Auf Wiedersehen

Saturday

It is our last day; tomorrow we fly home. Glenn's fever has broken, but he is still fairly miserable. My throat is bothering me a bit... Perhaps it is time to go home, but I do not want to. My German is improving by leaps and bounds. Vocabulary, that is, not so much the grammar. Oh well, Manfred can usually figure out what I am trying to say.

The Alps are truly gorgeous mountains. They rise up so dramatically; each village, town or even city is literally surrounded by walls of mountains. Manfred, who is from the flat north of Germany, said that he is not terribly comfortable with them, but I am in heaven. There are also some large lakes nearby, so those are our destinations for today. We breakfast in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and head out east then north. The jagged peaks slowly change into tree-covered mountains, and soon we come to Walchensee.

The air was fresh and it was so peaceful. It was difficult to leave the lakeside bench, but I wanted a photo of my two men as they called themselves.

Back to the car and on northbound. What did we encounter but the fog! What is it with Bavaria and fog? I knew that there was a reason I did not ask to try for Neuschwanstein again! Soon we came to Kochelsee, but it did not have the same charm under the low clouds. Still, It was lovely.

From there we headed towards Staffelsee, but missed it. Manfred's map app was no longer picking up any information, so we never found the way to the lake. We had to resort to an atlas (heaven forbid! However did we manage before smartphones and their navigation systems?), so drove to a small village where it looked like there might be a road cutting off a stretch of somewhat uninteresting road (we had now reached flat land). The red dashes were not listed in the atlas' key, but Manfred was sure that it was a small road. It turned out to be a bike path. And the only place to get a coffee and pastry was closed. Germany was really not being nice on our final day. Back to the main road and onwards. No coffee Haus to be seen anywhere. The only road back to Garmisch was past Oberammergau, where we knew that there were several choices for food, so we went into the village, found a parking place (never an easy task) and coffee at the Hotel Wolf.

I had my final serving of apfel strudel, sigh... Next door you can see the home of the Passionsspiele (Passion Play).

A bit of retail therapy

That evening I found an Afghani restaurant in Garmisch. We all decided it was a definite win!

Back at the flat we packed up so that the car could be loaded before morning. We would have to leave at 6:30, so there would be barely enough time for a coffee from the flat's wonderful cappuccino machine.

After a short, restless night, we met in the kitchen for cappuccinos. No one wanted the trip to end (well, perhaps Glenn did as his cold was making him miserable). As we left the sun was not showing much promise. Sure enough - fog. All of the way to München (Munich) the fog was down on the ground, then the sides of the road would be visible, then the tops of the trees, then back to no visibility. Thankfully, the famous Autobahn was not at all busy, but we certainly did have a few cars fly by us at untold speeds. There really are sections with no speed limit. Passing around the centre of München, the autobahn suddenly had cars parked on the sides of the road! Weird! Then we were back out into the countryside for the final stretch to the airport. Manfred found a parking place, Glenn and I checked our luggage, and we found a place for some breakfast. It was quiet around the table. Manfred and I had decided to have regular video chats, alternating German and English to help us both with our language studies, so it was not the end.

We finished our meal, and there were customers in search of seats, so we took our farewells out by the snaking entrance to passport control. After 52 years Manfred and I had finally managed to get together; we promised that it would not be another 52 before the next time!

Two great weeks, three countries, new and renewed friendships. We bade Europe auf Wiedersehen - we will be back!