From Cairo to the Connemara: A Sojournal

      Pt3 - 5: NORTHERN GERMANY 7 th July – 13 th July   The weather was resolutely Transylvanian as we left the suburbs of Prague behind and pointed the bullet in the general direction of Berlin. We approached the border north of Teplice through heavy rain. Here, the road climbed steeply into a range of classically conical hills, like the hills kids draw. With the altitude came a scything wind that occasionally had the bullet dancing on the corners. We crossed the frontier at a burg called Windblastedstadt, or something like that, where the stunted and busted trees whipped around in a force 10 maelstrom. We hung a left at Bad Dipsydorf (sic) south of Dresden and ended up overnighting at Machen near Leipzig in the former East Germany. The campground was very peaceful, with a lake and manicured gardens and birds singing in the trees, a welcome relief from the mad turbulence of the journey up. The low cloud burned off soon after we left Machen. Tess drove the...

  Pt3 - 2: SOUTHERN GERMANY 23 rd – 28 th June   If it’s Sunday it must be Germany. There was nobody to gestampen our passports as we crossed the Rhine on the autobahn to Freiburg. From there we swung east into the heart of the Black Forest, which lived up to its name. By now the rain had set in again and even though it was only mid-afternoon it was dark enough to flick the headlights on. We wound through steep moody hills covered in dense stands of symmetrically straight pines; you half expected the Big Bad Wolf to chase Red Riding Hood across the road. By the time we arrived at Seerbrugg on the eastern tip of the Schluchsee the showers had developed into a biblical deluge which sounded like rocks on the roof of the silver bullet. We pulled into a carpark on the lake and sat in a cold grey silence watching the water sluice down the windscreen. This is supposed to be summer for christ’s sake! We could have this weather much more cheaply back in bloody Bridgetown and fo...