The campsite at Boppard on the Rhine included a public transport card in the price so we took the bus into the city of Koblenz, much easier than trying to find parking for Connie near the sights. Koblenz is on the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers and is a larger town. There is a very good sculpture called the history column that tells the history of the city, very interesting. Also a huge bombastic monument of Kaiser Wilhelm I at the confluence. We’re g...

While we were in Svalbard in June we met Dimitris when we joined the same hike over a glacier. Dimitris invited us to visit him at his work if we were passing through Frankfurt. He works at the European Central Bank in an iconic glass building which we thought would make an interesting stop. We checked into a campsite on the outskirts of the city with easy access to the metro system. The campsite owner is the grumpiest we’ve met since leaving the uk (we met a r...

From the Eagles Nest we headed West along the Austrian border to Füssen. This is where the famous Neuschwanstein castle was built by Bavaria’s favourite king, Ludwig II. It is claimed that this was the inspiration for Walt Disney’s fairy castle and it’s easy to see why. Ludwig became king at 18 and died at 40. He was a monarch with little power as Bavaria was subsumed in to the German Reich and spent his time in a fantasy world where he indulged his passio...

When Vanda was a kid they had a board game “Escape from Colditz” so we had to go. It was, of course, an infamous prison of war camp in WW2 for officers and important prisoners and the only German high security POW camp. Under the Geneva Convention officers were not to be put to work and were allowed their own uniforms etc. Under these conditions the officers made a kind of “sport” out of schemes to escape. There was a sporting rivalry between the nations ...

Did I mention the beer? Well, it’s cheap, they do a great dark beer and IPA, and it’s never less than 5% abv. I’m doing my best to try as many varieties as possible. On the subject of staples, they don’t think much of vegetarians here and there’s not much gluten free food either, but sausages....... We’d been given a tip to go to the Spreewald region. It’s a national park that is riddled with rivers and canals. Great place. We popped into the tour...