Friday 18th November 2022
Today we are on our way again for the next 18 days. We have hired a VW Golf this time and the loose plan so far is to travel south to Switzerland, spend a few days there, then head towards Spain and Portugal. It is about 2500km to Portugal so we might not make it that far as we are due back at Benny’s on 6th December. Wish us luck.

Well this morning the weather is putrid. In Chemnitz it started at 4°C and will not get any warmer, by 3pm it is forecast to be -3°C. So we are out of here in search of fine and warm weather. We need even more luck on this front as the forecast across Europe is rain for the next 2 weeks.

We left Ben’s at about 8.30am as we had a very big driving day. Our destination tonight is Kandern in the south west of Germany just near the Switzerland border. It is about 660km without any wrong turns. We have added me as a driver this time so I can help out with the driving as we have at least 2 or 3 long days of driving to and from Benny’s in the next couple of weeks. Eeekkkk! I am a little scared and apprehensive. I know I can do it but it isn’t my favourite thing to do. I will need to psyche myself up and it is one of the easiest places in Europe to drive on the autobahns. They are such good roads and the drivers are on the ball all the time.

Anyway, as the weather was so miserable, rainy and foggy, David started the driving as they also drive so fast. Unfortunately, there also wasn’t much to see as therein kept coming down. I wasn’t keen to start driving now and David also wasn’t keen for me to start either, so he was a trojan and just kept on driving. On and on and on we went. 100, 200, 300, 400km, theism just kept ticking on by, the weather stayed the same and my amazing husband just kept on going. At about 2.30pm the weather cleared a little, the rain stopped for a bit, so it was time. I bit the bullet and had a drive. The aim was for about 30mins just to give me a little introduction to autobahn driving. I was a little nervous as some of the cars today have been driving in excess of 160kmh. It is tricky being on the other side of the car, driving manual and amongst the fast drivers but I managed ok. Painfully after about 10mins there was a traffic jam caused by an earlier accident, so the next 30-40 mins was a continuous stop, start, in 1st and 2nd gear at between 5 and 15kmh,. So the speed was no longer a problem and I got heaps of gear changing practice. The traffic jam finally ended and I drove for about another 30mins. It is a little stressful but I managed to get up to about 120kmh which is pretty fast for me. David then took over and drove the last hour to our little apartment in Kandern. The scenery as we continued towards Kandern was beautiful green farmland with amazing autumn colours in the forest. It was beautiful. Kandern is a little suburb off the main road. The further in we got, the less likely we thought our host would speak any English, but lucky us, he has a son who lives near Brisbane and his English was really good.

Time to make some plans for tomorrow. Hope all is well at home. Take care. Lots of love from us!