Where's Bertie? He's still at the same Stellplatz as yesterday.
Weather: Sunny intervals and pleasantly warm when in the sun.
We found a bar and watched the Germany v Sweden World Cup match last night. It was a subdued affair, far removed from the scene we would have expected for the equivalent game in a UK pub, with only a handful of people watching and only slight reactions being made to what was going on on screen. I say 'we' watched, but in reality, Mick watched and I looked up occasionally from my sock knitting. My coolness knows no bounds: knitting in a bar on a Saturday night...
Germany's winning goal was excitingly snatched 10 seconds before the end of the 5 minutes of added time. A cause for celebration, for sure, but from the tooting of horns, letting off of fireworks and shouting going on in the town for the next hour or so you would have thought they'd just won the entire tournament, rather than achieving their first win from their two games played to date.
Today also had a football focus, in that it was England's second match of the tournament. We returned to the same bar as last night and were the only customers for most of the match, as we sat in front of the muted TV. Whilst it would have been nice to have heard the reactions of the crowd, we didn't miss out by not being able to hear the German commentary. Again, when I say 'we' watched, I mean that I looked up occasionally, but also spent a profitable chunk of time using the free wifi provided by the tourist office, which happened to be next door. Amongst other things, I now finally have a couple of guidebooks to Germany downloaded, having completely failed to think of the benefits of such resources before we left home.
With the football having concluded with the right result (6-1 to England against Panama), we returned to Bertie via an indirect route taking in the key sights of the town and the local parkland on the way.
The Hansel Fountain, depicting a figure from the Donaueschingen carnival celebration. Next to this was a popular ice cream shop selling enormous sundaes. My resolve not to over-indulge may not have held, had the queue been shorter.
Another fountain that took my fancy. The figures of musicians at the far end have mobile joints, so presumably the fountain has (or had) a feature where the water pressure is used to make them 'play' their instruments.
The source of the Danube, 678m above sea level and 2840km from the sea.
The temple that marks the point where the infant Danube joins the much bigger Brigach river. Hold on, said we - why is the source of the Danube not the source of this bigger river, which clearly originates further away from the river's final end at the Black Sea?
A sculpture of lightning, outside the Art Museum, which was closed by the time we passed by.
I'm now going to go off on a bit of a tangent, but it is relevant to what came next...
When I was in my youth, the act of going around a pub or nightclub and taking drinks that had been left by others was known as 'minesweeping'. I don't believe I ever took part in that activity, but I do now do effectively the same thing with electricity at motorhome parking areas. In Germany it is common for motorhome Stellplätze to have coin operated electicity points, priced at either 50c or €1 per kWh. It's also very common for Germans to use those electric points. Having established that running Bertie on gas is cheaper than running him on electricity at even 50c per kWh, we don't usually choose to pay for electricity unless there's something for which we specifically need mains power. However, when someone has left credit on the meter, that credit is going to be used by someone else, and I figure that someone may as well be me. So, when this morning there was an exodus and we moved Bertie into a proper space, from his position squeezed onto the verge at the margin of the parking, I checked out the credit situation, scoring 1.7kWh.
Arriving back from our football & sightseeing outing, we noticed that our neighbour two down, who had also been plugged in, had left. Checking the plug points again, I saw that we were down to 0.6kWh, whereas the recent departee had left a whopping 3.9kWh. Score again! That should see us through to when we leave tomorrow.
I'll finish with three semi-random asides:
1) After seeing mainly only German vans since arriving in the country, it's a multicultural gathering here tonight. In the row of six vans in which we are sitting, there are six different nationalities.
2) We learnt from the Run Director at yesterday's ParkRun that different regions of Germany have their own school term dates. Accordingly, the neighbouring region to here started their holidays last Friday, where as this region doesn't break up for another four weeks. ('Region' isn't the term she used, but I'm having a failure of memory.)
3) We also learnt yesterday that it is an offense in Germany, when using on-street parking, to park against the flow of traffic. Happily we also learnt this from the Run Director, rather than from a financially painful experience of breaching that law!
