Morgen! Back from mittel Europe safe and well and still gobsmacked at how Germany and Switzerland can run their countries (and especially their trains) to such strict and exacting timetables. Even Easyjet were scared into arriving on-time both ways.
Basel was a good-looking city and we spent Saturday bimbling along its cobbled streets avoiding marathon runners and trying not to stare at their tiny running shorts. We saw churches and bridges and swollen rivers and street golfers and street fashion shows and street art and lots of really tall and beefy handsome Swiss men (must be the chocolate).
Our hotel was mighty grand (the kind with slippers and robes in the bathroom and such a bargain on Expedia) and just opposite the train station, which was very handy for the next morning when we started our trip into Germany and the Black Forest.
The Heimat scenery kept us amused for two hours and was made even more dramatic by dark clouds and belting rain (yet, naturally, the local bus kept to it’s schedule and met our train at Ringsheim) and ten minutes later we were checking in at our theme park hotel.
The next three days were spent riding boats, trains, rollercoasters, bobsleighs, monorails, runaway mine-cars, paddle-steamers, revolving viewing platforms, waterslides and log flumes. We ate delicious food from Italy, Spain and France but not Switzerland (do you know how disgusting raclette smells?) and we sat in beautiful gardens admiring German green fingers.