Race Across the World Holiday

Team Theatrics:

• Bonus challenge at St Pancras, which we nearly missed due to the fact that we assumed it was talking about the destination station! We had to find the statue of the poet who saved the station, then recite the lines around the statue in front of a café that bears one of our names. We found the statue of Sir John Betjeman upstairs and recited the lines in front of the Paul café. Phew.
• Boarded the 9.01 train to Lille.
• Raining in Lille. What happened to the European heatwave? (A recurrent thought all week). Walked around in the rain for a bit.
• Boarded the 12.35 train to Charlville-Mezieres armed with a baguette and a bit of cheese.
• Train stopped at Avesnes-sur-Hope and never started again. Avesnes-sur-Hope is in the middle of nowhere. We looked at an Uber – but it would have been £250. There were no other transport options. At some point we learned from the conductor that there was a tree across the line. Sunday in France – not looking good for the tree to be moved. At 4.30pm we were given SNFC emergency water. At 5pm we were put in a taxi along with two other passengers and driven to Charleville.
• In Charleville-Mezieres, which is the apparently the international capital of puppetry we walked to Place Winston Churchill to see the puppetry clock. Our main day challenge was to recreate the puppet display in the clock using the puppets provided in our challenge envelope. Sadly the clock was broken. The doors opened, but the knights and the horse didn’t move. It was befitting for the sort of day we had had.
• Boarded a train to Sedan. Arrived at 8pm. Only one taxi there but he was booked. Didn’t fancy walking the 30 minutes to the hotel – tired and a little jaded. Taxi driver took pity on us and drove us to the hotel free of charge.
• Met up with the boys, who were in high spirits having arrived many hours earlier. Went and ate fabulous African food.

• Boarded the 8.01am train to Paris.
• Spent an hour wandering around Paris.
• Boarded the train to Epernay. Arrived without incident. It was sunny.
• Completed their challenge which was to drink Moet & Chandon on the Avenue de Champagne!
• Completed the bonus challenge, which was to sing Killer Queen on the Avenue de Champagne.
• Discovered a handy carpool ride on BlaBlaCar. Got an Uber to Reims in order to meet their carpool driver Valerie.
• Valerie drove them all the way to the hotel for 18 euros.
• Arrived at the hotel at 5pm.
• Today was also IB results day and while Bertie was on the move, he got his results. Fantastically – he got into his first choice university. So a great day for him.

Day 3

• Bertie started with a pep talk – explaining to me that we would not be spending any unnecessary money at all and that we would be walking everywhere. This started immediately with a very brisk walk to the station.
• Bertie organised all the travel today. We had three easy trains with stress-free connections – comfy seats each time. A great improvement on previous days. We played some cards and I particularly enjoyed the train ride through the Black Forest.
• Paul and I gave each of the boys an “I Spy on a Train Journey” book as a side-quest. Bertie was unimpressed, but was cajoled into crossing some items off.
• We arrived in Allenspach around 2pm and had a lovely pizza lunch. As the sky turned an ominous shade we walked along the lake to catch a ferry across to Reichenau Island. (There were other ways to arrive on the island, but to complete the bonus challenge, we needed to arrive by boat.) The ancient ferryman told us we had to pay in cash – which prompted me having to run through the town to find an ATM, by which time, of course the heavens had properly opened.
• Now soaked, I arrived back at the ferry to be told that the storm light had come on and we had to wait for the storm to pass before we could cross (it was only Bertie and I on this ferry). He waited about 5 minutes, then seemed to get bored and took us across anyway.
• When we docked, Bertie revealed that the ‘short walk’ was actually about 2.5 km. He’d ‘helpfully’ adjusted my rucksack straps, which made it far less comfortable and proceeded to lead me at a fair lick across the island in the pouring rain.
• Eventually we arrived at our destination St Georg’s church, where we were tasked with marvelling at the beautiful murals. Indeed, they were impressive. We were lucky to get in, because the church is only open twice a day, for a tour, in German. We arrived 15 minutes before the 4pm tour and I sweet-talked the tour guide into letting us wander in for 10 minutes alone (and free of charge). Bertie was not on board for a 45-minute church tour in German.
• Finally, a short bus and a quick train later we arrived at the hotel. Very damp, but triumphant.

