Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz at 'Das Bad' in Merzig. It costs €7.50 per night to stay here, including electricity. Water is available for an extra fee. Exact location: 49.44652, 6.62492.
Weather: Some cloud this morning, but gloriously sunny this afternoon. Hot (low thirties).
A man, speaking a language that did not sound European, decided that Wadern's motorhome Stellplatz was an appropriate place to carry on a phone conversation at 12.45 this morning. That may have been because he was availing himself of the free internet, but I wasn't awfully amused at his lack of volume control.
Once he'd done his chatting all became peaceful until 6.30am when a work crew arrived with a JCB and started removing the curbstones in the Stellplatz. Yes, really. In a place designed for people in motorhomes to sleep, they decided this was an appropriate time of day to clank, bang and shout instructions.
By 8am my opinion of Wadern was low, yet we stirred ourselves to walk into the town, albeit without expectation of finding anything interesting. With low expectations, we weren't disappointed and when our intended route to the Schloss, just outside the town, was thwarted by the lack of a footpath we decided we'd seen enough.
Straight to Merzig, or a one-night stop somewhere en-route? We opted for the former.
The Stellplatz here in Merzig is kept a secret, hidden away without a single sign pointing towards it (an unsual state of affairs), but the SatNav located it for us. However, we found it to be behind a barrier (again, very unusual in Germany), with no signage as to how to gain access.
No great investigative work was needed. There's only one building immediately nearby and that's the swimming pool/spa, so we presented ourselves at their reception.
"Sprechen sie Englisch?" we asked.
"Nein" came the blunt response. It didn't occur to me until later that, being so close to France I should have tried that language as the next option, so the entire transaction had to be carried out in German.
Had this occurred at the beginning of last year's trip, we would have struggled. However, our German vocabulary has come along nicely this year (purely from absorption, not from structured learning), so we came away triumphantly clutching a set of keys and a receipt. We'll be keeping that receipt safe, because they *really* don't want you to drive off with the keys - there's a €50 deposit on them. Yep, you read that right, we had to hand over €50 against a €7.50/night stay. Fortunately someone had mentioned this in their online review so we had been pre-warned.
As for Merzig (where there are to be found branches of Woolworth and C&A!), the town centre is functional, with only a small handful of slightly-eyecatching buildings. I'd noticed on the drive over here that the places through which we were passing didn't have a German look about them, and Merzig is no different, being so close to both the French (5km) and Luxembourg (25km) borders. French and Luxembourish number plates are plentiful on the roads here.
With only four days left in this trip, we'd likely move on tomorrow, to split the journey home into more even sections, but our purpose here is our final German parkrun on Saturday, so we'll be sticking around tomorrow.
Only four days left! Where did the summer go? And how am I going to cope with the British autumn after three months of shorts and t-shirts?
There's a marina just along the river from the Stellplatz, and a little chapel up on that hillside opposite.
Weather: Some cloud this morning, but gloriously sunny this afternoon. Hot (low thirties).
A man, speaking a language that did not sound European, decided that Wadern's motorhome Stellplatz was an appropriate place to carry on a phone conversation at 12.45 this morning. That may have been because he was availing himself of the free internet, but I wasn't awfully amused at his lack of volume control.
Once he'd done his chatting all became peaceful until 6.30am when a work crew arrived with a JCB and started removing the curbstones in the Stellplatz. Yes, really. In a place designed for people in motorhomes to sleep, they decided this was an appropriate time of day to clank, bang and shout instructions.
By 8am my opinion of Wadern was low, yet we stirred ourselves to walk into the town, albeit without expectation of finding anything interesting. With low expectations, we weren't disappointed and when our intended route to the Schloss, just outside the town, was thwarted by the lack of a footpath we decided we'd seen enough.
Straight to Merzig, or a one-night stop somewhere en-route? We opted for the former.
The Stellplatz here in Merzig is kept a secret, hidden away without a single sign pointing towards it (an unsual state of affairs), but the SatNav located it for us. However, we found it to be behind a barrier (again, very unusual in Germany), with no signage as to how to gain access.
No great investigative work was needed. There's only one building immediately nearby and that's the swimming pool/spa, so we presented ourselves at their reception.
"Sprechen sie Englisch?" we asked.
"Nein" came the blunt response. It didn't occur to me until later that, being so close to France I should have tried that language as the next option, so the entire transaction had to be carried out in German.
Had this occurred at the beginning of last year's trip, we would have struggled. However, our German vocabulary has come along nicely this year (purely from absorption, not from structured learning), so we came away triumphantly clutching a set of keys and a receipt. We'll be keeping that receipt safe, because they *really* don't want you to drive off with the keys - there's a €50 deposit on them. Yep, you read that right, we had to hand over €50 against a €7.50/night stay. Fortunately someone had mentioned this in their online review so we had been pre-warned.
As for Merzig (where there are to be found branches of Woolworth and C&A!), the town centre is functional, with only a small handful of slightly-eyecatching buildings. I'd noticed on the drive over here that the places through which we were passing didn't have a German look about them, and Merzig is no different, being so close to both the French (5km) and Luxembourg (25km) borders. French and Luxembourish number plates are plentiful on the roads here.
With only four days left in this trip, we'd likely move on tomorrow, to split the journey home into more even sections, but our purpose here is our final German parkrun on Saturday, so we'll be sticking around tomorrow.
Only four days left! Where did the summer go? And how am I going to cope with the British autumn after three months of shorts and t-shirts?
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