The beautiful Berlin afternoon we had made us feel like Spring was really on the way, but when we arrived in Marburg David informed us it was going to be snowing the next day. I did my best to will him to be wrong, but it turned out he was right. The morning brought what David called ‘snow rain’- it's more like very light hail. It cleared for long enough for David to show us around the old town in Marburg and to stock up on German delicacies David thought we should try. It was hard to ignore the fact that we had a trolley full of meat and beer, so at the end we threw in a few token vegetables the Kroef mothers would approve of. The afternoon brought clear skies and Davids flat mate was kind enough to lend us his bikes so we biked along the river from Marburg to Giessen. The route was very pretty with lots of blossoms and hillsides covered in oaks and beeches with bright green fresh leaves. In the valleys the flat land was vibrant with the bright yellow flowers of rape crops. The biggest thing that struck Liam and I was the lack of fences and the perfectly groomed pastures-one of the benefits of housing cows indoors over the winter.

We walked up to Davids university the following morning which is nestled in a forest above Marburg. It started snowing on the way back giving us an excuse to have a lazy afternoon. I had several attempts at baking a decent loaf of Irish soda bread, and David proved it is possible to barbecue in the snow if you use a hairdryer to get the fire going.

We decided to go for another bike ride on our last day, this time catching the train about 40km of Marburg and riding back. Despite the cloudy skies and occasional shower of snow rain we were in looking forward to getting on our bikes. Unfortunately, Davids inner tube split when we were trying to pump up his tyre after we got off the train. We went searching for a bike shop before David established after a 20minute conversation with an old German guy that the closest one was 1.5 hours walk away in the next town. The boys decided they would be better fixing it themselves and we found a hardware store and got a new tube. Putting the minor setback behind us we headed off down river towards Marburg. The ride was as beautiful as the first one passing through lots of small towns and crops. We even saw a few roe deer which at first glance looked like giant hares bounding across the paddocks. We didn't manage to avoid the hail and snow as well as did on the first day and towards the end we got pretty saturated but we headed into a heated supermarket which, bizarrely, seems to be the norm over here and dried out before heading back to Davids for another evening of great food and good beer.