Final Europe trip, Post 6: Otterbach, Luxembourg

Continuing on from the last post, on Thursday afternoon Delle, Ben and I flew with RyanAir from Pisa (Italy) to Frankfurt Hahn (Germany), where we had left our car five days earlier. At the airport, we collected our car, paid the 40 euro parking fee, and set off on the hour-long drive to collect Dotti and her brother Lachlan (who had been travelling in Eastern Europe) from a train station before heading on to convention.

On this trip we had a number of interesting experiences! Dotti and Lachy's train was delayed a little, which was good for us, as we had to stop frequently on our way to collect them in order to refill our car's leaky radiator from the many water bottles we were carrying for this purpose. Our GPS also chose this moment to refuse to accept power from its car charger cable, creating the valid concern that should lots of jiggling and rearranging of the cable not result in said power being restored, we would have no idea how to find Dotti and Lachy OR convention! Thankfully we managed to get it working well enough to last out the rest of the trip.

At the train station, Lachy and Ben set about creating our extremely stable and unworrying luggage transport system (keep in mind we now had five people AND their luggage - including convention luggage - in our little VW Golf) while us girls met some Aussie soccer players (see below).

The luggage transport system consisted of a floppy black bag that sat on the car roof. Ben had ordered the bag on eBay some weeks before, but it had turned out to be one without proper clips to attach it to the top of the door frame. The method of securing it therefore involved people inside the car pulling the elastic straps hard in towards the centre of the car, and then slamming the door on the straps to hold them in place. It was important everyone remembered to do this each time they got back in the car...



As you may be able to imagine, the drive to convention was somewhat slow and cautious, but thankfully the luggage transport system held out well. However, we never used the bag again. After convention the boys managed to get all of the luggage in the boot, albeit with the tray thingy behind the back seats sitting up so high it practically hid the rear window!!

At we neared the convention place on Thursday night, it was already after 9pm when I realised our written directions went no further than taking us to the nearest tiny village. No worries - we figured we'd see something that looked like the right place. We turned off down one little track, saw a deer but no convention grounds, did a u-turn and took another little road we thought looked promising. We pulled into a man's driveway and asked him in German whether he knew where we needed to go. Yes! It was just the next driveway along. So in we drove, happy we'd managed to find it without needing to phone for assistance, only to discover that there was indeed a gathering there, but NOT the one we were after! So we headed back up towards the main road and Dotti rang for help.

As she began talking to the lady of the house, who knew very little English (and Dotti knows no German - except for what we'd just been teaching her and Lachy during the road trip!), we saw a large vehicle coming towards us along the narrow road. This meant we needed to pull over to let it pass. To the right of us (it's right-side drive in Europe) was a lovely flat paddock with grass up to the edge of the road, so Ben veered off into the grass.

Suddenly, we came to a extremely sudden and somewhat violent halt!! Four of us bailed out of the car to discover we had driven into the end of a roadside ditch! The front right corner of the car was wedged on the end of the ditch, the front right tyre was IN the ditch, the car was on a dramatic lean... and Dotti was still sitting in the backseat trying to keep a straight face and calmly carry on a conversation with a stranger who was trying to give us directions!!

The two young German guys who were in the oncoming vehicle stopped to help us push the car out of the ditch and check under the bonnet for any damage. It was about 10pm and dark by this time, but luckily they had a torch. The only damage seemed to be that some plastic under the front right corner of the car body was hanging down. So, having established that someone from convention would come and find us, we drove back to the main road to wait.

Two men soon turned up on a motorbike, introduced themselves, and then led the way. And guess what? All of this had happened only a few hundred metres away from convention! If it was daylight we would probably even have been able to see it on the hill across the main road. So, with our eventful day finally coming to close, we bid the boys goodnight and moved into our dorm - trying to be as quiet as possible, and thankful for the kind ladies who came out to help these noisy latecomers find their way around - and, at long last, into bed.

The next three days were wonderful days at convention. It was a very peaceful and special time. There were a number of other English speakers there and we could listen to the translation through headphones, which worked wonderfully. We sang in German though! :) There were actually lots of Australians there - 18 of us by Sunday! - including Donna H (from snowboarding in Austria blog entries), her parents and brother Brandon who had come over to visit her, and Maryanne W and Lexie S. It was good to meet Hermann too, whom some of you may have met in Australia last year.



