Princess Stella Reporting From The Bavarian Outback

I wrote this in my journal to share with you all yesterday morning.

Mr. Early Camper Waker Upper.  You suck.  And I am going to tell you why.  I'm really trying to get used to this camping stuff, but you are making it very difficult.  Now that we realize we have only 60 euro a day to eat, sleep and pay the enormous motorway tolls in this continent...I have had to get used to the notion that whether I like it or not, the tent be my new home. 

My husband and I were doing just fine exchanging body warmth and snoozing semi soundly in the confines of our little abode.  That is of course until you decided it was time to get up.  You see, I dont mind that you prefer an early rise...its just that as soon as you start doing all your morning camperly things (clanging of pots and pans...zipping up and down this and that...igniting your stoves...chit chatting with the birds...), you might as well sound the wake up alarm for the whole god damned campground because as soon as you get up, your neighbor gets up.  And then their neighbor gets up...and before you know it the early risers have multiplied (like a plague).  So now you have awoken myself, and my husband...but the difference here is that, as the Brits say...I CANT BE BOTHERED - yet, the esposo...he cant possibly ignore your sweet camperly music.  There is coffee to be made...and stuff to cook...and air to be breathed.  And shit.  And there I am left in the cold den of that bastard T-E-N-T, with my not so discreet husband joining in on the music.  I lay cold and disgruntled and I dream of the quiet hotel room where I can pull the curtains at night and hubby cant tell the difference between 6am and the much more appropriate 10am.

So I sat there like (as Hillary says...) POUTY PARKER, sipping on my coffee - and I couldn't take my eyes off a cute couple that had camped beside us.  I had noticed them the night before...appeared to be our age, and married...they spoke with an English accent - what I had assumed was Australian.  They laughed a lot.  They had arrived there on bikes, towing all their travel gear.  They both were in incredible shape, kick ass figures and super good looking.  Dude was straight out of Braveheart...fiery messy hair with a single dread hanging down the nape of his neck.  The girl was so friggin beautiful...dark hair, long and slender, lightly freckled. 

She was fixing their breakfast.  I had been given the duty of watching our eggs boil while Zack was tidying up our campsite.  Hotty Mc Hotterson is whipping up what appears to me to be friggin BANANAS FOSTER on her little stove while her Braveheart is packing up.  It gets better.  I nudge Zack...and point out her culinary skills.  Before I know it...she has moved on to French Toast, boiled ham...eggs...its a damn 7 course meal before you know it, all out of one pan...hunched over in her little bicycle shorts and scarf wrapped hair.  I hate her.  Zack chuckles in the background as I mumble under my breath, about "wheres my breakfast at?". 

But of course I start talking to her as soon as she walks by to go brush her teeth...and before you know it the four of us are sitting around chit chatting.  Mel and Steven.  From NEW ZEALAND.  They were the poster couple for athleticism...and in serious denial as she must have told us 4 times that they were NOT CYCLIST.  Just giving the whole biking around Europe thing a whirl.  I couldn't get enough of her lovely estrogen beaming aura.  It was so nice to get a little girl time after spending a week with the boy.

Speaking of a week with the boy.  Poligny, and Fontainebleau  France, was lovely.  Even more so were the wonderful people we met during our stay.  There was an elderly couple staying next to us with their daughter...who I made good friends with, Danielle.  She spoke great English, and was a god-sent as she translated for us to the owners of the gite where we stayed.  Her father had helped hide some British and American soldiers in his house in France during the war, when he was young and was ratted out to the Germans.  They came and took him in the middle of the night and put him in a concentration camp, where he managed to escape 6 months later, with the assistance of a...German, who hid him in his truck from the camp and smuggled him out.  Dropped him off at the border of Germany and France to swim across a river where he stumbled onto a Farm where a woman, whose husband had been killed in the war, equipped him with her husbands clothes and a bike...to ride all the way to Paris.

WILD.

We left all teary eyed, and on thru Germany.  Went thru Uberlingen (and camped) then on to Fussen (where we met Mel and Steven).  Southern Germany is friggin gorgeous.  Its like....North Carolina.  But awesome-er.  I almost went paragliding...but we decided to save it for another time.

Then on thru Austria.  Beautiful.  We tried to check out Innsbruck, but the place was impossible to drive around in.  It took us an hour to locate the tourist info place, and after getting yelled at by angry pedestrians we decided they could all kiss our ass, and wed move on to Italy.  So here we are in lovely, Bolzen.  Or something.

After falling in love with Braveheart and Mel...and wishing we had rock hard bodies like they do...Zack and I are flirting with the idea of biking South America.  YOU HEARD ME.  BICYCLE.  I wouldn't hold your breath just yet.

I have to go and eat the rest of my chocolate croissant now.  Ciao!

s

Picture pages...

This first one is just for you Hill.

 

The view from our camp in Fussen.

I cant complain people.  The country here is rich and beautiful.  The baguettes are like crack, the pastries (especially the pain au chocolate variety) are like crack, and I have gained 5 pounds.  All is well.