Gorman Stories

Prague may have been the single most important stop on our trip, because Czechoslovakia was home to one branch of her family. You could spend days visiting Prague and not tire of it, but given our ambitious itinerary to see as much of Europe as possible, we are not spending too much time at any one city. Imagine skipping a stone flint across a pond — skip skip skip skip before it slows down and sinks. We are skipping across Europe.

We decided, then, to take a walking/bus tour of Prague to see as much as we could. Our guide looked 40 but said he had been giving tours for 35 years, which puts him around my age, 57, I’d guess. I didn’t ask him because he was shy.

We were in a small tour van, about 15 of us. It had been billed as an English-speaking tour but there were French speakers on board, too, and our guide was trilingual — Czech, French and English.  We visited all the “towns” of Prague — New Town, Old Town, Lesser Town (on the way up to the castle) and the phenomenal Castle town, with the only functioning castle in Europe and perhaps the finest cathedral I have ever seen. I was more impressed by it than by Notre Dame, which we saw on our last trip to Europe to visit Daughter.  (Daughter is expanding our horizons, you see.)

While walking the castle grounds, I asked the guide what is the greatest frustration of his business. “It’s when I’m told I’ll have a van filled with English speakers but when I get in, I discover there’s not a single English speaker among them. They are Turkish, Chinese, Portuguese… and there is just nothing for me to do.”

I won’t go into a blow-by-blow description of our day, but rest assured we ate local food (for dinner, Jeanne had what she proclaimed as the best duck of her life, and Daughter and I had pork ribs; for lunch, the ladies had beef goulash and I had lamb). We ended the day at the ballet, “The Best of Swan Lake.” Because of ticket confusion — we wanted reserved seats and were sold general-admission seats — we were re-seated in the third row center. 

Back now at the campsite, I’ll see how many photos I can download into an album called “Prague” for you to click on if you want to see some of the sights. As time permits — maybe after we return home — I’ll add more. 

Prague is very photogenic.

It’s Sunday night, almost midnight after a full and wonderful day in Prague. It is a most amazing city, seeming much larger, more dynamic and more filled with energy, history, beauty and architectural wonder than its population of 1.5 million or so would warrant. We will spend part of Monday there revisiting one of the neighborhoods before moving on to Auschwitz and Krakow as we begin week 2 of our 3-week mad-cap RV trip through Europe.

If I sound in good spirits, it partly is because I’m finally moving in to Mobi. It is now a five-room house: the family room with its two chairs (when the driver’s and passenger’s seats swivel around), two couches and dining room table; the kitchen with its three-burner range, sink and ample-size refrigerator and freezer that is cold enough to make ice in ice-poor Europe; the full if tiny bathroom with its sink, cabinets, medicine chest, toilet with the swivel seat and shower stall (which we have yet to use because the campgrounds have had nice shower facilities); the master bedroom with overhanging cabinets and privacy curtain, and the basement. I’m guessing our house is about 140 square feet, not counting the basement.

Ah, the basement.

It is the storage locker that is accessible from the outside back of Mobi, and from inside Mobi by pulling up the master bed mattress (which sits on a wood frame on hinges). Imagine the Wizard of Oz, when the tornado is coming and Dorothy’s family is rushing to the storm shelter, and someone (not Dorothy) lifts the door to the storm shelter. That is how we lift the bed  to get into the basement. Except that there’s a mattress on top of the door, and sometimes a sleeping spouse.

When we picked up Mobi, the basement was stocked with toilet chemicals, the electrical cord, the water hose, the swivel do-hickey that opens the awning (which we have yet to do), and an emergency something-or-other.

I began referring to the storage locker as the basement, and it seemed the perfect place to store things like toilet paper and paper towels.

Now everything goes down there.  After Daughter found cabinets to put her clothes in, she put her empty duffel bag in the basement. When we stopped by a small grocery store in Germany that she knew had great prices, she bought 8 bottles of wine, so now the basement is our wine cooler.  We store the tabletop fan in the basement when we don’t need it, and the sling-canvas camping chairs). There are bottles of water and diet Pepsi down there too, and when I stepped in some dog poop the other day while walking along a river that cut through downtown Munich, I put those shoes in the basement (after cleaning them as best as I could). 

And I had been putting my duffel bag — filled with my clothes –in the basement, too.  And every time I needed something, I would have to lift the master bed frame to reach down into the basement to grab a fresh shirt, a pair of socks, whatever.  This could be problematic if Jeanne was in bed; she’d have to roll over to the far side of the bed so I could lift the hinge on her side. If this was in the morning and Jeanne was sleeping, this task would be too daunting. It would be like trying to roll over a sleeping bear that doesn’t like being awakened. I’d rather face the tornado and take my chances with the mean witch.

