Mayday: A spontaneous decision

On Thursday over our usual Mensa lunch a bunch of us decided to head to Bodensee (Lake Constance) for the weekend. Monday was Mayday (1st May is Labour day holiday) and Tuesday our broken-legged teacher gave us another day off. So I booked us into the Bregenz (Austria) youth hostel as all the hostels in the German towns were booked out.

On Saturday morning nine of us departed and made the four hour journey with five transfers through the Black Forest and along the lake shore thanks to the Baden-Würrtemberg Ticket (cost us 7€ [$12] each for a 5 hour journey!!). It was a beautiful trip. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great but we still got to see the rivers, mountains and woods of the Black Forest, and the towns up against the lake.

We arrived in Bregenz at around 2 to rain. We got to the youth hostel 10 minutes later to discover that my booking was a dud! I had actually just submitted an enquiry!! WHAT??? AND they were fully booked out! GREAT! The next hour saw a lot of stress and a great test of my German and we saw ourselves an hour later standing in the foyer of a Pension (cheap hotel) waiting to see the manager as all the staff were telling us they were fully booked out and that it was impossible that they could fit us in. The manager arrived and promptly informed us that he would collect the keys for us. There were 9 very confused foreign faces in that foyer in Bregenz that Saturday. The Pension was a bit more expensive than we'd hoped to pay, but it was comfortable and after a few hours in the city we came back and spent the evening reading the hilarious /Xenophobe's Guides /to various different nationalities, and watching a particularly dodgy horror film dubbed into German.

Sunday we spent the morning and afternoon, after a delicious breakfast at the Pension and then a move to the Youth Hostel for which I had made a successful booking, on the foreshore playing frisbee and football (with a round ball of course). We at lunch at about 5pm then some went to Mass while others headed back to the Hostel for some beauty sleep before we all headed out to Bregenz's club. Twas much fun and dancing to be had by all.

On Monday four of us (John, Astrid, Stefano and Magi) headed back to Freiburg while we five (Andreas, Tanya, Caitlin, Michelle and I) stayed on. We took a walk along the foreshore followed by another late lunch which seemed to run into dinner. Then we spent the evening in the hostel
playing 500 until the wee hours (the only way one can play 500!).

It was a little strange for me to be back in Bregenz again. I spent a few days there in 2002 on my stopover in Austria on my way to Russia. Then I remember being very lonely, traveling alone and feeling the effects of not knowing the language. This time both of these factors had
changed. I was with a group of great friends and I could speak German!! It was a very different experience. Not to say that I didn't enjoy Bregenz the first time but it was definitely better the second. Made for a good few days.

Tuesday we headed back to Freiburg, this time via Basel. With a short stopover in Lindau and a five minute peek at the lovely foreshore there, then a longer stop in Friedrichshafen where we sat on a lawn and lunched to fantastic views of the lake with the Swiss Alps in the background!! Incredible! We also had an unexpected guest as a young man (drunk? high? definitely drinking!) decided to follow us from the train station and sit amongst us. Although he didn't answer questions from us, he would make a comment from time to time. "How many people live in this town?" or "It's beautiful with the lake and the mountains" were favourites of his, and he used them both more than once! The scenery along the Rhine to Basel was fantastic and many places there reminded me of the Yarra Valley down under. No wonder a whole bunch of Germans headed that way!