Arrival

Arrival

Greetings from Gengenbach, the town where Augustus Gloop wins a golden ticket in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. (watch the first 10 seconds - incorrectly identified as Dusseldorf in the movie. (Pronounced Geng - en - bach)

We flew into Zurich and had an event-free morning. 

Transport from the airport to the city was straightforward, and we hired a couple of lockers for our bags for a few hours while we wandered the city near the train station.

We had a coffee and inserted our European SIMs and spent a little while sorting that out (Apple stores have such good free wifi!) and went for a walk down to the edge of the lake. 

It's nice how as soon as you see a familiar landmark, lovely memories flood back. We were here in Zurich (day trip from Constance) in 2018 with our "kids."  Such fond memories of a terrific three weeks together.

It was fairly cold (no gloves or beanie), possibly because it was pretty foggy.

We bought a roll to have on the train for lunch and hopped on the first of three trains to Gengenbach - to Basel, Offenberg and Gengenbach.

Transfers were OK, with one slightly fraught moment when a train was cancelled and we weren't sure what platform to be on. Thankfully a helpful local had a good guess and pointed us in the right direction.

Our accommodation is great. The location is fantastic - a short walk to the train and into the old town. On arrival we walked to the local small supermarket and bought a few staples 

The town... it's lovely!! Quaint older houses - the old town is like gingerbread houses - and plenty of shops, cafes and restaurants (Germans DO love a good shoe shop!)

Although it's cold - 2 deg overnight  and up to 8 today (they appear to be having a cold spell as its forecast to reach 16 later in the week) it's autumn, and the trees still have beautiful colourful leaves falling...

This morning, our first here, we walked across the bridge over the Kinzig River (meets the Rhine just north of Strasbourg, about 40km away) into the newer part of town which has larger supermarkets. We did a big shop at the nearest Edeka (shops are closed on Sundays) and pushed the trolley home five or six hundred metres. The shop took a little longer than usual because we used google lens on a lot of our purchases to make sure we were buying what we thought we were buying. We'll see if we made any mistakes in the coming week(s) I guess.

Our town has its own wine :)

It's a shame the fair for the Christmas markets is set up, blocking the view. The 24 windows in the front of the Rathaus (town hall) make it the biggest Advent Calendar in Germany.

A few sights from around this pretty town.

The Kinzig River

The gate/tower can be seen in the first image from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the top of this post.

We didn't want to have any black forest cake in the Black Forest, but apparently it's a crime if you don't, so...

Quick update. The stork isn't there today - pigeons are sitting on the nest and there's no sign of the stork. Maybe it's finally flown south to Africa where they typically fly to each year, or (according to wikipedia) it's dead :(

Bye for now :)

Will update when we do something... it may be a while as we aren't rushing to do a lot in the next week!