Hi all,
Now well and truly on the road, so may be brief, rough (excuse weird
tense changes etc, I’m just going to do brain dumps and not spend the time I
usually do editing) and pictureless until I find some free WiFI and a power
source.
Picked up car – guy who served me handed me the keys, told me where to
find the car and that was it. You had better believe I took a fair bit of time
taking pics of every nick and dent after our experience in the UK, JG! The hire
car parking lot was hilarious – full of people not able to turn their cars on,
or put cars in reverse, or do various other essential things, so I felt I was
in good company when I had to go back and ask how to do these things myself
after a number of valiant but unsuccessful attempts. Driving out of the parking
lot you had to keep your wits about you for others who had managed to bunny-hop
their cars forward but weren’t able to do anything else – was a bit of an
obstacle course.
The actual driving was very interesting – besides the driver’s seat
being on the left, the car is manual. I normally drive a manual, but having the
gear stick on the left was such an odd feeling. Oh, and it was raining. So all
in all very glad I picked a short run for my first trip – I kept clashing
gears, stalling car, veering towards the right-hand kerb forgetting I had, you
know, a whole car on that side, having a heart-attack every time there was some
traffic coming in the opposite direction (it feels so strange to have traffic coming at you on your left), getting
honked at by probably every motorist on the road for driving too slowly, or
stalling at lights, or taking a really long time to turn corners. After the
first couple of times I stopped even noticing the honking, don’t care how
impatient people are, I’m going to do this trip as safely as I possibly can,
especially these first few days while I’m getting used to the driving side of
things. Key mantras for the trip quickly became “Look left, keep right” and
“Holy f*ck, what the f*ck having I f*cking done, deciding to do a road trip
through f*cking Europe driving on the f*cking wrong side of the f*cking road.”
Thank you TR for the wide range of creative epithets I picked up from you over the years and which also got a thorough
workout during this first bit of the road trip.
Finally arrived at the Rhine Falls, utterly mentally exhausted, after a
half hour trip that felt like an eternity. I vaguely remember passing through
fields of poppies and yarrow, and others full of sunflowers, and seeing ornate
manor-type houses and centuries-old farm houses, but I was so completely
occupied by not endangering myself or anyone else that I didn’t have the
headspace to really take this stuff in. Only a half hour north of Zurich so can
always revisit this bit on the end of the trip if I feel the need!
I might have missed the sunflowers but I found some poppies ...
The Falls themselves were far better than I had anticipated. I could hear
them from a long way away, but to see them you have to buy a ticket, walk
through a small castle built in the 1500s, and out onto the first viewing
platform, on a cliff high over the river. You follow a path down the cliff to
various viewing platforms, increasingly close to the falls, until you reach the
piece de resistance, one extraordinary platform reached by a tunnel carved
through the cliff itself at a point halfway down the falls and so close to them
that when the wind gusted in the right direction water from the falls hit you.
The strength and volume of the falls, which, being able to hear them for such a
long time before I even saw them, I had
been aware of from this first sensory connection with the falls, was
breathtaking at this point – I could feel a deep, visceral throbbing in the
rock I was standing in, the reflections (seems too gentle a word for the
feeling) of that vast quantity of water throwing itself down the falls, as it has
done for millennia (17 millenia, to be precise).
They're really quite impressive
After this, followed a beautiful walking track through a forest right
along the edge of the Rhine (the Rhine! Can you believe it? I hardly could –
when it clicked I had to stop and put my hand in the cool, clear, greeny water,
making a direct physical connection with this much-read-about river - walking
beside it wasn’t enough) to a bridge a little way down from the falls where I
crossed the river and walked back up to the falls to view them from the other
side of the river. Then up this other side of the falls, past a water wheel
(can’t think of right name right now), to another bridge and back to the car.
By this stage was utterly ravenous and pretty thirsty – finding food
and water, and my first camp for the night were becoming pressing needs. After
awkwardly driving around a nearby town looking for a supermarket without
success, I was getting pretty stressed. Decided to set my GPS for
Neuschwantstein Castle and hope to find a supermarket along the way. Reached
Schaffhausen, a town in a little promontory of Switzerland reaching up into
Germany. Spent quite some time here, going around and around while my GPS had
kittens as I met road works and closed roads and looked for a blasted
supermarket (the wretched things should really be signposted). Finally gave up
again on the supermarket thing and continued on route, and (as people always
say about dating) found what I was looking for just when I stopped looking.
Cannot convey what relief I felt when I found the local Co op supermarket – I
bought a vast amount of food and water and parked in a corner to eat and drink
and rest for a little while.
By now was obvious that I was feeling pretty shattered, so I thought
I’d drive a bit further along the route and hope to find a quiet place to camp.
Jackpot – found a public car park with no parking restrictions, in a nice area,
with some beautiful trees and shrubs slightly overgrown around the edges.
Snuggled the car into one of the corners, where the passenger side is poked
right up into a shrubby corner, while the rest is gently lit by a nearby street
light, and after eating a little more settled down to read Sherlock Holmes,
make friends with my car (from now on aka my travel pod), shrink the world back to manageable
proportions and fall asleep.
Neuschwanstein Castle tomorrow depending on how I find the drive – if
I’m getting too tired, I’ll do legs as short as I need to to stay safe.