Day 60: Rosenheim to Hundham

June 28, 2014

We knew that since today was Saturday, there would be a market scheduled in Ludwigplatz in the altstadt of Rosenheim, and that there is an organ concert at one of the churches as well. As a plus, we had seen the stage set up for a choral presentation in the next square over, so we planned to hang around a bit, and take in the action.

We were headed for the market first, but got attractedy the sound of the organ, coming from the St Nikolaus church. This is the one whose tower is most noticeable on the Rosenheim skyline. Gabi had mentioned that though the church looked good on the outside, it had been turned to blah on the inside. We found that to be quite the case. In fact, such stained glass as there was looked a lot like the stuff you may put in a window with your kids. The organ recital was only to be at noon, and that would have stretched our patience, since we are always eager to get going. However here before 9 someone was no doubt rehearsing (we could not see the keyboard or who was playing) so we got to hear the sound without waiting around.

To be honest, the organ sound was not as rich as we might have imagined, and Dodie quipped that it sounded much like something from a scary film. However, we did pick up one Pope card - John XXIII I realized that collecting popes was ultimately going to be uninteresting, because churches seem to only focus on the most recent ones. This is quite different from their interest in saints - any saint of any vintage is fair game.

Realizing that I myself was not up on even 20th century popes, I fired up the wiki article on the Popes. The total number of popes is often in dispute, but the official tally is 266, from Peter (the first) to Francis (the current incumbent). It would be much easier to keep track of US Presidents, since there we have only 44.

I noted that although I could pick up lots of material on John XXIII, there is nothing on his successor, Paul VI - who ruled for 16 years, or the ill fated John Paul I who followed Paul VI but died after 33 days in office, under mysterious circumstances, in 1978.

To the market, then. This turned out to be a craft only market - so no cheeses or sausages. Moreover, what they mean by crafts seems to include only really traditional crafts: basket making, spinning, felting, blacksmithing, lace making, or crafting leder hosen parts or belts. Interestingly, almost all the crafters were wearing lederhosen or dirndl. But it was not just the crafters. In fact perhaps half of the locals who had come to the market were wearing traditional dress. To be fair, many of the people circulating around may have been part of choir groups to appear later, civic officials, and such like. Maybe we could say that anyone who felt a need to dress up a bit was traditionally dressed. We got the strong impression that the people of Rosenheim are not self consciously preserving or displaying their traditions, they are living them.

We set ourselves up to one side of the square, placing our stools and preparing to watch events unfold. I went over to a fruit stand and got some apricots and cherries. Cherries are in season here now and are great. I know my German pronouciation is atrocious, so it was natural for the fruit lady to tell me the total cost in English, though I had not used any in talking to her. I came back and said to Dodie in mock horror: "How did she know to speak to me in English!" Later in the day, I got all fouled up between "Richtung" and "Rechnung" (direction vs. the bill). I still have a long long way to go!

When the time came to get the choral presentation going, a lady (maybe the mayor) gave a nice speech. She was followed by a man who after speaking for a time, blew a pitch pipe for himself and sang an anthem like song that I took to be the Rosenheim "song" but in retrospect was an ode to music, in Rosenheim. It surprised us that the assembled crowd seemed to suddenly produce a program or songbook, and all sang along.

After that, choral groups that took the stage were quite weak, and we drifted away. Because of the crowds, we could not leave the city by the way we came in. So we circled around, and got ourselves lost. The GPS is helpful for this, of course, but in bright sunlight we can not see the darn thing. Ultimately we got onto pretty much the right track for eventually getting out of town. It was a good way, too, because we ran into a bike shop on the way. I have been concerned about the chain link thing and wanted to talk to somebody about it. But in the shop, on a Saturday, there were too many real customers for me to get to speak to anyone. We carried on, and happened on a second bike shop within a block. This one was less busy, and the owner gave me a quick link to try, if needed. It was of a style I have not seen before. If I do not end up using it (or if I do) it will be a good souvenir.

While I was in the bike shop, by coincidence Gabi, our friend from yesterday, happened by on her bike. So when I came out of the shop, Dodie and Gabi were having an enjoyable reunion. On this second meeting, and without being in the situation of pedalling on a path, we seemed to delve into some new topics with Gabi. She talked about the fight to prevent fracking that could threaten nearby lakes, the need to keep GMOs out of Europe, the lifestyle in Italy - and which parts would be the best to visit, pollution around Venice, and sneaky stuff that German politicians could try to slip by the people while they are glued to the TV watching the World Cup.

Gabi said it was a little tricky to reach the Inn from where we were at, but we assured her that the GPS had it all tracked. This turned out to be not quite so, but eventually we did get back on the familiar straight gravel path by the straight river. So we pedalled the 14 km to Raubling in this familiar mode. And so came to an end our traverse of the Inn Radweg. By first coming down river from Innsbruck to Raubling, and then coming upriver from Passau to Raubling, we had pretty much done it all. So we hung a right (as usual for the Inn route - unmarked) and got ready to challenge the Bodensee-Konigssee route, to the Bodensee.

Before we had cycled long, we decided to pause at a bench and fuel up with some stuff confiscated from breakfast that morning. I fired up the tablet, and casually brought forth the weather forecast. Sunny today, said the Weather Channel app, but 100 percent chance of rain tomorrow, and oh, pretty much 100 percent chance of rain for most days of the week or more to come.