For Sunday night we had booked a room at a youth hostel in a small town called Larochette in Luxembourg, two hours away from convention. We had longstanding plans to spend time in Luxembourg that night and the next day with our friends Francisco and Elaine, who have previously featured in this blog. They also came out to convention for the day on Sunday, so it was there that they met Delle, Dotti and Lachy, and we met their gorgeous baby daughter, Sophie, who was then only 3 months old.

That evening we drove from Otterbach to Luxembourg in the pouring rain, checked into our hostel (the blue building below) in the pouring rain, and set off to visit Francisco, Elaine and Sophie - in the pouring rain. We had a lovely dinner with them, sang some Aussie songs, and let's just say that Sophie didn't go without attention or cuddles for long!!!



The next morning, Monday, we met at Francisco and Elaine's house again and the eight of us set off into the city of Luxembourg (i.e. the capital city of the country of Luxembourg). Luxembourg soon became a firm favourite for our visitors too! We had lunch and then wandered through the valley in the centre of the city, which Ben and I had explored when we were there on my birthday earlier this year, but this time we walked further and saw more old ruins and suberb views.

Luxembourg City is great for exploring on foot... right in the centre of the city is a valley, with the city at the top of the cliffs on either side, and at the bottom of the valley is a stream, lots of trees and rocks, and staircases and walking trails all the way along. Not to mention the awesome old bridges overhead that connect the two clifftop halves of the city together!



Later on in the walk, we came to a small river running through the city, and lingered for some time to watch a family of adorable little black water birds. There were four tiny fluffy baby birds, and a mother and father bird looking on. They were initially clambering around on a cement wall jutting out of the river, but all eventually ended up in the water! Here's a video of one of the parents leading the little ones downstream - you can see them get distracted/tired and start drifting away, but if you listen carefully you'll hear the parent calling them back into line! It was extremely cute!!



After our walk, we wandered around the shops for a little while. Then we went to Oberweis - a VERY fancy bakery - and chose a treat each at Elaine's kind insistence! See photos below - these type of bakeries are everywhere and warrant a visit to Luxembourg of their own accord, we think! We then took our amazing-looking treasures back to Francisco and Elaine's house and sat down to enjoy them with great anticipation and zeal. YUMMY!!!!!



Soon it was time to hit the road and head for the place we would call home for the next two nights - a B&B in the little town of Notre-Dame-de-l'Isle, an hour north-west of Paris. This was a journey of five hours, so once we got there it was already time for bed! It was a gorgeous home that we would later discover housed various pets, grandchildren and volumes of clutter, and our hosts were a very nice couple: a man who spoke no English, and a lady who spoke some English with a very strong accent. Given that between us we knew about five words of French, we had a lot of fun talking to them!! :)

Anyway, that's all for now - I'll be back soon to tell you all about our awesome and rather dramatic adventures in Paris the next day! Goodnight!

Snowboarding trip, Post 4: Salzburg

On the Friday of our Austria trip, the five of us set off for the Bad Dürrnberg Salt Mine, “Salzwelten”, near Salzburg. After donning the attractive outfits below (to protect our clothing), we were ready for our tour.

On the tour, we rode the miners' train 650m inside the mountain, walked through the maze of tunnels, learnt all about the ancient salt mining practices of the Celts, and even crossed the Austrian-German border (twice) – underground! We crossed a brine lake (27% salt compared to the 3% salt content of the ocean) by silent boat in a dimly lit underground cavern... reminding more than one person of the sixth Harry Potter book!

We also had lots of fun sliding down two miners' slides – check out the video of Donna, Ben and I below on the 42m-long slide. We aren't sitting on a cart or anything – THIS is why we had to wear the overalls!

All in all, it was excellent fun as well as being educational! Afterwards, we had a look around the Keltendorf Celtic Village next to the mine.

Next, we spent some time wandering around the pretty city of Salzburg, with its colourful houses, narrow streets and interesting shops. Salzburg is the town where Mozart was born and The Sound of Music was filmed. Watching over the city from the top of a hill is the imposing medieval Festung Hohensalzburg - an enormous fortress that Jim, Jenny, Ben and I had toured on our 2006 Europe trip.

The five of us enjoyed a delicious lunch at a local guesthouse – cordon bleu or stew for the others, and schnitzel with cranberry sauce for me – an Austrian meal I had remembered from our 2006 trip and that did not disappoint.

