Megz and Peter in Europe 2004

Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, France

From the time we left Venice, the feel and pace of our trip changed somewhat. Up until that point we were just on holiday, going to places we wanted to go. But when we left Venice we had exactly one week to get back to Paris to return our car and catch our flight back to London. So it became almost part of the journey rather than the trip.

We left Lake Como on the Italian/Swiss border at lunchtime, and within a couple of hours we had arrived in Luzern. Motorway driving in Switzerland is very expensive. You have to buy a yearly motorway sticker that allows you drive on the motorway. This costs 30 Swiss Francs (they're not on Euros which was mildly inconvenient) but covers you for the whole year. Which is great if you live there or drive there often. But for us only being there two days, it was very expensive. On the other hand the roads are all very good and fast, and we went through the world's second longest road tunnel, the St Gotthard tunnel.

Switzerland and Luzern were beautiful, with snow still on the Alps and the sun shining brightly. We left the rain of Italy behind and encountered some of the hottest weather of the whole trip. I've been to Luzern before, and on that occasion it was overcast and I didn't even get to see the Alps. So this time it was almost like a different city, except that everything was still where I remembered it.

We arrived early in the afternoon and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening wandering around town, seeing the old town and the beautiful Chapel Bridge. It was difficult to find somewhere to eat that night because it was all so expensive. We almost went to McDonald's except that even their combo prices were outside our budget (9-12 Francs / 7-9 Euros / 14-18 NZ Dollars).

The next day we left Switzerland and drove to Germany. Originally we had been planning to go to Munich then north to Heidelberg and then along the Rhine. But as we had discovered driving times to take much longer than we'd expected, we decided to head straight north through the Black Forest, rather than detouring off to Munich.

The Black Forest was really beautiful. We got off the motorways (which are free in Germany, yay!) and onto some small roads through the countryside, where the trees were tall and the houses were few and far between. It was almost as I imagined it to be. We visited the Cuckoo Clock Museum in the small town of Furtwangen and stayed the night near the spa town of Baden Baden. Tempting as it was we didn't take to the waters in Baden Baden the next day, as the minimum time for a spa was two hours and we were keen to get on the road.

The next place we went to was Trier, where we spent a couple of nights. Trier has the oldest Roman ruins north of the Alps and is ideally situated for day tripping along the Moselle River. We had been recommended earlier in the trip to go to the Moselle rather than the Rhine, and we spent a pleasant day driving along the beautiful river past countless vineyards, to the point where the Moselle and Rhine rivers meet, at Koblenz. Once again we tasted some local wines, and found the Rieslings a lot sweeter than New Zealand Rieslings.

Trier is just by the border with Luxembourg, and pretty near the French border too. We drove to the small town of Diekirch in northern Luxembourg. The country is so small it took less than an hour to drive halfway across it. Peter's family has a connection to Diekirch so we stayed a night there and visited the national war museum, which is very impressive for its scale and size.

The same day we also drove to Luxembourg City and spent a couple of hours wandering around there. There wasn't much to see or do there, but the city is built high above a river gorge and the view is pretty impressive. We also visited an old castle near the German border (we literally drove all over the country) which has been restored from ruins to what it looked like in the 17th Century (although there has been a castle there since Roman times).

Our last full day on the Continent we drove across Luxembourg, through Belgium (just because we could - our 10th country of the trip!), and back to France. We stayed in the town of Epernay in the Champagne region, right in the heart of Champagne producing country and home of many of the large Champagne houses, including Moet & Chandon. We took a guided tour of the Moet cellars which was fascinating and I learned a lot about the making of champagne. The tour ended with a tasting of Moet's Brut Imperial champagne. Wow it was nice. The nicest champagne I've ever tasted. I am going to have a very hard time returning to NZ sparkling wines. We bought a bottle from the factory shop to toast our last night on the Continent. It only cost 23 Euros (NZ$45). Also that night I finally got the courage up to try escargot. And I really enjoyed them, they were cooked in loads of butter and garlic and tasted meaty, not slimy as I'd feared.

The next day we packed up our tent for the last time and drove the couple of hours back to Paris and caught our flight back to London. It was so sad to leave Europe. After a month away we both started getting tired and wanting to go home to our comforts. But by the time we came to leave we had gotten our second wind and didn't want the trip to end. In some ways I enjoyed the last couple of days the most out of any because they were unplanned and unexpected, yet they turned out to be full of pleasant surprises.

We found along the way that it takes about two days to get used to speaking a different language. We had five nights in German speaking places, so were just getting the hang of it and learning new words. The menus in Germany/Luxembourg weren't particularly varied - everywhere was basically veal or pork or beef steak. However the portions were certainly large.

At the end of the trip it was really nice to return to France, which was certainly both of our favourite country. It was nice to return to what had become almost familiar customs, and to our favourite radio station NRJ. Arriving back in England we found it really weird not to have to think about which language to speak. Several times I found myself wondering how to say something, then realising with a laugh I didn't have to translate anything.

We had a fantastic holiday, and are really sad now that its come to an end. Somehow returning to a proper bed (which at times we had longed for) just doesn't make up for what we are most definitely going to miss.

posted by Megz @ 4:12 pm