Day 12 – Goodbyes and Hallo Maus & Elefant!

Today was both sad (leaving the home of our friends) and exciting (starting our trip toward Switzerland).

As our rental for the next two weeks, we picked up a solidly German car (Passat) with much needed American conveniences (Automatic & AC) and promptly got stumped by the “Navi” which did not let us plan any routes using the Autobahn (and let’s be honest, that type of road is one of the key reasons to drive in Germany). Turns out somebody had turned on the “avoid using Autobahn” option! Who in their right mind would do that?!? Once on the fabled street we also encountered a massive rainstorm.  Water was coming down so fast the wipers couldn’t keep up. Traffic more or less just stopped and people pulled over to the side to wait for it to move through. We braved the open road and continued at the incredible speed of 5kmh — so much for pushing the pedal to the metal….!

A couple of hours and very windy, narrow roads later … actually, I’ll digress: at times it felt like we were going down someone’s driveway, that’s how bizarrely narrow it was – there were in fact expletives uttered in the car when the road that had just gone from a marked two lanes to an unmarked two lanes, shrank to what was clearly one lane only to seem to get even smaller and flanked with tall hedges of hops cultivation for extra effect … ok, so after that interesting driving experience, we arrived at a place that has managed to put all my favorite things from childhood into a theme park. It wasn’t around when I was a kid (it’s “only” 20 years old), so this was my first chance to visit and luckily my understanding spouse obliged. The RAVENSBURGER SPIELELAND is near the city/company that makes all of the puzzles and games with the blue Ravensburger triangle. So those featured prominently in the park 🙂 And since no wholesome German childhood is complete without a good dose of “Sendung mit der Maus,” the Maus & Elefant were there too. Even before we went into the park the next day, the boys had fun with the Elefant’s balance and parcours play area and shot some funky hoops with the Maus. When you then add to that the Brio set of toys (mostly wooden trains that my tweens are still obsessed with), which featured prominently in the park along with Rittersport chocolate – it was almost eerie just how much the place catered to my nostalgia.

We spent the night in one of the themed “cube” accommodations (ours was for a character of the Sendung mit der Maus, Kaeptn Blaubaer, the teller of tall tales), ate a delicious Swabian dinner and borrowed a bunch of board games to try out. We played El Dorado, which was really fun (and promptly acquired the next day —a brilliant marketing strategy…!)