2nd October 2016. Schmelz, Germany.

At last the rain has arrived.  The weather forecast said it would be raining on Saturday and Sunday but it was baking hot yesterday which is why I suggested that we went out for a walk before the weather changed.

It’s nice to occasionally have a rainy day so we can get on with some jobs in the van, I hate staying inside when it’s a beautifully sunny day I want to be out and about exploring the area we’re visiting.

Today I’m going to try to add photos to all the old posts that haven’t got them yet.  I do hope I get that finished then I can just concentrate on what we’re doing now.  Mark (wheresfrankie.co.uk) manages to update his blog every day, I’m not sure I’ll ever be that organised but it’s something to strive for.

It’s amazing how our plans change.   I’m not really sure where the day went, I’m sharing Darren’s laptop now that mine only works on mains electricity as we have no hook up here so I spent the morning working out how to transfer books to Darren’s tablet for him to read and then we wandered over to the restaurant where we had yet another very nice meal.

We noticed the people at the table next to us had gone over and got themselves a menu so I went over to the pile of menus and tried to find the English version that we’d been given on the last two occasions we’d eaten there.  It took a while but I eventually found them right at the bottom of the pile, I slid two out and brought them back to the table.  We spent a while perusing them and then a new waitress appeared.  She took the order from the table next to us and turned round to take us then seemed very stressed, she appeared to be telling us that we’d done something wrong and we realised as she started to take the menus away that she was saying we’d got the wrong menus.  We tried to explain why we needed those menus and she suddenly realised we were speaking English and placed the menus back on the table with a smile.

She didn’t speak any English at all which made things very interesting but we managed to order our lunch and a drink.

The confusion kicked in when we tried to ask for the desert menu.  We had no idea what she was saying and she had no idea what we were asking and it wasn’t until she walked off and we heard her say a word that sounded like tally and we realised she thought we wanted the bill!  We were saying “Nein, nein”, she was looking very confused (it looks like the word is kein not nein nowadays).

Another round of confusion followed as we couldn’t remember the name for menu (I remembered it’s meny in Sweden, not much help eh!) so we pointed at the people’s puddings next to us and she assumed we wanted what they had, we shook our heads vigorously and tried to remember the name of the desert we wanted, we knew the first part of the name was Kaiser and tried saying that but that didn’t work so Darren started trying to say speisekarten he thought meant menu and doing little mimes eventually the kind German people at the table next to us realised what we wanted and explained to her that we wanted the desert menu.

She brought the menus over but they weren’t the ones we’d had earlier and the Kaiser pudding wasn’t in it so Darren ended up having the same as the people next to us and I had a crepe with ice cream.  What an exciting meal.

It did mean we started talking to the people next to us, I’d been wanting to know what breed their dog was.  He was very well behaved although it did all get a bit much for him at one point and he tried to jump on to his owners lap which wouldn’t have been quite so bad if he hadn’t been quite so big, it made us laugh though.  It turns out he was a cross between a Labrador and a Large Münsterländer (my friend Anna had a Large Münsterländer called Henry and he and our dog Inke were best buddies) but this sweetie didn’t have any of the white markings that a Large Münsterländer has, just the size!

There were two other dogs in the restaurant, they were all so well behaved, it would appear that it’s only in the UK that dogs aren’t allowed in restaurants.

After we’d finished our meal we started walking back to the van, the mountains were looking completely different from the last two days, the tops of them were covered in swirling cloud so that every so often we’d get a momentary glimpse of the jagged tops.

I phoned my parents when we got back, my Kindle really isn’t up to the job of Skyping, we could barely hear them so we need to wait until we’re on electric hook up before we try to Skype anyone again.

My plan to update all the photoless posts didn’t quite work out.  I ended up only adding photos to six old posts (still that’s better than nothing I suppose) and I answered a load of emails (still got lots left to reply to, sorry everyone who’s still waiting for a reply, I’m getting there!)

Emails have been zinging backwards and forwards between Darren and Mark and it looks as though we’re meeting up with him and Lucy tomorrow which will be lovely.