German Trip - Day 2 (Travel to Bavaria)

I woke up at 0200, which isn't that surprising considering I went to sleep at about 1800 the evening before! I decided that I should probably try to get back to sleep and get up at a more reasonable time, so I lay awake for a while before finally falling asleep again. I was woken up at 0700 by the tolling of a bell from the nearby church. I figured it was a morning chime, but then it continued ringing with no sense of rhythm. It just kept tolling erratically for the next 5 minutes or so. I later looked it up and discovered it is apparently common in many smaller villages in the South of Germany to remind people to wake up. I feel like a few chimes would've been fine though, and the reckless tolling was a bit much!

Laura somehow managed to sleep through the cacophony.

When we got up properly we found that the toilet had broken again and once again would no longer flush. We were leaving anyway so weren't super bothered, but it didn't paint a good impression of what was otherwise a very nice hotel.

After we left we went to the local backerei for some breakfast buns and we managed to fumble our way through another interaction in Deutsch. The buns were nice! We decided to head straight for Bavaria afterwards.

Driving through the autumnal countryside

At some point in our journey we stopped at a motorway parking place to pop to the loo. While there I noticed some polizei had pulled over a French driver and were chatting to him about something. I didn't pay them much mind. When we left however the police car followed us and swiftly overtook us and indicated that we should pull over. We did so and were asked to show our identification documents. Apparently they were border police and were just checking things out. We suspect that we were targeted for our non-EU number plate (thanks Brexit!).

Unfortunately they couldn't find the stamps on our passports, and neither could we (we hadn't checked when the border passport checker stamped them). They seemed concerned and asked to see proof that we'd travelled over the border legally. They also implied that we could have troubles returning to the UK without proper stamps, so they would get a person to come over and stamp our passports for us at the lay-by. We sat around for 5 minutes or so when they came back over to us and told us they we did have stamps, they were just somewhat concealed because of the very busy pages. They then sent us on our way and we continued on. They were generally friendly and professional, although we were glad they spoke fluent English. We probably couldn't have defended ourselves in German!

Stopped by the police already! We haven't even done anything illegal yet

Laura's "I've been pulled over by the police" face

The journey was only a few hours, but we decided to break it up a bit by stopping somewhere on the way. We originally decided on Wurzburg, but then on the spur of the moment we ended up in Seligenstadt because I saw a sign saying it was a 'Historische Markt Stadt'.

Wandering into Seligenstadt

Old houses!

It was nice to walk around the town. We went into another backerei and Laura got some little biscuit things. We were looking for lebkuchen but it might be too early in the year for them. We also went to a little hole-in-the-wall cafe and got some bratwurst mit brotchen and some pommes. Laura got currywurst, which smelled great! But I wasn't brave enough to go for it.

A really long canal boat went past! No idea what it was.

Laura's currywurst

The 'kloster museum'. Not sure what it is but we might check it out if we go back.

A nice looking pub/restaurant.

We finally got to Rick & Anja's place at about 1500. They welcomed us in with some Earl Grey tea and some tasty cakes. Then Rick regaled us with many a tale of his adventures, and we discussed the importance of a good hero in film & TV. They ordered us a nice pizza for tea and we chatted for quite a long time! Felix - their young son (ich glaube er ist drei jahre alt, aber ich kenne nicht. Felix sagt nicht!) - showed us his toy collection and impressed us with his bilingual abilities, and then later Rick & Anja showed us their far more expensive toy collection - a HUGE array of miniatures. I didn't get any pictures unfortunately, but I'll try to get some soon.

We'll be playing a game of Frostgrave using some of their extensive terrain collection sometime in the next couple of days. It's gonna be great!

Tomorrow we'll be having breakfast with Rick & Anja, then we'll be heading to Rothenburg to celebrate Laura's 30th Birthday!