OOPS - stood up!!

Monday October, 1, 2012

We left Gimmelwald in the fog this morning - nothing to see on the way down to the bottom of the valley at Steckelberg but the cables of the cable car.  The bicycles were still attached to the car so weset the GPS and headed for our next farm stay at  Uehlingen-Birkendorf, Germany.  It is close to the Swiss border but we chose to stay in Germany - food etc. is more reasonably priced. 

It was a pleasant ride through the countryside, over several passes, through the Black Forest and back into farmland.  Our stay with Familie Ebi was greatly anticipated after spending 2 day in the fog up in Gimmelwald.  Don’t get us wrong - it is a beautiful spot when the fog is not in but when there is fog there is only so much to see obviously.

The Familie Ebi farm is way up on the side of a hill at the end of the road.  We parked the car and rang the door bell and Mrs. Ebi opened the door and when I told her who we were she put her  hands on the side of her head and rattled something in German - I caught something about other family members and something about Canada.  Regardless her beds were full.  She had double booked we presume.  We showed her the e-mail confirmation she had sent us.  Jean had sent her a reminder that we were coming just before leaving home and I sent her an e-mail 2 days ago from Gimmelwald saying we were on our way.  Don’t really know what happened - we had her confirmation e-mail right there.

We decided to look up a farm B&B where we had stayed in 2002.  It was about 30 minutes away near Bonndorf, Germany but could not remember the name of the family or exactly where it was on the map.  In Bonndorf at the TI office, the lady tried to find the address but could not so we asked for another farm stay in the area.  The only one she had was 5 minutes away on the outskirts of town.  She phoned and yes Mrs Maier had an apartment available for the 4 nights we needed.  Seeing it was by now close to 4pm we took it.  Alexandra Maier is a sweet lady - speaks fairly good English and loves to talk.  Looks like a better place than where we would have been - it is close to town and we can ride bikes here as well as along the Rhine River and the Bodensee which are close by. 

After a quick supper of things we had with us we headed off to the Aldi  store for some groceries then to find an Internet Café.  The only one internet in town was not able to accommodate our laptops - we would have had to simply use the desktop they had - so we left in search of the bibliothek (library).  Was unable to find it so headed back here with the hopes of an internet connection or a WiFi  somewhere tomorrow.