Now, this part of the Bodensee- Konigssee is the one we have always known was going to be the tough one. It traverses the feet of the Tirol Alps, and seems to go through some pretty remote and rough territory. Camping places are few and far between, and we are not so sure about guest houses, let alone grocery stores. So how did we feel about doing this in the rain?

We could see that Raubling has a train line going through it, so we should be able to find a station. Then maybe we could take a train to someplace like Bregenz, where we have our friend Bernie, stash the bikes, and bug off to Switzerland while the rains fell. In the end, all that seemed like too much work, so we just pedalled onwards, Weather Channel be damned.

What we pedalled into was at first very pleasant. The route led through a broad valley, with dairy farms, beautiful fields, and sweeping views. The path was beautiful and well paved, and any slopes not extreme. Really remarkable in this region was the size of the farm houses. As usual, we are talking about dramatically sturdy buildings, but also huge. Typically, a third of the place would be the family home and two thirds would be barn. But even the home part is something like a small apartment building. Style is also now drifting back to the chalet with red flowers in boxes hanging from second floor balconies.

We could see the honeymoon period with the route heading for a sudden end. On my map, the darkly shaded mountains were encroaching on our broad valley. And on Dodie's map, the chevron hill indicators on the route line were cropping up. At the same time, any camping, or towns large enough to support guest houses were far off. So up we went, into the never never.

We have seen long hills before - but this is always in Canada, approaching the Rockies, and we are always in the van saying "Boy are we ever glad we are not cycling this one!". But now here we were approaching the Alps, and we were cycling, or at least pushing. My cold had sapped a lot of strength - in fact had I been at home I probably would have been in bed. I pushed my bike, and in spots Dodie's too. Poor Dodie's knees felt it too. We pushed for a lot of hours. Meanwhile, maybe especially because of it being Saturday, scads of daredevils on motorbikes were zooming on the road. They were joined by crazies on ATVs, also speeding, car drivers who felt they owned the whole road, and lycra warriors heading down at 70 kph, their wheels whirring madly.

Finally, around the minute hamlet of Sonnenreuth we appeared to have reached the top. We started down a super steep descent. It was one of those where you hope your wheels don't overheat or your brake arms give up. Unlike the lycra people we could not just blast down - packed bikes are too unstable.

At the bottom, Dodie said "We missed a turn - we have to go back up". My reaction was a no brainer - I simply did not have the strength to go back up. So we continued on a larger road to the slightly larger hamlet of Hundham. On the larger road, the crazy drivers could drive a little crazier, but the distance for us was not so great.

Meanwhile, thunder began in the mountains. Hey, that rain forecast was not until tomorrow! Still, we put on the rain gear. It looked like some guesthouses might pop up about 10 km further on, at Fischbachau. Easy to reach, unless the road wanted to be 10 km straight up.

When we reached Hundham, we found one of those giant houses, the ones with the barn in part and the living quarters in another part. It was called the Alter Wirt - loosely, the Old Inn. It was built in 1513, and looked great to us. It looked even better as the sky opened and rain pelted down. The proprietor guided us to zoom the bikes around and put them into the barn section, near the cows.

How to describe the place.. Old and beautiful furniture. Halls filled with armoires and knickknacks. Large room, large common spaces, lots of religious pictures on the walls.pictures of family members - dead, I guess, and a real restaurant in operation on the ground floor! Our waiter was wearing lederhosen - not because he was waitering for tourists, we felt, but because that is what he wears. The food was all totally authentic and home made - soup with home made noodles, potato salad with cucumbers, shredded horse radish, veggie flavoured butter, apple strudel, etc. It was costly, but oh so good. Our room itself is 58 euros with breakfast - very reasonable for Germany - and is it ever fun to be in this old, huge, 1/3 barn, 1/3 farm house/hotel, and 1/3 restaurant - with the red flowers on the front.

The St Nikolaus church features a bone from the saint - encased here in the centre bottom

Intresting angles, though, on the exterior of the church

Dodie at the wool lust store! (Lust does not exactly mean "lust" in German!)

Spinners. Craft like this is alive where we live too, but somehow you no longer see a scene like this at a market.

Erdbeeren schnitte - I am still looking for a really great one

Lederhosen cost hundreds of euros, but presumably one pair lasts a long time

I thought this fellow looked pretty handsome in his outfit

The blacksmith was showing kids how to hammer out red hot metal

Speeches in the square. Rosenheim seems to have lots of community spirit

This group must have been waiting for their turn on stage, as all had identical outfits. The cross piece for their suspenders had a lyre image on it.

The new sign we haveto follow is on the right. We finfit small and rather indistinct

An example of the huge farm houses that are common along this part of the route. We took photos of a number of them, just to show how many of these amazing buildings are all over the place.

The mountains are drawing near, but so far the route is great.

Cycling on route like this is really fun

The farms are mainly dairy. Look kids, here are some baby cows.

The road began to climb, and did so for at least 10 km.

This radar tracked me at 4 kph, but this is a trick photo. When it was taken I was **walking**

Ok, one more farmhouse photo. Just look at the thing!

We finally came to stay in one of the giant houses

We made it just in time, this is the view from the barn section of the house, where we stashed the bikes

Today's ride: 45 km (28 miles)
Total: 3,139 km (1,949 miles)

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