Our Day Today - Monday 6 July 2009

This morning I awoke to the kids telling me they’d broken the glass lamp in the bedroom of the unit we're renting. That pretty much set the tone for the day.

Most of my morning was spent doing laundry. This meant carting the dirty clothes down to the hotel at the end of the street because our hotel has no facility for washing clothes, so back and forth, back and forth. Ho hum.

The rest of the day was spent arguing with the kids about the noise they were making and fighting about whose turn it was on the computer. Fun stuff.

On a brighter note, when we booked into the unit in Strasbourg we thought the wifi was 8 euros per hour. When Andrew checked it out it turns out it’s one euro for 24 hours of use which has to be the best buy of the trip.

Selling Car

We’ve had contact with two different people who we found on the internet about selling our car. One is French and one is English. Hmmm, I wonder who we’ll go with…Both have places near Paris which suits us because that’s the way we’re heading on our way to the UK. Maybe we can even take it to the UK but we’re not sure about whether it’s legal to drive a French registered car in the UK.

We originally planned to sell the car in Slovenia where the people are very obliging and helpful. But we didn’t get around to it. There’s quite a few things I wanted to do in Slovenia which I didn’t get around to doing only because we couldn’t get ourselves organised.

Petit France - Sightseeing - 5 July 2009

Interesting head in a fountain
Samuel on a curly bridge

Dinner at mexican restaurant
Houses on canal

Strasbourg has lots of interesting places to walk around. One of these areas is Petite France which is full of half timbered houses from the 16th and 17th century. In the past these houses were occupied by fishermen, millers and tanners. Almost all the houses have a first floor overhang which protrudes into the street and some of the roofs have open galleries where the tanners hung the skins to dry after they’d been cleaned in the canal waters. These days tourism is the main industry and the area is full of restaurants and souvenir shops.

After our walk obligatoire before dinner we found a place to eat and the man serving us was so charming and friendly and he spoke the most beautiful French….beautiful because I could understand what he was saying. The French we hear being spoken in Strasbourg is a mix of French and german – lots of words that make no sense to me. So I’m back to giving that blank look whenever anyone speaks to me.

Concentration Camp - Sunday 5 July 2009

Memorial

Today we went to visit Natzweiler Struthof Concentration Camp. This camp is the only camp constructed on French territory by the Nazis and is situated in a peaceful wilderness forested area on the side of a mountain. The landscape is just stunning. It’s hard to imagine the terrible things that happened in this beautiful place but the barbed wire fences and gates are still there and the museum has photos and descriptions of what went on.

Parc de L'Orangerie - Saturday 4 July 2009

Storks

Having fun in the old cars

The gorgeous trees

We spent the day at the wonderful Parc De L’Orangerie, the oldest and largest park in Strasbourg which was built to impress Napoleon’s wife Josephine. I’d never heard of this place but I read about it on a blog somewhere and I thought it was somewhere the kids would like to go. There are animal enclosures with monkeys, curly horned African goats, lots of birds, kookaburras (would you believe) and a mini petting zoo where the kids could feed goats, lambs and guinea pigs. The horse took Samuel’s whole cup of food, cup and all! The park has a programme to encourage stork breeding and they have built these tall platforms where the birds can build their nests. The storks have also made their homes on top of the chateau in the park grounds which looks kind of funny seeing this grand chateau with huge storks’ nests in the roof.

The park is obviously a popular place for wedding photos too as I saw five couples in the space of ten minutes having their wedding photos taken. It’s a very beautiful park to visit. We spent most of the day there and when it was lunchtime we went to find a supermarche so we could get some picnic things and have our lunch there.

Reunion at Sevlje - Saturday 27 June 2009

Willi and Tine
Ella and Polona

Picnic table

My Slovenian rellies on Dad’s side of the family have a family get-together once a year. It’s a picnic held at Sevlje, the family farm, and is usually held in June when the weather is nice.

This year we timed our return visit to co-incide with the picnic and it turned out to be an excellent day. We’ve already met everyone on our first trip in April. It was fantastic to see everyone together yabbering away and cracking jokes in Slovenian, none of which Andrew and I understood. But aside from the language difficulty, Andrew still managed to make everyone laugh. There was lots of food and drink and the kids played happily with all the other kids. It was a good day.

Selling the Car

Today we had another slight inkling that selling the car was not going to be a straightforward process. This was after we went to four different garages and they all said no we’re not interested in buying your car from you. Andrew rang a guy whose name we found on the internet and he told Andrew that all the dealers were overstocked with cars at the moment because people were buying new cars because there was good bonuses being offered for people to trade in their old cars. Internet guy offered to sell our car for us but we will have to bring it to Lyon. Well it’s an option I guess but I don’t fancy driving 500 km in the opposite direction. We’ll see…

Thursday 2 July 2009

Andrew washed and vacuumed the car today. In the afternoon we took it to the Renault dealer and asked about selling it. The lady said it was “too new” for them. I thought that was hilarious. I've never heard of a car being too new. I thought it was a good thing that it was still new. Anyway, she suggested we try the garages that do mechanical repairs which also sell cars. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I can see it turning into a big drama. We had originally planned to sell the car in Slovenia where everybody seems so obliging and helpful. But we didn’t get around to it. There’s a few things I wanted to do which I didn’t get around to doing only because we couldn’t get ourselves organised.

Also, today we tried to find out about getting on the Eurostar from Calais over to Dover. It’s all so complicated. The cheapest way to go over is if we take a car but seeing as we won’t have a car (we’ll have sold it by then, won't we!?) the ferry is the next best option. We wanted to travel via the chunnel but it’s really expensive. Something like ₤301.

Strasbourg 1 July 2009

We arrived in Strasbourg around lunchtime, found underground parking at a shopping centre and bought a snack and a drink for the kidlets. Then I went off on my own to look for the tourist office at the Gare. It wasn’t far to the gare and it was quicker without the kids once I worked out which way I was meant to be going. I think I need to pack a compass on my next trip. I can never tell which way is up. It was kind of exciting walking along on my own in a strange town. Eventually when I found the tourist office I saw that the map cost a euro and I only had the small change purse on me with 87 cents in it because Andrew always carries the money with him in his wallet and we’re never apart. It was abit embarrassing not having any money to pay for a map but I found some change in my pocket.

Augsburg

It rained sporadically on the drive from Bled to Augsburg in Germany. The rain fell in those hard sudden summer showers that make driving visibility difficult. We ate lunch at one of those expensive roadside cafés which I hate. But self catering wasn’t an option today. €34 for lunch, a bit exxie in my book.

The plan was to drive towards Munich and wherever we were around 2pm we would start looking for a hotel. Well at 5pm we were still driving around looking for a hotel. Usually there’s always hotels on the outskirts of town as you drive in. Maybe we were in the wrong part of town. The tourist office offered us a dorm room at the youth hostel which we initially declined but later ended up going back to because we couldn’t find anything else.

The youth hostel room was ok apart from the rampaging young folk banging on doors and hollering up and down the hallways. The breakfast was as good as any hotel breakfast we've paid 14 euros for. We scored a free carpark at the front of the building and we only brought up what we needed for the night rather than lugging suitcases up 4 flights of stairs. I guess you could say it was a learning experience. I learned that I never want to stay at a youth hostel again!

Augsburg is full of people riding their pushbikes all over the place. It’s great to see a city really set up for cyclists. The footpaths and roads all have a separate marked bicycle lane. I wonder how safe it is to ride a bike amongst all that traffic.