CHAPTER 25: CHIEMSEE, GERMANY
Saturday, November 13

We have changed our plans for the trip and will not winter over in Spain as we had originally thought. Instead, we will travel to Italy next, then over to Spain, and then fly back to the States on December 9th. We have a lot of reasons for coming back earlier than we thought. The primary one is that we've been living out of suitcases for four months now and it's getting to be a drag. Another is that while I would be busy in Spain doing artwork, Janis didn't really have anything to keep her busy. And the third reason is that we (and Janis in particular) wanted to get started on our new "nest". So we decided that four months in Europe would be enough for now.

So our plan: as soon as our new credit cards arrive (more on that later), we'll head to Pisa, Italy. We'll stay in a military recreation camp that's about 10 minutes from the Leaning Tower and 45 minutes from Florence. Yowza! We want to be there for a week to ten days. Then we're going to head across southern France and through Spain. We'll wind up at the Navy base at Rota. We've got tickets to leave Jerez (near Rota) on December 9th. We really wanted to stay another week or so, but ticket prices doubled after that date because of the Christmas holiday travel season. Once back in the States, we'll go to North Carolina, get a car, go shopping for a home, and have Christmas with Janis's sister. We're really excited about it.

Okay, enough on future plans. Now for some of our escapades.

"Express Mail" to military APO addresses in Europe is even more of a misnomer than it was in Japan. Our new credit cards were express mailed to us from San Diego last Tuesday. They still aren't here and won't be before Monday at the earliest. Yes sir, that's some “express” service they've got! We're stuck here until they arrive. On Wednesday, we moved from our German hotel over to a nearby military hotel (Chiemsee Armed Forces Recreation Center). Our room is smaller, but has more than one English-language TV station, a king-size bed, and lower rates. The restaurant in the hotel is nothing to write home about: friendly staff, but bland food. We had Thanksgiving dinner there (yes, Thanksgiving isn't for a while yet, but that's what they called it anyway) and walked away stuffed, but that's about all you can say for it. Wonder of wonders, we can actually get on the internet FROM OUR ROOM!! Yes!!! No more driving over to the cybercafe and hoping one of the computers is free! We've stayed in nine places so far this trip, and this is only the second one where we could make the connection from the room.

The weather has improved a bit. We've had a lot of gloomy weather lately: cold, with alternating rain and snow. The Bavarian Alps are spectacular with their white coatings. Driving on the Autobahn, however, is a bit more of a challenge. German drivers don't slow down just because of a little snow and rain (or even a lot of snow and rain, for that matter), so we've had more than our share of white-knuckle moments. Today it's still overcast and cold, but the rain and snow have stopped.

We visited a palace nearby, the Schloss Herrenchiemsee. It was built by Mad King Ludwig, the same guy who built Neuschwanstein, and is on an island in the lake adjacent to our hotel. He had it modeled after the French palace at Versailles. Like Neuschwanstein, it's huge, gaudy, spectacular ... and unfinished. It was still under construction when the good Bavarian government agents made the King conduct a face-down float test in the lake (he failed), and the palace has been a tourist attraction ever since. When we visited, it was a cold, gray day. We took a ferry over to the island, then walked along some paths through the woods for about 20 minutes, then suddenly came around a corner and there it was. The fountains are covered in white plastic for the winter and much of the front is covered in scaffolding, but it is big and imposing. Inside, it's also cold. The palace is huge and they don't have much in the way of heaters. Only a few of the rooms were ever completed because they were loaded with murals, carvings, gilded plaster, hand-embroidered drapes, crystal chandeliers, and on and on. Whereas the British palaces with murals and embroidered drapes and all that stuff were impressive, this place was dreadful. It was the ghastliest decor I've ever seen outside of a cheap Las Vegas motel. Not only was King Ludwig wacko, he had no taste whatsoever. Still, we had a good time visiting the palace and the island. Afterwards, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Prien, which was pretty good but not great.

Today (Saturday) we took the train to visit Munich. What a neat city! It was a cloudy day, of course, and cold, but we had a great time. Munich has a lot of ancient buildings, but it also has a lot of new ones, too, side by side with their old neighbors. It seemed that half the city's population was wandering around the tourist/shopping area with us. It was great being in a modern city again. Shopping was good, as Janis of course found out. I went looking for good art galleries with little success. Munich has quite a number of them, it seems, but they either weren't open when I arrived, or they didn't have much good art. We had some kick-butt apfelstrudel in a little coffee shop, then later had dinner in the world famous Hofbrauhaus. Yes, they really do have the buxom German serving wenches bringing six steins of beer to the table. We, however, had a skinny Chinese guy bring ours. I ask you, WHERE IS THE JUSTICE? All in all, a wonderful day in Munich. Tomorrow, we're off to Salzburg.

Some random observations:
- Sometimes a German word is incredibly appropriate ... their word for "city hall", for example, is "Rathaus". I couldn't say it better myself.
- The Hofbrauhaus is primarily a tourist hangout, but there are some hardcore German drinkers in there. I saw one old coot in his Tyrolean farm hat come strolling in .... with a little blue gym bag carrying his own personal beer stein!
- Wandering through the city on our way back to the train station, there were church bells pealing all over the city. Unlike the British churches, which have a bunch of smaller, high-pitched bells ringing rapidly ("BONG Bong bong BONG Bong bong"), the German churches have one large, deep bell pealing steadily ("bbooonnnggg ........ bboooonnnngggg ...."). It was really neat to hear that sound reverberating through the old city streets. It provided a great backdrop to a quintet playing Vivaldi and Mozart on the street.
- Munich seems to be more style-conscious than many places we've visited. Many of the people strolling around were dressed to the nines. We passed by a fashion photo shoot on the steps of a building, which was interesting to watch. While wandering the cobblestone streets in the old town area, a young woman walked by who looked like she came straight off the pages of Vanity Fair: tall and slender, with long flowing blonde hair, and a gorgeous full-length sable coat that must have cost at least $50,000.

The Range Rover is holding up well. It's a typical British car: it leaks oil and coolant, but not too much. Two tires have a habit of holding their air just fine for a while ("a while" varies anywhere from three days to two weeks), then suddenly losing 50% of it almost overnight. A third tire actually seems to gain air. I haven't been able to figure that one out yet ... maybe the other two are keeping the third one topped up?

Previous Chapter | "Trip" Table of Contents | Next Chapter