Homeward Bound (Monday, October 24, 2011)

Doing what they do best: electronics of any form.
A seven hour drive from Paris to Singen, Germany made up the most of our day. I can’t tell you much about the first hour or so, since I slept through that part of the drive.

I can, however, tell you more about our rest area experiences. When I started this blog, I had no idea that it would turn into a serial harangue on public restrooms in Europe. After all, I’ve been to Europe before, I know the public bathrooms are not plentiful or free, and I’m over it. But driving gives it a whole new dimension.

So when we started in France a few days earlier, I mentioned the porcelain pit toilet that we encountered. I said it was possibly worse than the automatic flushing toilet for those toilet-training children. I had no idea it could be even worse.

On the way out of France, we stopped again. This time, we were looking for a picnic table and were happy to find one with a bathroom nearby. Little did we know. Again, the modern pit toilet. Again, no easy way to explain the logistics of this to the orderly youngest. But wait. This pit has an automatic flusher! And lest you deal with the strange logistics by leaning against the back wall, you’ll be sadly surprised to find that when it flushes unexpectedly (as ALL automatic flushers seem to do), water flushes down the back wall too! Thankfully we all stayed dry in the process, and really, our shoes needed some washing off anyway.

Okay, so we left France, back in Germany. One more pit stop. And no pits—yay! We are back to the world of paying to pee. So this place has it all—a restaurant, a clean bathroom, a playground, picnic tables. Wait, what’s this? A beer garden at the highway service station! Is this really a good idea? Only in Germany.

Helen, the GPS lady, kept us on course for the last time. You can even see the little finish line flag if you look really closely. Brian kept us on course with continuous caffeination.

We got to Singen without difficulty, which is amazing considering that any one of the drivers around us may have just loaded up at the rest-stop beer garden, and there are no speed limits. Brian made sure that we tested the limits of the car, barely keeping within the 210 km/hr (130 mph) limit posted on the dashboard of the rental car. After that, going 65 mph on the highway feels practically Amish-buggy speed.

In Singen, we settled into our rooms. Brian suggested a walk around the downtown area, which is cute, clean and small, to find a place to eat dinner. Not one child was interested in leaving the hotel or seeing anything. They laid on their beds, reading or drawing. We ate at the restaurant at the bottom of the building, thankful that going home is as big a joy as coming to see this part of the world.

Tomorrow, we fly.

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