Today was interesting. Up early again, organised everything into stuff that would be packed on the bike and other stuff to be left behind in the suitcase. At the railway station in time to catch an earlier train to Erding. First problem, the ticket machine said my debit card was invalid! It had worked in a similar machine at the airport. I tried the credit card, same. Machine took €5 and €10 notes but by this time I had only €50 notes. At about this time a panicked looking woman arrived, and the train appeared too, so I let her have a go. She was unsuccessful also. I considered just getting on the train, buying a ticket in Erding. I had never seen inspectors on any train in a dozen or so trips I had done in the last two days. The system seems to rely on German (or Bavarian) honesty. But my suitcase was unzipped by then, since I had remembered the stash of € coins I had brought from home. The train went, I got my ticket and got ready for the next train. That reminded me though, in a foreign country, reverse my normal habit and spend big notes first, keep lots of small notes and change with you. In Erding, at the end of the line, I found where the 512 bus to the airport left from (for me, Aufkirchen, a small village a few stops away where I was to pick up the bike). But first, the backerei beckoned: yet another ham and cheese roll, and coffee. They do not really do cappuccino here, not well enough to bother with anyway, so black coffee with milk where you can get it. The bus turned up, I manhandled my 34kg of luggage aboard. Then a busful of schoolkids arrived and got in, and a couple of travellers with luggage, headed for the airport, so the bus was indeed full. The driver got ready to leave, so I walked up outside the bus to the driver, and asked for Aufkirchen. I thought I pronounced it well enough, he seemed to know what I wanted and charged me €5.30. This seemed like a lot for a 5km trip. It seemed like better value once the bus had toured all of Erding and surrounds picking up passengers. Once we left town, I thought I’d ask a fellow passenger how you pay for the bus trip. She said you pay the driver. I asked whether it was when you got on the bus, or when leaving it. When you get on. But I’m the only passenger on this bus who has paid! She shrugged and waved dismissively. So much for German honesty. I had the iPhone out, running Google Maps to track our progress. My stop came up, and went. The bus didn’t stop, since nobody was waiting there. I pressed the red button and the next stop went by too. I clambered over all the suitcases in the aisle to get to the driver and he finally pulled over, a km out of the village. So, back up the hill, dragging my luggage. The system of attaching the heavy soft bag with all the bike gear piggyback on the roller equipped suitcase worked quite well, at least on smooth surfaces like airports, not so well here.
I found the motor workshop where I was to get the bike. Ralph was working on the blue BMW 800 installing the GPS I had ordered. Apparently the people in the rental company in Frankfurt had neglected to ship it with the bike, and he was installing his own personal one. He apologised for the delay. It was OK, I was earlier than he had expected. I finally got the bike organised, with everything stowed away in the panniers and top box, and everything else in the one suitcase which would stay there for the 3 weeks I was away.
It was about 11am now, and I was ready to go. I took a walk around the bike to check it, and found that the back tyre was worn out. The bike had done 12835km, and so had the tyres. I normally get about 11000km out of a back tyre and perhaps 15000 from a front. My prepaid allowance for the 3 weeks was 7500km and one tyre was knackered already, the other one well advanced. Ralph had to accept that the tyre would not make it, but he tried to convince me it would be OK, because the remaining tread depth was almost 1mm above the wear limit markers! It took a while, with a call to Frankfurt, and some searching, to find a compatible replacement tyre. He finally disappeared in his van to get the tyre, leaving me alone in the workshop full of bikes in varous states of repair, returned rental bikes and a couple of cars.
Finally, at about 1:30pm I was ready to go. My efforts to convince Ralph that the front tyre would not make it either were not successful, even though he had a suitable new tyre onsite. I decided to deal with that when the time came, and left Aufkirchen on the bike, feeling very uncertain, riding a bike on the wrong side of the road for almost the first time. I have driven upwards of 80,000km in the US and Europe, but only about 200km overseas on a bike, in S Korea, about 10 years ago. I was heading for Schwangau, a village near Neuschwanstein Castle, about 125km from Munich, and where I had a hotel room booked. The idea was to arrive mid afternoon, take a look at the castle and have a quiet evening with my ipad, booking hotel rooms etc. The GPS was set to take me there, and the route took me near Kawamoto, the Kawasaki motorcycle dealer in Garching where I was to pick up the bike according to the original plan. I wanted to be as independent as possible, and so had a toolkit weighing a couple of kilos and a tyre repair kit, but no way to inflate a repaired tyre, because you cannot take pressurised gas bottles on a plane from Australia. I wanted a new set of gas bottles, and a hand pump as a backup. Kawamoto could not sell me a pump, and had never heard of pressurised CO2 bottles. The guy there suggested BMW Motorrad in the heart of Munich. I wasn’t keen on going there, but I had the GPS, so off I went. BMW sold me a nice compact foot pump which would do the job, so now I could fix a flat on the road. I hadn’t had a flat for 3 decades in Australia, then had two in the last year, so wanted to be sure.
I set the GPS again, and set off to get out of Munich. A few km further on, still in central Munich, the GPS died. Suddenly everything had changed: I had no idea where I was, or where to go at the next intersection. I pulled out, lit up Google Maps on my phone, and helped a guy who walked up and asked me for directions. This sort of thing is easy in Germany, everyone knows English. Essentially, I then did a U-turn and then followed the signs for the airport, as far as Garching, then navigated back to Aufkirchen with Google maps on the phone. None of my calls to Ralph had been answered. Being on a bike was a huge advantage, because when you miss a turn, you can always do an illegal u-turn to recover, and you can always find room to stop and establish your position without driving kilometres out of your way.
