I sort of think the best way to represent today is to consider it like in an Indiana Jones film. There is map in the background and a red dotted line that goes across the stages of my travel. It was the better part of 11 hours of travel from start to finish, so needless to say it is basically all I did for the day.
I woke up at a 6am in order to get breakfast at 7 when the hotel breakfast buffet opened. I got cleaned up and mostly packed up. I should point out that this was the second shower in a row with only a half wall for water stoppage which meant that I crammed myself into the corner again so as not to soak the whole bathroom. The extra bonus was the half wall was not properly sealed to the top of the tub. After that it was down to breakfast. It was a typical European continental style breakfast where I chose have a sandwich with ham and a sandwich with cheese and some yogurt. I had an orange juice and two cups of coffee. The breakfast was included in the room rate.
After I finished eating I headed back upstairs completed my packing and checked out of the hotel. The few minutes it took to get to the train station were very easy. It was definitely going to be a nice day in Luxembourg. I sort of wished I had chosen to stay one more day before my epic train rides to Munich then on to my hotel in Oberammergau. Nonetheless I had to go so there was not much else to do unless I wanted to reach my hotel at some ungodly late hour. I found the ticket office and got a schedule of how to get to Munich. I needed to get on the 8:22 to Cologne and then from there I could switch to the 11:55 to Munich. The scenery at the start of the first ride was very stunning and everything I would expect old fashioned Germany to look like. As it went further in towards Bonn and Cologne it got more industrial. I guess I wasn’t surprised at that. During the ride I watched The Fighter on my laptop and quite enjoyed it. I ended up sharing a 1st class booth with two elderly German women and a mentally handicapped man for the majority of the trip. They didn’t really speak English and I don’t speak German so we really just nodded at each other a few times. Getting out of the train I met a German woman who lives in Melbourne now as she asked me to help another lady take her gigantic bag off the train which of course I did. She helped me find my train to Munich.
In Cologne I was to make a switch to the 11:55 to Munich which turned out to be 21 minutes late. Leave it to me to make the German train system late. I have been told that it never happens. I think there were issues with the first train they wanted us to use and they had to switch it out or something. It is what looked like happened anyway. Since there was a delay I chose to buy a sausage at the stand on the train platform as my lunch then wandered out to where the first class cars were supposed to be. After a while the train showed up. Once on our way I started to watch a Japanese movie from 2005 named Starfish Hotel. It was strange but definitely felt related to a Haruki Murakami book I had read before. I really liked the rabbit guy. I suppose he was sort of the sheep guy in the Murakami book. After that I still had maybe an hour and a half of battery life on the laptop but decided it would be best to just relax rather than try to squeeze another movie in. There didn’t appear to be any power outlets in the car. Along the time in the train it appeared we were going to make up the majority of the late departure. By the time we were on the second last stop we were only 5 minutes later than we were supposed to be, but then as we neared Munich an announcement came over the intercom, in German only of course but I could make out the gist of it, and we had to delay so we would be over 20 minutes late. I think it was due to having to wait for another train using the same track we needed. It meant we lost all the time we had regained. I was not on a time budget but this only lengthened the travel of course.
When we arrived in Munich I asked how to get to the airport and I had to take a subway, the S8 to the airport. It was just downstairs and easy to find. The train arrived a minute after I got there. It was a forty minute ride to the airport that was basically uneventful. It was obvious the weather was beautiful outside. After the subway, stage 3 completed, it was on to stage 4. I found the rental desk relatively easy and was able to get my car sorted out in fairly short order. I took an automatic this time so as not to add to the stress. I knew I was coming to another mountainous region and I didn’t feel like making myself not like the place because of my car. I ended up with an odd green Opel Astra. It only had 171km on it before I started to use it. No picture for today due to the timing explained soon. It took about an hour and a half to get from the airport to the hotel. It was basically all highway driving. I was driving 90mph for some of it but there was also spots of construction that had me lower than 50. All the same since it was Saturday the traffic through Munich and to the south was fairly light. It does mean I need to be aware how long it is going to take to get back to the airport. Along the drive I ran into a few bouts of rain, a couple of which were very much the downpours which also slowed me up a bit.
I got to the hotel around 7:30pm. It was still light out but the weather was playing around so it was cloudy. I checked in and found that dinner was technically until 8pm but they would serve me because I was late, the check in took a few minutes so it was probably already 7:50 by the time I got to eat. The chef is the person who checked me in. This place is a small village bed and breakfast type place. The name is the Hotel Friedshoehe (I don’t do the umlaut so well). I am sure it is family run and they speak English well. He told me they have guest specials for dinner and suggested I have the pork leg, a very traditional Bavarian meal. I agreed to that and quickly stuffed my belongings in the room and headed down to the porch where they serve dinner. The place is very cute. I need to point out my room is smaller than a mailbox but the cost was about $30US a night. I am not going to complain at that. I do have a private bathroom but as I expected the internet is going to be limited.
I had a Koenig Ludwig Dunkel Bier (which is a dark beer) to start and they served a soup with some form of meatballs as part of the meal. They were a very pale meat so I suspect it was probably either veal or chicken. I can’t really be certain. The soup was good if a touch salty (not badly, I quite enjoyed it, I also hadn’t had anything since that sausage in Cologne before noon and it was basically 8pm). The pork leg came out and it was huge and juicy and tasty. I loved every bite of it even when I had eaten too much. I swear there was no way I could manage to eat the whole thing. It was just too big. They served it with steamed dumplings and red cabbage which was not overly sweetened. I loved this meal honestly. I am sure being hungry to start helped, but everything was excellent. After finishing I followed with just a coffee that was a normal coffee and very enjoyable. Possibly the best cup of coffee I have ever had in Europe (though of course that is not hard to do being I don’t like Italian style which is everywhere out here). My expectation is that the pictures of the pork leg would make a couple people I know jealous.
From there it was up to the room to sort out my stuff and settle for the night. It was a long day of travel and I was exhausted by the time I started to write this. All the same I think it was a good day. Rail travel is so much more interesting than air travel. I really believe that, even with the delays.
Pictures will have to be posted when I return it looks. Sorry, I am working on a Ubuntu computer in the lobby of the hotel with a QWERTZ keyboard which is killing me...
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