Wieder unterwegs - Teil 1

Here we are again! We spent a hot, relaxed, cheerful summer in Duisburg, meeting old and new friends, fixing up the Dubs again, or having it done, relaxing lazily in the sun and diligently painting a kitchen buffet, riding bikes a lot and enjoying the long balmy summer nights on the terrace in front of the garden shed. And we have decided where to go in the second half of the year.....

First of all, we want to roam around a bit more with the Dubs - after all, we bought the combination specifically for the year. And since we had a lot of adventures in the first half of the year, we want to take it a bit slower now. Until the beginning of October we swing comfortably through France, across the Pyrenees to northern Spain. At least that's the plan. We're happy to take you along on this tour via the blog, and we'll try to regularly post our most beautiful pictures and document the most important events in writing. Maybe it's not as exciting and exotic as South America, but we'll do our best to make it not boring.

And from October 15th onwards, it will get exciting again. The Dubs takes a break and we check in at Frankfurt airport again. For the last two months of our sabbatical year, we treat ourselves to some more summer in South Africa and Namibia. And of course we're happy to take you along on the blog as well.

But for now, we're looking forward to a great time on the road with the Dubs! First, we'll visit Uli and Hartmut in Mainz and let them cook us a nice meal. In Hartmut's garden, we'll spend the first night in the DUBS and nostalgically think back on South America. After a sumptuous breakfast, we head to Mengen to Sibylle's mother and spend the weekend in the beautiful Markgräfler Land. On Monday, we finally cross the border into France.

Our first stop is Dijon... one of the cities you pass by on the way south and wonder if a stop here would be worthwhile. It is! In addition to the famous delicious Dijon mustard, there is a nice little old town with diverse architectural styles from Gothic to Art Nouveau, many half-timbered houses and magnificent townhouses. A city tour, marked by the symbol of the city, a small owl, takes us to all the sights in a relaxed manner. We enjoy a classic French holiday day: strolling through a flea market, enjoying delicious baguettes with pâté/cornichons or goat cheese and salad for lunch, admiring the brightly glazed tiles on the roofs of the churches at the market, and drinking overpriced café au lait in typical French cafés. We stumble through a creative but incomprehensible mix of Spanish and French sentence fragments - but it doesn't matter at all, the French have learned English by now and charmingly ignore our attempts to use the national language. A perfect start to the holiday!