The Romantic Road III - Augsburg, Germany Oct 26, 2007
We drove to the city of Augsburg where we had booked a cheap room in a family hotel. We didn’t have much in mind for this particular destination except eating and sleeping. Getting there was the challenge, not because we got lost on the highly efficient German motorways, but because left hand-hand driving has ceased to be one of Ed’s fortes. Now used to driving on the right side in the UK, here he had to concentrate double on not making any fatal mistakes on the road. The concentration went out the window when trying to make a turn at a traffic light, we failed to realize we were going the wrong way in an avenue. Two headlights came rushing head on towards us and we both instinctively screamed as Ed manoeuvred the car out of the street and unto the sidewalk. Miraculously there were no pedestrians on the sidewalk which saved us from being charged with multiple manslaughter. The people that drove by glared at us; some rightfully angry and other blatantly laughing at us. Thank god for German sense of humour.
We found the hotel, an old townhouse which looked cosy and pleasant from the outside. I imaged flowered curtains, intimate lighting and chocolate mints on our pillows as we dragged our exhausted bodies up to reception with our bags, but soon we found that Reception was not really a reception but a kitchen. The interior of the hotel reeked with the pungent smell of drain pipes and there was a musky heavy cigarette scent left behind in our room. There was one toilet for the entire floor which consisted of about 6 rooms, and let me tell you, something had been in there which was not human. Because of this I decided against bathing in the one and only shower room, and chose to stink it out until the next evening. Ed didn’t seem to care though, not like he ever does as long as there’s water coming out of a hole. I wish I were a man sometimes.
We walked around the city centre for a bit trying to decide what we wanted to eat. We were so tired we didn’t want a sit-down-dinner at a restaurant so we decided to get take-out somewhere and eat in our filthy drain-stinking room. One homemade pizza and two cans of lime Beck’s later, we were sound asleep and I forgot all about the smell, the dirty lace curtains, the potential bed bugs, or this bump on the Romantic Road.
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