Thursday, September 23, 2010

Dash from Inverness to Frankfurt

Sometime on Tuesday morning we discovered that Nathan was not going to be able to renew his German visa and that he would have to fly out to NZ by the 12th of September; understandably this was quite a shock and there was a huge number of changes to be made to our itinerary plus a much abreviated trip to Europe and an early arrival there.

Travelling back south through Scotland, Yorkshire (Darlington and Haworth), Wiltshire and Kent we boarded the ferry at Dover and landed at Dunkerque in time to make it for dinner with our friends near Noyon (where Calvin was born). After this we had a long leg of the journey to make across to Germany so we used the motorways. The tolls on these roads is high and the trees either side obscure most of the views but you do make good progress. Our kind friends near Mainz who are away travelling themselves had made their home available to us so there we stopped and after delivering Nathan to Frankfurt airport on the 12th we flopped for several days only making short excursions. The Guttenburg Musuem was one visit that we did make. Other interesting adventures were had by shopping in the various supermarkets and viewing and sampling the European delights - so much more possible when you are house sitting and have to buy all the food yourselves. This was also an opportunity to hunt for BMW car parts! While passing near Manchester we had purchased and installed a new rear passenger door on our Hyundai. The Breaker (read wrecker) was a couple of Muslims operating out of a shipping container is an exceedingly shady neighbourhood down by the railway-line.

Over the weekend and into this week we have visited with Christian Home-schoolers and with a Reformed Baptist Church which meets in a home. These folk have had Martin Holdt staying with them, so yet again it proves to be a very small world. We've also called in at the school that Nathan had been attending and received a most cordial welcome from the Rektor there who had taken a real shine to Nathan. And then we called in to his home stay to collect his bag etc. There is a huge castle, Hoheneuffen, on top of the hill there.which has stood senteniel over the city of Neuffen (5000 people, but a city of course because it has a castle) for 1000 years. If I ever get the hang of putting pictures on my blog I'll post one of the mountain castle.

Peter has had a rather stiff bout of Menieres but we hope to travel on to visit Ben and his family today near the Rhine River just west of the Black Forrest.