Sunday 3rd July Besenwirtschaft to Fischen im Aligau
The town names are long, the street names are long, people’s surnames are long - heaven help the poor children when they go to school and they have to spell their name and address!
It is bad enough for us trying to negotiate our way around the small words, whether written or spoken. Today started with Roger negotiating with the German-speaking farm owner our final bill including parking,
power and one shower in the barn. He was helped by a fellow-camper acting as translator. So there was no need for Roger to pick strawberries in the paddock next door to pay our board and no need for him to attend church; which is where our host was going and needed our money NOW!
We couldn’t actually leave without paying because the business-end of our power cord was locked in her meter box. We drove off to Ravensburg, the home of Jigsaws, knowing full well that we weren’t going to buy any because today is Sunday and Europe is shut on Sunday. However we did pass more Summer Festivals, as if we didn’t hear enough celebrations last night.
The first weekend in July is a big occasion in rural South Germany; you and the townsfolk must celebrate the beginning of summer with copious amounts of alcohol and traditional food. We did our part by attending the hand-workers (craft) fair in Ravensburg and buying a sticky bun from a local bakery before all the shops shut. Like good Germans we dined in and put our plates on the trolley to be washed.
The craft fair only had three food outlets, Italian pizza, French crepes and German slops. You get one large spoon of sauerkraut, one of macaroni and one of something, that looked like it had tuna mixed in it, all slopped on your plate. Let’s just say the longest queue, and the second longest, wasn’t at the German stall.
We got some fuel from “Jet”; they do the cheapest in town and then went to Lindau which is on the edge of Lake Constance. Unfortunately the sun was out as was the summer festival holiday traffic and some partially clad bodies lying around the lake. This was a total contrast after driving from our camp to Ravensburg this morning, which was all orchards and hops, just like Motueka/Nelson NZ.
From Lindau we made the decision to go to Liechtenstein. Just like Monaco it is a small principality that other nations just drive through to go somewhere else. We had to drive through Austria to get there; no border control, however from Austria to Liechtenstein there is a customs booth but we were waved straight through, whereas the Swiss and Austrians were stopped. We decided to take a ride on the little train around the main town of Vaduz but we missed it by 35 minutes, which is probably the time we wasted at McDonalds in Austria eating lattice-cut chips and mozzarella coated tomatoes; we also made yet another sighting of yet another guy wearing a “Pervert 17” shirt.
So, back to Liechtenstein, the town was shutting, we saw the Castle you can’t go 
into because the Prince lives there. To make up for this we parked and raced to the souvenir shops. Not reading the sign properly I threw a euro into the meter (they use both Swiss Francs and Euros) only to discover it was free on Sundays, bugger. There are two souvenir shops and one tourist information building open after 5.00pm on Sundays, all of which are run by Asians. I purchased, for the collection, a salt and pepper set priced in Swiss Francs but at the conversion rate the shopkeeper used I image it was not just the car park that ripped me off.
We decided to head back to wifi friendly Germany and camp for the night, on the way driving through lots of small alpine villages and ski resorts. One of the curious things about rural Austria and Germany is you can go through a town with what looks like no more than a 1,000 residents and there is a massive car dealership like VW, Mercedes, or Skoda. Anyway, being the sporty camping sort we are parked up at the Fischen im Aligau Sports centre, drinking 11-fruit-and-carrot juice for me and cheap one-fruit wine for him, dining on cheese rations because the supermarkets weren’t open today.
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Happy Liechtenstein family
Random village, Germany