Sarah had a rather surprising suggestion last evening. Despite the remains of her migraine she fancied a German beer! No wonder I married her – genius. So we ended up going to the campsite restaurant for a beer, or two in my case and some food. I was finally able to get my teeth into a German sausage. It was only Currywurst, that strange curry flavoured sausage from Berlin, but it’s a start! I even managed the whole meal without me or the waitress speaking a word of English!!

I know the German’s hold out many health properties for their beer, but this morning Sarah’s migraine had not fully disappeared, but it has slowly improved over the day. As usual it has barely slowed her up at all as we get back into the campsite routine.

Team Basil’s Pitch – Untidy as always!

The reason German’s are so proud of their beer, quite rightly, is the Reinheitsgebot. These are often referred to as Germany’s beer purity laws. The best known regulation dates to 1516 and requires brewers’ to limit their ingredients to water, barley and yeast. This has been extended to allow hops and other grains, but these are the only ingredients in the vast majority of German beer. EU law means that imported beers do not have to comply with these rules and the re-integration of East German has led to other minor additions to beer being allowed, but only a very few brewers have taken advantage of these relaxations, because their customers would no longer buy their product.

I have spent the day planning our stops on the way to Prague, while Sarah has trimmed Melek, where she found yet another tick, and done the laundry. However today Sarah has, for once, needed my assistance with the laundry. The campsite has a very fancy electronic card which is loaded with money and used for the laundry, showers and other extras. Because we are on the ACSI rate, we get a free shower each day and this is loaded onto the card. The problem with the washing machines was that the card reader and the instructions for the machines are all in German. Sarah could not understand what to do, so it has been up to me to sort out the loading and programming of the machines.

The rest of the day has been hard. Clear blue skies and temperatures around 25 degrees celsius. It’s a hard life for Team Basil but we are more than up to it!