Palatine wood gnome: Albany; Monday

Palatine Wood Gnome

There are many that spread over a much larger territory; that host a wider range of peculiar plants or give shelter to much more interesting wildlife species.
But the Palatine Forest is the largest coherent wood in Germany and, most of all: It's my home.
Why "Wood Gnome"?
Well, I have been named thus because I turn into Rumpelstiltskin kind of regularly when "visitors" come over from the other side of the Rhine Plains (where they have lots of forest as well...) with their huge cars, jamming the streets of my village, drive up to a forester's lodge, have lunch there, return home after a final cup of coffee and then claim "Oh, we have been to the WOODS this weekend"

That's why.

Monday, 24 March 2008

Albany; Monday

The first day with really bad weather. And Graham isn't even anywhere near us. Heavy winds, rain showers, very uncomfortable. We headed for Albany, having intended to spend an easygoing day at the beaches of Torndirrup National Park.

No way.

We drove

to the most outstanding features like the blowholes, the Natural Bridge and the Gap, but as it grew colder and colder we turned around, driving to our hostel to warm up again. At least to some degree.
Monday, 17th was St.Patrick's Day, right? So we were at least looking forward to a moist and merry evening in one of the local pubs. When we went out for dinner we already spotted some weirdly dressed blokes in green shorts, shirts and giant plushy hats, which assured us that there would be some sort of celebration later on. But when we looked for it around 9pm there was....nothing. Zilch. Nada. We found two (TWO!) pubs in a city of 30000 (we only looked in the city itself, but hey, even so the result was poor) and both were almost empty, no party, no music, no nothing. I was not in the mood to start one for myself, seeing that not many people were out having a ball. They were more the type of serious drinking "I'm not doing this for fun" guys. So what, we went home again and that was about it. Strangest St.Patrick's day we ever had.
Only highlight was phoning Mike and discovering that his voice was completely different to what I had expected. As far as I understood him we made an appointment to meet the other day on our way to Fremantle. So that was a thing worth looking forward to.

Palatine wood gnome