Day 7

Weather: 20'C

Breakfast with the rats today...not literally of course, however there are depictions of the small rodents everywhere in this town. I believe there is a famous story that might explain this obsession, and a monument to the man who played his famous rat whispering pipe in the town square.

Not really knowing how this car travelling vs holidaying thing is going to work we struck a few bumps today. Apparently on German roads you can just put a large red cross over a directional road sign and this indicates you can no longer get to this town as the road is permanently closed. This not only works for road signs but speed limits, and many other road signs. Unfortunately as per previous comments about the rebuilding process in Germany, everything seems to have a red cross through it.

At about lunch time we made the decision to throw our initial plan out the window and find a nice

place to stay for the night (in the nearest town with a working road) and re-evaluate the driving holiday plans. This town happened to be Kassel which is fortunately a lovely town on the fairy tale road with its own Castle at the end of town (how appropriate). Kassel also happens to be the most stylish town we've come across, including Berlin, and therefore we have a lovely stylish apartment about 2 mins walk from the aforementioned castle.

The day was not a complete waste however as we did stumble across our first real Schloss (Castle) on the way. Schloss Berlepsch was originally constructed 1368 but has had multiple additions over many centuries. We were the only visitors today so we had the place to ourselves which is unsurprising as it looks like it's set up more for planned weddings and functions rather than drop in tourists. It's built high on a hill so the view from the wall was pretty fantastic but not

quite as good as the view of Heffa in the stocks.