25th September
View the video of yesterday and this morning in this video here

Finally we both had an uneventful nights sleep! Until 7am when dads alarm went off.  This was actually 6am back in England but they are an hour ahead of us over here for some reason.  Just to be different I think.  Dad farted around for an hour (breakfast was at half past 8).  God knows what he was doing, I tried to get some more sleep but the silly old sod was bumbling.  He even put the TV on, and watched the weather reports for Austria.  I don’t understand what goes on in his confused head.  Ever!

I finally got up and got dressed, then we went for breakfast.  Cue disappointment #37 their selections of meats and cheeses consisted of one highly processed pink circle of ‘meat’ which tasted like just protean slices, i.e. no flavour. And the cheese was just yellow, it had no taste either.  The breads were only one type and that type was crusty and dry!  All in all it was yet again, a disaster!  And their orange juice had bits in it!  The only ray of sunshine was that we got to eat it all on the table by ourselves again.  Thankfully this was due to some quick foot work by Cecil.  A pair of particularly grumpy biddies were attempting to come and sit at our table (even though I had already put my jacket down) but Cecil nipped in front of them and reclaimed our spot!

Today, in the morn, we went to Freiburg.  It wasa town or city I’m not sure which.  There was a market but it only sold fruit and veg, I was disinterested.  Cecil bloody loved it, he kept going up to the veg and touching, saying how big they were compared to ours.  He held up a particularly huge radish and told me to come and feel it.  I did not!  We walked around streets, the shops were too posh for us to go into apart from we had lunch at a McDonalds.  Dad wasn’t happy about this, he hates them and normally refuses to have anything to do with them, but I just marched in and demanded we have a burger, also I needed a poo very badly so I had to use the toilets.

We walked a bit more, never going in a single shop.  There was a woman, dressed in bright orange, being a statue, both me and Dad freaked out a bit and crossed the road and looked in the window of a gun shop.  We bought nothing at all.  There was a big church or something but Cecil was scared of the gargoyles so we couldn’t go in.

We then got back on the bus and went to the most amazing sounding place in the world (after the Isle of Lesbos)!  It was Lake Titisee! I prepared myself for wall to wall boobies.  And by prepare I mean got an instant erection.  Dad hadn’t said anything about coming to this place, I guess because if he had, he would have known how exited I would have been.

It took the longest 40 minutes of my life to get there.  But when we did, I jotted down holiday disappointment #40: There was not a single mention of boobs anywhere.  I was sickened.  If anything it should have been called Lake Disappointment and cuckoo clock.  Because there were about 10 shops and every single one of them sold cooku clocks.  And pretty much nothing else!  Dad wanted one and nearly bought one until he saw it cost over 1000 Euros!  For a clock!! Dad added it to his disappointment list.  We walked around every shop.  Until we came to the best shop I had seen so far.  It had an upstairs dedicated to Christmas decorations! It was a magical land.  I got so excited I even bought 3 things and took them to the till and paid for them myself.  And the person I bought them from was a woman.  At least I think it was a woman.  It was dead grumpy whatever it was.  How you could be grumpy working in a shop that not only sits on a beautiful lake side, in the heart of the Black Forest and also you’re working with Christmas things all day, I’ll never know.  Unless she was currently in an abusive relationship or something I guess.

For lunch we had giant sausages, I assumed they would come in some kind of hot dog style bap/bun.  But no! The sausage was places next to 2 slices of dry thinly sliced brown bread, and we weren’t provided any butter.  It was a chore to eat.  Then when we went and paid the really grumpy woman ignored us for a while then took our money and didn’t even look at us.  She wouldn’t last long at Tesco!

We then started to walk back to the bus stop, but Cecil saw some weird booze in a shop so he went in.  There were a lot of open bottles on a counter top and several tiny glasses.  Cecil obviously thought you could taste the booze before you made a purchase so he started pouring himself a wee dram of some weird drink.  Then a man came running behind us shouting in German.  We didn’t know he was talking to us at first.  Then he grabbed Cecil by the shoulder.  Dad jumped and knocked a big bottle of something on the floor.  It smashed.  The German man violently pointed at a sign on the wall saying something about it not being self-service.  Dad made some gesture as if to say “I don’t understand” and he walked off.  I looked at the angry German man, who was just stood there looking stunned.  And I walked off.  The German man shouted something at us while we were walking but we didn’t care, we would never be back here again!

Cecil gave a wry smile, and said “I read the sign, I just didn’t think they would dare tell me not to drink, so I dropped the bottle on purpose” the naughty old scamp!
Watch the video of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDUWV44__1Q

We got back on the bus and drove back to the hotel, on the way back the driver thought it would be high-larious to play a cd of a Scottish radio person doing phone pranks on people.  The biddies thought it was great fun.  But it was just an hour of Scottish people very angrily screaming at a man pretending to be someone demanding money or something who then said he was from the radio so the Scottish people then laughed.  I did not laugh!

We finally made it back to the hotel and had 20 minutes to get ready before the evenings meal.  We rushed and got ready.  And by got ready I mean Dad changed all his clothes, while I sat on my bed and ate a giant pretzel.  Then we went to tea.  The soup today was string, green and water.  I kid you not!  Cecil says it was probably celery, herbs and cream.  I had one spoonful just in case the pretty waitress was looking.  She didn’t so I spat it out into my napkin.  I then put the napkin in my pocket.  It soaked into my trousers almost instantly!

Then we waited.  We waited and waited.  We had sat down to eat the soup at 6:33pm.  Out next course wasn’t delivered till 7:29pm. The main course was semi raw pork, round potato things and a big pile of veg.  I left 80% of it.  The meat scared me, I have never seen pork that isn’t dry and like cardboard so I was scared of it.

Then we waited, our pudding was served at 8:19pm.  Dad was livid.  He hates waiting for food and to keep him hanging round for nearly 2 hours was almost enough to make him complain. He didn’t (apart from to me, almost constantly) but he said he would if it happened again tomorrow!

Then we had pudding, on the menu it was “Vanilla ice cream desert pudding” when it finally arrived, it was yoghurt with 3 small round dark berries in, I don’t know what.  Purple berries I guess.  I gave it to Dad.  He finished it in about 40 seconds; it was the smallest bowl you have ever seen.  Think of two egg cups combined to make one small bowl and you’re there.  Maybe, if you’re imagining the exact thing that we had our puddings served in.  Dad slammed down the bowl and got up and walked back to the room without thanking the waitress.  I tried to smile at her but only looked at my feet and mumbled something so inaudible I couldn’t even hear it.

We both sat writing our diaries now.  Well Dad wrote his usual one line which is “If I don’t find the key this will have been a giant waste of money and effort.  I hate Germany.  I love you Margaret”.

He’s been a right grumpy sod.  I don’t know where we’re going tomorrow or what we’re doing, Bigglesworth tells us nothing.  I think he said about 9 words today, which were “be back on the bus by 8:30am please, thank you” though I suppose he did say “be back on the bus by 4 o’clock please” so there is some variation there.