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.

Hermeskeil - (Another day trip to Trier) - New Years Day

When we went in for breakfast in the morning our table hadn't been set, and there was no food in sight. Eventually the lady in charge realised and came in and told us that the Americans were leaving early and our fellow dinner room guests were having brunch later, so we had to go and get our food from the spread put out for the Americans. We got the distinct impression that we had been forgotten.

We weren't really sure what to do for the day, as it was a double whammy of Sunday (not much is open in Germany on a Sunday) plus New Years Day. In the end we decided to go to Trier again and see what we had missed the day before. We parked in the same place, and as we expected, nothing was open. But we saw the Roman-built bridge over the Mosel River, and inside a big glass building (which wasn't open because of NY's) we saw some Roman baths which they uncovered when the were excavating to build a car park - which consequently never got built! We also saw Karl Marx's house.

We wandered back to the main drag where we heard music playing. We followed the sound and it turned out to be a small brass ensemble playing hymns and classical pieces on a colonnaded balcony of the cathedral, so the music flooded the square outside the cathedral - quite unexpected!

To fill in some time we had lunch in a bistro/bar where we ordered pizzas, which turned out to be HUGE! After finishing them, we tried to get the attention of the waitress, to pay the bill, but were blanked for half an hour, which filled in some more time too. We headed back to Hermeskeil.

It had been sprinkling a tiny bit throughout the morning, but on the way back, as we moved higher up in altitude, it started to rain, and then the rain got weird and seemed to float, and suddenly we realised it was snowing! In the snow we turned off to visit the local concentration camp, but it was closed and it was snowing quite a lot so we kept going on to Hermeskeil. We took a few photos of it snowing from the youth hostel.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in our dining room writing postcards, reading and knitting (me, not Tim!) and then had dinner in another dining room, with the remaining Americans. Most of them had gone home that morning (to the U.S.) but the remaining ones actually lived in Italy.

I will say here that it was at Hermeskeil that I first remember seeing concrete table tennis tables. It would seem that the YHA in Germany must gotten a good deal on them because they seemed to be at a lot of them. When the soccer world cup was on, I remember one radio correspondent who was staying at the Possenhofen YHA (which we will get to) making a comment about said table tennis tables. I eagerly agreed with the radio that they were quite bizarre!

Hermeskeil - (Day trip to Trier) - New Years Eve

Apparently lots of businesses close at about midday on New Years Eve in Germany, so we went to Trier for the day to walk around and see what we could see anyway. Trier is one of Germany's oldest towns and was founded by the Romans in 15 BC.

It took us about half an hour to get to Trier, and we saw some enormous windmills along the way. It was cold and bleak.

When we got to Trier we decided to chance the cost of a parking station rather than find somewhere on the street to park. It was pouring with rain and the snow was progressively turning to slush - all we needed was some cola syrup and we could have opened a slushie stall!

We went to the Porta Nigra first, which is a big black stone gate, and would have originally been the gate to the city in Roman times.

Wandering down the main shopping street (cobbled with no car access) we saw a big cathedral off on a side street - the Catholic church. It was huge and inside was very ornate.

We then headed off to see a Roman basilica, and on the way stopped at a lovely little toy shop. At the front of the basilica a rather ornate rococo style building was built, which was an elector prince's palace. The basilica is now an evangelical church. Inside it was very spartan (a complete contrast to the catholic cathedral). In Roman times it was an indoor marketplace.

We trudged on through the slush and rain to the library where an exhibition of the Egbert Codex was being held. The Egbert Codex is a local illuminated manuscript. The exhibition was quite small (and probably not worth the €4 entry fee) but it did have some other lovely calligraphed scripts and even a Gutenberg Bible. We then continued on in the snow to try and find a Roman amphitheatre. When we eventually found it, it was closed (New Years Eve strikes!) but a lady who was walking past suggested we walk up the hill behind it and then we could see some of it, but couldn't get any good pictures of it from that angle. We also saw the ruins of the Imperial Thermal Baths on the way there.

