Fruit of the Sea

Against better judgement (I claim brain dysfunctionality due to sickness) I decided to go to Boden See. (Lake Constnace?) The first sign that this was a poor idea: having to wake up at 7am. Nothing good ever happens at 7am.

Well, almost never. Our day started out well with a surprisingly nice fast train towards Singen. You had to buy tickets for that train. We had only a regional pass. Which meant that the nice ticket lady didn't fine us, but kicked us out in the middle of nowhere to wait an hour for the regional train. (We were just really happy we didn't get fined)

Following the sort-of plan we had, we immediately crossed the lake by ferry (totally making the ferry man's day by paying in all sorts of loose change) to a small lake side town perfect for renting boats and wading in the water. That is if you could rent the boats (one place was under re-construction, the other - though advertised as "Open on good-weather weekends"- was not open. - We had nice weather.) or go in the water. (The nice beach was a private-pay-lots-of-money-to-enter-here type of beach.)

We were resilient (northern) Americans though, so we carefully picked our own path down to the lake to wade and skip stones. (In my case, sink stones) I hadn't realized how much I'd missed lakes/oceans/rivers until I was wading in the water. Something about standing there (in the basically perfectly temperatured and beautifully clear water) is just so peaceful.

I didn't want to get out of the water

Since standing in awe of nature is rather energy consuming, we next foraged on for food. The cheapest food we came across with lake side seating was a fish restaurant that served pizza. Despite ordering 2 pizzas with seafood (fruit of the sea and shrimp) the vegetarian pizza was the clear favorite. To top off the meal, we picked up some Spagetti Eis (Ice cream served to look like spaghetti) to keep us going on the ~5km walk to the next town over.

Between the ice cream and the view, the short(ish) walk was soon over, and we found ourselves at another marina. This time however, we were able to find a boat rental place that was open (sadly, no sail boats). Taking out the largest paddle boat they had, the 5 of us piled in to the Police paddle boat (complete with kiddy slide) and set off toward the middle of the lake.

We didn't make it very far. Despite turning the steering wheel with all of our might, the boat just wouldn't go in a straight line out of the marina. The dock staff, after watching "those stupid Americans" flounder for a while, eventually came over to help. They also diagnosed our problem: no rudder. Makes steering hard.

For our second try, we took out the Ferrari. (nice, easy-to-see bright red, still with a kiddy slide!) What do ya know. Boats with rudders are waaaay easier to steer. :D We took our little paddle boat out onto the lake and played "please don't hit us we're tiny and have no speed" with all the other boats.

Paddling is hard work. It's good to take breaks

And there were a lot of boats. First off the ferries. That go EVERYWHERE. all the time. And then the legit sailors. (With really pretty wooden decks and colorful spinnakers) And the motor boats (with varying levels of BAC in their skippers) And then closer to our size, tiny sailboats. (Like a really cool fleet of tiny catamarans. They went by soooooo fast)

There was actually a good amount of wind

As we learned, there is not only other boats on the water. The lake also provides to it's visitors. As a welcoming present to us foreigners, it bequeathed half a watermelon; A true fruit of the (Boden) See.

Those times when the lake is so big, that it's almost no longer a lake

Since we enjoyed so much time on the water, we quickly moved over the next city down to end up in Sipplingen for dinner. After getting directions to the restaurant that was recommended ("You're standing right in front of it".. yea, we were observant) and discovering we had needed reservations, we chose a different slightly cheaper- definitely more casual dinning location. Here yet another American fell victim to the salat = salad conundrum. I repeat. Wurstsalat != salad. It's just a pile of meat with cheese bits.

At this point we were running a bit late. Which was kind of worrisome since we had been planning on taking the last train from Singen to Stuttgart that night. Luckily, the ticket printer is knowledgeable, and gave us a new plan to follow that would get us back at around the same time. The only catch was that we were running the other way around Baden-Württemberg taking a long hemispherical path starting with the first leg in the opposite direction from Stuttgart. Not at all worrying. Particularly when you add in that all of the connections were only 5 minutes. (And the first train was already running 7 minutes late)

Luckily, all of the trains were delayed so although we looked like idiots running from one train to the next, just to have them sit there for another 5 minutes, we made it back home without getting caught out in the middle of nowhere.