This was a bit of a lost day. Originally it had been our plan to take the train to Berlin today and ride the 30 km or so to Potsdam. But… in keeping with our train challenges I neglected to book the train until April, which honestly didn’t seem unreasonable at the time. (It was two months out).  I learned the hard way that Deutschbahn has a shortage of bike slots and that it is necessary to book WAY out. (I later remembered, when I was TRYING to book in April that  Suzanne Gibson, a well know Cycleblazer who lives in Munich, had  mentioned once that German trains do not have enough bike slots to keep up with demand). In any event, this was a long-winded way to report that when I went to book a train for us and our bikes for Sunday June 25 there was nary a slot to be found. I found two solitary bike places the following day Monday at 6:54 am, so I grabbed those and readjusted our schedule. The bummer of this change was that it reduced the planned trip to Potsdam from two nights to one night and, we were left to hang out in Munich on Sunday. We used the day to pack up, make another trip to our public storage unit and have an ongoing argument (Dave: I would substitute discussion here instead) about packing! 

So, those of you who read last year's journal know that Dave and I have a fundamental disagreement about packing, specifically what should go, what should stay behind. Jill is a lean packer: she can get along a with a couple pairs of underwear and a toothbrush and call it good (which is slight hyperbole, but you get the idea). She likes light panniers because they are easier to lift plus (and this is important when you get to our vintage age) there are less opportunities to lose stuff if you don’t have it with you to lose in the first place. Dave on the other hand feels reassured by having all his “necessary” (I have no idea why she thinks quotes are needed around "necessary") stuff with him. He feels comforted by his electric toothbrush, electric shaver, more electronics  etc. In addition he is stronger so lifting and riding with heavy panniers is less of a chore. Trying to be fair - this is Jill speaking — I recognize it’s a philosophical difference and there is no right or wrong (but it still still drives me crazy). In any event having a whole day to pack on Sunday allowed us to spend a lot of time dwelling on what - if anything — he was going to leave in the storage unit. His panniers were so stuffed that he determined that he would have to carry his camera around his neck with no option for storing it in the pack. (In the interests of full disclosure, a few days later he managed a pannier rearrangement and the camera now fits).

Dave: OK, in my defense of Jill's assessment of our packing differences, I maintain that the weight differential between, say, packing my electric razor versus packing several straight razors and shaving gel is negligible. As for the electronics, I schlep things for Jill's needs as well as mine--adapters for her Fitbit charger and electric tea kettle come immediately to mind. The extra bulkiness in my panniers comes from hauling extra tubes for our bikes, a bike pump, duct tape, bungee cords, bike lube, cleaning cloths, etc.  I will admit that taking 3 separate jackets takes up a huge amount of space if not weight. So, yes, my panniers are fuller and heavier than Jill's, however, you should have seen her slinging those panniers onto the train! She's buffed up over this past year thanks to her work with our personal trainer. Yes, this ongoing disagreement has yet to reach a rapprochement. 

Because we had an early train the following morning we moved from our favored Novotel in the Munich City neighborhood to the Aloft right across from the Central Station.  In general I would not recommend anyone stay by the Train Station - too chaotic- but if there is a reason to do so (ie: an early train) I would recommend the Aloft. Clean, tidy, nice staff, they let us park our bikes in the garage, and the air conditioning worked (something we no longer take for granted in Europe).   As an aside, they also had a laundry room so Dave did a load. We have not gotten into the swing of things so no pics except this one of us eating a pretty good pinsa (a version of Roman pizza) for dinner. Hopefully we will do better in the future.

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