So, I was again at Aufkirchen, after doing 95km, mainly in Munich traffic, and it was now 4pm. I waited 20 minutes for Ralph to return, and showed him the broken GPS. It turned out that the cable he had used to connect the GPS to the battery was frayed and had one broken conductor. The GPS had been discharging its internal battery since I originally left, then finally died. Ralph used a different cable this time, with a cigarette lighter socket and plug to power the GPS, and stuck the connector assembly to the fuel tank with duct tape. It was messy, but worked, for about 2 hours, as we shall see. I showed Ralph my 9 unsuccesful phone calls, did I have his number correct? Oh the phone was over there, I was very busy…. Hmmm, I’d better be as independent as possible, if this is the state of the “roadside service”.
While I had been waiting for Ralph to return, another guy arrived on a bike, same type as mine, a BMW GT800. I asked how he liked it. He was from Israel, had just completed a week in the Alps on the bike. He left for the airport, with a tiny backpack, to return to Israel. He had rented a light jacket and helmet from the rental company, so he was carrying almost nothing but a toothbrush and a credit card. No tools of any kind. No wonder Ralph was driving all over Europe rescuing customers in trouble.
I had thought to ring the hotel in Schwangau to say I would be late. From the start, we were at cross purposes. Oh, we are just a family run hotel, we close reception at 6pm, we can’t afford to pay staff to wait around for guests who arrive late. I completely understand, I was just doing the right thing, calling you to say I would be late because of vehicle trouble. I don’t think we can be blamed if a guest has vehicle trouble. Of course not, I wasn’t blaming you, just telling you I would be late. If I have lost the booking I’ll….no no, I can help you. At the front door there is a box with a keypad. Just enter 1111 when you arrive, and your room keys will fall out, room 14, you can arrive any time you like. I forget to mention that she said all this with a charming Irish lilt, she was Irish!
Right, off again. It was 5:30pm. After a while I realised that this time we had not gone close to Garching, the GPS had not told me to make that particular turn, and I had gone through several villages which eventually coalesced into the Munich suburbs. I was headed for central Munich again! I pulled out and checked the GPS settings. It was set for shortest distance instead of minimum time! The shortest distance from Auchkirken to the northeast of Munich to Schwangau to the southwest is right through the centre. Munich is a very handsome city, and I had seen a lot of it by now. While I was resetting the GPS, my phone rang. It was Vodafone, in Ireland. Another charming Irish lilt. She wanted to know how long I would be roaming, when I was going home. I had my helmet on, and the phone on speaker, with traffic noise, but was able to tell her that home was in Australia. She said, no problem, I’ll just record that, thank you. This is a bit ominous because roaming on an Irish Vodafone SIM that hadn’t been originally activated in Ireland is against their usage rules. They might just turn it off. A day later my phone is still working, fortunately.
It was 7pm by the time I reached a freeway after crawling through the worst of the peak hour traffic. Finally I was on 95, heading south. It was virtually dark by now, and after an hour or so of cruising, the outline of the Alps loomed into view against the starlit sky, no moon. At least the weather today had been good, cloudless all day, which meant it was getting quite cold now. By this time, the GPS had said it had lost external power and would shut down in 10 seconds if I didn’t authorise it to run on its internal battery. I did, and eventually pulled out to see what was wrong. It was just the cigarette lighter and plug setup, the plug had fallen out. I used some of Ralph’s duct tape to hold the plug in. I’ll need to fix it properly sometime. Getting back on the autobahn, I had to accelerate to 160km/h in the emergency lane to merge with the traffic. This is not Australia.
It’s a good time to say that despite the problems, the bike is great. It accelerates briskly to 160km/h, cruises there comfortably, for it, not me. I like about 120, which is the autobahn limit anyway around here. The BMW has comfortable suspension, good brakes, reasonable wind protection, a willing engine. It’s not too heavy or bulky, and as I learnt an hour later, fantastic handling. A typically well sorted BMW. Really, it’s everything you could want in a touring bike, and it was one of the cheapest available rental bikes, at €100 per day.
Autobahn 95 turned into a normal road, the GPS had me make a couple of turns, we travelled through an alpine valley, I found some fuel and a ham and cheese roll in a small town, and we started to climb into the foothills of the Alps. It was 8:30pm. I had no idea where I was, or where the GPS was taking me. I stopped more than once to try to get Google maps to show me where I was, but it wasn’t really practical on the small screen of the phone, and I was slowly freezing. I spent a long time, perhaps 50km, on a small road, with no centre line, no other traffic, winding through forest and hills with occasional small villages. The GPS kept telling me that we were getting closer to Schwangau. We went into Austria, the road went from German smooth hot mix to an Austrian patched road then back to German smooth hot mix again. Finally I saw the lights of a large town in the valley below and we emerged back into civilisation. I found the hotel in Schwangau, the keys dropped, and I was in a hot shower at 10pm. It turned out to be a lovely hotel.
I would have been happy to stay longer. Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to have it to read in future, to remind me of the trip.