ring, or to drive them insane, hence making them manic fighters. Bizarre!!

The farmer moved the cows to a slightly lower field during the day, but they seem to have crept back up again, nearer our house, during the evening, so we’ll see what tonight brings. It’s now 10.30pm and the cows are just audible. We’ve elected to stay in the girl’s room just to ensure a full nights sleep. It’s off to Bern tomorrow on the train, so we need an early start!

Aside, from the cows, we still haven’t heard when the car will be fixed. The insurance company said they’d asked for an estimate Wed, but haven’t heard anything back yet. They tried again today, but as it’s Saturday they probably didn’t get very far.

During the day, we drove up the Saas valley to Saas Fee, another non-vehicle town, sat at the foot of the Dom and several other tall peaks. Very similar to Zermatt, with traditional chalets, it was a peaceful village and very picturesque. Elena wasn’t feeling on top of the world so we didn’t stay long though. The windy roads had given her car sickness, which she couldn’t shake off. 

13th May- Bern

The train ride into Bern took us thru the Lötschberg mountain (15km actually inside the tunnel), bringing us out at Kandersteg. From there we followed lake Thun, past Spietz, and into Bern. We spent the day wandering thru the ‘old town’, with the girls heelying along the smooth-floored arcades. All the shops were shut as it was Sunday, which is just as well as Andrew kept wandering off to look at more knives (he’s already bought a new Swiss army knife), cameras and other expensive items. The Heelys are creating quite a stir everywhere we’ve been, either in France or Switzerland. It seems like no-one has seen them before. The girls are losing track of the number of times they’ve been stopped by people, and because of language issues, just have to show off the wheels on the bottom of their trainers. It’s like walking around with two famous celebs!

Speaking of celebs, we came across a group making a Bollywood movie. A young Asian couple were dancing, whilst their entourage held umbrellas (for the sun), adjusted hair, and generally fawned over them. The clipper board said the film was called ‘Sathya in Love’, so we’ll look out for it in the future! Later on, Madi and I went to McDonalds loos and bumped into the female lead…weeing with the stars, whatever next!

We saw the Bern bears (a bit sad to see them in their pit), watched the ‘Bern Show’ (3D show about the history of Bern- was quite good considering it was ‘education’), and lunch in the old town. Good day out! 

14th May- A sad day

This is the day our lovely dog, Caly, died, aged 17 years. She was on her holidays with Andrew’s Mum and Dad at the caravan in Wales having a great time. She died peacefully.

15th May- A gorge walk

Had a walk in a gorge near to our house, which we named ‘Crag Martin Gorge’ due to the large number of Crag Martins that dive-bombed us as we walked. Also spotted our first Alpine swifts.

16th May- A small taste of Italy
We hopped on the train again today; to take our first ever trip to Italy, albeit only for the day. The route took us through a mountain tunnel to a small town called Domodossola. We walked through the streets on a route that took us to the Piazza Mercato (Market Square) in the heart of the historic town. It is, apparently, typically Renaissance in style, with its balconies, protruding loggias, arches and granite columns which date back to the 15th century. We had lunch in a small restaurant, dining on pizza, lasagne and Andrew’s first glass of Chianti drunk in Italy. Really cheap food and very tasty! We worked if off by walking to the top of ‘Colle di Mattarella’ to Sacro Monte Calvario, one of nine ‘Sacri Monti’ (sacred mountains) in this region of Northern Italy. These sites are dedicated to different aspects of catholic beliefs and here, following the path up the hill, there are 15 sanctuaries containing life-size statues and enormous frescoes depicting the course of Christ’s Passion (i.e. his journey carrying the cross to his crucifixion). The picture here is the one where he arrives in heaven after his resurrection. Although you can’t really tell from this picture, the sanctuaries are actually in pretty bad shape, with fading colours and broken statues. One of the sanctuaries is undergoing restoration, which looks a tedious, painstaking and difficult task. No doubt this was prompted by the sites’ inclusion onto the World Heritage List in 2003, but it will be a long time before it will be restored to its former glory. 

17th May-Car update
It’s a Bank Holiday today and a holiday tomorrow too, so nothing is happening with the car until Monday. The quote for repairs has still not been received by our insurance company, but they have told the garage to go ahead with repairs anyway. Apparently it is booked into the body shop on Monday and they are trying their best to have the work finished by next Friday as we leave Switzerland the day after. We will see……….. 

