Evonka's Gems Part 1

Frans wrote:

16 Nov '09: Whilst I'm waiting in my hotel room in Budapest, Hungary for my Ladies to return from yet another shopping spree I thought it might be a good opportunity to update you with those little anecdotes that happen on any holiday and that can make it quite special.

Now before I start let me assure you I have nothing against Yvonne and I don't mean to set out and pick on her but this blog would simply not reflect a good account of what our trip is really like without recalling some of those what we now call Evonka's Gems.

Let me set the scene for the first Gem......
We are travelling through The Black Forrest and it is that time in the afternoon where we can do with a stop to satisfy the craving for a cup of tea or coffee and answer the call of nature as one does have to do now and then.

We had noticed by now that a lot of road side Cafe's and Restaurants were closed for their own holidays and as it was Evonka's turn to sit in the front seat we had given her the task to look out for a nice Cafe.

After a few dissapointments Evonka spots this place with a lot of cars in front of it which is usually a good sign for a Cafe to be open:

'Look at that one', she cries whilst her hand points in the general direction, 'that's got a lot of cars in front off it!'

'I don't think so', comes back the reply ....'unless you're Japanese'...

'What's that got to do with it' she asks seriously

...from the darkness of the back seat comes the dry reply... 'it's a Mitsubishi dealer....'....

...and then we were on the road in Switzerland and we stopped for a coffee. From my previous entry you now know that the Swiss have their own currency and we don't have any of that on us. Unbelievably, Karen finds to what appears a 10 Swiss Franc note in the car park and hands that to Evonka as the bearer of the kitty.

'Here you go, Evonka', she says, 'We might use that for our coffee'

Not quite trusting this coincidence I reply: 'You sure it is not a fake?'

We sit down for coffee and we are discussing where we have to pay as each country and restaurant seems to have its own particular system and Evonka is determined to use the money Karen has found:

'I wonder if we can use this', she asks

'Sure', I reply, 'just don't do it whilst I'm around so I can't get arrested for forgery, the Swiss are pretty serious about their money, you know'

Evonka mulls this over for a little while and comes to a decision about the legality of this apparent 10 Franc note:

'It must be real, she declares with determination, 'otherwise it wouldn't have a number on it!'

To conclude this Part 1 of Evonla's Gems I can't get passed this one. We had returned to the car after walking through a village where the mother of the famous composer Mozart was born and whilst discussing Mozart's parentage Evonka lets go with this particular peace of wisdom:

'apparently he was only a small guy, he was only 3 foot!'

This particular statement is received with a bit of skeptisism by the rest of us so she adjusts her personal knowledge on Mozart a bit:

'Well it might have been 4 foot'

Even this statement is received with a few raised eyebrows but by now we have learned not too question her wisdom but she continues with another piece of personal knowledge of the by now severly shrunken Mozart:

'And he was pretty popular with the ladies' ...she states with total conviction in her voice

and I just can't help myself again: ....'then they must have been a bunch of bloody midgets'...

Day #9: Three Countries in One Day....

Frans wrote:

12 Nov '09: After we left the Hotel on the bottom end of the Black Forrest we pushed for Salzburg in one day which meant we sat in the car for most of the day. The weather was not good anyway with nearly constant rain so in hind sight this was a good day to travel if ever we had to pick one. I had programmed that essential marriage saving device 'The TomTom' for the most direct and quickest route to Salzburg not realizing it was actually going to take us through 3 countries in one day!


Click on the map for a larger image

Shortly after leaving the hotel we came to a sign which said 'Zohll' which I mistook for 'Toll' as in paying to use the road. It was only when we saw the uniformed guards that I realized my mistake and became instantly aware that we were at a border post which are these days pretty rare in Europe.

We were briefly stopped by a border guard who enquired if we had anything to declare? 'Three women', I replied hopefully thinking he might relieve me of a couple.... He just gave me a knowing grin and wished me 'Good Luck' !

So now we were all of a sudden in Switzerland which has retained its own currency and has not joined the European community probably because a big part of Switzerland's economy revolves around their banking system which they would not allow to be opened up by the European Community laws on an 'Open Banking' system. Just too much black money is locked away in the Swiss bank faults and if that were to be drained off there wouldn't be much left for the Swiss to do other then exporting Cuckoo clocks. and sell chocolate!

Anyway, we proceeded on our way towards Salzburg of Sound of Music fame which lies in Austria but lo and behold after a few hours we came to another border crossing, this time back into Germany! Our TomTom obviously did not have any respect for border crossings and determinetly stuck to what it had been told to do, the quickest route to Salzburg! What an example?!

