Munich

Sun.7^th July :  We left Pfarrwerfen late on Friday (5^th) morning and headed up the autobahn in the drizzling rain to Hallein, home of the Hofbrau Kaltenhausen – exquisite “Speciality Beer Manufactory” and the oldest wheat beer brewery in Austria. This was on our list of ‘places to see’, Mike having ‘discovered’ it on the internet many months ago but on our arrival there we found that although they still brew their own beer, it is now mainly a restaurant and no longer have tours of the brewery.  As we only wanted to try out the beer, we continued on, disappointed.  Shortly after, we crossed the border into Germany and almost immediately came to a snail crawl of a journey lasting about an hour.  The cause of the traffic jam turned out to be an overturned truck which was lying in a roadside ditch, causing closure of first one and then two lanes of traffic.  Once we got through that it was plain sailing until we came to the off ramp we were supposed to take to our chosen overnight stop…it was closed which meant we had to continue on the autobahn until the next off ramp which didn’t take us to where we wanted to be, so it was a bit of backtracking, a change of destination and we came to Prien am Chiemsee where we camped overnight.  It was a lovely spot beside the lake, we were amongst the trees, there was a large grassed area, a bar and café, hire boats and it was almost free!

  We cycled into the lakeside town just a kilometre or two away, took a little train ride into the main town and back again, simply because the train was there when we arrived and about to leave so we hopped on. 

On our return the rain came down with a vengeance, so we dashed into the nearest café for refreshments and waited till it cleared then strolled around the promenade for a while before cycling back to camp to cook our evening meal.  The evening’s entertainment was provided by a group consisting of about two dozen young women and one young man engaging in a zumba class on the lawn in front of  us.  This lasted for two hours and we were exhausted by the time they’d finished…don’t know how they kept it up for so long, though a few of them looked a bit worn out!

After a quiet night, we left early on Sat.6^th for our next destination Bad Aibling, chosen because the railway line which runs through it goes to Munich.  From past experience we knew that trying to drive and park Boris in a big city is a no-no so decided to stay outside the city and visit via a train ride…which is what we did.  We were at our camp spot shortly after 8am, parked Boris and walked the short distance to the railway station.  It cost us 28 euro for two return tickets, we changed trains at Holzkirchen, a twenty minute changeover and then into Munich.  The whole journey, including the changeover, took about an hour.  Munich is a big, big city with beautiful old buildings,

 thousands of tourists, lots of noise and we enjoyed a few hours of strolling around the streets before returning, exhausted, to the railway



Lunch in Munich (with a Weissbier of course)

 station for our trip ‘home’.

Today (Sun.7^th), we have cycled into the lovely town of Bad Aibling to visit the Flea Markets, ridden through the beautiful park, had coffee and cake at a family café in town and are now having a relaxing afternoon.  After the last few days of climbing ice cave steps, walking up mountains and gorges, as well as walking around Salzburg and Munich, we agreed to give ourselves a day off and do very little, so that’s what we’re doing…tomorrow is another day!