Day 2 (Brugge - St. Goar)

Based on the old OzBUS itinerary we were scheduled to go to Heidleburg today, but that's off the table as it's too far away from St Goar and our date with Herman the German.

The hostel in Brugge last night was fine, but the room we were sharing was super noisy (reckon that's the bad side of being on the first floor..we were right over the pub). The bunk Una and I had was not in the best of shape and was already leaning sideways before anyone even lay down. I thought it best to avoid clambering onto the top bunk in case it made the whole thing crash to the ground ending up with an Una sandwiched between bunks. So, I rolled out my crash mat and sleeping bag liner and slept on the floor (it was surprisingly comfortable). Breakfast this morning was cornflakes and toast, not exactly the biggest spread, but the coffee was lovely. We had the bus loaded up in time for our 8.30am departure and amazingly there were no stragglers given some of them had been out til 3am. I was tucked up on the floor shortly after midnight myself, very, very sleepy after a long day..but unable to block out the noise even with my earplugs!

I think the drive time today was somewhere around 7 or 8 hours with breaks for lunch (at a roadside convenience store with a Burger King and a counter serving German food) and one for a guided tour of Marksburg Castle. I didn't go into the castle, but from the feedback of those that did I didn't miss a whole lot. The guide did the tour in German and very few people could piece it together, so that coupled with her lack of enthusiasm was what people were talking about most once they got out. While the tour was running I sat outside and chatted with Mel, Alet and Barbara as I'd not really had a chance to talk to them up to that point. We were set for a 4pm departure from the castle but the tour dragged on so it was closer to 4.30pm by the time we were loaded up and ready to go...though we almost left Ann behind (we only spotted she was missing when the bus started to turn around the carpark – Oops!)

It was around 5.30pm when we arrived at Herman's place. We were warned that the accommodation wasn't going to be of a great standard, but in honesty it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. For the 20 of us there 4 rooms with compartments with two single mattresses in them and curtains to be pulled across, and a set of bunk beds. The room I initially chose (with Ann, Una & Michelle) was a bit damp, so I moved next door to bunk up with Alex, April & Ana where there were a good few spare beds. They were comfortable enough, and I got to use my sleeping bag and liner so they are proving useful!

We sat down to dinner at 7pm for a 3 course meal prepared by Herman (€9). Salad starter, schnitzel and chips for mains and fruit cocktail with ice-cream for dessert. When the first of the main course plates came out I was worried about whether I was going to be able to eat it or not, the big problem being that the town of St. Goar was about 35mins walk away and didn't look to have all that much in it. The problem was that on top of the schnitzel there was a big steaming pile of mushrooms....not good! Thankfully I have 3 fellow mushroom haters on the bus so we were able to get ours served up without the fungus. It was absolutely delicious...not normally a fan of breaded pork, but my god..this was yummy! After dinner 7 of us went to the bar for a wine tasting evening with Herman (€5 for 6 glasses). It was more of a wine drinking evening than tasting because we had to finish up what we had before we got the next glass. The dry white didn't go down too well, but the medium dry and the sweet white were lovely. The rose was ok, but nothing that I'd drink again. The red was never going to sit well with me, so I was hoping the final one wouldn't be another red, and I was pleasantly surprised by a strawberry flavoured wine that was presented to us. We had an 80's tv show playing to explain German wine making to us – the wine of the 90's is set to be Reisling don't you know :)

As we were finishing up the wine tasting the rest of the crew came in to join us in the bar where there were such classics as Take That's Relight My Fire and DJ Mark McCabe with Maniac 2000. Only in Germany! We stayed up quite late chatting with people and drinking far too much beer before heading for a shower too avoid having to get up early tomorrow morning.

During the drive today we got information about the prices for the optional extra tours that can be sorted out for us as a group for whoever wants to opt in. I can't remember all of them, but there were two that stuck with me that I'm almost definitely signing up for (both in Nepal) – (1) flight over Everest (2) an adventure day that includes a ride on an elephant. There's white water rafting up on offer too and I'm tempted by that, but am slightly put off after hearing about Kim's experience her first and only time doing it. I'm leaning toward skipping the hot air balloon ride in Turkey, because at €165 it's a bit steep given that I was on one just last year in Phoenix. Have to make a call on it in the next few days as it'll be happening in the next two weeks and numbers need to be finalised soon. Think I need to check out the photos from it on the OzBUS website to get a better idea at what the scenery in the area is.

The itinerary update for today is that we're no longer going to Dracula's Castle (boo!) and won't in fact even be going into Romania (double boo!). Instead we're going to be driving through Serbia (though that's not listed on our Daz white OzBUS t-shirts). Apparently the roads that the bus has taken on previous voyages through Romania weren't great, and the infrastructure in Serbia is better so that's why the decision was taken to change the route. Though we lose one country in our list, we gain another one in it's place so I guess we can't complain too much :)

Something that was mentioned yesterday that I'd forgotten about was that we're now looking at a 3rd flight on the trip (not so overland anymore then really is it?). With the current climate in Pakistan, there's a high possibility that instead of driving from Iran onwards, we'll take a flight from Tehran to somewhere in Pakistan (haven't heard where yet). By doing this we're getting a few days back and by the sounds of it these will be used to give us some extra time in the sun further on in the trip.

Photos from today are here: