Today we were headed for the home of some travelers we met back in 2010 in South America. According to the instructions we had, their house was in a small village called Thilhove east of Cologne. We feared that it would require some squeezing through tight streets and a bit of careful navigation. So after waking up to a nice sunny day, getting some fuel (Euro 1.47/liter) we headed east along the A313/A4/E40 (all the same road, A313 is the Belgium designation, A4 the German and E40 the European - and I forgot what its called in the Netherlands. But we only spent 20 minutes in that country today.)

Around the middle of the day we got off the motorway to find a Media Mart store (German equivalent of Best Buy ) and got ourselves a brand new GPS (though I got a blank look when I asked for a car GPS - here they are called Satelite Navigation Systems or SatNavs). It was a minor victory to actually locate such a store and get to it as the European motorways are pretty much fenced in by trees and sound barriers and shops, towns and other things are basically not visible.

Just east and south of Cologne (Köln) we exited the motorway and followed the lead of the SatNav through some wonderful forest lined roads, through a number of villages until we came to a turn towards Thilhove. I was a bit skeptical of this turn as it looked like someones driveway, but trusting to the SatNav we proceeded, eventually arriving at the corner as our instructions had specified. Within a few minutes Romy came out to see us and there were hugs all around. A few minutes later Wolfgang arrived, then their two young teenage children Leon and Muriel.

After a bit of careful manouvering to get the truck into their yard we settled into some afternoon coffee/beer and chatted catchng up on lifes happenings.

Later in the evening we all watched with delight as Uruguay defeated Italy in the world cup there by eliminating Italy from further participation.