Jul 4

Written by: rhertzler
Wednesday, July 04, 2007 9:48 PM 

Mostly traveling today and I think the longest of all traveling days so far. The autobahns in Germany are great, but only when it is possible to actually move. From Stuttgart to Munich and beyond we could have travelled faster on bicycles it seemed. But anyway, we had the first part of the trip broken up with a stop at Selecta Spielzeug - an excellent toy company in Bavaria.

We ended the day traveling (I use that term loosely in Germany) to Budapest. At one point we made just under 4km in just over 1 hour - all because there was a section of autobahn (about 100m long) where they were grinding the road surface for repaving. Unbelievable that they do that kind of thing during the day causing that huge of a backup - in the USA we have the common sense to do it at night. We even sat there through a hail storm!

Once we got to Austria we were able to travel delay free the whole way to Budapest - about 500 km. Finally arrived at 9:30 pm and had some wonderful Hungarian Goulash waiting for us prepared by Beth.

Here is a summary of the day in photos - not many because we spent most of the day in the car:

Josef and Karola Lenzer - our hosts in Germany. Karola loaded us up with little smoked sausages to snack on during our long journey.

At the Selecta Spielzeug factory, Ian and Nic get to do some heat and pressure transfer printing unto wooden plates. They were very pleased with the outcome!

Nic, Ian and Kathy try Elemento, a game from Selecta. Then on the way from Germany to Hungary, the boys play Plan Quadrat in the back seat - another great game that will get lots of use in the next few days as the trip draws to a close.