Still near Konstanz, southern Germany. We’re heading to a monkey farm to feed the little critters popcorn and break our new boots in with monkey doo.

Too late, we’re told that there are no buses there but instead a rather delightful little stroll through the woods.

Inside the forest it is damp and cold and so misty we can barely see our hands, let alone each other. Every so often we happen upon a signpost pointing to ‘Affenberg (’monkey mountain’), 1.5km’ - then twenty minutes later stumble across another saying ‘Affenberg: 4.8km’. It’s like the enchanted forest, only with murderers and lunatics instead of happy bunnies with rays of sunshine in their picnic baskets.

Lozz picks this particular moment to start dissecting the plot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while Laura starts assessing her potential weapons: ‘Let’s see, what have I got here….a fork! I could totally gauge their eyes out with that!’ Eventually we come across the world’s biggest cornfield and spend half an hour picking our way through three-metre high stalks.

At the monkey farm at last, Lozz is attacked. Well, not ‘attacked’ so much as ’suddenly embraced’ by a cute little chimp, but her shrieks frighten the poor critter so much he leaves a nervous little number two on her jacket.

Shortly thereafter, we call a taxi and wait at the entrance for forty minutes before realising there are two entrances, and guess which one the taxi went to? So after a short taxi ride, a bus, a ferry and another bus, we get back into town, duck into the supermarket for some dinner, and rush back out just in time to miss the last bus home.

Next German mission. We’re heading for Meersburg, a town near Lake Constance which boasts the oldest castle in Germany. Then to castle #2, Schloss Salem, which is now a posh boarding school for the über rich and snotty.

The day starts as mine generally do - with massive public transport woes. We manage to get the two buses and a ferry across to Meersburg without a hitch, and probably would have found ourselves well impressed with the castle there if only we could see it through the mist.

Then we stand in the rain for an hour and watch three buses pass us by - the first so full of school kids we couldn’t possibly squeeze ourselves on, the second we forgot to signal the driver, and the third we evidently didn’t signal the driver ‘properly’.

Finally we find a dubious bus driver who promises to drop us off ‘nearby’ - ie. a two km uphill hike to the castle/school while daddy’s little 16 year-old princesses zip past us in pink alfa romeos.

There we are royally jipped by having to pay €7 to get into the castle grounds, where we promptly get lost in the hedge maze, then discover that not only are the castle and cathedral shut to visitors as of October, but also that there are dozens of unmanned side entrances to the grounds that we could have snuck in through for free.

Bah.

Hamburg – kooky ‘postmodern’ exhibition, though frankly unlike one I’ve seen before, because normally you can in fact see them.

“Dialogue in the dark” basically means you walk about in – you guessed it – the dark, led by blind people, and have to touch and smell everyday sorts of things. You know, so you know how they feel. (And they get to have a good giggle at you being a clumsy chicken.)

It’s touted as a ‘travelling’ exhibition but we learn it’s been in Hamburg seven years now. We arrive in plenty of time for me to hop to loo a dozen times. I’m nervous, because our guides will be speaking German, and the chances I mishear the warnings and fall into a pit of crocodiles, I feel, are high.

Were in a group of 5. We set off with a lot of giggling and bumping into one another and holding onto each others jumpers. Well, I do anyway. Im feeling a little panicky, I have to admit.

First stop is the smell room, though there’s only one smell – pungent flowers. Then the ‘market’, where we get to fondle bananas and guess what they are. A recording of normal city noise is playing and I find it so distracting I want to shush the world so I can concentrate. One foot in front of the other. Mind the step – klink Wilken around the ankles with my stick – follow the handrail – careful, there’s a vorhang.

What a vorhang is? I ask.

A thing that hangs vor. Like a curtain.

Oh.

We’d been told to hang onto our ticket stubs because we’ll need them for the boat trip, otherwise we’ll have to swim back in the dark. Cor, I think. We dutifully hand them over and are guided onto the boat. Hier rechts, he says, nimm mein Hand.

Wo? Where? Where hand? Hand is where? I say.

Hier, he says. Alles klar. Nimm doch ein Platz.

I sit down then realise I’m still on the wharf, so crawl forward a bit and launch myself into the boat. Alles klar.

We sit all 5 of us, knees touching, squashed. Then a fan starts blowing in our faces and a tape recording of a boat engine starts up. It’s a bit cheesy.

Later, in the sound room, we sit and listen to – yep – sounds. Waves crashing, then some sort of cave water dripping, then a burst of African campfire music. I try to get into the zone but it’s hard with Patrick on my right snickering and Willy on the left scratching his foot, the one with the bad toenail.

Eventually the whimbaweys die down and we move into the bar, also in the dark. We order and hand over €5 notes, then ask doubtfully how she knows we’re not giving her fifties. The sizes are different, apparently. We make mental notes to check on that later.

We grope our way to a table and sit with the guide, who patiently answers our questions. Are you sometime nervous, that you not all see can? I ask.

Ich kenne nicht anders. I don’t know any different.

Wilken nudges me as if to say, der.

What? He might not always have been blind, I whisper indignantly back. Then we realise he speaks English too.

Is it hard for blind people to get jobs? we ask.

Yes, but you can train yourself to work in an office, do physiotherapy, things that need hands and not sight. This exhibition employs jobless blind people for €1 per hour as part of a government scheme.

What about travel? someone asks.

Sometime I go to the Nordsee, he says. A friend of his just went to England to meet his internet penpal. They chat on instant messaging.

There’s silence until someone works up the nerve to say, but how does he read the messages.
Sie wuerden vorgelesen. They’re read out. There’s software for that. Der.

And then it’s over. We troop out and sit in the semi dark room for a bit while we wait for our eyes to readjust. We’ve been in the pitch dark for 90 minutes. Wilken gets up and writes ‘schöne Möbel’ in the visitor’s book.

What’s Möbel? I ask.

It’s like…interior furnishings.

But we couldn’t see the – oh. I see. Good one.

Were you guys nervous at the start? I ask. Because to begin with I was feeling really panick-

Nah, the guys say. No worries.

Oh. Me neither, I say.

Today I’m on a mission to find what touts itself as ‘the biggest second-hand English bookshop in Germany.’ Subway map in hand, I set off in search of the elusive Gneisenaustrasse U-bahn station, which the bookshop website claims as its closest but doesn’t seem to appear on any city map.

Once there, I figure out why. It’s a forgotten old slum area, with shelled-out buildings (granted, they just be tumbledown, but I’m a sucker for war stories), an oversupply of 65-cent döner street vendors and all the signs in Arabic.

It’s hard to tell if I’ve crossed into East Berlin somewhere on the underground or if it’s just a dodgy part of the west. Coming out of the station I nervously skirt a gypsy woman who proffers me her baby, and fretfully mumble something incomprehensible to the two grubby boys who ask if I’ve a day ticket they could ride on.

Then I realise I’ve left the directions to the bookstore in my diary at home. I start looking around for approachable-looking people to ask for directions, and, finding none, eventually corner a young guy with bleached hair and a surfboard under his arm. He reminds me of the surfer dudes back home who are always either stoned enough or docile enough to be harmless, so I feel that it is safe to approach.

And indeed, his directions turn out to be faultless, though looking back perhaps I should have been more wary of the surfboard – Berlin is well inland, after all.

Needless to say, after the pains I’d taken to get there, the bookshop itself is a grave disappointment. It seems promising enough when I enter, with walls of books – very handy, given the nature of the establishment – and those comfy old brown chairs that everyone likes. Even the store guy peeling a sack of potatoes at his desk doesn’t put me off.

I’m not really startled until, ducking under the rafters to get to the back of the store, I barrel straight into a homeless fellow carting a pot of stew – or haggis, or possibly sauerkraut, it’s hard to tell – up from a ragged set of cellar steps. It seems the place has a makeshift kitchen-cum-homeless shelter in its basement, and old Gunther at the front desk is readying spuds for the shindig they’ve planned for the evening.

I don’t buy anything, in the end. All the books, though admittedly quality reading, are in highly dubious condition, and I’m not fond of reading in my rubber gloves.