Tag 1 - Konstanz to Förmitz

10.00am - Our journey began in Konstanz. Jessica and I will be traveling around Europe for a month. Not fully realizing that a full month of adventure awaits us, we stood in front of the car rental office where we had reserved a car online. Compact car, three-door, Ford Fiesta... or similar, was stated in the rental description. With not too high expectations, we entered the car rental office where a friendly, albeit very stressed, employee welcomed us. He informed us that he was understaffed, which is why he had limited time for the car handover. Since he didn't have time to provide our car (a four-door SMART car, rather inconvenient for our large amount of luggage), he offered us an upgrade, which we naturally accepted. The upgrade turned out to be a black five-door Peugeot, including navigation system.

Since our (halfway) planned route was to drive through the Czech Republic to Poland, we would have chosen a place near the Czech border as our first stop. However, we spontaneously decided to drive through Germany towards the Baltic Sea, as this way we can also spend more time in Sweden. New plan: heading towards Nuremberg to Berlin and from there to the Baltic Sea.

Finally, the journey could begin. Completely spontaneously, we drove in the planned direction, but quickly realized that it clearly takes longer to drive on country roads than estimated. So we got on the highways. After over 500 kilometers of driving, experiencing alternating heat waves without air conditioning and cold spells with air conditioning, we discovered a billboard for a park. We promptly changed our route and headed for this park. Upon arrival in Bayreuth, the imagined bathing lake turned out to be a small pond surrounded by a small animal park. So we took a short walk around the lake and then back to the car.

We searched the map for all the surrounding blue dots until we came across a lake called Förmitzspeicher. Another change of plans with the destination of Förmitztalsperre near Schwarzenbach an der Saale. The sight of the beautiful lake convinced us that the change in route was a good decision. For food, we had packed camping chairs to at least have some comfortable seating. The supposedly comfortable camping chairs turned out to be our old children's chairs. Laughing, we sat in the chairs that were way too small and enjoyed our meal. Together with the evening atmosphere and the sky colored by the setting sun, we had the perfect first evening.

Not feeling motivated to set up our tent, we decided to sleep in the car. The somewhat remote lake was perfect for that. After rearranging the seats (and some shuffling of luggage), we were now lying/sitting in our improvised sleeping quarters and enjoyed our time.