Tenting it

  After the excitement wore off from the cuckoo clock adventure we drove to our next destination in Germany near Lake Constance in the own of lindau. This is the first time we are staying in a tent,not because I'm humble or sporty, simply because all the mobile homes ( aka, trailers) were booked. Now mind you I'm battling a cold from hell, it's cold ,wet raining and throw in pms just for good measure. . Hmmm this should be interesting. We'll at first glance, it's not to bad at least there's beds and pillows. There's a curtain to divide the beds, I'm not sure why ,the kids were sure to remind us that no action should take place because that curtain certainly isn't sound proof. The bedroom are can be zipped off from a common kitchen living area complete with table, chairs, a small fridge stove and cupboards with all the dishes. Not bad. Still no toilet no sink. I'm not cooking I tell myself. 

  We head straight to the laundry facilities or I should say Jimmie does. At home I do 99% of the laundry, of course I don't work out of the home anymore so I'm happy to do it, so it's a welcome change to see Jimmie take such charge of the family's dirty underwear. He is really frustrated ,the machines buttons are all in German. I watch him impatiently open the drawers that hold the soap and fabric softener ( I'm sure he doesn't know what fabric softener is) and guess which container to dump 3 cups of soap in. I don't tell him he's just wasted 3€ of soap because that would just set him off. He tries  first to buck the system and see if the machines will run on less than the 2.50€ we've already been told it cost to run  the machine. When his plan fails, he starts frantically pushing buttons, all in German mind you. I'm pretty sure he pushed buttons like " extra soak" so long story short, the laundry took ten times longer and costly twenty times more than it should have and by the end of it I had to practically grab hold of him by the behind and keep him from shaking the machines to death to give him his two dollars back. Let's just say , I don't mind doing the laundry.

  After all of that we decided to go to eat dinner at the camp restaurant. It was actually really good and moderately priced. It's an awesome thing these camp grounds usually have really great food. Tristan and Brock ordered pepperoni pizza, we didn't look closely and notice it did actually say " green pepperoni" so when it arrived it was pizza covered in green pepperocinis ! I thought Brock ( my picky eater) was going to poop his pants! The look of shock on his face was priceless. He picked them all off. It's a good thing for them to learn to go with the flow. Anyhow after dinner beer and ice cream our bill was 70 € not bad for a family of five but none the less, if we do this every night could be a budget breaker so tonight I decided to step up to the plate and cook dinner In our tent. We went to the grocery store and spent 29€ To have breakfast for tomorrow , lunch for tommorow, and cooked a lovely dinner tonight. I made a simple salad with farmstand tomatoes, cucumber, herbed olives, basil garlic and some lovely cheese leftover from France. Tortellini with pesto ( also bought from a roadside farmer) was easy to prepare and just as good as our much pricier dinner out. And this is the beauty of eurocamping. It really makes this possible.  There is absolutely no way we could do this  for this long while footing the bill of a hotel and food out for five people. Now mind you at this moment,I have to pee like a race horse, it's raining cats and dogs outside of this fragile tent and the toilet is a good hike away, but you know what , it's okay. It's kind of an adventure , and eating our ravioli dinner on our plastic table tonight was cozy and comfortable and actually more memorable than any dinner in a fancy restaurant could ever be.