Kirchhain and around

16 September (Tuesday):

I didn't mention yesterday that we returned the rental car.  To have VISA cover the insurance costs for the whole trip we had to break up the rental into 2 parts, separated by at least 24 hours.  When we returned the car we told the agent of the problems we had with the GPS system in Austria and we needed to be sure it would give us directions to precise addresses in France and Spain.  We thought it was just a matter of having the right CDs.  This morning we took the tram from in front of our hotel right to the AVIS office on the edge of town.  They reported that the GPS system in the car we returned was not working properly so they had an Audi waiting for us.  I was a little sad as I had gotten used to what I could do with the system in the Volkswagen Passat and the new one had completely different controls and prompts, though it sounded the same.  We drove back to the hotel for our luggage, entered our day's destination and were off.  The destination was a house in a small town, Kirchhain, one we have visited several times before.  It is the home of Brix Eichinger and her husband Horst.  Brix and her brother Klaus, with their parents, shared a 3-room house with the Zickmantel family for 7 years in the prison camp in Suriname.  The four children shared one bedroom.  Brix is like family, so is her husband.  After catching up on the families onboth sides, we decided to go for a hike.  We did the two-car trip,m parking our car at the end of the hike then driving their car to the starting point.  It was a pleasant hike through forests and past high Burgs.  It took us close to 2 hours.  We drive our car back to get their car, and couldn't find where we had parked it!  The town it was in climbs the side of a big hill and forest is all around it.  It is quite a large town and the roads curve continuously, every junction looking like the last.  We finally stopped and asked some local residents how to get to the start of the hiking trail, and then finally reached the car.

17 September (Wednesday):

We stayed a second day here.  Around 10:45 we left for a trip to see some of the small towns in the area.  The first stop was Bad Wildungen, then on to Waldeck and its Schloss, and finally Fritzlar.  All the towns are old with Tudor style architecture predominant, as you will see when you look at the pictures.  The church in Fritzlar was surprisingly elaborate to find in a small town.  We had a very enjoyable day's tour, returning to Kirchhain by 5:30 pm.  Horst is a wonderful tour guide as he knows History, Geography, Architectural History and any thing else you may want to know about the places he took us.  He is also an excellent chef as he cooked Wiener Schnitzel for dinner.  The evening discussion, including looking at photo albums of our past visits and their trip to Vancouver, went on until almost midnight, when Brix and I went to bed.  Hans and Horst continued talking until 1:30 am!  

18 Septemeber (Thursday):

We left Kirchhain just before 10 am and headed for Aachan, in Germany but on the border into the Netherlands.  I entered our trip destination into the GPS, giving it the address of a Hotel we thought we would like to stay in, then off we went.  It was about a 3-hour drive.  The GPS took us to a place and said this is it but we couldn't see a hotel and found ourselves past the hotel with the G"PS giving us instructions we thought were to take us around and back to the hotel.  The first couple of directions it gave seemed odd and I suddenly realized that it figured we had reached our 1st destination and was now taking us to a 2nd destination which was back to Kirchhain!  We quickly changed direction, got ours selves back to where we found the hotel and Hans went in to get a room and find out where to park the car.  He returned fairly quickly and announced that there was a large convention going on and there wasn't a free hotel room in the city.  Hans immediately decided we would go on to our next destination, Bruges, in Belgium.  We have 3 nights book there and thought we would see if they could put us up tomight, if not, where would they suggest?  (It is a small B^B with only 3 rooms.)  When I tried to enter the address of the B&B in the GPS it wouldn't accept the street name, or the name of any street nearby!  I finally entered Cantre, figuring that would get us near enough.  We drove on for about another tow and a half hours, arriving in Bruges about 4:30 pm.  When we reached the Centre, according to the GPS, we could not find ourselves on the small map we had.  Hans went off to investigate while I waited at the illegally parked car.  I finally stopped a couple walking by asked if they could show me where we were on my map.  (Everyone here speaks at least one foreign language, usually English and French, often German too.)  They had just left after showing me that we were actually off the map of the centre of the city that we had when Hans arrived back to say he had booked us into a nearby hotel and knew where we should park.  We proceeded without the GPS and have a very nice suite for the night.  We walked around the area looking for a nice restaurant and found that our first choices (from the Guide Book) were closed on Thursdays.  We walked a little further and found a very nice place where we got the last unreserved table.  We had a very nice meal and returned ready for a good nights sleep.