Allemagne

We've had a fabulous time here in Germany. I have been sad much of the time as I keep thinking about my aunt Rosemary, savouring the funny little happy memories that pop into my head, and not quite believing she's really gone.

It has been a lovely week despite the sadness and feeling so very far away from my mother and her siblings, who are of course terribly grief-stricken. What would we do without email?

We had a week with Andreas, Tiziana and family in Furth, near Nuremberg. They have built a lovely house and filled it with their gorgeous children Adrian (9 - Henry is now his biggest fan), Fabian and Luca (2 year old twins - Bella was in heaven - they followed her around and serenaded her. Literally - as only a 2 year old can. I hope she made the most of such adoring attention!).


A and T are wonderful hosts - we have had delicious meals, drunk lots of wine (but only in moderation, for digestive purposes of course) and had fun with them and the little people. We were all set to go off to Prague on Thurs a.m when I heard about Rosemary on Skype. I couldn't face going anywhere. So we stayed close to home, visiting "Franconian Switzerland" one day, the castle in Nuremberg another day, and having family time all together and in various combinations. It really is a gorgeous part of the world.

Yesterday we picked up another car, having driven our tiny Nissan Micra (on roads with NO SPEED LIMITS - ye gads - definitely a German car next time) from Kehl, just across the border from Strasbourg and left it in Nuremberg. This time we have a groovy VW Polo plus - much safer feeling on the amazing autobahns here, where 140kms can still be slow to those in big Mercedes.

We are on our way to Berlin, which will be v interesting. I have bikes booked for tomorrow but it is very cold so I may rethink that plan. We had snow on the way up yesterday. Eek. We stayed last night in Leipzig, and are about to go into the old town in search of coffee and wurst or cake, whichever looks best. Henry always asks for "anything with meat in it", so we should be ok. Ordering from a completely German menu can be a little freaky when one only has about 10 words to draw from - who knows what will come on the plates??!! We are going to what is apparently the oldest cafe in Europe, and maybe the Stasi museum afterwards. so we can truly appreciate the freedom we take so for granted. The architecture here is meant to be pretty amazing, too.

We will head back to Furth in a few days to switch our cold clothes for our hot clothes before leaving for Marrakesh on Thursday. Much planning still to do for that, thank goodness for hotels with wifi. Strangely the expensive hotels (esp in Italy) tend to charge by the hour, where the smaller, budget hotels tend to offer free wifi - and have more friendly service too.

Okey dokey time to get back on the road. Wiederseihn.