Saturday June 1st

Ugh.  The earliest start I think we have ever had......we didn't think this through properly, did we?  Morning flight to arrive in the after own sounded fine until we realised that we hadn't really accounted for the time it would take to get to Heathrow.....!


So we had a little breakfast but at 3:30 my stomach at least wasn't sure about having any food in it, but Mathew felt fine.  Our taxi arrived slightly earlier than we had anticipated, but it got us to the bus station in no time.


The bus was fairly empty, the traffic light and the weather sunny.  We arrived at Heathrow Terminal 1 on time at 7:30 and headed straight in to drop off our bags.  The queue was long but it moved fast, looking back a few times we realised we got there just in time!  We stopped off to buy a bottle of water and some mini cheddars (which I had to scan my boarding pass for!??) before sitting down for a moment whilst waiting to find out what gate we had to go to.  Fortunately gate 17 wasn't too far away and we were there and on the plane in no time.


On the plane we had a Croquet Monsiuer which filled our stomachs nicely, I tried to read a little but a headache had started so I closed my eyes.  Suddenly we were descending into Munich Airport and we were off the plane, the flight having been fairly uneventful with the exception of the steward taking a shine to Mathew.  He kept telling him to smile, although I didn't think he looked particularly grumpy..!


Off the plane and into the Airport.  We breezed through Passport control (Go EU!), had nothing to declare and went straight on to collect our hire car.  Even though the Airport and the car hire "hub" were in seperate buildings, the outside area in between was covered with a giant canopy which was pretty impressive, and fortunate for us as it was tipping it down outside.  We were in the queue for the car for a little while, but when we did get seen to it seemed ours was much more straightforward than everyone else before us.  So our economy car turned out to be a SKODA Yeti.  Economical, yes.  Absolutely massive!! #weaskedforasmallcar

Our first experience on German roads was....interesting...!  First of all Mathew had to get used to a diesel car; he was less concerned about driving on the other side of the road as he had done it before in Canada.  Although these roads seemed rather narrow......it felt a bit hairy in places but it was just a case of getting used to the width of the car.  We managed to get ourselves from the Airport to the ring road around Munich, but we ended up turning off too soon resulting in a driving close to the city centre.  But we got through it and out onto the other side, after having sussed out German road signs somewhat #somanysigns.  Into the countryside where the roads were nowhere near as congested, we found Obendorf pretty easily and the hotel even easier.  Obendorf seemed like a fairly small place with plenty of traditional style Bavarian buildings, especially the hotel which had a really cosy atmosphere inside!  I rang the bell at reception and this is when we discovered that we had inadvertently landed ourselves in the heart of traditional Baravia where little English is known, or so it seemed.  Not that we minded, even though our German isn't particularly good, we managed to understand each other, especially as I recognise a good handful of words.  I thought she spoke quickly but not as fast as I've heard French, Italian and Spanish - I was actually able to isolate the words I am familiar with, which I somehow can't with other languages.  I knew I should have worked harder at learning German before we got here! #lazybones  Our room was on the top floor with a shared balcony looking out over the car park and some fields beyond it.  We went back down to get our luggage and stopped off to have a look at the menu for the restaurant.  There was no English translation (as we expected) so we thought we may have an interesting dinner.....!  We thought it a good idea to take my German phrase book with us.  It's a pretty old one (Deutschmarks still in use!) but I doubt the language has changed!  Back in the room, we had a doze until about 18:00 when we went downstairs to investigate and translate dinner.


In the restaurant we were greeted by a waitress wearing traditional Bavarian costume - in fact, the entire hotel was Baravian style inside and out.  We were seated and menus given, and we safely managed to order a large coke and a small sprite.  We read the menu with the phrase book, not understanding everything but enough to be able to choose something which we knew most of!  I chose a fish called perch which came with parsley potatoes and a salad.  Mathew ordered Schnitzel (escalope) which actually turned out to be veal which he didn't realise until later.  Even though I was really hungry, I couldn't finish the meal entirely, possibly because lack of sleep seems to disturb my appetite/digestion somewhat, but Mathew finished his and we were both stuffed.  During the meal we both managed to nod appreciation when guessing if we were being asked if we were enjoying it.  We came to the conclusion that they do the same thing everywhere - it must be a thing waiting staff are trained to do: wait until the customer puts a forkful of food in their mouth and THEN ask if they're enjoying it! #tacticalquestioning


I managed to ask for the bill and I paid in cash, rounding it up which added 2 euros after I couldn't find the German words for "Service Included" on the receipt which I was given (I had just looked it up in the phrase book).  The waitress seemed rather pleased with this, and then wished us a pleasant evening (I think).

Back in the room we chilled out some more, and had a look through the TV channels to see if we could find a weather report.  We found three different reports but none went into great detail, all gave us generic World weather.  However, we did discover that there was some serious flooding going on in Dresden, and there was yet more rain forecast for south Germany. The map looked like rain covered the entire country, but Mathews weather app which had downloaded the most recent info last night stated that the rain would blow itself out of Germany by the beginning of next week, getting brighter and sunnier.  We hoped this would be the case!  A good night's sleep was needed, and we had no trouble getting it.