Friday 16th June – Aschaffenburg to Saarburg
Our plan today is to drive to Saarburg where we will pick up our barge. We went a day earlier as Elfi has a plan to do a walk in the tree tops not too far from Saarburg. The boys loaded up the bikes on the back of the car and secured them very tightly as with typical autobahn travel you travel at warp speed – move over the Enterprise. Both boys looking very proud of themselves.
It was a three hour car trip in a north west direction and at times we were right on the French border. The town of Saarburg is on the Saar River that empties into the Mosel and where we meet the barge. We are only about 20k’s up from where the two rivers meet.
It is a pretty little down so we wandered around for a while before hitting a coffee shop. It has a small stream that runs through it and then empties into the Saar River.
Like with all these types of places they call themselves the Venice of the ……fill in the space. The geraniums are now out in full bloom and all the window boxes look lovely.
Saarburg was very lucky during the Second World War as it did not have any significance so was not bombed the shit out of like so many other parts of Germany. Elfi was telling us that last year when they were doing some highway maintenance not too far from their place a worker was killed by a Second World War bomb that he hit whilst repairing the road.
We had a wonderful dinner alongside the canal. Though not fluent in English but having a very good understanding Horst and Elfi sometimes can’t remember the exact English word so we make up similar words. An example is photo maker for a camera. Last night at dinner was a good example. We were talking about baptisms and we couldn’t translate it for them so we were calling it the Pi Pi like when you go to the toilet. We all ended up with this image of God undoing his fly from above and pissing on baby’s heads – well that ended up in all of us peeing our pants in laughter at the table and drawing a lot of attention to ourselves. In this case I would say it did not get lost in translation.
Often when you are in these towns that are so close to borders of other people countries there will be an influence in the language and customs from that country. In this case there really does not seem to be. The town is full of bikers and old people in Lycra, and we all know how that goes. A lot of people bike the Mosel and start either from Saarburg or Trier. Trier is a little further down on the Mosel and we will be there at the end of our first day on the bikes.
On our walk we noticed that the MS Patria is already moored up – just waiting for our arrival tomorrow.
On our way to bed we knocked over someone’s glass of red wine but can you notice what is wrong with this picture.
Horst tells me there is no wifi on the boat so there really will be an absence of postings to the blog going forward. If we are lucky enough to find a café with wifi we will certainly download our diary.
Please all wish us luck on this bike trip as Di is not that well prepared. Fraser is extremely fit and Horst and Elfi have hired electric bikes ( we have nick named them BAR – battery assisted riders) from the boat but Di is going to be dragging the back of the bunch this time. See what happens when you do not put the effort in.
Rowkin Rovings Blog 