So tonight, after my shower, I finally emptied my duffel bag, claiming two cupboard spaces above the bed that have been empty. I am now moved in, with my duffel in the basement now empty. The bear can sleep without my bothering her.

I’m celebrating by indulging in a chocolate-covered banana cream cake pastry that I bought a country ago. It may not be healthy but, by God, it is local food and everyone says I should try the local food.

Life is good.

We arrived in Prague Saturday evening after a thankfully uneventful day — in fact, a good day, considering how it started.

We had filled our water tank in Munich and, in the course of trying to figure out our hot-water problem, we ran the tank dry. So we had refilled it on Friday, and this morning we were going to run the hot water to wash the morning dishes. Not only was there no hot water, there was no water, period.

This was the last straw! The Gormans have turned into magicians!  We can fill a 100-liter water tank and make it disappear a day later without even turning on a spigot!!

For the third day in a row, we called the dealership in Belgium. This time, a real person answered. And he apparently was a mechanic, because when I told him there was no way a water tank could end up empty in a day without even using it, he said yes, there was one way.  He instructed me to look beneath our bed, through a tiny door, where the boiler mechanism for the hot water is.  “It is possible that the water boiler bled the tank empty without you knowing it,” he said. “It would have pulled the water in, and then drained it beneath your Mobi. You wouldn’t know.”

And the solution? “Do you see a red button?” Yes. “Push it. If it releases and goes higher, that is good.” I pushed it. It shot up higher, like an old-fashion car lock. Bingo. “You will be fine now. Fill your tank again. Everything should be fine.”

Since he was helpful, I mentioned that the valve to our wastewater tank could not be closed. I told him that the handle for the open-close valve just turned and turned and turned and never seemed to lock in an open or closed position, and that every time we run water in the Mobi, it pees on the ground. “Next time,” he said, “press the handle toward the plate right in front of it. Squeeze it. That will engage the valve.”  Oh, squeeze the handle while turning it? The snot-nosed kid at the dealership who taught me how to use the Mobi a week ago never mentioned that.

I went outside, knelt on the ground, reached under, grabbed the handle, pressed it and — bingo! again — the handle this time engaged with tension and I definitely could feel it opening and closing, not unlike a fireplace flu. So I think our watewater tank will now hold water.

So, with hot water (we assume — we won’t be trying until after dinner tonight), and a functioning wastewater tank, we set off for Prague. The German countryside was beautiful  — rolling fields of tall corn and other crops, with a backdrop of lush forests, and we drove through small villages with beautiful homes. We wondered what the Czech Republic would be like. It’s not like the countrywide would suddenly change…

We entered the Czech Republic, paid about $20 for a motorways windshield sticker at the border (no need to see  passports or proof of car insurance or anything, just the money, please) and discovered we were entering some knock-off version of the United States. More specifically, Nevada, if not for the trees.

The first billboard we saw was for a poker tournament. The next, for a casino. It was called “American Chance Casino”  but before we could react, we already were past the off-ramp. Then we saw a McDonald’s billboard. And a topless joint called Pamela’s. And another McDonald’s.  In fact, in the next 45 minutes we would pass no less than 10 McDonald’s restaurants. And McDonald’s wasn’t the only English we saw. About a third of the billboards — actually, they were signs hanging across the freeway, attached to overpasses — were in English, which confuses me.

The other remarkable first-hour discovery about Prague, as we drove through town, was the amount of graffiti. It was bad, with only one or two displays of graffiti art, and the rest mish-mash.

We found our campsite for the evening without too much trouble (the address didn’t show up on our GPS but when we pulled to the side of a road near the Prague Zoo to figure things out, a passing motorist pulled over, too, and asked if we needed assistance, and then pointed us in the right direction.)

The campground is one of maybe 10 along a street of what was once, apparently, a very fancy neighborhood with larger  homes and larger back yards.The homes have been turned into B&Bs or hostels, and the back yards converted into campgrounds.  Interesting. We are parked next to a mom and daughter from Switzerland; the other mobis around us are empty, suggesting that their occupants are still walking around the city and haven’t returned yet.

There is only one computer here, in the reception office, so there will be no photos with this post. I’m hoping to grab some time on it when the line thins.  I told the young man operating the office that the owner should invest in wireless. He said the owner has balked, due to cost.  I told him I would pay $10 a night for wireless. He said he gets lots of offers like that.

