Milestones and Snails

Sunday, 2 November 2008.

Today, we thought we’d have a road trip, along with Edward. And on the way, my car reached a milestone on its odometer… 210,000 miles! How good is that?

The plan was to go even further Süd to a place called Karlsruhe, which is a really nice place with a palace and trams. Lots of trams. We wandered along to the Palace grounds, which were very picturesque, and Karlsruhe had lots of Kodak Moments, including a leaf stuck to a windscreen wiper.

Trams. Lots in Karlsruhe.

I also managed to cover myself in Senf when eating a Schnitzel im Brötchen. That was fun, though you can’t go wrong with a bit of Senf! So I didn’t mind getting it all over my hands and nose. Also, we were being lazy and caught the tram back to the square near my PKW, and also avoided the ticket machine, but Rob gave into temptation. Maybe tickets are the momentos of German public transport! But to pay 1.50 Euros to go down the street? Maybe not my cup of tea. I normally pretend to look confused and search everywhere for change until my stop. It works so far.

The Palace at Karlsruhe

So, back to the car, onto the Autobahn and forth to Baden-Baden, a place with spas and hot springs, hence the name. Also similar to Bath, the both cities share the same name… just like twins, separated at birth.

Baden-Baden is a really nice town in the middle of the hills and forests of the Schwarzwald area. They still have cobbles streets and old (and original) buildings, as it wasn’t damaged during the Wars. However, they do have buses going through the town square, which seems to be always full of pedestrians. Rob also pointed out that all the shops were still open. Strange for a Sunday evening, especially in Germany, where the most that people normally do is get out of bed.

The town centre of Baden-Baden. Rather busy.

We wandered around the place for a bit, took a photo or few, and went to a local bar for a local beer. Rob had a local malty dark (or black) beer, I had a local Pils and Edward had a mojito. And the beer glasses impressed us. They had the town shield and Baden-Baden written on it, also the name of the bar. So me and Rob bought one each. So happy days.

Further Süd we drove, and eventually ended up in Straßburg, a really nice city in France. However, finding the city centre and the car park proved a challenge due to the ‘great reliability of frequent French road signs’. I think we must have gone around the city for a bit and weaved along the centre. It was fun. Though I wasn’t impressed with their traffic lights. They didn’t use the amber when turning green, so there was no warning… which is annoying. Means I had to be quicker, and the French aren’t known for their patience.

So, we got to an underground car park and went wandering around the cathedral, the city and an old part of town called Petite France, with old buildings and a river and such. The street signs were in French and (possibly Alsatian) German, too. Even though it was dark, I managed to get a few good photos!

And we also visited a proper French restaurant! I wanted to try out some escargots, but the restaurant we went in was full, and the on where we were in didn’t have any. Though it was no problem, I’ll try them out when I go to la France again. I ended up with these roast potatoes and some creamy sauce and two steaks of beef. It was soo good! The French restaurants do live up to their reputation, and the place wasn’t expensive at all, either…

We also met this American guy (I think he was American), and his Croatian wife and the kid who didn’t like German, but they were fine! The wife was interested in my beef and she got a salad because I had one. I felt as if I did a helpful deed, and also influential!

The 'Petite France' area of Strasbourg.

But it was all good there. I would like to have tired out some of their wine, but due to the beer in Baden-Baden, I didn’t want to. But maybe next time!

And so, we went back to Worms, via the Nine. The Nine is everywhere, but it’s a good road. Me and Rob played a guessing game called ‘Guess the Speed’, so we switched off my blue dashboard auxiliary lights, so I couldn’t see the speedometer, and had to guess how fast I was going. I didn’t do too good at first, but go better!

Though this developed into a long debate involving the speed=distance/time formula. As we counted the French hard shoulder lines (which are long dashes), and how much we covered in a certain time. It was difficult as we couldn’t agree on the length of each line. They were definitely not 100 metres. I then noticed posts on the central reservation at 100 metre intervals, they were kilometre posts… which didn’t have the same ring to them as mileposts.

But after all that effort of working out the speed and stuff, we couldn’t be bothered to carry on, and eventually headed towards Ludwigshafen.

Ludwigshafen. Less said, the better. From miles, the pungent smell of chemicals abuses your nasal senses. They get worse in the centre, though. I didn’t know what to do first, either suffer in the car, or open the windows, but would the air be clearer? Though they do have a nice bridge.

Eventually, swiftly leaving the Port Talbot of Germany, we arrived in Worms (as usual, exactly the same time as Rob’s estimate). But we didn’t do much else apart from browsing t’Internet and playing some SWR 1 on the TV-Radio thing. 'tis a great radio station. Plays über good Musik on it... such classics!