Week 1 - Things

13 July - 19 July: Germany

Trucks are everywhere on the roads in Europe. Well, except on Sundays. They contain all sorts of products, from strawberries from Holland, tomatoes from Italy, biscuits from Belgium. There always seems to be more German and French trucks on the road, with the odd Czech or Romanian type in the mix. Whatever the type or provenance, these diesel monsters plod along – slow and steady winning the proverbal race. But, I always like to check which nationality our little hard-working camper can overtake. “Take that, Poland”, I’ll say. “Eat our dust Hungary!”I’ll cry. I´m shallow, but our camper was doing 30km up a mountain the other day, so hooray for little triumphs.

We inherited a pet fly, christened Patrick by Edwin. He travelled for about 5 days from Creglingen to Füssen. (Mind you, he may have not been the same fly, but you know, we had six-feeted, winged company with us all the way and while it’s kind of gross, it was kind of nice to have someone else along fo the ride).

Pfifferling mushcrooms are delicious. We ate them for three days straight; once with a lovely steak from Wertheim, another time with creamy pasta with bacon chunks, and then the last time with Frankish sausages and barbequed potato crisps. According to our combined opinion, pfifferling mushrooms taste nutty, creamy, sweet and earthy. (More so the latter - sometimes gritty too, as I can’t always wash them as thoroughly as I might do at home).

Butterflies flourished at just the time that Edwin and I decided to make a little trek from Münster to Creglingen along the Romantic Road. There were orange ones with black and white dots, black ones with white dots, white ones wit black dots … the permutations of colours are endless, but they were practically swarming. Combined with delicate Germanic blooms of violet, yellow and white, we enjoyed a warm stroll of six or seven kilometres in idyllic teuton countryside.

Walking along the quaint, forested path from Creglingen to H_______, just after the Thimble Museum (which was closed, unfortunately, during our ramble), my eyes locked with those of a young doe. She eyed me with mild surprise while I fumbled stupidly with the video camera and gasped to Edwin what (or who) I could see. She slipped noiselessly into the brush, never to be captured.

There are numerous crucifixes dotted along the roadside in mid- and south Germany. In Holland we tend to stumble more upon statues or chapels of Mary. (Note: we took this shot in Austria, actually, as we never captured crucifix shots along the road in Germany. See Innsbruck's pretty buildings in the background!)

Schneebollen were advertised as a Frankish speciality. From how they looked, I thought they might be massive balls of marzipan, but when I tasted one, I must admit I was disappointed. As large as a softball, they are crimped strips of crumbly shortcrust pastry, woven into a round shape. They come in various flavours from vanilla, to chocolate to hazelnut I’m sure, but they are ultimately just not sweet enough or quite tempting enough to actually buy. We left the €6 packets in Dinkelbühl.
The art of ricocheting pebbles across a quite lake has been lost on the new generation. Edwin and I watched three teen girls try their hand at this age-old skill and witnessed their sad failure at every turn. Wrong rock selection, bad technique – honestly, underarm? – and much too much self-consciousness. We showed them how it is done. I mean, Edwin did.

Edwin said when he first tasted it in Australia that iced coffee would “absolutely take off” if it ever arrived in Europe. That was 7 years ago. It’s ubiquitous, now. Expensive (around €5 per glass), and not quite as nice as it is in Melbourne Town (the icecream isn´t quite right, they leave out the ice and they use too much whipped cream then sprinkle it with coffee instead of chocolate). But, it is still much anticipated when in need of a caffeine hit and a thirst quench.

Harder than it looks, the science to rigging a tarp is a mystery to me and my husband. Efficient guy-rope tying combined with optimum peg hammering and best tensile points … needless to say, we have managed numerous times now to make a sort of shelter that keeps out rain and gives shade to the camper when there is none, but it’s a craft that will surely be honed over time. We are only one week into the trip and we will be true tarp-ease-artistes when we’re through with our European adventure.