Today we left Cottbus around 8:30, and headed to our next stop, Rakotzbrücke (Bridge over the river Rakotz) or the Devil's Bridge. Located in the Kromlau Azalea and Rhododendran garden, the Devil's Bridge was built in 1860 at the order of Freidrich Herrmann Rötschke who was "the knight of the local town."
The bridge was extensively renovated in 2018 and 2019 and is unsafe to walk on.
The main feature of the bridge is that it forms a perfect circle reflection with the water underneath.
The drive from Cottbus to the Kromlau gardens was about an hour, and we arrived around 9:30. Along the drive we saw some interesting sights of the Saxon area of Germany:
 |
| In Germany, even the trees are out to get you |
 |
| A lot of the area was corn and wheat fields |
We didn't see much of the gardens, focusing mostly on the bridge. From the sign by the bridge:
"From 1860, in a construction period of almost 10 years, Friedrich Hermann Rotschke had a semicircular bridge arch made of basalt and rock built over the 35m Rakotzsee (Rakotz = Serbian for cancer). This is reflected in the water to form a complete circle. In the lake he had basalt columns set up in a bizarre group called an "organ". The basalt was brought in from quarries in Saxon Switzerland and Bohemia"
 |
| Heading into the park |
 |
| Devil's Bridge |
 |
| The whole bridge |
 |
| Basalt Organ |
 |
| This duck walked up to us and quacked continually until Kristine took it's photo. |
After leaving the Devil's Bridge we started the 4 hour drive to Bad Mergentheim and our start of the Romantic Road:
 |
| Despite the Stereotypical cooling towers, this was a coal power plant |
We were making decent time for the first half of the trip, and then this happened:
The first thing I noticed was the sheer amount of trucks on the road - the line of them went as far as I could see. While the left lanes are clear in the photos above, they started backing up very quickly and GPS warned us of a 99 minute delay. Most of the truckdrivers had switched off and were chatting or wandering around. We finally managed to get off the main freeway and took a detour, but it cost a few hours. Instead of taking 4 and a half hours to get to Bad Mergentheim, it took almost 9.
 |
| Free again! |
 |
| More corn! |
 |
| On the no-speed limit freeway (not the full autobahn). 160km/hr or 100 mph |
 |
| 'Die' means the, but we did wonder if Johanniter was the guy being strangled on the side of the car |
 |
| More wheat |
Our accommodation in Bad Mergentheim was a campsite, where we'd booked a two bedroom cottage. There was nothing particularly wrong with the accommodation, but we didn't have a kitchen or washing facilities and the boys would have to share a bed, which was never going to be fun - especially for three nights... It was also super hot (about 30 degrees) with no fans or airflow and a lot of mosquitos and European wasps (well I guess they are just wasps here...). The campsite looked pretty run down and to top things off we found out that our camp fridge had stopped working and the small fridge in the cabin wasn't working.
 |
| The 'kitchen' was a two burner camp stove |
 |
| The sunset from the balcony was beautiful though (once the mosquitos and wasps dissapeared) |
It was uncomfortably hot in the rooms, but opening the windows let the mozzies and wasps in, so we cracked them a little and went out for dinner and to do some shopping. We'd planned to cook the hotdogs we had in our fridge but that wasn't going to work on the tiny camp stove.
After Burger King dinner, we stopped at Lidl and picked up some drinks and a screwdriver set. Back at the apartment I took the fridge apart and found that the neutral terminal wire had come loose. Fortunately it was an easy fix and we were back in business. A decent thunderstorm rolled in with some impressive lighting, that almost drowned out the sound of the boys arguing in the next room: "Your foot is on my side of the bed!", "Well you put your arm on my side" etc etc.
While the campsite was fine we felt that it would be a struggle for the extra two days without a kitchen, washing machine and extra bed and the heat didn't show much sign of letting up for the next few days. In the end we bit the bullet and booked a different place for the next two nights.
No comments:
Post a Comment