It's vacation time again as I need to burn some annual leave. After looking around for somewhere to go I settled on Germany to go and see the World Endurance Car championship at the Nurburgring.
I had to fly from Stansted though which was a bit of a pain, and my flight was at 7:30am. So I took the opportunity to visit Martin's new restaurant in Chelmsford. It's very nice, and they do awesome steaks so book in at Bake n'Grape right now.
The journey down was pretty uneventful, it was the M1 and M25 after all. However, after 2mins into my journey after dropping my cat off with Graham I had to turn around as I'd forgotten stuff already. Amazing the fastest part of the journey was the M25, I don't know what all the fuss is about, I happily did 90 most of the way around at about 6:30 pm (I also beat the satnav by 10 mins, get in!)
After leaving Martin's place I headed to a B+B next to the airport. The satnav thought it would be fun to send me down country lanes barely wide enough for my car to fit down which made for a fun drive.
I arrived at the B+B just before midnight. It was OK, although the bed was made for someone of hobbit height and the mattress was about as thick as a napkin that had been run over by a steam roller. My neighbour who I have to share the bathroom with has some aversion to flushing the toilet it seems, so I made sure I flushed it several times, I hope I didn't wake him.
I flushed it again.
Five hours later it was time for my early morning flight so after flushing the loo a few times I headed out only for my friendly sat nav to freeze. This made my already pushing the boundaries of being late a little further and resulted in some slightly more extreme driving in order to get back on track. Obviously to make the timing more interesting when I parked my car at the airport the bus pulled away so I had to wait 15 mins for the next one.
Finally in the airport I was starting to rush, my stress levels weren't helped by the fact that my flight wasn't listed on the big screen. This made me paranoid enough to check my tickets and today's date. I headed to the gates anyway and my flight was on the next screen, it looks like it was missing on the previous screen so that they could display an advert. Brilliant.
I made the flight, it went well, nothing to report. Upon landing I picked up my hire car, a high octane Fiesta 1.0. I asked for a free upgrade to a Porsche, being in Germany and all, and the lady told me that the fiesta was the same as a Porsche as it had four wheels. Can't argue with that logic.
It turns out that Frankfurt Hahn airport is nowhere near Frankfurt which was good as it meant I didn't have a city to deal with and I was immediately in the middle of nowhere which made getting used to the car and driving on the wrong side of the road easier. Bring on special stage 3.
I wanted to stop at a shop to get some water and bits and pieces, but it appears that there are no shops, only car dealerships. So I failed to get any water but did get a VW, two Audis and a BMW.
It was only about 30mins before I rocked up in Bremm, my base for the next three days. Bremm is a gorgeous town on a large river cut in a valley. It really is stunning and my phone camera can't do it justice. I decided a walk was in order, I still needed that water so I walked around Bremm and failed to find any shops. So I went to the next town and the next and so on. I kid you not, during my 2 hour walk the only shop of any description that I found sold dead butterflys.
I gave up on this walking lark and drove to the biggest place I could see within range, when I arrived there were actual people there and everything so I parked up and went to the only restaurant that had people in. I didn't understand one word on the menu and had no wifi to look things up with, it turns out that in the land of the sausage, I'd picked the only salad restaurant in Germany. There's about as much chance of that as finding a gay only vegan bar in Dallas.
The waitress helped me out who spoke embarrassingly good English and I settled on a chicken salad baguette without the salad. While I was there, I did spot the most German looking man ever:
After lunch I went for a drive and found a Lidl so finally got my water. Of course when I got around to open it, I'd only brought bloody sparkling crap hadn't I. So back in the hotel I opened it all and left it to go flat. I might drink the toilet water instead.
After a rest I went to the restaurant bar for a beer pre-dinner. I had a nice outside seat when it started raining so I edged under a brolly and the heavens really opened. There's nothing quite like a thunderstorm in a valley. I know the thunder isn't in there but it really echoes and the clouds dropped right over the river, pretty cool.
An English menu was provided which was very much appreciated and I had a really tasty pork medallion meal. Om nom nom.
No comments:
Post a Comment