After a leisurely breakfast and a tour of Gertie’s unit downstairs we ‘hit the road’ for Backnang. We had a lovely time in Essen, helped by the fact that everyone is so friendly and that everyone (except those of Gertie’s generation) spoke English so well. We are very fortunate, in the English speaking world, that so many countries choose English as their ‘main’ second language to teach in schools. The only time we have really had much difficulty with language has been in restaurants where there is no English on the menu and no one at the restaurant speaks English. On this trip, we were particularly fortunate that it was here that Jill needed to see a doctor. The family rallied around and it was all sorted out. I can’t imagine what we would have done if we were in a hotel. A big thank you to the Lupp family.
We expected a fairly straight run down the autobahn to Backnang but plans often don’t work out in reality. Not far out of Essen we hit a standstill as the traffic crawled along at snail pace and didn't improve a great deal for almost the first hour.
We pulled into parking area just before Frankfurt for picnic lunch, provided by Eva, and decided that we would then go to Backnang via Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Jill has on her shopping list a Christmas table centre with some sort of working mechanism. While in Essen, Eva had tracked down the Käth Wohfahrt stores on the internet which specialise in this area (as well as anything else to do with Christmas). It so happened that there was one in Rothenburg about 100km away from Backnang. Rather than leave it to chance that we might get back we decided to head there on the way.
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| Rothenberg |
The ‘Old Town’ of Rothenburg is very cute. It’s predominately car-free and the houses are very traditional half-timber German houses. Jill didn’t quite find what she was after but did purchase a garden scene, clockwork, music box which will do the trick. They will even send it to Australia overcoming the problem of how to get it home.
After a cup of coffee, we headed for Backnang. The fact that we were now on secondary roads and also had to stop for fuel meant we arrived in Backnang quite a bit later than expected to a welcome from Horst and Klara. Horst and Klara had stayed with us a couple of times in Australia while visiting their daughter.
A nice Pizza tea with some good German beer/wine followed by an evening walk and we were ready for bed.
After a cup of coffee, we headed for Backnang. The fact that we were now on secondary roads and also had to stop for fuel meant we arrived in Backnang quite a bit later than expected to a welcome from Horst and Klara. Horst and Klara had stayed with us a couple of times in Australia while visiting their daughter.
A nice Pizza tea with some good German beer/wine followed by an evening walk and we were ready for bed.