At this moment, we are sitting outside, 8:15 Saturday night. I’m sipping my rusty nail (scotch and Drambuie), Daughter has her wine (she bought 8 bottles in Germany today because the prices were incredibly cheap), Jeanne her diet Pepsi. We’re in our sling camp chairs, at a burgundy, round plastic table that was sitting nearby that Jeanne grabbed. It’s maybe 65 degrees, beneath an early-evening blue sky.

People all around us are talking. We don’t understand a word. Daughter is getting ready to cook dinner. Later we’ll see if the hot water works.

Tomorrow, Sunday, we will go into historic Prague.  Life is good.

We spent the day Friday in Munich. We left behind our frustrations with Mobi. Hey, this is how memories are made: renting motorhomes that fall apart on you. In Munich, we had an awesome time and met some wonderful people. And you know how that feeling when you think you’ve met someone before? Wait for this story.

Downtown Munich is the perfect definition of a city that has a “there” there, with a marvelous beer garden/outdoor plaza/farmer’s market (every possible meat, fish, vegetable, fruit, herb and flower) and thousands of people in a good mood. And why not? They’re all drinking beer, even the musicians!

To be sure, Munich has its grand government buildings, spectacular cathedrals and museums, and a chic retail district. In the course of two or three blocks, we passed stores for Versace, Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo, Dior, Chanel, Georgio Armani, Hermes, Ralph Lauren and Valentino. (No Costco, but maybe out in the suburbs…)

We started our walking tour in the beer gardens, and ended there. Seating was congested, but two other couples invited us to join them. Dominique and Jean, from Lyon, France, and Theo and Gudrun, from Solingen, Germany, were friends through the marriage of their two children, and were anxious to give us advice on which cities to visit in Switzerland.

When they left, another couple took their seats: Deon and Elsie, from South Africa, who  had just spent two weeks in Prague. They were especially happy to speak with Americans and after 30 minutes we had exchanged e-mails and promises (that we hope to keep) to visit them in their country. “We love American people,” Elsie said. “We are Obama fans,” Deon said, commenting specifically on how he admires our president’s efforts to tackle the economic nightmares. “It’s hitting everyone, everywhere,” he said. (And he should know; he is an investments advisor.) “Obama, he’s something special. His heart and soul is there.”

They each remarked how the world seemed to be getting smaller, what with technology and the growing adventurous spirit of people to travel.

As we all stood up to leave, and they made the first move to hug us, I heard a voice that seemed amazingly familiar. “Tom!”

It was a coworker, Ulf, a researcher for In Business Las Vegas, the leading business publication in Las Vegas (and a sister publication to the Las Vegas Sun, where I work). Ulf was visiting his parents, Gerda and Arno, who live in Klais, about 90 minutes outside of Munich.  He arrived a few days ago for a week’s stay. He had been hiking and today came into Munich. And there he was, sitting five feet from us! Weird. Really really weird.

Meanwhile, an Australian friend of Daughter (they connected in Dutch language classes; in Antwerp) who knew we were going to be in Munich today text-messaged her, suggesting we eat at the restaurant her aunt and uncle, Rosemary and Volker, operate a few miles from downtown Munich. What the heck, so we took the underground to the neighborhood, found the restaurant — it specializes in meals featuring potatoes as the entree — and had a wonderful dinner.

Today was a good day, enjoying a beautiful city filled with wonderful people, making new friends and finding a coworker  in a crowd of happy beer drinkers thousands of miles from home! Did I say it was weird? In a very very good way.

Tomorrow, on to Prague….

Here in Munich, it is 8 a.m. Friday, and I’m hoping today goes better than yesterday. I’m sitting in the little internet room alongside the reception desk of Munich’s big, semi-urban campground. Hundreds and hundreds of camping vehicles are here, separated by class: cars with tents, vans and small motorhomes (that’s us), pull-trailers and large motorhomes.

Outside, it’s maybe 65 degrees, drizzly, grey sky. It reminds me of June gloom along the California coast.

An amazing assortment of people are walking past my window, from their camping units to the bus stop outside the gate where they can grab a bus to the underground to take them to the heart of the city. (We are about 2 blocks from the city’s zoo, on the edge of downtown.)

The people walking by are mostly casually dressed, carrying backpacks for a day of adventure in the city. But a surprising number of people men are in coats and ties, with nametags and carrying briefcases, as if they are going to work or to a convention.  I suppose it is possible that in Europe, to save money, men go to conventions and rather than stay at a hotel — say, the Bellagio or Venetian or Mandalay Bay — they travel by motor home.  I doubt these finely-dressed men crawled out of a sleeping bag in a tent, though.

