After Margate and Bruges, we drove across Germany the next day, stopping near Kaiserslautern for the night in a town called Pirmasens. Many years ago, I went to visit there with my friend Vonnie. We had met a couple of German lads in Spain the previous year and decided to take up their invitation to visit Germany. They lived with their parents in Pirmasens and we arrived one wet Saturday afternoon on their doorstep with several suitcases. The parents were not exactly over the moon to be hosting two young English girls and after two weeks under their roof and a lot of German shouting matches going on between the sons and the parents, we decided it was time to leave. We expect there was a lot of celebrating after we left their lovely home.

We found a small apartment in Kaiserslautern and one of my brothers arranged for us to work for a friend of his (let’s call him Wayne). Wayne was a somewhat colourful character and the job he gave us was selling sets of saucepans to the Americans on the nearby army base in Kaiserslautern. Wayne gave us basic training on how to sell and we had to do a trial run and cook a simple dish in the customer’s kitchen. Vonnie and I knocked on doors and managed to get a few sales.

On one occasion, were invited into an apartment full of American soldiers, who were very friendly until their wives came home and threw us out of the place. Then Wayne wanted us to sell separately, hence doubling our sales. We both hated this idea (and we hated Wayne) but we tried it for a week or so. I knocked on one door and an English lady answered. She invited me in and I told her that I hated this work. She and her husband took us under their wing, sharing their home and their dog with us and making sure we were well fed and looked after. We decided that selling was not for us so we headed back to UK and told my brother exactly what we thought of Wayne the wonderful. Thus ended our very short career in sales.

Back to the story. We left Pirmasens the following morning, arriving in Ehrwald at 4pm that afternoon. We were greeted on our arrival by the Spielman staff and family, who made us feel at home straight away. As we drove up to the hotel, we noticed a lovely new building and asked if it was an annexe to the hotel, but no – it was the new staff lodgings.

Once we unpacked, we put on our winter boots and coats (Polly hated her coat) and set off down to the village to one of our favourite cafés. We ate bockwurst and Senf mustard – washed down with Weissbier – delicious!