• Walked to the station and then deliberately misrepresented getting an Uber to the rival team – as a stealth strategy.
• They made a last-minute decision to get off the train before Frankfurt Hbf and jumped on Lime Scooters and scooted off to do a bonus quest – a visit to a clocktower.
• They then razzed around the city on the scooters to try to find the Fleming Hotel with a paternoster lift. Unfortunately, they found the wrong Fleming Hotel, then made a strategic decision to abandon that part of the plan in order to catch the next train.
• Incredibly, due to the scooter action, they still made the train connection that they had originally intended to get… and they were off to Stuttgart.
• In Stuttgart, an overground tram/train thingy (Paul is dictating this) took them to the funicular railway. Ascending via the funicular, they arrived at a massive cemetery in which many notable people were buried… including Robert Bosch – dishwasher man. They did some slightly irreverent filming at his grave, and completed their main challenge.
• Back on the funicular, back to Stuttgart on the tram/train thingy, where they thought they would have 20 minutes to scope some delicious lunch for the next train. But the tram/train was delayed and the time was cut very short. So it was a grab and go pretzel for lunch. Paul wants it to be known, however, that the pretzel was an absolute winner. Cheese and chicken. The hero.
• Then hotfooted it to the hotel in Konstanz.

Day 5

• Started by making a run for it out of breakfast to get a head start on the other team, but quickly realised, while googling that we had missed the early train – largely because Alfie was 15 minutes late to breakfast, though he denies this was the reason. We don’t get the challenge envelopes until after breakfast, so pre-planning is not allowed… but if he had arrived at the agreed time we would have been off earlier. Not bitter. My old hip issue is also playing up (probably due to running upstairs and around towns every day carrying a rucksack) – so this slowed us a bit.
• Took the train from Regensburg to Nuremberg – with Team Statues. We had 45 minutes at Nuremberg. Slightly weird being there not for Spielwarenmesse. Nuremberg Hbf has lots of food options, so Alfie and I grabbed some lunch for our second train. Alfie chose two slices of mushroom pizza and I got a salad and a large slice of cherry crumble cake!
• Travelled from Nuremberg to Hof. Met up with Team Statues on the train and sat together again. At Hof, we dropped our bags in the lockers and waved goodbye to the others. Then we proceeded into the town to complete our challenge.
• The challenge gave us a dodgy translation of from the city guide and we were to discover what the correct translation was. This was actually the hardest and the easiest challenge to complete. It was easy, because it was clear from the slip of paper what the translation should have been (well clear to Alfie – totally passed me by). Part of the clip said: “All passages of the Saalepark to the city centre are paved with colourful pants, old gardens in the Hope city have been restored.” So ‘pants’ should have been ‘plants’ (not sure why I didn’t see that!). But finding the Saalepark wasn’t that easy. According to Google, there was only one place called Saalepark and that was the student accommodation – which was admittedly next to a park, though this park was called Lorenzpark. Another part of the translation mentioned St Lorenz church, so we thought it might be this, but I was quite confused. Fortunately, I eventually found a PDF of the city plan online and found that ‘Saalepark’ had been translated from ‘Saaleauen’. Mystery solved we were able to navigate to the correct place – to see the plants (pants).
• We ambled back through the town where we found a get-the-three-balls-in-the-holes puzzle… which I insisted on completing before we moved on, much to Alfie’s irritation.
• Then back on the train, this time from Hof to Dresden. About an hour before we reached Dresden we saw Team Statues jumping on the train at a different stop. So we arrived at the (totally lovely) hotel together.

• Upon opening the challenge envelope, Paul was dismayed to learn that our destination was Dresden – not because he doesn’t want to go to the city – but because his very close friend Bill lives there… but he is currently in the USA. 
• Paul has spent some time every day bemoaning the fact that he hadn’t found any sausages in Germany yet. So, he decided to make this a sausage day, come what may.
• In Nuremberg Paul went off in search of sausages – success – got sausaged up at a sausage stall and it renewed Paul’s faith in Germany.
• Then the train from Nuremberg to Hof. 15 minutes at Hof, then boarded the train for Chemnitz, which was previously called Karl Marx Stadt before the reunification. Chemnitz station reminded Paul instantly of footage of people being put into train carriages in WW2, and they found a plaque about this. In fact, on consultation with Bill, Team Statues discovered that at each train station in Germany there are the names of each person from that town that were deported.
• Team Statues’ task was to find the Karl Marx Statue, which was astonishing and magnificent – very impressive.
• Before getting back on the train, they got sausaged up again. Then took the train from Chemnitz to Dresden – the same train as Team Translation.
• In the evening, both members of Team Statues ate Currywurst, making this a 3 sausage day.