18th May- Avalanche!

We headed up the Dala valley to the thermal spa town of Leukerbad today. Every day, 3.9 million litres of water gush and bubble at temperatures up to 51 ºC into 22 pools, rich in calcium, sulphur and gypsum. This makes for a therapeutic spot for bathing, which has been going on since Roman times. We couldn’t make use of this however, because our swim stuff is still in the car (in France!)!!. Instead we made do with the spectacular scenery, the park and the avalanches. Check out the movies for one of the avalanches (or rather, the ava-littles……but come on….it is an avalanche, and we could hear it!!) and the girls getting giddy on the hammock!
 

19th May

We bid farewell to Brig today and headed for Interlaken. Despite the cows (we remained sleeping on the floor in the girls’ bedroom for the rest of our stay), we enjoyed our Valais chalet and our host, Elisabeth, was very nice and friendly. May is a nice time to visit the Valais as it is virtually empty of tourists. Although the smaller ski lifts are all closed until June (they only just closed in April), the main touristy things are open so there’s still plenty to see.

Our route to Interlaken took us through Grimsel Pass, which had been closed only last week. We drove up and up, on windy roads with hairpin turns. Deep snow lined the roadsides, and you could imagine how treacherous it would be if the clouds came down. We saw loads of bikers (motor and amazingly, push-bikers (crazy people)), which Andrew kept looking at quite forlornly (ahhh!), as it must undoubtedly be a great road to ride on. We stopped for a snow-ball fight at the highest point of the pass, before driving down to the other side into the Aare gorge. Here we stopped at the Reichenbach waterfall for a picnic and took the funicular up to the falls. These falls are where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle staged the death of Sherlock Holmes, as he fought with Prof. Moriaty. They both tumbled into the water from the top to their death. Very strangely (it seemed a bit weird to us), the British Sherlock Holmes Society visited the falls all dressed up in costume, and ‘Sherlock’ fought ‘Moriarty’ in front of them. Very bizarre to think grown people do this sort of thing. Anyway, the falls are amazing and we walked right to the top, peering over the various bridges down into the water.

We arrived at the Manor Farm campsite, 2km outside Interlaken, later that day. It’s cost more for 1 week in a caravan here, than we paid for the 2 weeks in the Valais, and this was the cheapest thing I could find!!. We are staying with Eurocamp on this site, so there are quite a few English people here (the first ones we met for a long time!). the caravan is really clean and well equipped….not a cow in sight….so we look forward to peaceful sleeeeeeeeep in a nice comfy bed!! 

20th May- International Encounters

We had a lazy day around the site today, enjoying the sun. The girls have befriended some German children so they have been off playing somewhere. We went into Interlaken in the evening not expecting much to be open (Sunday in the Valais has been deader than a dead thing). How wrong were we! It was really busy, shops were still open (Madi treated herself to a Swatch watch), loads of Japanese and Indian tourists wandering about. 

We heard the Alpine horn being blown by one of the shop owners (who was really good at it of course), and was rapturously applauded by the huge Japanese group sitting at the restaurant across the road. A few minutes later the horn was in the restaurant and a Japanese fella was having a go, being cheered on by his friends. He wasn’t bad considering it was probably his first go, and even got a few different notes from it. The girls heely-ed around the town, still creating a bit of a spectacle and being stared at.

21st May- Bern again!

Last time we were in Bern, Andrew spotted a second hand SLR camera (D70S) body at a really good price. Elena has saved up every penny of her spending money since about February for ‘something’, and has decided she wants a ‘proper’ camera. We went back today to buy it, taking advantage of our Swiss Travel System card to return back to Interlaken by train to Thun, then boat to Oberhofen, and then by bus back to the site. The weather changed very suddenly as we were on the boat and the skies darkened quite dramatically. Andrew caught this photo of the clouds.
 

22nd May- Gondola Ride

Another lovely day today, blue skies and warm. We drove up to Grindelwald, with great views of the North face of the Eiger. We rode up to Bort at 1570m on a gondola, and then walked back down to Grindlewald through meadows and along the edge of the forest. 

