What the...?

After a very relaxing day in the therme, we came back to our beautiful cabin to eat the last of our tuna and cheese sandwiches.  At least we had a bottle of red to drink with them! I opened the bottle, and the room was filled with an indescribable smell. Undaunted, I poured two glasses and said to Keeley it might need to breathe.  I won’t repeat what she said.

After letting it “breathe” and opening our door so we could breathe, I tasted it, and immediately spat it out! Those of you who know me know it has to be pretty bad for me not to drink it, so we ended up having the last of the Baileys- one less bottle to carry down to the car tomorrow.

We woke up at 7am, determined to make the most of the spa, and headed up for one last soak. We thought we’d be the only ones there at 7 (it was still dark), but the place was packed! Back to our room to pack (yuk!) and head off. Keeley took everything down to the car while I went to check out at the café. Checking out was just a matter of handing the key back, or so I thought, as I had paid for the room back in March and we hadn’t had any extras. Well apparently, they only took my credit card but didn’t charge it ( going to check this when I get home, because I was sure I had paid!) They had also charged me for two breakfasts on two mornings and I explained that we hadn’t eaten breakfast at all. Breakfast was $30 pp, so we had brought our own cereal and croissants from France to avoid this extra expense. While he was sorting it out, I went to the toilet. No sooner did I sit down than a spider came wandering under the door. My scarf was hanging down, so had the vision of the spider getting on my scarf without my knowledge, then crawling onto me at some stage of our journey, me screaming and Keeley crashing off the road. Yes, all this in the few seconds before I decided to crush it.  Do I have an overactive imagination or am I just crazy? No need to answer!

Back to the counter only to find my Amex didn’t work! Argghhh! Finally got it sorted, and off we went.  We wanted to go to Neushwanstein Castle in Germany, so put Fussen, the nearest village into the GPS, as it didn’t recognize Neushwanstein.  We had a lovely drive going through some villages but no big cities. We thought we’d go through Vaduz, but if we did, we didn’t recognize it. (I was looking for the castle on the hill.) Finally got on a highway and thought we must have crossed the border into Germany. We had seen something that looked like a border or toll booth but there was nowhere to put a credit card so thought we might have to do it at the end. (Some toll booths in France were like this.) We saw no sign telling us this was Austria and that we had to buy a “vignette” from a service station on the Swiss side for 8 euro. I’ve never even heard the word “vignette” before today. Now I can tell you everything you need to know about them!

But back to the saga! We came across a roadblock where police were pulling cars over, and waving some through, just like a RBT. We weren’t worried. We hadn’t been drinking. A policeman came up to the car and rattled something off in German, and Keeley said English? To which he replied driving licence and rental car documents? I dug them out of the glovebox and handed them to him. He then asked for another document- green in colour- which I eventually found in the depths of the glovebox. He tells us we have to have an 8 euro sticker on our car which we had to buy at a petrol station, so Keeley asks him where the nearest petrol station is to which he replies, “Get out of the car!” which we did immediately. He then takes us to a van parked in front of us, where there is a guy sitting at a desk taking money from travellers like us. There were at least 3 vans like this and they were doing a roaring trade. The penalty was 120 euro. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe we had to pay 120 euro for something we had no knowledge of. He said there was a big sign at the border in English telling us all this, but as Keeley said, she was so concerned with staying on the right, not crashing, and not getting lost, she only saw the stop sign. And we were looking for a credit card slot! Wouldn’t you think they’d have a machine at the border were you pay your 8 euro? No, you have to buy it from a SERVICE STATION!!!! Who knew? Certainly not us, nor the other dozen cars they had pulled up while we were there.

We continued on our way crossing into Germany although we didn’t see anything saying we were crossing into Germany either. Luckily, Germany doesn’t have this vignette system. We actually haven’t seen any signs saying which country we were in, and have just had to guess by the names of the towns although my geography in this area isn’t brilliant. We drove on to Neushwanstein enjoying the 120 euro view. When I checked the maps, I found out we had actually only travelled 26.9km of Austrian road. Oh, it’s a money making venture all right! The irony of us saving money in Switzerland by not eating struck us, and we started laughing. Why hadn’t anyone told us about this? We knew about tolls, we didn’t know about “vignettes”. Anyway after paying 120 euro, we STILL have to find somewhere to buy a vignette for the rest of our stay in Austria, and THEN we have to buy one for Hungary, and then we have to buy one for Slovenia. Keeley also found out we were supposed to have one for Switzerland as well, and could be up for a $250 A fine. Just great!

After finally reaching Neushwanstein Castle at 1pm, and paying the parking attendant 5 euro, we hopped out of the car to freezing conditions. It was 4C. Brrr! We walked up to the ticket office to get tickets for the castle. Not only was there a 20 minute wait to buy a ticket, the first available tour was at 3.40pm. We couldn’t wait that long as we wanted to get to Langenfeld before dark, which we did, which was very lucky as we drove round the streets looking for our B&B. There were dozens of them, Margret, Markus, Mrak, but no Martha. We finally found it, only to find no one was answering the doorbell! Of course, no one was home! Why did I expect anything different? After calling their mobile and no one answering, we decided to find somewhere to have something hot to eat.

We drove down to the village and parked outside a restaurant. You guessed it- it was shut, walked a bit further and found a pub, it was closed also! Everything was shut! We asked a couple of old men who didn’t speak ANY English where could we find something to eat, and they pointed in the other direction to what we were walking. Of course we were walking the wrong way! We got back to our car and drove up to where we saw three eating places open. Keeley chose the most expensive looking one. We had eaten nothing all day, and hadn’t had anything hot for 4 days, so were craving hot food! It was called Pizzeria Piazza, so pizza it was! Delicious garlic bread followed by mouth-watering pizza washed down with a carafe of the house red, all for 34 euro! Best meal we’ve had since Bath! We’re going back there tonight!

With our bellies full, we returned to our B&B. Hooray- there were lights on! We rang the doorbell several times before a woman answered the door. She looked perplexed. I said my name and we had booked for 2 nights. She had forgotten we were coming! She was very friendly though and asked us in. She gave us both coffee while she made up our room. We are the only ones here! Because of our patience, she upgraded us to a beautiful top floor apartment, so all’s well that ends well. But as I always say, you can’t have everything, and the only place I can get wifi on my phone is in the stairwell. However, I can get wifi on my laptop if I sit on the end of the bed. What a day!