Our route took us to the southern outskirts of Munich where we had some hold up through traffic and then we turned South towards Austria. The only reason we were making such good time was due to the fact there is no speed limit on many sections of the German Autobahn and with no fear of being booked, a Mercedes Benz under my seat and 3 Ladies asleep for most of the time I wasn't going to spare those horses under the hood....

We came to the Austrian border in the afternoon and we basically drove straight through as both Germany and Austria are part of the European community and both have the Euro as their currency. This was a big difference from my childhood days when we still needed passports just to get from Holland into Germany!

From the border we reached Salzburg in about an hour or so and after circling the inner city a number of times to look for a parking spot and from there a suitable hotel we decided to give up on the parking spot and go straight for a Hotel hoping that any Hotel would also have some parking arrangement. Very quickly after we made that decision we found this near new Hotel very close to the center of Salzburg. The Star Inn Hotel http://www.starinnhotels.com/en/ was obviously not very old, well maintained and their staff was well trained.

Karen and Evonne took a standard room and Maxine and I took an upgrade to a business room that was furnished with an extra table and a couple of chairs which came in handy when we had a frugal dinner of cheese, biscuits and red wine in our room the next night. I sometimes wonder what the poor people are doing ... but not too often....

We hadn't booked any hotel in Salzburg as we usually do the night before because in our last hotel an internet connection was simply not available. Having learned from that mistake we made sure after that we always checked into a hotel which had an internet connection in our room. So as soon as we had settled in, I went back downstairs to reception to ask for my username and password for my internet access. Instead I received a full page warning in German agreeing to God only knows what before I would receive the required credentials. I did ask the young girl at the reception: 'So what am I agreeing to here' to which she promptly replied in perfect English but with a lovely German accent: 'that just means you agree not to go to illegal sites and we are not reponsible for any viruses'...and after I signed the document she continued with an absolute straight face: 'and now we've got your house as well!'.... It is those little funny moments that can make your holiday so special....

Day #8 the Black Forrest tour

Frans wrote:

11 Nov '09: It was Maxine's wish for quite a few years now to go and visit the Black Forrest in South West Germany. In the years we lived in Holland we still hadn't been there so we made a point of it to include this spectacular place on our travel itinerary and we were not dissapointed.

We took the 'autobahn' for the first section from Kaiserslautern to Baden-Baden as this area is not so interesting but from Baden Baden the scenery dramatically changed for the better.

Karen had brought her Lonely Planet guide book and had discovered that Schiltag was prized as the 'Prettiest Town of The Black Forrest' so I programmed the faithfull TomTom to guide us to the centre of Schiltag and on the way there we were greeted by some beautiful scenery. The route took us over some of the highest peaks in The Black Forrest and the Ladies cried out in delight when we encountered our first areas covered in snow.


Our first stop was an hour or so into the Black Forrest near a look out. This gave us time to stretch our legs, have a breath of fresh air...or a smoke depending on the preference.... and do the other things that we all have to do at times even when there is no old lady to collect her 50 Euro cents.


We arrived in Schiltag http://www.schiltach.de/ceasy/modules/cms/main.php5?&cPageId=223 around lunch time and before stopping for lunch at a local Cafe we had a brief wander through the town and had a stop at the local council office which doubled as tourist information center. Inside this office was a display of a handmade clock that not only showed the time but als the date, position of the Sun, Earth and Moon, made a rooster call early in the morning and paraded a troup of roman soldiers around a figure of Jezus Christ. I've been searching the ineternet for information on this clock to show you but so far I've not been able to find anything yet and as it was enclosed in a glass case I could not take a proper picture of it.






We had lunch in a local cafe where we tried some of the local food which we tend to do now in every new town just to get as much as local experience as possible. This Cafe sported, amongst other things, an old fashioned stove that was placed behind the bar esspecially to keep the staff warm and Maxine straight away fell in love with it. I was just mighty pleased at that point in time, the Mercedes Benz was already filled to capacity. After lunch we wondered into the town and you would not believe what the Ladies discovered, yes another leather articles shop like we really need more coats, boots or handbags!

After we left Schiltag we headed for a sinister place called the 'Heksenloch', which translates to 'Witches Hole'. According to the mighty Lonely Planet, Karen quoted the description of this place as 'sinister' and 'eerie' and as it was on our way to the Southern end of the Black Forrest we decided to have a look. According to the Lonely Planet we were looking for this place just South of Furtwangen. TomTom had no record in its databanks about this place and the Lonely Planets description was pretty poor to say the least. In the end we had to ask a local for some directions and fortunately this good German soul knew immediately what we were looking for. He gave me his directions with a smile and a wink and I started to wonder where he had last seen his own wife or that he was simply going to warn her that she could expect a few Aussies for tea.... her tea that is...

