Stadhagen 22nd June 2009

Our drive to Stadhagen was long and the high standard of driving (compared to Italy that is) in Paris and Northern France, took a a dive as we crossed the boarder. Once again it seems no dangerous people reside in France and even if they did it is presumed they'd have no beef with Germany! No reason at all to cross the boarder with bad intentions, I mean it's not like the German's ever did something like that to them! I am presuming here that they obviously did, didn't the Germans piss everyone off?!! I've bought Bryson's 'short history of nearly everything' just not started it yet!

So as we joined the Autobahn the chaos ensued. Audi's and BMW's are apparently the German car manufacturer of choice, as it was these vehicles that whizzed past us at an almighty speed! Andy enjoyed trying to be a human speedometer, throwing out estimations with absolute confidence when one drove past. I did however discover my favorite German word - Auschfart! It means 'Exit' and it is such a fabulous word considering it sounds a lot like the....well lets just say onomatopoeia plays a role! Anyway we were auschfarting all over the autobahn it was ridiculous! Actually we weren't, I just wanted to write that, in fact, we stayed on the same road pretty much all the way, for around 300Km.

When we finally arrived at Andy's cousin's house, Maca (pronounced Matsa phonetically) we were pleasantly surprised with the German countryside and it seemed we'd brought the good weather with us too!

It was a lovely few days, involving more walking than I'd hoped, but the Bacik family are fond of a good old stroll (Remember Seleve!). Although the family spoke fabulous English I felt I struggled to get me point across. I had several jokes go down like a lead balloon, but strangely enough their two year old, Nico, found my inability to understand a word he was saying charming! So not alll was lost, although I'm still not quite sure what happened when he smelt my butt cheeks!!

We drank German beer and ate German sausages (which are no Waitrose pork) and relaxed in Maca's brilliantly self-designed home. We walked some more, obviously, and sniffed roses, for what I considered a peculiarly long time. I was told we were "appreciating our surroundings", guess I'm just a bit quicker on that front. We also took so many photos, had it not been the digital age the prints would have stacked the height of me. And despite taking almost identical photos of the same things, they were still swapped between photographers afterwards! I took 3 photos, they were nice.

So once again we are off, this time to Copenhagen!