So this is the morning after yesterday’s series of small disasters that just took the spirit out of us by last night, when I posted the long story about all that went wrong.  I’ll recap:

* The side door cannot be locked from inside because when we do, the key cylinder thingy twists on the outside and a key won’t go in, and it freezes until you manhandle it loose.

* The wastewater tank valve is broken, so when we use sink water, it immediately spills onto the ground, rather than collecting in a tank for proper disposal at a dump station. (This is not the toilet, which has its own tank and is working fine.)

* We finally figured out why our hot water wasn’t working: the plumbing was reversed on the sink, and “cold” was really hot and “hot” was cold. For the gallons of water we wasted waiting for the hot water to pour out, we were draining our tank. And last night, when we finally realized that we should have turned the spigot to “cold” to get hot water, we got maybe 30 seconds of hot water before we drained our 100-liter holding tank. So this morning, we have no water.

* Putting more water in the tank should not be a problem, except that we have to disconnect our electricity line and drive into the heart of the campground where the “water house” is, to hook up our hose. And that gets us to the other problem from yesterday: the cap for the inlet pipe is frozen to the inlet pipe, and so when we turn the cap, we are turning the entire pipe. That means the only way to put water into the tank is to access the water tank from inside (beneath a seat cushion) and drag a hose inside Mobi. That’s a pain in the rump.

All of this follows our most costly incident, which also occurred yesterday:  Making a turn too tightly, and rubbing the side of the Mobi against a gate pipe, gouging the right side of the Mobi for about five feet, and tearing off a piece of plastic molding around the back right tire. I’m distressed now that the dealership will argue that they should keep our entire security deposit to cover the repair. This puts me in a bad mood.

These events all occurred yesterday. Not a good day. But we can focus on the good times, too: the great dinner Daughter cooked last night — steaks with mushroom sauce, fresh French-cut green beans, risotto. Walking the streets of small German towns and watching children play in school yards.  Meeting the cousins of my health coach, the Traub family that owns two bakeries in the Black Forest region of Germany. And meeting Mia and Adelin, the Belgian couple who helped us with our water problems yesterday morning, and Ute and Ernst, from Hanover, who helped us figure out the hot-water problem last night.

Funny how people can make international connections, and become instant friends. We exchanged e-mail addresses and who knows if we will run into each other again. But now we can say we have friends in Europe, people who will help us out when they see our distress.

As I sit here, more people are streaming out to catch the morning buses. Here comes a family — mom, dad, two young kids, all dressed very nicely, he in a suit. And another couple holding a basket between them. I can’t tell if it is a picnic basket or a small basinet. I wonder where they’re going. And what’s it like waking up in a campground and putting on a coat-and-tie?

Me, I haven’t worn a tie now for a week. And I’ve only shaved once. Now, that is camping. 

The drivers most in peril when driving along Germany’s infamous autobahn are not the ones who travel the fastest, nor the ones who drive the slowest. It’s the ones who travel at speeds in-between the fastest and slowest (like us), and here is why:

Slow traffic always stays in the far right-hand lane. If you’re on a two-lane highway, but are driving faster than the slow traffic, you are constantly turning on your left blinker to slide into the fast lane, in order to pass the slow vehicles. Then you quickly return to the slow lane.

It is this constant changing of lanes that is fraught with danger. You peek into your rear-view mirror before shifting to  the fast lane. Is that a speck of a vehicle way back there in the fast lane, quickly approaching? Maybe. So you stay put, and you brake so you don’t drive into the backside of the slow vehicle. Indeed, some fancy-pants sample of German engineering blows past you at twice the speed and you say a prayer of thanks that you didn’t pull in front of it. You watch your rear-view mirror for a break, and there’s one! Quick! Turn on your blinker, change lanes, accelerate your Mobi as quickly as possible, overtake the slower vehicle, and get your fat bumper back into the slow lane before that Audi or BMW or Mercedes-Benz or Volvo run up your backside.

The flip side to high-speed travel on the autobahn is when construction or repairs close lanes, and for a few miles, traffic crawls along at only, say, 60 mph.  At one point, the lanes were so narrow that Mobi was rubbing up against the one-inch rubber warning tabs on the side of the wall-of-death to warn motorists that they were within an inch of getting a concrete burn. That was unnerving.

