Up early this morning to reorganise my stuff again, this time into things that are going to Berlin and things that will be left at Munich Airport. Essentially, the bag that I used every night and carried in the top box is coming with me to Berlin, less a few items, plus a few items.
Breakfast was very good. The orange juice came from a machine and was ersatz, but they had granola with lumps of chocolate, and rolls with prosciutto cotto, which helped compensate for the OJ. Then I looked out of the window for the first time this morning. Clear sky, and the mountains lit by the morning sun. Almost 3 dimensional. Well, of course they are 3 dimensional, but they stood out in such clear relief. So Cortina is a ski town after all. I could see the ski runs and lifts, visible today in the sun.
Being clear, it was cold, and I had to scrape frost off the seat of the bike to sit on it. I filled up, and with 360km to do to get to Munich, would need to stop once more.
I was concerned that there might be ice on the road. The temperature fell as low as -5.5 degrees en route to Dobbiaco, the road rising to over 1500m, mostly in the shade, and any residual water from the rain last evening would be ice now. The road was winding, but the grip seemed to be fine, as the road was dry. From Dobbiaco west on the SS49 to the A22 autostrada was steady going at 60-80k, along a broad, beautiful valley, with plenty of traffic. Lots of snow on the alps now, summer is over. The temperature never rose above 9 degrees, all the way to Munich, and I was freezing, counting the kilometres away. The A22 carried me over the Brenner Pass, and started a long descent into Austria. Some very impressive engineering holding this road up. It’s the main alpine pass between northern and southern Europe and carries countless heavy trucks.
I stopped for gas and a lump of chocolate cake on the E45 somewhere east of Innsbruck. By now, the Italian phone company Wind had sent me a couple of texts as it detected me leaving Italy. While eating my cake, and shivering uncontrollably, I saw that the gist of the messages, in Italian, was that I could text a number to start roaming outside Italy, the cost for calls and 50MB data per day would be €2, or I could pay 6.9c/MB. Neither offer was attractive, and I reinstalled my trusty Irish Vodafone SIM to get unlimited calls, 200MB per day, and Vodafone reliability for €3. My number is now +353 871461459.
Near Munich, Zumo wanted me to get off at Munich Zentrum. Not much chance of that happening. I stuck to the freeway, with the signs pointing to the airport. The autobahn was now 3 lanes in each direction, extremely busy carrying a large number of trucks, as well as cars doing mostly 120km/h. Aufkirchen, which I had Zumo set for, is near the airport, why get off sooner? It’s also near Erding, so I left at an exit indicating Erding, still with 25km to go. But this time I was around Munich, no problems getting to Aufkirchen. At 3pm, nobody was at the depot. I texted Ralph, no reply. Eventually another guy turned up, who knew I was returning the bike, and I retrieved the luggage I had left there 3 weeks ago. After changing out of my bike gear and packing everything, at 4pm I was set to go, with the suitcase and the bag containing all the bike gear.
In 3 weeks I did 5260km, about 350km average for each of the 15 days I actually rode the bike. Not a bad compromise between just riding all the time, and doing other things too. I didn’t get to ride a lot of passes in the Dolomites, but I certainly experienced the scenery, at its best, with snow. Apart from that, I did everything I had set out to do, and didn’t fall off the bike, so declining the extra €20 per day to reduce the insurance excess had paid off. I didn’t lose anything, didn’t get sick, and had a great time, so the holiday has been a success, so far.
Taxi to the airport, Terminal 1. I found the service centre and left the bags there for a week. Now I had the clothes I was standing in, and one fairly small bag. It was liberating. It brought to mind the Apollo Moon expeditions, where 3 men lifted off atop a launch assemby 363 feet tall, weighing 7 million pounds, and returned to Earth in a capsule the size of an SUV.
Train to Munich, which takes about an hour, the airport is a long way out. I went to the Hauptbahnhof, the main station, where the trains leave for places afar. The real railway station. It was great, I love railway stations. I’ll be back here tomorrow to leave for Goettingen, where I change trains to Berlin. Strangely, the fastest trip to Berlin is the one where you change trains.
Dinner in a proper restaurant at the station. Kartoffel Suppe and a really good hamburger which I forgot to photograph in my haste to eat it.
Two subway stops to Fraunhoferstrasse, where I am sitting in my AirBnB. Here in the BnB, I chatted for an hour with my host, Maren, who also liked Italy, and we compared notes about Palermo and other places. She mentioned that now she was renting her bedroom through AirBnB, she was thinking of dropping her second job, working at weekends. The one-bed apartment, on the ground floor of a tall building, with its own grassy backyard, within 30 minutes walk of central Munich sounded cheap to me, by Australian standards, at €300000, but giving up your privacy is a huge price to pay.
Then I went into “my” room to write this. I had been careful booking with AirBnB to ensure I had a room to myself, not a fold-out bed in the living room with the host’s cat, or worse. I didn’t anticipate (I should have) that the host would sleep in the living room. I had to creep past Maren in the early hours to go to the bathroom, and dress to do so, just in case. To flush, or not to flush? I flushed. Who uses the bathroom when? I decided I would shower tonight and use it for 10 minutes in the morning sometime. At least Maren’s bed was very comfortable.