Germany - Europe's largest inland port & friends again at last

The destination is Duisburg. I get to give a workshop again. For two days my favourite topic (ok, after travelling, sure): super structured layout documents.

So we roll north on Thursday evening. 600 kilometres lie ahead of us. Normally a distance for a few weeks, if it were up to our normal travelling speed. This time we manage 200 kilometres on the first day and find a nice quarry pond near Offenburg for the night. In the morning - we somehow didn't notice - we are woken up by loud neighing: We professionals are standing in the middle of a horse race track. Around us, meanwhile, motorhomes and horse trailers. Before we get parked up, we "ride out of the yard". Let the others ride their horses, we are quite happy with our Felix.

Around noon we reach a romantic meadow in the Odenwald. And who jumps up in the air for joy? Robert and Barbara, our very first travel friends! The ones who lured us to Greece "Come on, there are no Covid restrictions here!" and then left us in lockdown to continue their wonderful motorbike journey in Central America. We still had a great time in Greece, they then spent years "over there" in Central and South America. (It's really worth it, read her blog, great route, wonderful people, great texts!)

Now we are actually together again, we with the van, she too. Crazy world. Are we all growing up at the same time? The reunion, even though we haven't seen each other for years, is like we just said goodbye yesterday. We pick up where we left off in Koroni. Robert barbecues for us, I bake us sweet fruit pockets made of sour, hard apricots and (lots of) marzipan. The evening is long, the morning cosy.

At some point we will continue. We make another diversions (more about that in the days to come!). And arrive in Duisburg. We find a parking space directly under the motorway bridge (who says we don't live "under the bridge" from time to time!), stroll along Europe's largest and most romantic inland port at sunset, treat ourselves to a few Virgin-style cocktails and fall asleep. actually dead tired, but very happy into bed.

"Kalong!" "Kalong!" "Kalong!" "Kalong!" "Kalong!"

Directly above us there is probably a small gap in the bridge concrete, the cars and yes, gladly also the heavier trucks "calonge" over the bridge. A little less late in the evening. But they don't want to stop, the annoying noises. At some point we put plugs in our ears, now we don't hear them any more, we just feel them. Just like you feel the bass in your stomach at a rock concert.

So much for romantic pitches and chic vanlife. On this morning, only one thing saves me: the knowledge that my client has a very good coffee machine and that I love giving workshops "in real life" anyway. And then also with my favourite topic. What I don't know yet, but notice after just a few minutes: the four participants are just great. We laugh a lot, have fun and even go out for dinner together in the evening (we just take Gerd with us, he's the cock of the walk now!).

Of course, we park later, there are so many other places without "Kalong! - We sleep soundly and for a long time. It's cool when you can spend the night almost on your doorstep.

The return journey is a bit bumpy: the A3 was lubricated with a truckload of oat milk. The almost 4 hours in a standing-room-only traffic jam were stupid. But I was able to knit and we finished our audio book and listened to one or two great podcast episodes.

And for all those who are now curious, here are our listening tips

The audio books we just listened to:

Always on air, never on reception! - Kate Murphy
Who we were - Roger Willemsen
A little philosophy of encounter - Charles Pépin

And our current favourite podcasts (among many others):

Word of Honour Podcast
A podcast about scandals. And entertaining as hell!

Servus Grüezi & Hello
In the political podcast "Servus. Grüezi. Hallo." they talk weekly about the politics and societies of the three countries. Maybe they can learn from each other.

The state of the nation
The politics podcast from Berlin.

One Hour History Deutschlandfunk Nova
What does yesterday have to do with today? How past and future are connected.

And what about you? What do you listen to and read?

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Merci for "travelling with us

We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.

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