Weather: Sunny intervals and pleasantly warm when in the sun.
We found a bar and watched the Germany v Sweden World Cup match last night. It was a subdued affair, far removed from the scene we would have expected for the equivalent game in a UK pub, with only a handful of people watching and only slight reactions being made to what was going on on screen. I say 'we' watched, but in reality, Mick watched and I looked up occasionally from my sock knitting. My coolness knows no bounds: knitting in a bar on a Saturday night...
Germany's winning goal was excitingly snatched 10 seconds before the end of the 5 minutes of added time. A cause for celebration, for sure, but from the tooting of horns, letting off of fireworks and shouting going on in the town for the next hour or so you would have thought they'd just won the entire tournament, rather than achieving their first win from their two games played to date.
Today also had a football focus, in that it was England's second match of the tournament. We returned to the same bar as last night and were the only customers for most of the match, as we sat in front of the muted TV. Whilst it would have been nice to have heard the reactions of the crowd, we didn't miss out by not being able to hear the German commentary. Again, when I say 'we' watched, I mean that I looked up occasionally, but also spent a profitable chunk of time using the free wifi provided by the tourist office, which happened to be next door. Amongst other things, I now finally have a couple of guidebooks to Germany downloaded, having completely failed to think of the benefits of such resources before we left home.
With the football having concluded with the right result (6-1 to England against Panama), we returned to Bertie via an indirect route taking in the key sights of the town and the local parkland on the way.
The Hansel Fountain, depicting a figure from the Donaueschingen carnival celebration. Next to this was a popular ice cream shop selling enormous sundaes. My resolve not to over-indulge may not have held, had the queue been shorter.
Another fountain that took my fancy. The figures of musicians at the far end have mobile joints, so presumably the fountain has (or had) a feature where the water pressure is used to make them 'play' their instruments.
The source of the Danube, 678m above sea level and 2840km from the sea.
The temple that marks the point where the infant Danube joins the much bigger Brigach river. Hold on, said we - why is the source of the Danube not the source of this bigger river, which clearly originates further away from the river's final end at the Black Sea?
A sculpture of lightning, outside the Art Museum, which was closed by the time we passed by.
I'm now going to go off on a bit of a tangent, but it is relevant to what came next...
When I was in my youth, the act of going around a pub or nightclub and taking drinks that had been left by others was known as 'minesweeping'. I don't believe I ever took part in that activity, but I do now do effectively the same thing with electricity at motorhome parking areas. In Germany it is common for motorhome Stellplätze to have coin operated electicity points, priced at either 50c or €1 per kWh. It's also very common for Germans to use those electric points. Having established that running Bertie on gas is cheaper than running him on electricity at even 50c per kWh, we don't usually choose to pay for electricity unless there's something for which we specifically need mains power. However, when someone has left credit on the meter, that credit is going to be used by someone else, and I figure that someone may as well be me. So, when this morning there was an exodus and we moved Bertie into a proper space, from his position squeezed onto the verge at the margin of the parking, I checked out the credit situation, scoring 1.7kWh.
Arriving back from our football & sightseeing outing, we noticed that our neighbour two down, who had also been plugged in, had left. Checking the plug points again, I saw that we were down to 0.6kWh, whereas the recent departee had left a whopping 3.9kWh. Score again! That should see us through to when we leave tomorrow.
I'll finish with three semi-random asides:
1) After seeing mainly only German vans since arriving in the country, it's a multicultural gathering here tonight. In the row of six vans in which we are sitting, there are six different nationalities.
2) We learnt from the Run Director at yesterday's ParkRun that different regions of Germany have their own school term dates. Accordingly, the neighbouring region to here started their holidays last Friday, where as this region doesn't break up for another four weeks. ('Region' isn't the term she used, but I'm having a failure of memory.)
3) We also learnt yesterday that it is an offense in Germany, when using on-street parking, to park against the flow of traffic. Happily we also learnt this from the Run Director, rather than from a financially painful experience of breaching that law!
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