It turned out that this Witches Hole was not one particular place but more a general location of a narrow valley off the beaten track in the Black Forrest where fog tends the hang up amongst the trees, the road narrows to a very small single lane and the wind comes to a complete stand still, eerie indeed. None of my travelling companions was keen to get out off the car and take up local residency there so we moved on again.

We had hoped to stop somewhere near this place and have our afternoon tea or coffee but wherever we stopped everything was just closed. Quite often we encountered a sign on a cafe door or gate which stated 'Ruhe Tag' which means 'Quiet Day'. Obviously this time of year is not considered a tourist time and the locals were quite often having a bit of a holiday of their own!

In one of those places we came across this replica fountain of 'Manneke Pies' of Brussels fame and as we couldn't get a hot refreshment we decided to take this opportunity and fill our water bottles from this generous young man with his enormous bladder.




From the Witches Hole we slowly made our way to our destination for that day. The Alde Hotz Panorama Hotel in Gorwhil http://www.alde-hotz.de/info.php?WEBYEP_DI=1 . This hotel was advertised as one with a beautiful view but unfortunately we arrived after dark at the hotel and left too early the next morning to notice anything of it. The Hotel is best described as basic, in fact very basic would be a better description as there was no television in any of the rooms and internet was simply not heard of. The local staff, another husband and wife team, was very helpful and accommodating though. I think we gave in particular the lady of the house a few headaches with our meal order as only Maxine was going for the house speciality and the rest of us had all different meals from the menu but she came through with flying colours and she certainly earned our prized Koala Award.


It was whilst ordering our wishes for dinner that night that I started to realize I was not only the chauffeur but also the travelling translater for this trip and in particular Karen was making use of 'my talent' in that regards...:

'Frans, can you ask the lady what is actually in the salad?'

.....here we go.....


'What do you mean', I answer, 'A salad has got lettuce and stuff hasn't it?'


'Yes, but I would like to know if it has tomatoes, cucumber and that sort of thing'

.....what else can it have in it....

...what you must realize is that I haven't spoken any German since I was about 16 years old and I'm a bit rusty and far from confident speaking it!...

'Ok' I'll ask', I reply without a great deal of enthousiasm.

'O, and can you ask what sort of dressing there is on it', she quirps

...what do you think I am, Star Trek's universal bloody translator.....

'Ok' comes back my terse reply

'and whilst you're at it, can you ask her not to put it on the salad but keep it on the side?'

...by this time Karen receives what is now commonly known as 'The Look'....

Karen did get her salad, I've got no idea what it contained in the end but the 'dressing on the side' bit was definetly lost in translation....

I suppose Karen has not quite forgiven me for my last defensive tactic in 'The Dreams' discussion and is obviously still out to regain some ground. It was during the dinner discussion that evening she finally managed to get a response out of me. The discussion had centred amongst the Ladies around the side effects of menopauze and as I don't suffer from that particular condition I had simply nothing to contribute to this subject and had withdrawn in my customary shell where I don't listen, don't talk but still hear what is being said. Out of the blue Karen fired one at me straight between my eyes:

'Just because you don't have any emotions, Frans', she declared vehemently.

Before the command 'Shields Up!' had reached my mouth I fell into the trap:

'Of course I have emotions'! I fired back.

Her hand raised up above the table and with her finger pointed right at the tip of my nose she declared triumphantly: 'Gotcha!'

'Ok', I had to humbly admit, 'One for you, Karen.' ....

...Just a message to you all...

Frans wrote:

13 Nov '09: Hi Everyone, just so you know, we've decided to leave Salzburg tomorrow morning and bypass Vienna and go straight through to Budapest. This to leave us enough time to visit the other places and have a few days over in our chalet and Amsterdam!

Although it might seem we have quite a few days left over, it takes about a day's travel to reach each destination as well.

We are booked for tomorrow night the 14th of November for two nights in Hotel President in Budapest, Hungary.

http://www.hotelpresident.hu/english/

Hopefully I'll get some more time there to bring our blog up to date and tell you about the Black Forrest in Germany, Salzburg in Austria and not to forget Evonka's gems of the day. O, and there will be a special 'Adult's only' entry soon too....

