Day 59: Mittergars to Rosenheim

June 27, 2014

Our room last night was our first experience with a "private zimmer" - which is exactly equivalent to a B and B in North America. We had the run of almost the whole upstairs of the house of Hans and Renate. In the morning, Renate had gone off to work at the supermarket, and Hans put out the breakfast for us. At first he stood by our table and chatted, but soon he sat down with us. Hans spoke German and we spoke English, but somehow we managed to understand each other enough.

I was curious about the house, and its wonderful quality of materials and workmanship. Hans said it had needed a lot of work when they bought it. We gather the work was professionally done. You can't really get this quality out of a Home Depot. However when I pointed out the granite counter tops and suggested they must have been very expensive, Hans downplayed the cost.

We found that Hans, now retired, had been an operator at the run of river power plant just upriver at Jettenbach. The plant has six turbines and a capacity of 20 MW. It is small compared to some others on the river. How Hans and Renate came to own their beautiful house is something I wonder about. It's not just this house, but literally every other one we see - they are large and sturdy, wonderfully outfitted and maintained. I guess it's just what we mean by a "developed" country. But still, we saw later in a real estate window that a house like that is worth about 2 million dollars. How do they manage it?

We talked with Hans about many other topics, even down to Bavarian slang. We found, language aside, that we understand each other, and each respects what the other is doing. Hans saw us out to the driveway, and made sure our waterbottles were full, before sending us warmly on our way. We sure enjoyed meeting these two, and staying in a place that was so clean and beautiful.

The view from our balcony at Hans and Renate's place in Mittersgards

I think the good vibes from this stay helped us with the cycling part of the day. It was needed because the radweg was not behaving at all like a flat and friendly river route. Rather, there was a lot of up and downing, and a lot of gravel. Plus, the signage - which had been switching its sign design or wording a lot, now in spots totally disappeared. This was only a minor problem, because the combination of the GPS, good map, and compass (plus, says Dodie - common sense), brought us through.

We cycled or pushed the bikes around many an isolated farm, through small woods, and beside grain fields. Really, it was quite lovely, though the hills and gravel were pesky. We continued to look at the farm houses - wondering at their huge size and quality construction. One feature, for example, that we see in virtually every building, is doors and windows that can either open normally (swinging in or out on hinges), or tilt inward at the top for ventilation. We can not remember seeing that anywhere in North America.

Gravel path and poor signage. Would you go right here? Wrong!

We missed it at first, but someone tried to help out with signage, using the back of a shovel.

A typical farmhouse door - has the flexible opening feature

For a good part of the day, the path looked like this

By mid day we arrived at a hill overlooking the town of Wasserburg. Wasserburg is a hub of at least four radwegs, but its main interest comes from the altstadt, which sits on a loop in the Inn such that the town is almost on an island. We could look down on the scene from a ridge above the town, and then swoop (or creep) down a steep and windy path leading to a bridge that crosses the Inn and goes right to the main gate of the city.

Inside the gate (which was from 1374) we rows of the three and four story multicoloured houses in what is known as the Inn-Salzach style. As is the case in every European town, there were many restaurants around, with outdoor seating. Outdoor seating is good for us, because it allows us to sit near our bikes, but in Germany/Austria it also means dodging large numbers of smokers. We did find a good spot - at a Chinese restaurant. Chinese people have been able to blend in to so many other cultures. So our German speaking Chinese waiter with menu describing familiar dishes in German was quite normal. He also spoke good English, we found, and also learned that he has relatives in New Brunswick and British Columbia. It's a small world.

As is customary for us, we checked out the local churches. Inside the St Jacobs church we found something a little unusual, for south Germany. A group of high school students were performing some lively modern religious songs (like Oh Happy Day) with speakers and instrumental backup. They really were very good. Outside I noticed a trailer from their school, indicating that they were on tour. This though was just a practice. It soon broke up and most of the kids left the church. I approached a cluster of five of the lead girls and let them know that the English they were singing with was surprisingly without any accent. I was curious if they could also speak this well. And yes, they pretty much could. They credited their school English lessons, though one had spent two years in Ireland.

Just then Dodie came around the corner and said "Aha, I thought I might find you chatting up the ladies!".This gave them a chance to escape, so I can't report anything further about them. It was an interesting change, though, from the dusty and antique atmosphere of all the churches we had earlier stepped in to.

Fed up with the constant short but sharp hills in our route, we left Wasserburg by an alternate that followed the water more closely. This kind of had a gotcha, because while maybe a little less hilly, it was also very gravelly. Also pushing up the hills that were there, on slippy gravel, was not really so much fun. Eventually, though, the route broke out onto a level dike path beside the Inn. The surface was fine gravel, which is not he fastest, but is still ok. We were cruising along this when someone came up from behind and said, in very good English "Aha, from Canada!" It turned out to be Gabi, a lady of maybe our age, who was born in Rosenheim (our destination for the day) and who lives in nearby Stephanskirchen. The good English came from the fact that she had lived in Key West for 25 years. Gabi only returned home when it became necessary to care for her mother, who had been afflicted with dementia. He husband is currently living 16 km down river, andshe had been to visit him. Apparently, when you live on the Inn, 16 km for a visit is a spin on the bicycle. Even after 25 years in Key West, I don't think Gabi would consider fooling with a car for such a brief trip!

One kind of interesting thing from Gabi was to call our attention to the grey Geese in the river. These, she said, were introduced by the psychologist Conrad Lorenz,who did the famous experiments with imprinting. Gaby was not so impressed, complaining that the geese poop everywhere.

Gabi led us into Rosenheim, and showed us around for a bit. Then after a stop at Tourist Information, she took us over to the guest house they recommended. So we chalk up another really welcoming encounter in this region.

Rosenheim has only one remaining city gate, and we passed through that into the old part of town. Like Wasserburg, there are four story multicoloured and plaster decorated buildings in the main square. We picked up a pamphlet that lists 21 things to see in "A Walk Around the Historic Town Centre". Two days ago a bizarre summer cold hit me, and I have been slowly weakening. Today, I tended to drag behind Dodie. So she felt a guest house would do me good, despite the (for now) fine weather. However, even sick, it's hard to keep the Grampies down. We dumped our stuff in the guesthouse and set off with the pamphlet in hand. So now we have pretty much seen ("used up") the 21 things. Some of them appear in the photos below, and are (or soon will be) described in the captions.

We understand that there is a market on here tomorrow, plus some music presentations in the square, and a possible organ concert in one of the churches. So while we will not be wanting to spend another night here, we will only slowly make our way through the town and out tomorrow.

In the city - news of Germany's win in ther world cup match

Our Wasseerburg exit route looked like this

Rosenheim was earlier a salt trading city. Brine was pumped here 110 km by wooden pipeline. This is one last remaining pump house

These buidings, the "Gillitzerblock" were built in 1894-97 by a Munich entrepreneur. The style is Neo-Renaissance-Baroque Revival. However, in the late 1960s a large section was pulled down to build this department store. People here are still ticked about it.

We ate supper at this guest house. The sign depicts the use of flat bottomed barges pulled by boats on the river.

We think this is part of the family that owns the guest house, but we snapped the shot only to illustrate blond hair and dirndls

In a shop window at Rosenheim. To be clear, these are not props for whatever clothes they are really selling in the store, these are the clothes they sell in this mainstream store.

Today's ride: 53 km (33 miles)
Total: 3,094 km (1,921 miles)

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