You may recall from an earlier story that Monica, my company health insurance’s “health coach” whose mission in life is to help me lose weight and lower my cholesterol, learned that we were going on vacation to Europe. She wondered if we were going to travel through Germany and, if so, would we go to Uttenweiler?

Why?  Because, she said, that’s where the family bakery, Traub Bakery, is! And if we went to Uttenweiler, we could say hi to her cousins Gertrude and Paul.

So we added Uttenweiler to our itinerary and today we found the family bakery and met her cousin, Paul.  He was very nice (and Monica, he says to tell you hello!). But more importantly, we found wonderful pastries and baked goods that filled up our bag: a cinnamon-and-nut pastry, a cheese pastry, a cinnamon roll, cinnamon-streudal loaf and a raspberry streudel cake, plus a pretzel for the road.  I don’t think any of these items are on our low-cholesterol, low-calorie diet, but Monica will have to deal with that in her own good time.

Paul said Gertrude was at the other Traub bakery, in nearby Biberach.  He got her on the phone and she was so excited to hear about us that she insisted we visit her as well. She offered to feed us lunch. That settled it. To travel from Las Vegas to Germany to send best wishes to my health coach’s cousins was worth a free lunch!

Gertrude was as warm and delightful as Paul, and spoke better English, and she fed us well with cold-cut sandwiches. We also bought more goodies from her: three chocolate pastries (their names I can’t pronounce, but “chocolate” being the operative word).

Gertrude asked us to tell cousin Monica that Paul got married last summer, and for her to please show up at the family  reunion this Christmas season in Florida. She missed the last one, you know, and she really should be there this time.

So Monica, don’t let us down. Please travel to Florida for the family reunion! And tell Gertrude and Paul, thanks for the great baked goods!

We woke up this morning feeling good. Somewhere deep in the Black Forest, the sleepy Danube was silently gliding past us, 20 feet off our bumper. It had rained a bit overnight, which only pushed us deeper asleep.

As we were preparing to leave, Jeanne found she could not lock the side door from inside. And I couldn’t figure it out either, so I examined the lock from the outside. And I saw what happened: The lock had turned into a position that would not accept the key. When we picked up Mobi, the young man warned us that this was bad. Very bad.  It was not Jeanne’s fault that the lock had turned sideways on us, because she was only trying to lock it from inside, and had no idea the lock would twist in a way that was disastrous.  To get the lock to work, I actually had an excuse to use the Leatherman tool I had purchased for the trip. By prying a screwdriver blade into the key hole, I was able to twist in into the position that would accept the key. Whew. In the course of my effort, I broke off the cover of the latching mechanism, but so be it.

On our way out of the campground, I stopped to top off our water tank with more fresh water. But the cap seemed stuck and would not come off the inlet pipe.  A wonderful couple from Belgium, Mia and Adelin, stopped to help (she teaches English for high school juniors, he is a solar-energy engineer – and wherever he travels, he carries large tool boxes.)  Despite Adelin’s best efforts, the cap would not unscrew. As it turned, so did the entire inlet pipe into the water tank. They were frozen as one.  Jeanne suggested smartly that we find the water tank because it might have another inlet opening for a hose. The tank was hidden beneath one of  the couches inside, and in fact there was another large cap that came off easily. We could stick the hose inside the Mobi and into the tank below the couch. But wait! Our hose would not fit the spigot. Adelin came to the rescue again, this time giving us a one-size-fits-all hose adaptor.

Of course, bad things come in three and that might have been three, but not for us. Not the Gormans. This was the day of calamity we had feared.

I wouldn’t be slowed by the semi-broken side door lock, and frozen water cap, and a hose that almost didn’t adapt. We needed to dump our “grey” (kitchen) water, behind the campground manager’s office. It was a tricky turn to get to that driveway, and I cut it too tight. A bronze pipe that was part of the entrance gate jumped into the side of the Mobi just as I was turning, and it left a deep scar and ripped off a piece of plastic trim from Mobi.  The incident attracted quite a crowd of campers who were muttering something about Americans and camping.  I don’t know if I will lose the entire security deposit for this damage, but am braced for the worst. Other campers looked at me, some sad, some laughing. Along came Mia and Adelin, who looked chagrined on our behalf. He helped push the pipe as I slowly pulled away from it. .