We looked through part of the Salzburg Museum, including the Panorama Museum, which housed “the only giant travel panorama still existing in the whole world” - a fantastic 26m (85 x 16 foot) painting of Salzburg by Johann Michael Sattler. The artist took it on “a ten-year exhibition tour of numerous European cities between 1829 and 1839”. It was an incredible work of art – the photos below look like we could be at a lookout overlooking the picturesque city (which still looks fairly similar today), but that is actually the painting. Not bad huh!!

That night was our last at the guesthouse. The next morning, Ben, Donna and I set off, leaving Matt and Kat behind for a few more days in Austria. In the late afternoon, we had an hour or so to look around Zurich with Donna when we dropped her off in Switzerland.

That night (Saturday), we stayed with Elaine and Francisco in Luxembourg again, and were invited to lunch with some of their friends after the meeting the next day.

On Sunday afternoon we drove to France (I think we had tea at a servo in Belgium) and took the EuroTunnel back to England. We arrived in Calais early enough to be offered a place on the train leaving half an hour before the one we'd booked, so we only stopped the car long enough to be checked out by a sniffer dog before we were on the train – the upper level for the first time! We really can't say enough good things about travelling with EuroTunnel.

Anyhow, the next morning, it was off to work for both of us, and our snowboarding holiday was well and truly over. :)

Snowboarding trip, Post 1: Luxembourg

So, our snowboarding trip!! Here goes...

On Saturday 16^th Feb, we set off around 3:30am to drive to Folkestone, where we were taking a ridiculously early EuroTunnel crossing slot (5:20am) since it is much cheaper to travel at inconvenient times. :) On the train, we loaned some sticky tape to the people in the two cars in front of us, who used it to attach their improvised headlight converters fashioned with pieces of cardboard, as they had forgotten to buy the proper converters. (These are a legal requirement when driving in Europe, to stop oncoming drivers being dazzled in right-side drive countries.)

After arriving in France, we hit the highway and headed for the home of our friends Elaine and Francisco in Luxembourg, 4.5 hours away. Once there, we were shown to the attic – the fourth floor of their house – to inspect the work that Francisco, his father, and his brother David have been doing to turn the space into a guest room and storage area. Francisco's mum was making lunch, and after Elaine came back from shopping, the seven of us sat down to a very delicious meal.

Afterwards, we ate the apple pie that Ben had made for them, which dominated the conversation for quite some time as he was asked all about how he'd made it (with Elaine and Francisco translating)! Francisco's parents speak Spanish and French (plus a little German – and maybe Luxembourgish?), and Francisco, Elaine and David all speak English, Spanish, French, German and Luxembourgish – very awesome!!!!

That afternoon, Francisco and Elaine drove us to a few spots in Luxembourg for a taste of the national activity: walking!! :) First, we parked in an area known locally as “Little Switzerland”, and walked along a scrub/bush (forest doesn't feel right :P) track below some small rock cliffs alongside the road. We saw a pretty stream, an awesome stone arch bridge, and “Luxembourg's most photographed waterfall” (about a metre high)! Afterwards, we stopped for a quick drink before continuing our drive.

The next spot we stopped at had an amazing collection of giant rocks with a maze of fissures forming “hallways” (or open-topped tunnels) to walk through – and yes, Ben and Francisco hid up ahead and jumped out to scare me!! It was absolutely breathtaking (the rock corridors, not the being jumped out at)... the rock walls had big bubble-like holes and were quite green, the ground was covered in orange-brown fallen leaves, and there were actually icicles hanging from the rock in some places! Will let the photos explain the rest!

Later on, we stopped for a quick look at a castle ruin.

That night, I played the guitar and sang for Elaine and Francisco, and discovered one of the most appreciative (and willing to sing along!) audiences I have yet had the pleasure to come across. :D Very very fun!!! (When we arrived back at their place the following weekend on our way home, we learnt that they had found “Cows With Guns” (one of my recent repertoire additions) online and had been singing along to (and laughing at) it all week!!!)

On Sunday, we went to their meeting, which was in French, German and English, with simultaneous translation (using microphone/headphone sets) into the other two languages occurring much of the time!!

We hit the road straight afterwards, en route to Munich (4 or 5 hours) to collect Donna before getting to Kaprun that night (2 or 3 hours). Anyway, this entry will have taken long enough once I add all the photos, so I will start the next one in Munich and take it from there. (Can you believe that, until tonight, I was silly enough to think I might have been able to write about the entire snowboarding trip in only one blog post?! Haven't even seen a snowboard yet in this saga!) Goodnight!