Germany's Rhineland - Mancunian Tales inspiration

Baden Baden – Rhine Valley Black Forest

Germany was much more enjoyable than Vienna. Granted I was on a High School holiday, but the week sticks firmly in my mind for many reasons: - The first was I was away from all parental control for a whole week! We had teachers minding us, but we had about six teachers to a whole coach load of hyperactive teenagers. Besides, teaching and laws around schools and care of children in the 80's were far more relaxed than they are today and so we pretty much spent a lot of time entertaining ourselves and getting up to mischief of course.

As a group we walked around the prettiest village of Schiltach in Baden Wertumberg just outside of the spa town Baden Baden. The only way I could describe it is picture postcard cuckoo clock style wooden houses with huge bursts of flora everywhere – in gardens and flower boxes along every window and along the river Rhine's railings. Back then I’d never seen so much uniformed rainbows of colour with not a shred of litter anywhere. It was like the whole village met for garden and flowerbed meetings so everything matched.


We walked through the streets pretending to be French exchange students! Why? God knows, I was a teenager! But even at fourteen, I could still appreciate the beauty of the Rhineland and Black Forest countryside. Dinner at the Gasthof Brucke hotel was a strange affair, the boys would come in to the dining room of the main hotel that the girls dorm occupied and we’d have this gorgeous garlic chicken soup with a bit like scrambled egg in it, which I loved, but everyone else just waited for the enormous tray of chips to arrive and hands would just claw and grab at the fried potato dish.

It was like feeding time at the zoo until a teacher told everyone off for eating like pigs. But we were able to sample the local delicacies similar to the food I mentioned in Vienna. I liked it, but most just lived on chips all week. Yurgh! I was a health food freak by this time and anything fried or meat based was just gross to me. The boy’s dorms were in another hostel type hotel across the road and because there wasn’t enough rooms in the main hotel for all the girls, the teachers asked for volunteers to sleep in the less than salubrious hostel next door.

Naturally the four man eaters amongst the group wanted to share with the boys, including one of my friends, who was like “Come on, Come in the boys dorm, it’ll be a laugh.” And I was like, “Ooh no, the bedrooms are skanky and the toilets stink!” So there you have it. Even back then when my teenage hormones were supposed to be raging I still chose creature comforts over ‘coppin’off’. Haha!

I loved breakfast time because I liked to see what the other girls would come down to the breakfast room wearing for that day.

I was never really that impressed with most of the girls fashion attempts (bearing in mind this is the mid-eighties – Hair gel, blue eye-liner and candy floss pink lipstick), but one girl, to me, was a fashion icon. Her clothes were high end fashion rather than high street and her hair and make-up was just always immaculate and perfect and I wanted to be her. I was told she was an amazing singer and was destined for stardom as a singer dancer actress. Never heard from her again!

Anyhoo, I did get my first snog at the back of the school coach, although he never spoke to me again, except to insult me. So my ideas of coming back to school with a boyfriend were crushed. The same boy hung out with the coach drivers every night and got pissed. A few others in the group followed suit and nicked a crate of beer from the cellar. That night almost everyone except me, Miss Perfection and a few first years got drunk and were grounded to their rooms whilst the teachers hit the bars for a quiet night without kids. And what do tiddly teenagers do when left unsupervised? Yes. Have parties in their bedrooms and wreck the joint! Good fun, but the groups chastised meetings became a daily occurrence.

Baden Baden was fantastic though and I remember buying lots of gifts , including some German sausage for my dad, which stunk the coach out. Teachers and pupils complained bitterly, but I stood my ground and dad got his salami garlic sausage. Hahahaa.

As a spa town the swimming was absolutely amazing with hot bubble spa’s and a steaming hot outdoor pool. Granted today we have similar leisure pools in say Centre Parcs, but back in the eighties if you got a swimming pool, one made your own entertainment, which is why at 42 I can still do back flips, continuous tipple overs, handstands and dives (when Health and Safety officers allow it of course!)Tut!

But we all loved it so much we managed to persuade the prison guards to go back there for the last day. The trip to and from Germany was a 24hour coach and ferry trip which I’d rather not think about. Bearing in mind the Herald of Free Enterprise had sunk the week before and we were travelling to and from Zeebrugge on the sister ship. Never thought of it like this until typing, but both ferry trips were so seriously overcrowded me and my friends found a baggage storage room to sleep in away from the noise, sick and claustrophobia.

And I think that was due to them being one ferry down. It would make anyone shake their heads in derision these days that a ferry company lost a lot of lives on one ship because they didn’t close the doors before leaving the port and so they overcrowd the other ferries so people are sitting on floors or sleeping in the baggage hold. Could you imagine the outcry today? I did enjoy this holiday, albeit a bit bonkers, but at least I can say I went on a school holiday once. I still want to go back there, reminisce maybe. Who Knows? Maybe I’ll take my characters there in another Beyond Series of My Supernatural Books!