Well Germany was not what we expected. Tim’s cold turned out to be COVID and so we saw a lot of a nice Hamburg basement, thoughtfully provided for us by our good friends Wim and Anette. Jeri succumbed two days later. Ten days of isolation meant we skipped our planned trip to Stuttgart to see Jurgen and Melli. On Monday May 23rd we headed out on our journey to France by taking a train to Mannheim then onto Paris Gare De L’Est. After an overnight stop in what was for Paris, a decent sized hotel room, we took the train to Thiviers and were picked up from the station by Patrick and Carole. Interestingly, we found the German trains comfortable but rarely on time and the ICE ones rarely exceeded 200km/hr. But the French TGV trains were even more luxurious and sped along at an amazing 300km/hr. and arrived well, on time.
