Three countries in three days!!

Fussen  – Wednesday 16^th April – Friday 18th

We awoke to find that it had snowed overnight and about 5 cm of snow covered everything and it was very cold.  We had planned to leave Fussen that morning after picking up a small part for the car at the local garage. Unfortunately the part was not going to arrive until the next morning so we had an extra day to explore Fussen.  We returned to the camperstop to set ourselves up and then walked  the short distance into town. We decided to follow a rough guide to the town and walked around seeing the sights. Ewout couldn’t resist buying a local style of hat and Jenny found a nice winter scarf to ward off the cold wind. The town was very interesting, the buildings painted up with Tromp L’oeil and we were fascinated by the painted effects on many of the doors and windows.  After walking up to the Castle, visiting the Churches and the Corn Market (ABCCC) we stopped for coffee & cake (to share) and walked back via the local cemetery to our home on wheels.

After a cold night snuggled up in our beds we woke up to a heavy frost.  We packed up early and Ewout drove to the garage, while the women went to the Lidl to get some supplies. Meeting up soon again, we found they didn’t have the right part so to get moving faster we organised to drive the 30kms out of the way to pick it up.( For your information it was a small cap for the injector which was leaking diesel.) All fixed we set off south on the road to Austria.

We had a pleasant drive through the Austrian Alps, enjoying the scenery of green meadows and high peaks covered with snow. Winding along roads by rivers and in and out of tunnels.  We arrived at Pfunds next to the Swiss border and parked ourselves up in the Stellplatz/ Camperstop. With a short time of sunshine we went for a walk to the bridge over the river to discover the border to Switzerland was only 8 kms away. We walked into no man’s land and then back to our camper to make our tea and settle in for the night.  We decide to have a typical Bavarian meal of Bratwurst, potatoes, sauerkraut and beans to finish our German/Austrian part of our trip.

Friday.

Waking up and getting on the road early for us, we headed into Italy. Winding up and down through the valleys we finally got Bolzano and found a place to park at Bolzano south railway station. We locked up  the camper and thought we could walk into town, but after a bit of getting lost and being cut off by the motorway decided it would be prudent to catch a bus. Asking the driver if it went to the centre, he just said “SI” and we thought this was good enough. He wasn’t much help with instructing us with the ticket machine and a helpful women tried to help us, but it was still confusing and we bought a ticket which we hoped was the right ones. Lucky for us this bus went on a ring route and eventually into the centre of town. We got off near enough to the main plaza and walked up through the streets and into the shopping district. We had a wander around the old town, jostling with the other tourists and then found a nice cosy place to have some lunch. Asking the friendly staff at the café for the nearest telephone shop they pointed down to the nearest Piazza and we found the shop straight away. We wanted to buy a sim to access the internet and after waiting in line we were finally served by a very helpful young man.  Internet card bought we caught the bus back to the motorhome and headed off to find a place to stop for the night. We had a place in mind next to a lake 20kms away, it was a lovely drive though a wine growing area with hills and valleys and arriving at our destination we found it full to bursting point. Easter weekend was not a factor we had planned for and it looked like it was going to be difficult to find a place for the night. After stopping at a small Camping site the helpful staff pointed us in the direction of a Sports centre car park where we could stay the night for free. We found the site easily and finding other campers parked there, we stopped and settled in for the night.