23rd May- Trümmelbach Falls

We drove up the Lauterbrunnen valley, which is very picturesque. It’s the world’s deepest U-shaped valley which gives it a dramatic landscape: steep cliffs and loads of waterfalls. You can imagine it being the setting for a dinosaur movie in some long-lost land! We were going to visit Trümmelbach Falls, a series of 10 illuminated glacier-waterfalls inside the mountain (these are the only ones in Europe still accessible). They drain the glaciers of the Eiger, Jungfrau and Monch with up to 20,000 litres of water flowing through them every second. It’s hard to capture how impressive these waterfalls are on camera. The noise of the water is incredibly loud, and the shapes of the crevices where the water flows are very beautiful. 

24th May- Mount Titlis

We used our last ‘Swiss Pass’ day today, to go to Engelberg, near Luzern. It was quite a long train ride at 2.5hrs, but we used the time for school. Got some strange looks as we did spellings! I’d seen the tourist info on Mount Titlis many months ago, and we were going because of the Ice-flyer, rotating cable car and glacier park. My guide book said it is one of Switzerland’s main tourist resorts and it was certainly one of the busiest places we’ve seen to date. Loads of Japanese and Indians (the snack bar at the cable car station only served Indian food, which for us, was really unusual as we’ve haven’t really seen much Indian cuisine in either France or Switzerland). The ride up to the top was in three stages: a gondola (just for our family), a big cable-car, and the rotating gondola. None of us really enjoyed the last two stages as we were crammed into the cable-car with over 50 other people. Not the pleasantest of experiences! Anyway, at the top (which has Europe’s highest bar) we had what was our ‘highest’ meal and headed out onto the snow. We’d gone geared up with gloves this time, as we were so cold at the top of the Matterhorn we didn’t want to spoil our fun in the glacier park. As it happened, Titlis is smaller than the Matterhorn, and the Kliene Titlis (which is where we actually were) is only at 3020m. That extra 800m on the Matterhorn must have really dropped the temperature, because on Titlis we were all roasting in our ski jackets and ended up stripping off to T-shirts.
The ice-flyer ride down to the glacier park was really good (see movie), and we had some fun on the snow-tubes and various types of sledges, getting completely wet through (it’s amazing where snow manages to get when you crash land in a pile of it!). We braved the crowded cable car back down and caught the train home. Spoke to the insurance company, who had been told by the garage that our car will definitely be ready tomorrow, so we’re planning to go and get it. 

25th May- 600km, one picnic and still no car!

We drove to get the car in Nantua (France). When we got to the garage the owner told us it wasn’t ready: they were waiting for the light cluster to be delivered, which wouldn’t happen until at least next Tuesday. The car was still at the body shop, so we drove there to have a look at it and get some stuff out of it. It’ll be amazing if it’s ready even by Tuesday, with it being a holiday on Monday, so we don’t know when we’ll get it back. Very disappointed, and annoyed with ourselves for believing the info we had yesterday, instead of double checking this morning before we set off! Complete waste a day. 

26th May

We left Switzerland and headed for the Black Forest in Germany. We’ve had a great time with the Swiss. Getting to grips with German has been a bit difficult, but it has set us up for our time in Germany. The multi-languages of Switzerland has been a bit hard on our language-deficient brains. If you try to be polite and say your pleases and thank-yous in German, they know instantly that you’re not German of course, so answer in French! This completely throws me, and my brain either completely freezes or I answer in Spanish!! Add to that that we now have learnt a few Italian words now, so it’s anyone’s guess as to what gets said!

The drive to Gengenbach in the Black Forest was very pleasant. We decided to come off the motorway and drove up along the forest roads instead. Very lovely countryside. We are staying on a farm just outside Gengenbach (bit worried about the cows!!). Our hosts are Barbara and Erwin Wussler and we have lots of ‘friends’ to look after (horses, goats, chickens, rabbits, pigs and cows……which are very quiet, thank heavens!!). Here is a picture of our house (we are on the top foor) and the girls with Daisy and Ricky. The apartment is really lovely, very well equipped and immaculately clean…..certainly landed on our feet with this one! We have cable TV, but the only English channel is CNN….this is the girls 7th week without English TV!! 

27th May- A gander around Gengenbach

Yes it’s my turn to write a blogg entry. Didn’t want to but it means I don’t have to wash up! As I hack away Jane is frantically shuffling paper and books to ply me with “tourist” type information for your perusal.

