Taz meets a man who loves to go a-wandering

Thursday 19th August - Belfort - via Erfstadt

Of all the towns in German we ended up in Erfstadt. Where? Well Erfstadt is twinned with Wokingham and I guess its name must have been lodged somewhere in my brain when I was choosing our next stop out of the very informative, but to me as a non-German speaker, very bewildering, “7400 Reisemobil Stellplatze” book. Can’t say we noticed many similarities between Wokingham and Erfstadt apart from an over abundance of cafes and restaurants. And you certainly wouldn’t have wares like that in photo above in a bakers in Wokingham – oh no,no,no.

Its been a bit of a culture shock coming straight back from Sweden – the land of Volvo drivers to the land of BMW; head in the sand land to rules on how to use toilet paper land. But we just began to get the hang of Germany, especially after a good recommendation for a supermarket from Denise – it did a great line in plastic goods, and we hit the border. We had a lovely stop in another entry from the book, a field at the start of walking trails opposite a Stube and only 5 euros a night. There was one other campervan and he left soon after we arrived – co-incidence? – of course. First he told us how he and his wife loved to go “vondering”. But not, judging by his tummy, along many difficult mountain trails. He also suggested some good places to visit in Germany, so we will try and remember those and give Germany a proper go another year.

Thursday

Wey hey – sunshine and internet!! Yesterday I spotted an entry in our Aires book that said “Wine town – you could drink yourself silly here – wine tasting”. Well it would have been rude not to go there wouldn’t it? Unfortunately that’s what 6 other campervans thought too and with only 5 places in the aire there was no way we could squeeze in. But God moves in mysterious ways and he obviously thought that we had been hitting the bottle too much already and we needed a taste of religion. When we arrived at the next aire we found it was in the car park for an Abbey. Actually it was lovely, only one other van and the Abbey was very arty with a lovely medieval garden. And we still managed to taste some wine – from a wine box we bought in Sweden rather than from a vineyard in Alsace.