Germany, Winter Tyres

It took only fifty-five minutes to fly the short distance and land at Kahlrsrue-Baden Airpark at nine-thirty in the evening and after quickly clearing immigration and customs we were soon at the Hertz desk to pick up our hire car. Following our snow experience last year and the protracted and painful debate about winter tyres, this year I had ordered them in advance so without a discussion with the clerk on duty about whether these were really necessary, on this occasion I just paid the exorbitant additional charge of €55 and very quickly we had taken possession of a royal blue Ford Fiesta and the car hire company winter tyres sting was complete.

I say ‘sting’ because this is an additional charge trick that Ryanair themselves would be proud of because at €13.45 a day I calculate that if they are on the car for a third of the year that is an extra €1,600 or €400 a tyre and I cannot believe that they can be that much more expensive than a regular tyre. And of course they are not because I have checked and they can be bought for as little as €40 each. The reason that this year I had given in so easily was that last year we experienced four days of blizzard conditions, sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall.

Since May 2006 German motorists have been required by law to use the most appropriate tyres for the weather conditions and that driving on snow covered roads is permitted only if a car is equipped with winter tyres. Motorists are obliged to make sure they have correct tyres to suit the winter weather conditions because if a vehicle becomes stuck because the tyres are unsuitable drivers are liable to an on the spot fine, and further more if the vehicle causes an obstruction or aggravation to other traffic, the fine may be doubled.

Winter tyres use a tread rubber compound and block pattern specifically designed to retain flexibility in low temperatures and give good braking and traction performance on snow and ice covered roads so I thought it would be a good idea to have them fitted again this time.

Unfortunately we had no real need of the winter tyres tonight because the roads were dry and the temperature was hovering around 5º centigrade so there was no danger of sliding on ice of running into snow drifts.

Driving to the Rammersweier Hoff hotel on the outskirts of the city of Offenburg should have been really straight-forward, after all we had been there before so should have known the way, but additionally on this occasion we had the support of a Nuvi-Garmin satnav so we were confident that we could be there and in the bar with a jug of wine and a glass of cold Pils lager easily within an hour.

Things went well at first and we followed the instructions of the lady navigator and although I had lost all sense of direction in the dark I had no reason to suspect that there was trouble ahead. This came when we reached the entrance to the A5 motorway and it was closed with two large no entry signs that really couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. Still taking instructions from the little black box I foolishly ignored these and drove through only to find that I had put us in a dangerous situation going the wrong way against oncoming traffic. I quickly turned the car around and the lady became confused.

I followed the diversion sign and clearly she must have wondered what on earth I was doing and kept trying to persuade me to turn around and return to the closed motorway junction. After fifteen minutes we were in a real tangle, going around in circle, becoming more and more confused and completely unaware of where we are. We found ourselves lost on the back roads driving through small villages and searching for clues from the occasional unhelpful road signs and ignoring the instructions to turn around and go back. Even the traditional paper map didn’t help because although Kim has improved recently as a navigator she was off duty tonight so we just had to keep going and trusting in our natural sense of direction.

Eventually, after several detours and a heated argument with the satnav lady, we reached the motorway and then the right exit and then after only one more mistaken wrong turning which we quickly corrected found the Rammersweier Hoff hotel without any difficulty at all. It was nearly eleven o’clock and the forty-kilometre journey had taken us nearly two hours! Fortunately the bar was still open so after inspecting our room and throwing down the bags we were able to unwind for an hour with that jug of wine and a couple of German lagers.

Black Forest, Baden-Baden

There was no let up in the heavy snow all the way into Baden-Baden and we were glad to get there because it didn’t seem possible that the road would stay open for very much longer unless a snow plough came along to attend to it. Even in the city the roads were treacherous and we had to make a couple of circuits of the centre before finding a parking spot at the top of a slippery hill. It was lunchtime so as it was still snowing heavily we headed for a traditional restaurant that we knew and had our final meal of the holiday and as we watched the snow through the window we started to wonder if this might affect the airport and whether it might be sensible to start making arrangements for an overnight stay in Baden-Baden.

Baden-Baden is a spa town not unlike Harrogate in Yorkshire but with a distinctly Mediterranean flair. Anyone who has visited Harrogate will know that this is probably the only town in England north of the M25 where the residents consider themselves posher than those in Surrey and I got the impression that it might be the same here in Baden-Baden. There was a smell of money about the place and the people, the buildings, the parks and the shops were all well turned out. I had made the assumption that it must be worth visiting because, as in the Frank Sinatra song, like New York they named it twice.

After lunch we moved the car from the short-stay car park and then investigated the city centre on foot. We walked through the snow that was continuing to fall, first to the Kurhaus, which is the city’s most famous landmark and is one of the most beautiful buildings in town. Originally it was a Promenade House and was the place to see and be seen and even today is the hub of the social scene and contains beautiful spa gardens filled with expensive shops, bars and reading rooms. Next, the oldest casino in Germany that has been a favourite amongst people from all over Europe for two hundred years or so. The Russian writer Dostoevsky wrote ‘The Gambler’ in Baden-Baden while compulsively frittering away his cash at this famous Casino and finally we walked by the Friedrichsbad or Old Baths that was built between 1869 and 1877 under the order of Grand Duke Friedrich von Baden. They follow the Roman-Irish method, which takes around two hours to complete the whole program, which includes a shower, two saunas, 55°c and 70°c, a brush massage, soaping, thermal steam baths and three freshwater baths.

The springs of Baden-Baden were known to the Romans, and the foundation of the town is attributed to the Emperor Hadrian but the town’s heyday was in the latter nineteenth century when it became a firm favourite with the aristocracy of Europe and featured prominently on their annual itinerary of places to visit and in the centre of the town and outside the Kurhaus spa, is an impressive bust of Kaiser Wilhelm I who especially liked this place. At that time it was called simply Baden as it always had been since the middle ages and it was only in 1931 that the town was officially given its double name which literally means Baden in the State of Baden, I suppose that would be a bit like Warwick-Warwick or Derby-Derby if the same principle was adopted in the United Kingdom. In both World Wars, the town was fortunate to escape damage or destruction which must have been a huge stroke of luck considering what happened to most of the Rhine towns and cities and after World-War-Two it became the headquarters of the French forces in occupied Germany who rather found the place to their liking.

After taking a short walk through the city park we agreed that this wasn’t really a good day for being out of doors and sightseeing and that we would be better off in a bar so we found a cozy place on the edge of town with a good view of the park and spent the last hour of our visit to Baden-Baden with a beer and a glass of wine. And it still kept snowing.

When it was time to leave we walked along the main street of expensive shops with their extravagant window displays and very high prices because Baden-Baden was a place of complete contrast to any of the other towns and cities that we had visited this week. After returning to the car we drove out of the city, stopped for fuel and were shocked by the price of a litre of petrol and then found our way back to the Airpark without any trouble although we kept an eye out for hotels and guesthouses in case we had to come back later. When we arrived we returned the car and its winter tyres to the car hire car park and I was quite sorry to leave it because I had grown attached to it on our winter driving adventures.

The airport was small and we felt sorry for the hundred passengers or so who were putting up with a four hour delayed flight to Rome and we hoped this wouldn’t happen to us. We were confident of getting off on time when the plane arrived and we were all settled down on board but immediately disappointed when the captain announced that he had brought out two engineers to mend the broken plane that was going to Rome and we had got to wait until they were finished so that we could take them back again. This meant an hours delay sitting on the plane but just as fellow passengers were starting to get fidgety and grumpy the men finished their repair job, climbed on board and within minutes we were on the runway, in the sky and on our way back to Stansted.