True to our pledge we were in the car and moving by ten AM after a very fine breakfast at our hotel in Trento, the best we had had on the trip to date. We took a few goodies from the breakfast buffet for snacking and headed north to Austria. Whereas the trip from San Marino to Trento was mostly flat though wide open spaces, this one was through narrow mountain passes and many, many tunnels. While Cindy assured me the scenery was beautiful, I was laser focused as our trusty car headed up hill. Sharing these narrow roads and tunnels with 18-wheelers is a challenge and by the time we reached Innsbruck and the roads opened up, I was one tired puppy. Augsburg was getting closer but we surely were not there yet.
The weather cooperated nicely, thank goodness, and a short time after passing Innsbruck we crossed the border into Germany. Our car, a Nissan X-Trail, had some lovely features but the one I liked the most and used the most was the posted speed limit right in the middle of the speedometer array. Speeds change all the time in Europe and depending upon the country, you can be photoed and issued a ticket multiple time within fifteen kilometers. I grew heavily dependent upon this feature so you can imagine how I felt as we got on the A8 towards Munich and the speed indicator just became a white circle, no speed indicated. It took me awhile to realize, mein Gott in Himmel, we are in Germany and there is NO SPEED LIMIT! My first clue was all of the cars passing me at great speed, so I put the pedal to the metal and in no time was at 180 kmh (about 110 mph). That was plenty fast for me but still it was like I was in the slow lane; amazing how fast they drive. These were actually not long stretches of road that had no limit - perhaps ten kilometers and then it was 130 kmh - then another five without limit and then back to 80 or 90; it was really crazy.
Our GPS Navigator - who we called Sybil since she had an English accent - took us around Munich to the north, which we think was the long way, but we also think she knew something about the traffic that we didn’t so we followed her directions. By now it had started to rain and yet there were those who still kept speeding by us. There was a lot of road construction and merging of lanes, which I must say the Germans do with exemplary skill. They are all taught the ‘zipper method’ of lane change in which each driver allows the one in the merging lane to enter ahead of them allowing all the traffic to keep moving. It makes so much sense and SHOULD be universal.
Sybil got us close to our hotel in Augsburg just before dark. It was still raining quite hard and we think that Sybil still harbored ill will with the Germans because she kept taking us in a circle. She would say, “Your destination is on the right” and it was a post office so we went forward and she said to take a right and the next thing you know I’m driving right down the pedestrian street. (I know I’m going to get a ticket for that.) She tried to do it again but we were not to be fooled. We pulled over next to a taxi stand and Cindy was about to get out and ask for directions when she noticed our hotel was across the street from where Sybil thought it should be. Several illegal U-turns later, I pulled up as close to the hotel as possible and Cindy ran in to find out where their parking garage was. Turns out they didn’t have one and we were directed to a city garage where we finally found a space and then schlepped our luggage (in the rain) to the hotel. We left a lot of luggage in the car but nevertheless we had plenty to drag along - a person gets lazy about packing when traveling by car.
Upon further reflection as to why I chose a city hotel without parking, I realized that we were recreating the September trip that we had had to cancel due to Cindy’s broken wrist, and on that trip we had planned to take the train. Rest assured that our hotel without parking was indeed convenient to the train station!
After checking in and changing rooms (the first one was mighty small), we were ready to take a walk and didn’t care that it was raining. We realized that we didn’t really know where we were, nothing looked familiar at all even though we had lived nearby (well, it was only 3 1/2 months and only 35 years ago, but still). We just couldn’t get our bearings, so when in doubt, drink beer. We found a small beer bar close to the hotel and I ordered what I had been dreaming about for months, a half liter of helles beer and a brezel; Cindy had wine. It was marvelous and all the tension just melted away as we sat and sipped. It was to be my only beer on the trip, but it was memorable and a second one would not have been twice as good.
That night, on the recommendation of staff, we found a Bavarian beerhall that we were told served the best Bavarian food in town. It was housed in an old armory and was enormous, not like the Munich beer halls, but really quite large. There were long tables of young folks drinking beer and a few other tables of white-hairs having dinner. Cindy, ordering lightly (so she thought), had two appetizers that could have fed one of the big tables. I had a pork schnitzel covered with the dried must of the grains used to make beer. It was the size of a tennis racket and was placed on top of a huge plate of fries, with a half lemon for health. It was delicious and I ate it all, but not all the fries. Cindy tried hard to finish her yummy huge salads but I needed to step in so she wouldn’t look bad.
More on this later, Cindy and Wm
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