With the Mobi now freed from its bronze pipe friend and finally backed in to position over the grey-water drain, I got on my hands and knees, found the water-release valve, and turned it. It turned, and turned, and turned. It was broken. There didn’t seem to be an “open” and “shut” position, and I was stricken with the fear that the holding tank waste water would back up into the Mobi during one of our deep sleeps (“American Family Drowns in its own Grey Water While Asleep in their Mobi, Film at 11”), or the grey water would dump onto the ground the moment we ran water into the sink.  It turned out, as we would discover later, that the latter was the case: when we run sink water, Mobi immediately pees on the ground.

And finally this: for two days running, we haven’t gotten hot water. We couldn’t figure out why not, but didn’t fully explore.  Tonight we asked fellow campers, here in Munich, for help.

Ute and Ernst, from Hanover, came to our rescue, and the three of us poked and prodded and explored and even read the thick instruction manual. It finally occurred to us that the sink water faucet hookup was backwards and when the faucet was put on “red,” only cold came out, and when we put it on “blue,” only — well, only nothing came out, because it was in fact connected to the hot-water boiler, but it was filled with air bubbles.  At least we knew we had the solution. We let the water run on “blue” for a while and finally hot water came out. Success!

But wait: the water stopped altogether. And not even cold water is coming out tonight. We are out of water. We have drained our 100-liter water tank dry.

So, let’s recap: Semi-broken side-door lock, stuck water-inlet cap, an un-adapted hose, a deep gouge on side of Mobi from collision with gate, a broken water-drain valve so we always leak when we run sink water, and finally the hot water works after discovering it was plumbed backwards…and we’ve run out of water. .

The trip is turning a bit ugly. It was only a matter of time.

The good news: the toilet is working perfectly and easy to clean. That’s my job.

(Dear friends: the day was so traumatic, I was too distracted to take photos… Jeanne took one which I will download. But it is depressing.)

The danger to sticking to a tour book (we relied heavily on the Lonely Planet’s “Central Europe”) is that it leads you to where everyone else goes. So yes, in Heidelberg we did visit the local castle, the Heidelberg Schloss. It is considered one of Germany’s most prominent examples of Gothic-Renaissance architecture and a place, as Mark Twain wrote in his “Tramp Through Europe,” that commands a sweeping view of the city and the river valley.

Jeanne found another view she liked. At the gift shop just outside the gate, Jeanne purchased a small cuckoo clock, which had been one of her missions of this trip. Now she could relax.

Then we started our day in earnest, not sure where we would go, except south toward the Black Forest. Somewhat randomly, we thought we would try for dinner at a town called Rotweil, and then for a campground alongside the Danube, deep in the forest of southern Germany.

Rotweil, which did not show up in our tour books, was a prize – a delightful town with all the architectural trimmings you   would expect, and with a view down its main street dissolving into a pasture and then the forest beyond. And, it turned out, it seems to be the home of the Rotweiler dog breed – if the statues of those dogs along the main thoroughfares were any hint.

Our goal was dinner, and we peeked into a few places. One was mostly a tavern, and so was the next. Then we found a restaurant that seemed authentic: no one inside spoke English. That would work just fine.

We asked to eat outside. The waitress brought us a menu that was printed in German, French and English, so there wasn’t much mystery in what we selected.  Jeanne chose veal and pork in white cream sauce, alongside spatzle (a  German noodle). Daughter favored pork with paprika cream sauce and spatzle, and I selected breaded veal stuffed with ham and cheese. It came with fries, and whether that’s a German traditional food, I don’t know.

Each came with a house salad of greens, German potato salad, sauerkraut, carrots and something white and thin. Hmmm, don’t know.  And beer.   It was all very good, for about $65.  Because we ate outside, we are probably responsible for diverting five other pedestrian groups into the restaurant for dinner after they passed us, stopped in their tracks, spied what we were eating and returned for dinner.

Just shy of 9 p.m. we made it to a campground promoted in the guidebook that came with our international camping card (called a “carnet” and which is given to the camp manager at night to vouch for us). This campground was situated alongside the Danube, shrouded in trees and at the bottom of a river valley framed by 500-foot-high walls of granite. We fell asleep thinking life was good.

Our first night in Mobi was Tuesday night, at the riverfront campground on the edge of Heidelberg. We were exhausted and ready for sleep. We closed up tight and pulled every curtain shut.  When we laid down, it was blissfully dark.

A gentle rain lulled us quickly asleep.

And we didn’t wake up until 11:30 the next morning. Two-thirds of the campers had left, and we didn’t hear a thing. When you are on vacation, and don’t wear a watch and don’t care what day of the week it is,and there are no noisy campers near you – or sirens, or honking cars, no street cars, and the inside of your baby motorhome is very dark, sleep comes easy.