We then went to the Landesmuseum, but it appeared to be closed - not that we could actually find the entrance! This was a big disappointment to Tim, as it was one of the places he really wanted to go.

We then headed back to the main shopping area to get some lunch, and as everything was closing up for the day (1pm) and our feet were sore, we went back to the car to go home. We were quite surprised that the parking only cost €4,80!

On the way back we missed the turn off and ended up going north instead of east, but eventually we worked out how to get back to Hermeskeil.

We went for a walk when we got back, to find a place for a hot drink, and the only places open in the whole town were the pubs. We finally found a bistro which would serve us hot chocolate and we also ordered something that translated as cheese bread. When it appeared it was two enormous pieces of bread with quite a few slices of cheese, plus sliced tomato, capsicum and pickles on top, sprinkled with something like paprika. It wasn't what we expected but it was quite nice!

Dinner at the youth hostel. After dinner I was determined to stay up later than 8pm (the longest I had been able to manage until then because of jetlag) - it was New Years Eve afterall - so I kept myself awake until 9pm knitting. I then succumbed to bed. All around us though were very noisy kids (mostly American) running around, constantly banging the corridor door outside our room. The Americans also let off some fireworks outside at about 8:30pm, and were going to again at midnight, but I never heard the midnight ones. Thank goodness I was really tired because otherwise the noise would have kept me awake for hours.

Mainz - Hermeskeil

It snowed lightly overnight.

Breakfast was spent with Renate, our American German friend, telling us pretty much the same things as she did the day before about how terrible the American education system was. She also gave us some useful information on shoes and leather - leather is much cheaper here and so shoes that we had seen for €20 weren't necessarily incredibly bad quality. We had been thinking that our shoes didn't have enough grip in the snow and ice so she suggested we try a particular shoe shop.

We had to be out of the hostel by 9am, so we vacated and left the car there to walk into town to go shoe shopping. I couldn't find any I liked with either good enough sole or were comfortable enough, but Tim found some good sturdy boots for a reasonable price.

After our shoe shopping expedition we headed out of Mainz to Hermeskeil. The night before Tim had gone over our maps and had written down the route to take, including names of towns and road numbers, which really helped, so our trip was relatively easy. We did however find that spray from other cars made the windscreen incredibly dirty, and once the sun came out it was almost impossible to see through. The problem was that we hadn't yet worked out where the knob to spray water on the windscreen was, and we couldn't find a place to pull over to check. I tried to assist by getting the car manual out of the glovebox,and reading out the German to Tim (complete with appalling pronunciation) and he eventually guessed enough of my mangled German to work it out. Finally we could see again!

Hermeskeil is a small town and the Youth Hostel wasn't nearly as big as the one in Mainz. We had chosen Hermeskeil to stay in because we really wanted to stay in Trier, but the Youth Hostel there was booked out, and Hermeskeil was the closest from there. The lady at the front desk showed us our table for our meals (you couldn't just sit anywhere) which was in a small room, and we shared the room with about 6 other families who were holidaying together. There were lots of Americans also staying at the youth hostel, apparently on a Christian retreat. It was quite weird, as there didn't seem to be any dedicated meeting rooms in the hostel, so you would turn a corner and discover a group of Americans sitting at a table (virtually in the corridor) having a bible study. I don't know how they concentrated!

We went for a walk after we had settled in and had our lunch. First we went to the tourist information centre and got a few brochures on Hermeskeil and Trier, and walked through the very small museum display on the town. Apparently there was a concentration camp nearby. We then walked through the town, where I found a wool shop, so I bought some wool and needles to knit a scarf for a present. We also found a $2 shop which had some nice Christmas decorations, so I bought a whole lot both for me and for presents. We also finally found a post office to buy some stamps for postcards. By this stage it was getting quite cold and slowly darker, so we went back to the youth hostel and attempted to translate the knitting instructions I had been given for the scarf. I transliterated it with Tim's help and that of a German dictionary, and though I couldn't totally translate it after about 1 and a half hours I was reasonably confident that I was knitting the same pattern I had seen in the shop.

At dinner the other families quizzed us about why we were there, and where Tim had learnt his German.