Hermeskeil - Freiburg

We had breakfast with the leftover Americans and the only other group now staying at the hostel - some Germans. Obviously 8am was too early for the Americans as almost all of them came down to breakfast in their pyjamas!

After we had packed up we loaded everything into the car. There had been no new snow overnight and there was no ice so for once there was nothing to clean off the car. On the way to the express way we bought diesel without any dramas, though we realised that we had no idea how much the tank holds. We had an uneventful trip, and I even remembered passing the army/airforce base just near Mannheim from our last trip in 2002. We stopped at a roadhouse near Mannheim for some morning tea, where there was also a motel. We counted at least 6 Avon cars in the carpark, so there must have been some sort of Avon convention on.

On reaching the turn off to Freiburg we once again had no idea how to get to the youth hostel, so we just drove and drove. None of it made any sense in relation to the map we had of the inner city of Freiburg in our guidebook. We went through 'town' and ended up in suburbia, and were just looking for somewhere to ask for directions when we saw a sign for a youth hostel. We didn't know if there was more than one youth hostel in Freiburg, but thought that at least if we got to the wrong one they should be able to give us directions to the right one! We followed the signs, but ended up on a bikepath/footpath which lead over a river, but certainly wasn't wide enough for cars! A kind man stopped and told us how to get there on roads but said it was a common mistake! When we finally got to the hostel it was the right one.

It is a very big hostel, but for some reason the kitchen doesn't cater for lunch or dinner unless you order and pre-pay for it over an hour beforehand, so we ordered and paid for dinner. They also still had us down as a reservation for 3 people, even though Tim had emailed them the change in numbers, so our room turned out to fit 4 and is the largest, nicest room we have had so far. As we had missed lunch (and it wouldn't have been pre-ordered anyway) we went for a walk to find something. We walked along beside the river for a while, and then decided to head for the main road. We found what passes for a shopping centre in Germany and had lunch in a Turkish kebab joint. They were the strangest kebabs we have ever had - on pita bread, with lettuce, tomato, red cabbage, yoghurt sauce and some other strange things, plus meat and chilli flakes. We walked back and Tim did some washing and I knitted until dinner. Dinner was ok, (dessert was a Milky Way!), and the only drink on offer was a barrel of raspberry tea. The kitchen staff thought it strange when Tim asked for some water to drink. After dinner we resisted the urge to watch "Bruce Almighty" (in German) which the hostel was showing, and went to bed at about 9pm.

A large group of folkdancers is staying at the hostel, and as well as dancing classes, they have a variety of craft activities too. The man who directed us to the youth hostel is with them.