With the important business of family and beer complete, our aim for the next part of our adventure was to spend some time in the Alps and ride some of the high passes.  The inspiration for this came from our off-spring who, some five years before, had given us a guide to motorcycle rides in the Alps.  As I write this, Jo is sitting on the bed with that well-worn guide, making margin notes and tagging pages for the journey ahead.  I am sure that Sarah and Nick are pleased their gift has been both inspirational and practical.

One of the great things about family connections in Austria is that we didn't have to go far to find some Alps.  We pushed Just Sue south past Salzburg then west into Germany and the town of Berchtesgaden made famous as the site of Hitler's WWII mountain retreat.    By the time we arrived the great weather, specially organised for our visit to Wolfsegg, disappeared and the rain set in.  After our Austrian stay, a simple meal, some local wine and an early night set us up for the next day.  Berchtesgaden positioned us for the northern run over one of the legendary passes, the Grossglockner.

During our time living in Canberra, Jo worked with a fellow teacher Indu. She and her husband Gerhard had become our friends.  We knew that Gerhard's family had a cabin in the mountains south of Berchtesgaden near the border with Austria.  We had a few other scraps of information from postcards and conversations but no real idea where it was.  Notwithstanding this small point, Jo decided that we should find the cabin.  We had, she assured me, found Scovorodino (a lost town in Russia), so how hard could it be?

We had a rough idea of the area from some detailed maps which Alois has shown us in Wolfsegg, and a little simple triangulation led us to the area northeast of the towns of St Martin and Weissbach, which was at least a start.  We stopped in the town of St Martin and started our search.  At first we found little to encourage us but then, up a narrow road at one of those places where walkers park their cars and set out into the hills, we found a map.  Not just any map, but a blow-up of a 1:25,000 topographic survey map.  A map that an old soldier could feel at home with.

We studied the map closely and there it was, a lone building high in the mountains close to the frontier.  I drew a mud map in my notebook and we set off, clambering out of the village of Weissbach up a narrow goat-track of a road, stopping occasionally to check our notes but mainly following the compass.  After a half hour of climbing we rounded a corner and saw a small cottage sitting alone on the edge of a clearing.  It was certainly the cottage shown on the map, but was it Gerhard's family cabin? 

We parked Just Sue outside the gate and looked around.  There, on a side wall of the out-building, was a wooded sign engraved with Gerhard's family name!  I took a photo of Jo and Just Sue to prove that we had been there and left one of our cards in the door, then we headed off in great spirits to retrace our steps back to the road south and our mission in the Alps.  We were sorry to have missed seeing Indu and Gerhard, but it was highly improbable that they would have been there for our unannounced visit.

A day later, we got an SMS from Gerhard.  They had arrived back at the cabin later in the day we had found it.  We had missed them by only a few hours.