To Germany
Published by
Duncan in
Travel • 01/04/2010 21:29:48
Lovely day: cold but clear and still. So, hopefully, no problems with the ferries. And so it proves; a smooth crossing and a passable full English breakfast. After doing the journey a number of times we have found that the best route to Italy (or our part of it anyway) goes through Belgium (Bruges, Brussels, Namur), Luxembourg. Germany (Saarbrucken), France (Strasbourg), Germany again (Freiburg, Lörrach – to avoid the border queues at Basel), Switzerland (Lucerne, Lugano) and finally Italy (Milan, Bologna, Rimini, Ancona, Monte San Martino). Although it’s about 50 miles farther than going straight through France to Strasbourg it saves a lot of money as it almost completely avoids French tolls and fuel is a lot cheaper in Belgium and Luxembourg than in France. It’s a lovely drive too, through the Ardennes and the Hunsruck (setting of Heimat, one of my all time favourite films).
We were hoping to get to Switzerland by nightfall but there are a few delays so we decide to aim for the Hotel Krone at Neuenburg am Rhein in southern Germany. We’ve stayed there before on the way home and know they have a family room with a pair of bunk beds so Chris rings up as we pass through Saarbrucken and happily the room is available. The hotel has been in the same family, who are also the town butchers, for a hundred years and they serve lovely simple food. At dinner there are almost as many French voices in the restaurant as German (France is only a mile away across the Rhine) and I think about how different it must be to live near a land frontier and how so much has changed since 1939.