Gengenback is spelt wrong, as Jane has just murmured into my ear…….she’s getting on my wick. It’s Gengenbach, and only five minutes away. Very quaint village with a shop selling “real” ice cream of various flavours for the tiny record breaking (Well, our trip record anyway) price of 60 cents. Of course everybody just had to have one (Except me) and wander around slurping and dripping everywhere.

We managed to visit (much to the kids distress) a “carnival museum” with examples of costumes from years gone by. Not sure what was going on (Our German is not too good) but they seem to have an annual carnival where men dress as witches and women cheer as the pretend witches pretend to kidnap pretend kids and are then scared off by pretend heroes with pretend weapons…………………………….you get the picture.

This town has the biggest advent calendar in the world. It is actually the town hall which is lit up at Christmas with all the blinds shut over the windows. Everyday they raise a window blind and…..there you have it…….a giant chocolate, not really a giant chocolate just a Christmas type scene in the window. We didn’t see it in all its splendour because, well, it’s not Christmas. AS

In the evening, the girls went with Barbara and Erwin to feed all the animals. They had a great time (I went too (Jane, not Andrew-I-hate-touching-animals-and-I’m-scared-to –death-of-them-Sullivan). Barbara told me a little about Germany and her views of it. I had read that the dialects in each state are very different, and Barbara told me she struggled understanding the local accent here in Baden-Wurttemberg as she originally lived in the north, despite being able to speak English, Italian, French, Dutch and Turkish! My meagre efforts to learn languages seemed a bit pale compared to Barbara’s abilities (she used to work for the German government years ago as a translator). JES 

28th May- A lazy day

A Bank Holiday so we had a lazy day. It was late out of bed for all of us and then generally slobbing about watching movies and playing games together.

29th May- Glass Blowing

We had a trip to Dorotheenhütte the glashütte at Wolfach, a place where they blow glass into vases, bowls and everything else you can think of. The also produce Christmas decorations (The kids get a free one each on entry) and give people the opportunity to have a go themselves. We paid the €10 each for the kids, et voila, two amazing vases to carry around half of Europe without breaking. (See movie)

We moved on from there to see, stand in and eventually watch chime, the worlds biggest cuckoo clock. It’s about the size of a house and quite an engineering feat (appartently it is only out by 2 seconds every day). We wandered around the inside of the clock, where a mechanised man explains the ins and outs. A group of Brasiians came in whilst we were there so we offered to take their photo so that they could all be on it together. they then took one for us....spot the wierd man who decided to join our family!!. We waited outside for the clock to chime 4 o’clock, standing in the rain, and then the 12 foot long wooden cuckoo sprung to life, bursting through its wooden door and letting out...wait for it..... a miniscule cuc……………………………………………..koo…………………………………..cuc…………………………………………koo……………………..(Four times though). The look on the kids faces was priceless!!!!!!!!!! Another €6 well spent. But we all laughed, oh how we laughed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AS

Also had real Black Forest Gateau for tea! Very nice and kirsch-y!! 

30th May- Another boring museum! (according to the kids)

 Another museum today (well, it is a school day after all). We went to Vogtsbauernhof, an open air museum documenting over 400 years of Black Forest history. It promised to be an interesting day out. They have taken to pieces and re-built six fully furnished farmhouses along with 15 out-buildings, which you can walk around and get a feel for how people lived many years ago. The brochure said that we would see ‘fascinating demonstrations and events that will transport you back to bygone centuries…’ etc etc. The reality was a little less than that though. It seemed a missed opportunity to us. It really is a fabulous place…amazing buildings…but just no atmosphere. We’d expected more people dressed up in traditional clothing (we saw 2 ladies) and a bit more interaction. Maybe it is better in Summer? The girls ended up on the playground (where all days out end), eating ice-cream! 

31st May- Kinzig River

The weather’s been a bit hit and miss this week, except for yesterday and today, so we set off for a walk into the Black Forest. Not sure how, but we missed the trees completely and ended up walking along the Kinzig river instead (I got blamed for that one!). Nice walk, but a bit too long for the girls (although it’s hard to tell when they’ve had enough physically because they moan about walking and being bored within 10 mins of setting off anyway!). We’d crossed over the river and then walked back along the other side. Then realised we couldn’t see another bridge over. You know when you can’t decide whether to turn back to the bridge you can see, or carry on to the one you can’t see. We carried on!! Anyway, we got back in one piece, it wasn’t really that far, and then the girls got to feed all the animals again so quickly forgot how boring the walk (to them) was.