Return Trip "Home", New Digs, Prep for School

"Get you big boy pants on, we are in for a long haul today." That can be applied to this blog entry but it is also what Cindy told me when she said I had to drive all the way back to Germany in one day.

As we mentioned previously, August and primarily these past ten days is the time most Europeans travel. Our drive to Nice last week included long delays for border patrol in Switzerland and tolls in Italy and France. In planning for our return trip I was looking at route options. Going to Freising (our new temp. living location) instead of Munich opened up another potential route that bypassed Switzerland. You always hear good things about the Swiss. Our experience has been they are the only European country that has border patrol between EU borders and they do not use the Euro for currency, not really a team player you might say; at least in our experience. Any way, this route followed the same winding and tunnel filled road along the Mediterranean through northern Italy. This time we headed further east through a much larger portion of Italy. In fact we were in Italy for most of the drive, then Austria, back to Germany. This route was 50 km longer but I think it was worth it to see more areas we had not experienced as well as bypassing the border control. It might have even been faster.

The drive started out pretty rough as the hotel valet had collapsed the side mirrors on our rental and I was yelling at Cindy to figure out how to fix it while trying to drive in crazy Nice traffic. This is a German car so the manual was not a lot of help. We were going the wrong direction and the GPS was not helping much, then we hit a toll booth, then another toll booth, then a big toll area with a long line, and we only had a quarter tank of gas. Four stop downs in the first 60 kilometers plus a lot of traffic. Not looking good to make it all the way in one day.

I was not up on my European geography prior to this move so it has been interesting finding out some of the details. For example on our first drive to Nice, once we completed the mountain pass between Germany and Switzerland I thought we were done with the Alps. Two hours later here are some more mountains coming our way. It was later research that I found out this was still the Alps, our route happened to take us across them in the north, then we hit some plains of northern Italy then back in the Maritime Alps as they swing around to the south and east along the Mediterranean. Pretty cool. The drive home I think we had a little more time not in the mountains so that might have helped get us home faster too.

We really did not take many pics of the first leg since we had seen it before.Once Cindy got the camera out later into the drive it was on. The kids were playing hard, staying up late and waking up early all week. Glad they got a little rest to pass the time.





David has been growing his hair out for months. It is thick and long. I think he is starting to get tired of it, but he is still hanging on for now. It is usually messy and he won't comb it until forced.

The down side to our new route was the tolls in Italy and Austria. In Italy to drive the A highways you have to get a toll ticket and you pay once you get off. The route we took resulted in six stops to get three toll tickets then pay the three tickets. That might have been limited to two, I think I made a wrong turn somewhere. In Austria I guess they made some relatively recent changes since the GPS was telling us about toll booths every two minutes, yet we only paid one modest toll. Here are some of the pics from Italy as we are driving towards the northern pass in far north Italy.

Once again I don't think we can capture on camera in a moving car what we saw with our own eyes. The highway system does a great job of putting up barriers on bridges and other dangerous area which are great for safety but suck for good pics. Also many of the little cute towns right next to the highway have large, what I assume are sound dampening structures to keep the highway noise away which also blocks good pics.

So here is a question for both of you that read the blog. I will know if you don't answer. Driving along the Mediterranean we saw many villages on the hillsides with what looked like greenhouse style grown crops. In other words large rows of covered, enclosed growing areas all along the hills. I theorized these to be olives but really have no idea. When we got further north into Italy in the above pics we saw open fields of what appear to be wineries. So who knows what they grow along the Med in far northwest Italy that requires covered growing areas? If it is just grapes why the difference? I would think the further north area would need the enclosed area for more warmth making a longer growing season, but what do I know. Best answer wins the prize of the week.

Eventually we made it into a new area of Austria. Here are a few pics from there.

 Does anyone recognize this thing? We are not sure what it is.

The road took us along the southern part of Innsbruck but we did not get any really good pics. We kept on going all the way home. We were discussing why Germany gets the credit for having the no speed limit highway system, but in fact it exists in all of these countries. Germany is the only place that you do not have to pay tolls to use the roads, at least among Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and France. There were very limited stretches where it was safe and I was able to go faster. The busy holiday week plus the mountainous roads led to reasonable highway speeds most of the way. In the end it only took about 8.5 hours to make the drive even with all of the false starts to begin the day. I am very glad we took a road less traveled. It made the drive very interesting and I think I was less tired than the trip down over two days.

One of the reasons we came home early was because we were moving into a new temporary space closer to Cindy's office in Freising. The other place was pretty far away in Munich and making the drive four times a day plus school starting this week was going to make it very inconvenient. Our relocation person here in Germany actually moved our air shipment stuff, 18 boxes, from our old place to our new place while we were gone which was a great help. The problem is that we arrived at 7:30 pm on Friday night to a place we had never seen. We had basic instructions that got us to a parking space in a garage under the building. We went through the wrong building entrance from the garage and realized we were trapped with no way out. We could not get back into the garage and there were only other apartments and a little courtyard. Katherine was about to pee in her pants so we had to do something. I took the kids and found a way out to the front of the building to a nearby hotel and found the restroom on a lower floor and made our way back towards Cindy watching over our stuff and getting eaten by mosquitoes in the courtyard. As we walked up another lady was walking into the main entrance of what I thought was our building. Sure enough we followed her in like we owned the place walked up to the next level and tried the key on the door we thought was our place. This was dicey since there is no apartment or room number, only the name of the tenant on the outside, and our name was not there yet. As I tried the key and got the door open Cindy was calling. I told her we got in and all was good. We unloaded the car and started to settle in.

We need a different posting to describe the good and bad of the new place along with some pics. There are some really nice things about the location but oh my gosh can we tell you about the bad!!!!! Coming soon!

We spent the weekend unpacking from our trip, doing laundry, unpacking our air shipment, and getting settled along with getting familiar with the neighborhood. It was a good weekend and I am glad we made it back earlier as we needed the time to prepare for school next week. Tomorrow after we drop Cindy off at the office a trip to find needed school supplies and additional groceries are in order. Still no fans to be found in Germany so I opened my Amazon.de prime account and my new Vornados will be here Tuesday. The weather has not been as bad, but mid to lower 80's with no AC is still not ideal for me. Today was the last day in the 80's for a while so I think I will survive. We did get the PC unpacked and connected to the Internet so we have more than one computer for blogging, Mine Craft, work, etc. David is getting his last hours in on his Mine Craft game before we get serious about school. Today we got back on track with our Rosetta Stone German language training. I am determined to get better as the battle to find someone to understand Texan is getting old.

All is well with the Ferguson Four. We are having fun and adjusting well. Once school gets started we will settle a bit. Finding a long term home is another big goal I am going to work on this week too. It is back to the office for Cindy this week but she is eager to attend the school orientation on Tuesday and first drop off on Wednesday. Big week for Katherine as she starts school for real and David enters 5th grade.

Please comment, tell us what you think. Thanks for reading.