The First Bit

This is our gelber engel, our yellow angel.  He swooped to our rescue with batteries and lollypops in Franfurt when our car was tick-tick-ticking and no amount of jump-start cables could get it going.  We'd had to jump start the car before we left Amsterdam, apparently an 11 year old battery doesn't take kindly to being left for weeks on end with no love and attention heading it's way.  We stopped twice on the way to Frankfurt, and each time the car started again.  We crashed at Rachey and Stephen's late Friday  night (never try to drive from Amsterdam to Frankfurt on a Friday, 4 hours slowly becomes 7.5 hours), and when we tried to head off on Saturday morning our can just wasn't having any of it.  So we spent the rest of the day trying to get it going, missing the road side assistance man, and then eventually having him work his magic on our car.  This was all interspersed with being fed fantastically by Rachey, watching Stephen pace about the house on the phone trying to find someone in Germany who could help us, and trying to figure if we were going to make a mad dash to IKEA before it closed to buy a mattress for us to sleep on (the air mattress had a leak).  But in the end, we headed off further into the black depths of Germany to find the village with the castle that Nicholas Cage used to own.  Yup, that's the only reason anyone would know this sweet little village!  And the rest will have to wait for tomorrow...