An epic journey

Our time in Rotterdam had come to an end. We were ready to continue on our mad journey through Europe. We had a deadline to reach, we wanted to get to Freiberg in Germany in time for the LDS temple open-house. This is a very special time when before a temple is dedicated and made holy and sacred for the Mormon people, the building may be viewed and toured by the general public. I wanted my children to experience this, and we even had a place to stay nearby!

Amazingly, our lovely friends that we had met in Salzburg had offered the use of their apartment in Werdau, Germany. As in, we had known them for a week, and our plans came up in conversation..and they offered their apartment to us!! This was so incredibly generous! Not many people willingly invite new acquaintances (especially when those new friends comprise of a family of 7!) to stay in their homes. Well, we gratefully took them up on the offer, and to save on money, we decided to make the trip in one go from Rotterdam to Werdau. Google Maps says that this takes 7.5 hours. Without stopping. But let me qualify, that actually means 7.5 hours for normal people, not us. We knew that it would be a difficult day.

We left Rotterdam on the hottest day in history. Ok, maybe not, but to us it sure was! We had no air-conditioning in our old 'whistle and squeak' van, and so we had to roll the windows down. On the Autobahn (a road not for the faint of heart), we had motorbikes and endless trucks roaring past us as we baked our way through Germany. It was hot, windy, loud, and generally miserable. The sun was directly on the front of the car, and after a few hours I began to fear that I would cook! I had to take turns trading seats with Levi just to survive. This trip was everything extreme about travel that is awful. Truly, I never want to repeat it, but fortunately it did produce an unexpected and funny story...

I had discovered online that a gorgeous bridge was on route to Werdau. It was called 'Devil's Bridge, and was everything I had dreamed about, according to Pinterest anyway. It looked magical, mystical, adventurous, and exactly the kind of thing that would make our drive through the fires of hell....I mean Germany in the summer....worthwhile. I couldn't find the exact location, so we made a stop at what was meant to be a nearby place and decided to ask around. It was perfect timing because we had all hit our limit. Hot, bothered and totally fed up with everyone and everything around us, we gratefully parked the car and left to discover this bridge from my dreams.

We walked through the grounds of a fancy hotel, through a wooded area and asked everyone we encountered if they could point us in the direction of Devil's Bridge. No one had any idea what we were talking about. My kids didn't mind though, they were finally happy to be free and wild and one-with-nature again, lol.

As we were resting here and watching the kids play, a German couple passed by. We stopped them to ask if they knew about this fabled Devil's bridge?