Day 1 - our adventure begins

I'm posting this which means I obviously made it to Frankfurt in our new camper safely. Driving through central Berlin on the opposite side of the road was one thing, but having to change gears with the other hand only added to the confusion, luckily nobody was in the car with me to hear me cursing and yelling as I entered an intersection on the wrong side and frantically tried to correct myself with car heading straight at me. After the seven hour drive from there to Frankfurt though (it's normally only 4-5 hours but I got lost!), I believe I am now well and truly used to it, and more to the point - the car made it!!

I picked up Zac from Frankfurt airport then we drove straight to my friend's dads place in Mainz where he had a big German breakfast waiting for us. My friend was there long enough to introduce us to her dad who couldn't speak any English before she had to rush off to work and then I was left to try to interpret what he was saying to Zac with my German language skills which would show-up any 5 year old any day. Luckily he was patient and spoke clearly enough to me that we actually managed to carry out a polite conversion and managed to interpret Zac's questions to him including "are there any coal mines in Germany?" and "why is there raw mince on the breakfast table?"

That evening we met a few of my friends' friends in Mainz town centre as they were kind enough to offer to show us around the city as they were studying English and saw it as an opportunity to practice. We walked around the old town centre and took a peek in the cathedral, had dinner and a few beers and by that time Zac's lack of sleep from his 22 hour flight the night before was kicking in.

The next day we headed off towards Grafenwöhr as our pet-sitting assignment started in a village nearby the following day but we wanted to take our time and have our first night sleeping in our camper on the way. We stopped in Mainz first at a couple of second hand shops which had been recommended to us to stock up our camper, then with our new tea pot, knives and forks and can opener we headed off.

Our 1st camping spot near Würzburg

 

Our first night was cold, unfortunately the heating in the back of the van doesn't work and we didn't want to start the engine to get the heater in the front cranking as we might wake the people parked near us, so we just slept with lots of blankets and lots of layers and it was fine. In fact we both slept really well and woke up feeling fresh and the first thing we did in the morning was pop across the road where Germany's largest indoor camping shop happened to be, brought fuel for our stove and cooked a breakfast and had a cup of tea like weirdos in their carpark, before heading off on our way...