We travelled through the beautiful mountain scenery from Garmisch and then along Lake Constance on the eastern side and then detoured to Salem to see where our old friend Margaret von Perger lived and taught in the school there. We continued on past the end of the Lake and around to the Gaienhofen Horn on the Untersee which is a part of the Rhein that flows into Lake Constance from the north west.
We met up with Maurice’s cousin Margarete and her husband Philipp who shares my birthday at the “Hirschen Horn” a beautiful hotel on the banks of the Untersee where we had terrific breakfasts and dinners and wonderful service. We had a lovely three days walking around the area and spent one day travelling from Gaienhofen on the ferry down the Rhein to Scaffhausen and then caught a bus and a train back via “Stein am Rhein” in a pocket of Switzerland on the north side of the Untersee. The weather was hot and humid, such a contrast to the last few years in Germany and last year in Switzerland but there was a nice breeze blowing when the ferry was travelling down and across the river to both banks to pick up more passengers. There were terrific storms with torrential rain on two nights which did clear the air the next day. The province around Lake Constance gave us through the hotel free transport passes for the days we were there and it was preferable to driving around ourselves and we could all enjoy the scenery. On the 10th July Maurice and I took all day to travel the backroads up to Schwetzingen. It was holiday season in Germany and there were many traffic hold ups, some for hours so we were glad to take the secondary roads which were not at all congested.