Our planning at this moment in time is : Budapest > Ceskly Krumlov > Prague > Wurzburg > Cologne > Terwolde

Day #7 Remouchamps and The Bremerhof

Frans wrote:

10 Nov '09: We discuss every night what we are going to do the next day and where to travel. Whilst studying our route I noticed that the town of Remouchamps was right on our route towards our destination for that night, Hotel De Bremerhof near Kaiserslautern, Germany.

I remembered from my younger days in Belgium that there were some magnificent lime stone caves in Remouchamps http://www.tourist-attractions.be/EN/cave-subterranean-attractions-Remouchamps/remouchamps-caves.html and I wondered if my travelling companions would like to visit them not knowing whether they liked being underground in the first place.

All agreed that it might be a good experience and so we headed to Remouchamps in the heart of The Ardennes. We took the major road for the first part of the trip as the Western belgian country side is not so interesting and when we approached Remouchamp changed to the secondary roads which gave us some beautiful views of the small places and streams that are plentifull in The Ardennes.

The cave tour was carried out by a guide who told the story about the caves and its interesting features in 3 languages including English so that it was understandable for my travelling companions. The first part of the tour was conducted on foot and the guide gave us permission to make photo's which officially was not allowed but obviously he had his own opinion on that particular restriction.

The Cave Tour

The caves are littered with stalachites and with some imagination you can imagine many figures that are represented in these sculpture of mother nature although I must say that a generous serving of alcohol would probably assist in that.

Imagination?

The walking tour was followed by a boat tour where a second guide acting as the boat man pushed our boat with some 12 people in it through the subterrainean waterways of the caves of Remouchamps whilst entertaining us with explanation, stories and jokes. It is amazing how these people still can make you laugh although they undoubtedly have told the same jokes hundreds of times before. The boat tour took us back to the entrance and after parting with the obligatory tip we came out of the caves with a memorable experience richer.

From Remouchamps we had to take the motorways to reach our next destination in time. We were heading for Hotel De Bremerhof http://www.bremerhof-kl.de/english/hotel/hotel.html which reportedly was situated in the middle of a forest. As we approached the end of our trip for that day we were becoming a little worried as we were still travelling through the suburbs of the big city of Kaiserslautern which did not attract us at all with its heavy industry and smog. I think we were quite relieved when a only few kilometers from the end of our trip that day we turned suddenly to the right and within a few seconds had become surrounded by a dense forrest with no sign of Industry or Traffic.

De Bremerhof was truly situated within a forrest and we were welcomed by the friendly family that run the hotel and who went out of their way to make us welcome and settle in. after inspecting our rooms and beds we gathered on the small bar downstairs and sampled some of the local beers. this sampling has now become a bit of ritual with us and in many places we stop along the way we make a point of sampling the local beer as nearly each place has his own brewery or at least their local favourite.

We had a wonderfull good meal at De Bremerhof obviously cooked by the local staff. We all had different mains and although none of was game enough to try the speciality of the house being a cooked Goose, we had other local dishes like wiener schnitzel and red cabbage that was very much appreciated. Needless to say the staff of De Bremerhof earned their koala award well and truly!

Day #6, Brugge #2

Frans wrote:

9 Nov '09: Because Brugge was such a nice place, we decided to stay an extra night so we could view the rest of the interesting places the city had to offer.

We started off with a leasurely drive around the outside of Brugge but as that took the whole of about 10 minutes and not much was to see there we proceeded on foot once again going straight to the Tourist information shop where I found a computer that showed a map with a predetermined tourist route through the city which took you past all the major exhibits and interesting place. In typical Belgian style, this map was not available in hard copy so I drew the route on a tourist map I had obtained from the Hotel.


My idea was to put a bit more structure in our wonderings through Brugge because we seem to go off in all directions often covering the same area a number of times. In particular the center of town had received a good work out as all roads led to this area and the cobblestones in this particular area and I were just about on first name terms. The plan worked well for the first 15 minutes or so when all of a sudden there was a flurry of discussion amongst the ladies about a church we just had to see, another exhibit we just couldn't miss and what we were going to do for the rest of the day and before I knew it they were off again completely forgotten about this route we were going to follow. .... I blinked my eyes a few times, heaved my shoulders, shook my head and starting to stumble after them again on the way to the next church..... my feet were still hurting from yesterdays efforts and by the look of things today wasn't going to be any different.....


