WHERE ARE WE ANNE?: Fly to Germany

JUST DRIVE FROM HAMBURG AIRPORT. HOW HARD COULD THAT BE?

Hamburg Airport. Homage to Jeffrey Smart who died just last month

Sqeasy Jet to Hamburg on 23rd July from Gatwick. Picked up the hire car, a nice VW polo cross, black, again. We said no to a GPS at ten euros a day and instead, using the free wifi at the airport, cached our google map route out of town on Anne's new ipad mini that she bought off her mum. So actually, I do have a GPS. Except mine is a Girl Powered System.

We headed off, driving on the right hand side again with Anne under pressure as navigator and had to immediately pull over on the airport roundabout with too many choices in German. We deliberated, discussed, deduced, decided and duly drove on. We actually work together quite well in these situations but it would be a fib to say it's not stressy. We don't have GPS on Anne's ipad but the free internet at the airport that we were on, stayed connected and the local cells must have triangulated us because the navigator reported our position indicator was moving with us on Google maps! Don't ask me how but we had live updates for a while.

That was all very well except that once it dropped off and we hurtled north, none of the exits were the expected ones as we came to terms with German symbology. We eventually twigged we were on the wrong autobahn but not too wrong. We bought a map at a gas station and soon found ourselves at our accommodation for the night. Thanks Anne, always a stressy ask to make navigation calls when we are both trying to decipher German road signs as they whizzed by. What did that say?......

We used airbnb for the first time for that night's accomodation and found ourselves at Im Langen Moor just out of Molln in a beautiful deeply wooded area driving through oaks then tall pine trees past ripe wild raspberries to a driveway to say hello to our host Jan who was repairing his fibreglass canoe. The sort of accommodation you would never have or know about if not for airbnb.

Jan and Bea were our lovely hosts and we quickly felt very relaxed with like minded people. We walked into town sightseeing on a very hot day, picked raspberries on the way home and then they took us to their lake with their dog Fino. A beautiful deep lake that only the locals use. We had a welcome swim, Anne almost got straight in with little of her customary inch by excruciating inch deeper method. It was refreshing but we didn't swim as much as Bea who set off across the lake for an hour. I would have needed a wetsuit too if I had done it but she says she likes it for the bouyancy as someone new to swimming who doesn't like the idea of drowning.

Jan and Bea took us to dinner at a location we would never have found as tourists. Apparently it is quite famous as one of the few privately owned enormous lakes with a restaurant speciality of local fish. I think they were trout but can't be sure. Either way they were delicious.

In keeping with my theme that has developed since Singapore that 'There Is Great Beer In Life For Those Willing To Take The Journey' I've been sampling and documenting some on offer. This is what the acronym TIGBILFTWTTTJ stands for. Doesn't quite roll off the tongue so expect some refinement yet. Maybe it will just be Tigbil. Anyway I neglected to take any pics there except for my beer pic. The weiss beers are great. A wheat beer, yum.

Our stay with Bea and Jan was just delightful. In fact we enjoyed it so much we stayed another night. The joy of no fixed itinerary. The second night we had dinner at home with Jan's visiting parents and his father pulled out a twenty year french Bordeaux wine. V nice. We had a great time.