A new German Sport?

There is nothing more pleasant than sitting in the shade of an oak tree, with spectacular mountain scenery in front, munching away at a fresh roll stuffed with pongy Swiss cheese. This has been a bit of a recurring theme over the past few days.

The Swiss, do, however have an unfortunate ability to place pylons just in front of any view that you want to capture. To be fair, they do keep these pylons in very good order, and we witnessed some of them being painted green by some most acrobatic ( and brave, because I guess the power had not been switched off) painters who were swinging by ropes keeping them in good order.

Today was through “Heidiland”. Thus called, because the writer of the books hailed from here, and in an entrepreneurial spirit someone has created an idealised version of the log cabin that Heidi lived in. This, oddly enough, explains why some of the signs in the local train station are in Japanese. There is a Japanese animated version of the book, and tourists apparently arrive in hordes to see this house.

So we are now in Bregenz, Austria, which is at one end of the Bodensee. I know I keep harking on about prices, but I am Scottish and we have a special “how much?” gene coded into our DNA, as well as the one for never tanning and having ginger hair. Anyway, you can actually buy things for less than a £3 in a supermarket, which you can’t do in Switzerland.

Our current campsite is a perfectly respectable one, but quite large. There was a big gathering of the cream of German youth last night, all of whom were very keen to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. All good natured, although one activity I haven’t witnessed thus far in the UK is inebriated hair cutting. A spectator sport, this consists of at least 2 participants using a comb and a blunt beard cutter to shave the hair off another participant, to the loud and raucous cheering of the spectators. The scoring system is a little arbitrary. If neatness of the result is the main factor, then the rather moth eaten appearance of the final result would be a 2/10. If the amusement to others ( including me) was the main factor, then a resounding 10/10 would be awarded.

The thunderstorm didn’t damp their spirits, but this morning the inevitable hangovers and the realisation that having your hair cut under these circumstances certainly did. The atmosphere around the loo block was considerably more muted……

The Austrian Switzerland border. The immaculately cut grass to the right is Switzerland. The unkempt grass to the left is Austria. Go figure

In this chapter, Heidi fills up her T-Bird and goes off to a drive in movie.

Full credit to Sian, clearly in arty mode using these clouds for perspective. Or something like that.

And there, dear readers is the source of the bells. Like a feral cat - cute in looks, but packs a fearsome punch