Esslingen and Lake Constance

Pretty girl in the flowers

Esslingen old town

Public profanity!!!

Christian the fireman.. and Andrew

Lake of Constance

Andy, Sharon, Christian, Nicole and Robert enjoying a wine or two

Local Rose

Sunset and wine.... only the best!!

Leaving Salzburg we bussed to Munich and spent our first night couch surfing! We had been accepted by a Hungarian computer programmer who worked for Google and was new to Munich so his social life consisted of random foreigners he let sleep on his couch. Staying with him at the time was an Italian girl who cooked us an authentic Italian gnocchi dish for dinner. The meal was stodgy homemade gnocchi in a blue cheese and almond sauce… mmm! Well it would have been had I liked blue cheese and almonds, but not wanting to offend I forced it down feeling quite ill by the end of the meal, I think Sharon liked it.
We talked late into the night and got up early to catch our bus to Stuttgart, there we were staying with a friend Nadine who lived in a pretty little village called Esslingen. We arrived at lunch time and met Nadine at the café where she worked and were treated to a massive lunch free of charge, it was great and for the first time we felt like rich tourists eating out. As we were really tired from a few days of being on the move with early starts and late nights our days in Esslingen consisted of sleeping in and wandering around the village chatting to the locals.
Nadine and her fiancé Dominik decided to drive us to our next destination the Lake of Constance and tie it in with a weekend away camping. This meant free travel for us in an 2008 3.2 L Audi A6 that Dominik borrowed from work. It was a very nice ride and we really got to experience the ‘autobahn’ with a top speed of 230km/h, sweet!!!
At the Lake of Constance we were staying with another friend Christian who worked at home for a few months. Christian and his family were really generous and treated us like royalty!. His father gave us an annotated map of Switzerland showing us where to go (which we forgot to take with us) and his grandmother gave Sharon two pairs of knitted socks and promised to make me some my size and post them home for me and also gave us a 750ml bottle of 42% pear and apple schnapps that her late husband home brewed, a little heavy but a very generous gift that we will try to save for home to share with all. 
And Christian treated us to a ferry trip and a Bavarian breakfast of Weisswurst (White sausage eaten a very specific way, you have to peel the sausage out of the skin and not eat the skin), pretzel and beer if we wanted.
The Lake of Constance is the biggest lake in Europe and is shared by Germany, Austria and Switzerland. From our house in the German town of Wasserburg we looked across the lake to the Alps, the view was nice but the weather not so with the temperature 18 degrees less than that of a few days previous. But the weather cleared for us to enjoy a bottle of red at a local wine festival sitting on the shore of the lake watching the sun go down.
To continue with the theme of generous Germans and free travel Christian drove us 2 ½ hours to our next destination near Zurich Switzerland to stay with my friend Dama from YWAM.