Roadtrippin’ along the Rhine (Germany)

You remember the scene from Romy & Michelle’s high school reunion when they’re off to their school reunion together & their car stalls a few times before they get going (random I know), well that was kind of me, after missing the turn-off the first time, I ended up doing a big loop & 10 minutes later went driving past the same people standing out the front of my hotel… And to those people, no, I wasn’t cutting laps!

20 minutes into the drive the rain came bucketing down, I was warned about it being a wet weekend but it was a storm & a half! Sitting on 110 on the autobahn with cars flying past me, bolts of lightning everywhere, the windscreen wipers at maximum & still struggling to see in front of me and all this 20 minutes into my first driving experience in Germany!

A few wrong turns along the way due to a very average map assisting in guiding me (yes, I’ve learnt my lesson in not getting a proper map) and I arrived in Bingen where I decided I’d spend the first night.

After driving around a few streets, I decided to pick one out, I wondered in to the Hotel & the Italian lady was very friendly & obliging when I asked for a room, and for €45 including breakfast. As I grabbed the key & walked up a couple flights of stairs to my room, I was shocked to see the size of it… tiny!

I headed out for a walk through the streets searching for a dinner spot and stumbled on a pizza & pasta restaurant with a few people inside.

Once again very friendly people inside and it was one of those traditional Italian restaurants with the owner coming & sitting down with you with a red wine in hand in between making pizzas.

My lasagna was amazing, cooked in its own little pot, it was made with fresh homemade pasta (you could tell), was flavorsome and just what I felt like, it was however way too much for me to eat.

After a great dinner, I headed off for a walk exploring more of Bingen and found a hive of activity in the town with a band, food stores & lots of people having a few drinks – welcome to the 3-day sparkling wine festival!

I soaked up the atmosphere & the band for a while before deciding it was time to head to bed. I arrived back & went to bed straight away, & within 10 minutes, three trains had roared past – reason two for a cheap room, after lying there for a bit listening to the trains, it took me back to my childhood with the constant buzzing of cars on the main highway, 50 metres away and the occasional train going past our home in Stratford in country East Gippsland, Victoria.

Back then you’d get used to the noise and this was no different, after bringing up a variety of wonderful childhood memories that I thought about for a while while I was lying there, before I knew it ,I was sound asleep, day one of my road trip adventure was over & the excitement of day two ahead of me!

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