Bavarian delights

I feel ashamed that I hadn’t known what a beautiful area Bavaria and the alps is, it has been an unexpectedly pleasant surprise. It beats other countries we have traveled in for beauty, incredible cycle trails and superb roads, not to mention the variety of beers and breads.

We are near the borders of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and our plan is to avoid the holiday hotspots at the coastal resorts, see some alpine areas as well as escape the worst of the heat. 

We have been roughly following the German Alpine Road. It is 450 km long and starts at Lake Constance, it finishes roughly at Berchtesgaden on the Austrian border.

We traveled alongside Lake Constance, a large lake with the border between Switzerland and Germany running through the middle. Vineyards on the slopes lead down to the lake making a lovely backdrop. We picked an aire in Meersberg based on the trusty aire bible The aire was a big gravely yard about 1km from the town and we had an unfriendly German couple and their dog (he looked alright) camped next to us.

Meersberg

Bubble blowing bear

Howard and Hilda were released from the garage and we went exploring Meersberg. A popular but still lovely old walled town on the lakes edge, it even had a schloss and a zeppelin museum, speaking of which, there was one flying above us advertising a theme park.

We walked along the lake edge eating ice creams and watching ferries, quite large ones, sailing up and down and across the lake to Switzerland. I looked at the menus outside openair restaurants and sneaked a peek at diners’ plates. It all looked like sausage, schnitzel and pommes (is that a French word?). German restaurants don’t seem to have the popularity around the world that they do in their homeland.

The lake area is a transition zone between the Black Forest and Bavaria. The next morning we were off early to Bavaria, stopping for a small quantity of diesel, cheaper in Austria apparently. Once away from the lake we started climbing and were soon following a twisting turning road through forest. When we popped out of the forest road we were surrounded by mountains and meadows. The hillside was dotted with large chalet style houses, we started travelling through ski resort towns.

The next aire we found had a friendly German couple camped next to us who more than made up for the other lot. The countryside is picture postcard stuff and criss-crossed with walking and cycling tracks. Lush grassy hills are set against a backdrop of craggy mist shrouded mountains with just a touch of dirty snow here and there. Holiday homes and Gasthofs are clustered in hamlets, most having a chapel on a hilltop.

We cycled to the main town in the valley – Oberstdorf, it reminded us of Banff in Canada, we were entranced watching the skiers hurtling down huge artificial grass ski-jumps. The town was very picturesque and filled with tourists buying up large at the outdoor clothing shops. Thunderbolts and lightning on the way back and we ended up soaked through – peddling furiously for 9km and blinded by rain.

At dinnertime we were treated to music from a Bavarian brass band playing soothing melodies, accompanied on percussion by goats in the nearby field. After a while the melodies began to sound all the same, the goats must have agreed as they seemed to stop ringing their little bells.

We spent a couple of nights in Fussen enjoying cycle rides around the lakes and visiting a couple of castles. Only viewing from the outside you understand, the queues were so long at 10.30 we would have had to wait until 3.30 to get in. We left Howard and Hilda in chains and enjoyed a lovely 40 min walk to Neuschwanstein castle up a beautifully kept road with trees shading us. Shire type horses were pulling carriages uphill for those not inclined to walk. Neuschwanstein is another ‘Disney’ icon of a castle and looked stunning set against a dramatic moutain backdrop.

Nearby Hohenschwangau is another castle, much older and a short walk from Neuschwanstein .

Neuschwanstein

The aire at Fussen is the biggest we had experienced – we slotted ourselves into number 9 – right opposite reception to pick up the free wifi (thank goodness, we were hanging out for wifi). There were about 200 sites and every night it was full with hopeful late-comers trawling through looking for a spot. One optimist was driving something the size of a bus and towing a trailer with a Mercedes 380 stationwagon on it.  

Picking up from the last post - I did manage to get the washing done, talk about a saga. Suffice to say I was ready at 9.30 for the first load, and finally got the sheets through the dryer by 6.30pm. The machine went into lock down – my unwashed clothes trapped in the Miele maw. It was partly operator error as the instructions were in German and a friendly lady interpreted but didn't really understand the workings. Quite a few unused euros went into the machine to add insult to injury. I thought it had all gone to hell in a handcart when the coin box went on the blink and we gave it a good thump – the lights went out, and the next morning when the man came round I used my best German – machine est kaput. He managed to release my dirty clothes by trickery that Stuart wished he had thought of.

Moving along we are freewheeling along the German Alpine Road towards Austria, yes we have the vignette, a bit premature as we are still in Germany for a while and traveled in Austria for a whole 15 minutes.