Brugge has many churches and I wouldn't be surprised if it had more churches per capita then any city in the World with the possible exception of Rome. Hence I've completely forgotten which churches we exactly visited except that this one was made of brick, covered in scaffolding and plastic and was a job and a half to get into but we made it!
After the visit to this particular church we were drawn once again to the center of Brugge which by now became pretty familiar territority for me as we had crisscrossed it a number of times now. In the corner of the square we found the 'Basilica of the holy blood'
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/belgium/bruges-basilica-of-holy-blood.htm where at certain times of the day a relic was shown to the public which contains a piece of cloth with a blood stain that was suppose to come from Jezus Christ. I'm not going to enter into a discussion whether the relic is actually what it is claimed to be but sufficed to say it was a moving experience to get up on the altar and lay your hands on this relic and say a small prayer......at the latest check there were no miracles to report and no, Maxine is not with child...However I can't vouch for Karen or Evonka, God only knows what happens in their room at night.....no pun intended, Lord......


After we left the church we encountered the first of the three women to fall that afternoon. An elderly lady, unknow to us, tripped or slipped on the greasy cobblestones and fell. She didn't hurt herself as far as we could tell and I wouldn't have even remembered it as a significant event if it wasn't for the fact that it happened to another two women that same afternoon.... coincidence or did the Earth move for them?...you just never know with them Belgians....


That afternoon we decided to take a tour through the city by horse and cart. why not you might well ask, we drove around the city that morning, yesterday we sailed through its canals, God knows we polished enough of the same cobble stones a number of times I just hoped nobody was going to come up with the bright idea we also could fly over the town as well because if you done that and blinked you'd missed it!

The horse and cart ride

Our hostess was named Lisa and our horse was supposed to respond to 'Bartje' (little Bart) but I doubt very much whether he agreed to that particular insult but all in all Lisa and Bartje did a fine job taking us through Brugge hobbling over all of its humps and bumps.


We stopped halfway through the tour to give Bartje a well deserved feed and a rest and the Ladies took the opportunity to visit a nearby local nunnery.

Bartje's rest and feed

I thought that perhaps some of my travel companions might be taken by a religious experience and remain there but alas, all three decided not to take up that particular vocation and promptly returned to the horse and cart.

After Bartje had satisfied himself on the oats and water he proceeded on his way again taking us finally back to...you guessed it.... the centre of town where we were now in danger of attracting the attention of the local constabulary for exceeding the amount of allowable wear and tear on the city's cobblestones by foreign tourists!


Maxine and I returned to last night's award winning restaurant for a cup of tea to present our prized koala to the serving staff when the second of the elderly ladies for that day tripped over the stairs of the restaurant and fell down. We didn't know then there was still a third one to come....

We had dinner that night at one of the many eating place around....you guessed it....the center of town.... but the meals were no where near the quality of last nights dishes so this particular restaurant did not receive their koala. We're quite strict in that, no good, you miss out on this top award! After that we proceeded to our accommodation because by that time we all had enough of walking and were looking forward to a nightcap in front of the fire place of the hotel. It was during this walk that the third of the women fell that afternoon and this time it was our own Evonka.


For no apparent reason she slipped and fell and although not seriously injured in any way it gave us all a bit of a fright and a wake up call that perhaps we should be aware that none of us are spring chickens anymore and that tiredness can result in loosing once balance. Evonka was the bravest, got back up on her feet again and made it back to the hotel 'ok' but whilst writing this blog a few days later now we know she is still a bit sore in the knee from it although like the trooper she is, she's not letting it slow her down...

This concluded our second day in brugge and our first stop. Brugge was beautiful, historic, friendly and certainly worthwhile visiting but it was time to move on to the next adventure...

Another quicky, from Salzburg, Austria

Frans wrote:

12 Nov '09: Just to put everyone at ease on the home front. We arrived this afternoon in Salzburg, Austria and all is well. There was no TV in the rooms of the hotel we stayed in last night let alone an internet connection hence I could not update our blog and suffered severely from withdrawel symptoms not being able to read my emails!

We have many stories to tell about the rest of our stay in Brugge, how 3 ladies fell down in one afternoon, why we dissapeared from the face of the earth in Remouchamp, had a great local cooked meal in the Bremerhof, drove through the heart of the black Forest and drank water from a little man's diddle near a Witches hole, admired the snow on the hills and were overpowered by some of the majestic snowy mountain tops of the Alps.... and not to forget Yvonne's famous quotes of the day.....

Tomorrow morning the Ladies are going ....you guessed it.....shopping! .....some time tomorrow....and I will be ..... right again..... blogging!...and bring you all up to date!

In the mean time, have another read of Brugge day #1, I have not only added to it but also have now managed to put 2 short video's (mpeg) in it to give you all a better 'taste' of our adventures.