Day 45: Schleching to Traunstein

May 27, 2022

We failed to get the tracker working at first today, so this is just a partial track. Check the map that follows for a better understanding of where we are.

Heart

Comment

Link

Susanne and Juergen live in the valley of the Grossache, or Tiroler Ache river. This starts in the mountains to the south and flow north into the large lake called the Chiemsee. At the bottom of the map below you can see the valley as the white bit, surrounded by green mountains.

The town of Schleching can be seen quite far south. The hamlet of Raiten is a little north, and the town of Unterwossen is to the east of these. The river flows by these places and many more to the north before dumping into the Chiemsee. These bits of geography will help make sense of our meanderings today.

You may have to zoom in if possible to appreciate this map.

Susanne and Juergen give their address as Schleching, but this is not quite accurate, as they live in Raiten. Schleching is merely the nearest real town. We did not quite make it there, but I understand it qualifies for this because it has one store.

When Susanne announced that she would be cycling in the morning to the bakery, I naturally invited myself onto the excursion. Cycling to the bakery is one of my all time favourite activities. The bakery is of course not in Raiten and it is not even in Schleching, but rather it is in Unterwossen. Unterwossen is literally a metropolis, because it also has an Edeka grocery store as well as a bike shop.

Susanne began by leading me to downtown Raiten, which seems to consist entirely of one church. Nevertheless we met and greeted a man who Susanne identified as the mayor. We also met a flock of goats who live downtown, including two really cute babies.

We descended from Raiten, which is on a small hill, and headed for Unterwossen. I looked up at one building along the way and asked whether this was an apartment building, a hotel, or what. In fact, as in so many of the cases we have already described, it was just a farm house. Various family generations may live on the various floors, and the cows live in the back. Right now the cows are high in the mountains, but they will come back for Winter.

At the bakery I made the expected fool of myself, first by wanting to choose all the items we were getting, and then by taking photos. Susanne had to explain to the staff and customers "Don't worry, he's not (exactly) crazy, he's from Canada".

These are quite standard by now, even for me, but good quality.

Susanne will not often come to buy this fairly extravagant type of bread. She normally sticks to muesli, but today was special.

Susanne sat down with Dodie and set out the best way for us to get back onto the track and/or to Traunstein where we had booked for tonight. We followed the instructions at first (but can not prove it, without the tracker having been running) but ultimately decided to have a peek at the Chiemsee. Doing this was super easy, because in Germany if there is a river, it has a signed bikeway, and if there is a lake, probably it has a bike path around it.

The river passes through meadowland which is a nature preserve. I think we spotted some meadow flowers not seen before, but there have been so many we no longer know. Meadows have been almost as big a feature as hills and mountains when we think about our experience here. Dodie demonstrated a good command of German when I half seriously suggested we should bring a purple marsh iris home. Suddenly she could quote the regulations. No iris for me.

The south end of the Chiemsee is occupied by a km long crammed in trailer park type campsite. It puzzles us that people go for these. After a while we were able t get access to the lake shore, and of course it is lovely. Finally, in the little town of Chieming we stopped for an eis. I got the exotic sounding Mohn Marzipan and Dodie had Hazelnuss. These were a reasonable 1.60 per kugel.

At the Chiemsee. Note the mountains to the South.

Susanne had mentioned the little lake Tuttensee, and we made for that next. This is a very small lake, but great for swimming. We found a very shady spot for eating our sandwiches.

We set off now towards our hotel booking in Traunstein. We are passing through an area with the tall mountains always present to the south, but only a few hills here among the farms and lakes. Soon enough we will dive into the real mountains, but this area is much like the Allgau, if a bit less hilly.

Our way included some small towns, like Vachendorf, with small churches. This one had a slight variation of the onion bulb steeple design. As far as we know, all steeple variations work about the same.

Very quickly our rural surroundings changed to urban ones, as we entered Traunstein. We found ourselves clinging to sidewalks and using the pedestrian cross lights. The town is not much for bikeways. The track shows us cross Bahnhofstrasse three or four times in a block, as we tried to get our bearings. Each crossing would be a performance of looking left and right and left and right again.

Our hotel is in the old town, we think, but we have not really explored. Getting in was too tiring. The hotel itself is big city style, standing directly on the sidewalk and with an elevator and sort of formal room appointments. Our joint reaction was "we hate cities". But who knows, maybe Traunstein will charm us in the morning. After all, it's named for the Traun river, and a place with a river can't be all bad.

Tomorrow excitement picks up for us, as we head directly to Salzburg, home of Mozart, The Sound of Music, tortes, chocolates, and domed churches.

What gave Meaning to Life today? The way in which, after 8 years apart, Susanne and we could pick up our friendship as if no time had passed.

Today's ride: 42 km (26 miles)
Total: 2,603 km (1,616 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	8
Comment on this entry	Comment	0