Why, Hello there

Seems ages since I've posted here, well a couple of weeks or so, but I've been under the influence of a virus and simply haven't had the energy to come up with the words and pictures.
I think I left promising pictures of Venezianische Messe 2012 which took place in Ludwigsburg in Germany in September, weekend of venetian style carnival, masks and music. Amazing costumes, many of which were homemade and speaking to local people it became apparent that some visitors actually bring a selection of costumes to change into.
The whole event kicked off on the Friday evening with a procession of over a thousand revellers walking through the streets from the train station to the town square.

We had a good vantage point, the local subway bar was empty and in the 1st floor:-) The crowd made its way into the square and after a prouncment by the local speech, the fun started. The first act to get under way was Teatr na Choduljach, a stilt act from Ukraine.

 Thanks to Bikerted for the video.

More photos and vids to follow, have a great weekend.

Germany, the Black Forest

I would love to share photos of the black forest, we found some really beautiful roads to ride along but pictures of trees flashing by are simply not interesting,
We decided to stay overnight at Freudenstadt as it looked a reasonable size town on the map although without wifi we couldn't really check it out in detail so we did it the old fashioned way. Ride into a town, look for hotel signs or tourist info office, follow them , get lost, get off the bike, tum it around and try again!!! Usually we look for a small hotel/guesthouse near the town centre with somewhere to park the bike out of sight. The bike may be old but its our only means of getting home !



So when we pulled up outside this hotel, my first thoughts were 'ok, well out of our league here, lets try somewhere else' but then I thought ' we're grown ups now (that always comes as a shock !) lets just see how much for one night'

We stayed to enjoy the luxury for a change, bathrobes and slippers provided, baby grand being played softly in the bar, chandeliers in the dinning room although we did feel a little uncomfortable being welcomed in to look around wearing scuffed black leathers and a days worth of road muck!





The view accross the forest was impressive as was the blue sheep on the gardens on the other side of the road!!
 

 

We ate in the town, admired the fountains, enjoyed ice creams and earmarked this as a good base for touring round the Forest area in the future as we had to be in Ludwigsburg the next day for the highlight of our holiday.





more soon xx

Sorry it's been so long

I bet you all think that I've abandoned you! Well, you don't get rid of me that easy!

Life has been a little hectic since we got back from Germany but here are a few photos from the beginning of our holiday.

We travelled down to Dover and stayed overnight with the intention of catching the early ferry which me missed due to a combination of chatting to a fellow biker for too long at the hotel and the person on front of us in the ferry queue messing about with his bike. Result was that he caught the ferry and we had to wait for the next one.




We took things steady on the first day, not our usual must get there mode and stopped overnight in France.



The Sunday saw us heading for Fussen on the German/Austrian border where we have stayed in the past.







More holiday photos to come once I've sorted them out and Bikerted will be posting about the holiday in detail on his travel blog soon, The next post will be back to my usual mix of spinning, knitting etc, honest!!

Have a great weekend :-)

more from Hamburg

As you can see, the sun was shinning still, different story when we got to Holland.

A more serious holiday visit

As Ian plotted a route from Hameln to Heide Park, he noticed that the road would take us near to Bergen-Belsen. I imagine most of you would know the name but here is a link to their site. I'm not going to try and put my feelings into words but will add that the sound of machine gun fire which we assume was from the local nato base or the arnamonts factory made the whole experience even more sombre.
Just three photos, there will be more on my flickr site and Biker Ted will cover this in more detail later this year.


Wall Hanging
Made by Antonina Konyakina in Bergen-Belsen circa 1942 . Anotonia Konyakina hung the image of a cat she had embroidered on an old trouser leg over her bunk to symbolically protect her from mice (Reproduction)
Scarf
Made by Antonia Konyakina in Bergen-Belsen circa 1942



Barbed wire and wooden post from the camps original fencing.

This is where we went!

Our original plans were to head for Spain but the nasty virus put paid to that. Instead, we decided to stay fairly local and caught the ferry to france and rode up to Hameln in Germany ( as in Pied Piper) for a couple of nights. Beautiful old place and more pictures can be seen here
I had to sneak these three photos of tradional embroidery as the museum did not sell postcards or a guide book that featured them.




At 400 miles, this was the longest days ride this year making it more relaxing, just as well as neither of us were fully recovered.