GERMANY - WEEK 5

Into the swing of things in Rudesheim

For our accommodation, we've used:

• www.booking.com
• www.airbnb.com and of course
• www.servas.org

Elvira and Rudi - airbnb hosts near Obsteig

Everything has been just great. Tonight we're having our second sleep at Hotel Ruthmann (with booking.com) at Oestrich-Winkel. It's not far from Rudesheim and in fact it's all not that far south of Koblenz. We have good friends Kai and Gabi and Johannes that live at Schlangenbad (means snakes I think.) When we leave here, we head to Saint Quentin in France, then on to Amiens and finally Lille before we get rid of the car and start on the bike and barge trip - Brugges to Amsterdam.

 Fay and Gra at Augsburg, Romantic Route

Fussen, Augsburg and the Romantic route were excellent choices as we headed to Aufheim-Senden (Near ULM). The coffee and tiramisu that Volker and Lieselotte served up was a great welcome by "old Servas friends."

Thanks Lieselotte & Volker & of course Matthias

You name it we saw it around ULM on this visit. The welcome was extended by Kerstin (Andy baltaks lovely wife), Matthias and even the neighbour who gave me a bunch of German plates. Great to get a good look at the school where Lieselotte teaches 4 days a week.
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Esslingen was enroute to Weingarten (near Karlsruhe). When we arrived and were greeted by our hosts Wolfgang and Hildegard, we were saddled up with a walk round the area, through vineyards and amongst forest etc. A beaut way to get an impression of the area, especially when the next day was scheduled to be a full-on guided walking tour, extra hike and then celebration dinner party. That sure gave us a work out - both days.

Wolfgang's a pretty good guide we reckon

You'd have thought they were giving out free fuel to truckies when we headed off to the pretty town Oestrich-Winkel, on the busy Rhine River. If you drive a truck and you weren't there, you were one of the few I'd reckon. Hotel Ruthmann was fairly easy to locate and so we settled in.

Our time in Oestrich-Winkel (Rudesheim, Schlangenbad, Kloster Eberbach Monastery and of course the Rhine River) was really superb. Thanks Kai, Gabi and Johannes for helping to make it a special time. They have a bit of Aussie in them those Germans. In fact quite a bit.

Saturday - off to Saint Quentin in France.