At the beginning of the week, we said goodbye to Alex’s mom and her husband, his brother and our children.
It’s always very emotional. We will never get used to saying goodbye. Although we are so happy that we can move on and experience new adventures, it is always so hard to say goodbye to our loved ones.
Motorcycle ride to Alex’s mom’s, together with his brother .
The motorcycle was loaded up ready to go. The laundry was washed again and the one or two things we didn’t need in the house over the last few days were stowed away in the WENNE.
After breakfast on Thursday, we packed the rest of our things into the car, said goodbye to Iris’ parents and then we set off.
There are some really beautiful areas here too. For this reason, we continued our journey in short stages. So our first stop was just 140 km from “home”. We found a nice free parking space in the Heilbronn district in the countryside and still close to the city center.
With chickens clucking, birds singing and church bells ringing in the distance, it was a great place for us to feel at home, despite the recurring rain. At least now at the end of April, when there wasn’t much going on. In summer, when the outdoor pool is open and the many parking spaces are full, it’s certainly a different story.
In the evening, we took a short walk through Güglingen.
How wonderfully fragrant the lilacs always are. Alex can’t smell it often enough 😉
Nice “Zug” beer garden.
The rest of the journey took us through Rhineland-Palatinate, right through Kaiserslautern into Saarland.
We found a fairly new campsite in the small community of Oberthal near Trier.
The highlight of the town is probably Matthias Josef Maurer, a German materials scientist and ESA astronaut. His participation in the SpaceX Crew-3 flight in 2021 made him the 12th German to travel into space.
The spacecraft is apparently built on the. It tells a little story about the astronaut and space.
We had a look around the area in the evening. Although the campsite is in the middle of the city, there is a lot of nature around it.
You can also learn dialect while shopping 😉 although we have to admit that we don’t particularly like the Saarland dialect.
On Friday, we set off to visit a friend. We got to know him on our previous trip to Portugal. Since we spent many months together with him on a campsite there, we have grown fond of each other. In the small town of around 2000 souls where he lives, there are no parking spaces, let alone camper van sites. Everything is pretty cramped, so we couldn’t park anywhere with our WENNE. He himself suggested contacting the mayor, whom he knows very well, to find out whether we could park in the large fire station and Red Cross parking lot.
With the mayor’s OK, we made our way to Rhineland-Palatinate near Trier.
We were actually only about an hour away from our friend’s home, but after our satnav wanted to send us onto roads where trucks were not allowed to drive through quite often today, it took us almost two hours to get to the fire station and Red Cross parking lot.
Our dear friend picked us up personally on his tricycle and of course we were greeted with a beer.
He had bought something “for the grill” (in his words), but Iris always needs something on the side. So we brought along a salad and a sandwich and spent the rest of the day together.
We had actually assumed that we would stay here at the fire station for one night. But our friend Pit would like to show us the area around his home on his motorcycle. And because we also want to see Trier, Pit would like to accompany us, but he doesn’t have time on Monday, we’ll have a nice day for two and then go sightseeing in Trier with our friend on Tuesday.
If you like, please check the blog again next week. Then you’ll find out about our stay here in Rhineland-Palatinate and the rest of our trip.