Day 28: Schongau, Germany to Reutte, Austria

August 18, 2015

It has suddenly occurred to me that this morning was our last German breakfast, ever, or at least for this trip, or year. So any fun there has been with seeing who had the best buffet should now be replaced by moaning about the thinness of Italian and French offerings. Hey wait, there is still some fun left - we will be in Austria for maybe two nights, coming up!

Leaving the guesthouse - the Blau Traube - we again had the gentle pleasure of looking at the town in the calm of morning. Not only is the town calm, but we are calm - no longer wondering what is where and where we will stay. Of course, now that we didn't need it, the Tourist Information was open, so we sent Dodie in anyway. She came out with a little treasure in the form of two maps covering the entire Via Claudia, packaged in a durable cellophane carry wallet! It is rare for any tourist information to cover anything but their little town or maybe nearby region, so this multi country effort was really something.

The Blau Traube - our costly guesthouse in Schongau

Downtown Schongau - nice houses, but no fachwerk

An ebike charging station. You lock your battery into the litle compartment, which has a plug inside. Ebike support here is strong, because the people recognize their value!

One of our new Via Claudia maps. This will help Steve, especially, know where he is!

Before leaving town, we were heading for the Maria Himmelfahrt church, and ran in to Bev and Jenni again - as they prepared to head, like us, for Reutte. We showed them our map treasure and Jenni headed on in, returning with her very own copy. The tour company has provided an English booklet that gives turn by turn directions, much like the German content in a Bikeline book. However, Bev and Jenni have found that it is nearly impossible to follow printed turn by turn directions, especially if you miss a turn and get lost. We think now that GPS really is the most powerful tool (next to a good map with the route marked on it).

The church looked plain just when glancing in the door, but a quick turn revealed a full on Baroque extravaganza. The ceiling paintings are always interesting to look closely at in such churches. At first the elaborate pastel colours just convey a sense of drama or perhaps luxury. But the actual subjects in the painting are often weird. Consider one of a man (who at a distance appeared to be picking his nose) with a skeleton looking over his shoulder: Also a bit unique was a full size Christ statue - normal - but this one was in normal colours and set at ground level. Have a look:

From below he looked like he was picking his nose

On the way out of town we ran by an OBI! Boy were we glad we had not climbed a mountain at Landsberg to reach the one there. Since we have lots of gaz now, and don't need any lawnmowers or such just now, we reluctantly just sailed on by.

Almost immediately out of Landsberg, we noticed a change in the landscape. Whereas we had grown accustomed to drought damaged corn surrounding solid but dull villages, we now had very green pastures, often with Brown Swiss cows (with bells!), and scattered picturesque barns or farm houses. This was the beginning of the "alm" (alpine pastures), and the foothills of the Alps. As the day progressed, this landscape rapidly became the norm. Even some proper chalet style houses appeared, and these had proper red geraniums.

For some reason I was slow to adjust, to realize that we were really there - really almost in the Tirol. I think I had expected it earlier, and when somehow it was not where I expected, I subconsciously stopped expecting it. So when suddenly the mountains appeared on the horizon, it was a bit of "what the heck?".

Our most typical path for the mid part of the day

Geese, being raised en masse for Christmas, presumably

Halfway through the day, who should pull up from behind us but Julia and Bjorn, on their tandem. Of course it was fun to meet again, and Bjorn had been looking at this blog. "Hey, he said", "You were going to put us in the blog, what happened?" "When di you check it?", I asked. "Seven o'clock".

Boy, oh, boy - after cycling all day (until 6:30 yesterday), now I have readers that expect the day to get published by 7 p.m.! Well, it's 9:00 p.m. now, and I have minimum 2 hours or typing and fooling around to do on it. Sorry!

Julia and Bjorn pulled ahead, but we knew we would see them again, and in fact we did - at least twice - as they stopped for various frivolous reasons, like eating and this day even swimming.

Though equipped for camping, Julia and Bjorn, like us, had stayed in a guest house last night. So we asked how they had made out in terms of pilfering food for lunch. They had done well, it turned out, and Bjorn even said he still had a mohn schnecke (poppyseed danish) from yesterday. I had the feeling I could talk him out of it, but I was confidently looking forward to finding a bakery in Lechbruck. Here is where the tendency of the route planners to take you away from things comes in, and I barely saw Lechbruck, let alone a bakery. This came into play a couple of hours later, in Fussen, as you will read below.

Fussen sits at the south end of the Forggensee, one of the most beautiful lakes going. The Forggensee is a lake on the river Lech, which also is beautiful, and to the south even more so, as it exits the Alps. On the east side of the lake stands the two famous castles Neuschwannstein and Hohenschwangau, and behind them, the mountains. It is a most idyllic scene.

Today, unfortunately, the weather had been highly variable. The temperature started at 15, went to 25, then back to 20, all in variable amounts of sunshine and rain. Finally, it fell below 15 and the rain was more on than off. This all obscured the castles, lake, and mountains, making for only marginal photo ops.

The Via Claudia runs down the west side of the lake, while the Romantische Strasse runs on the east. We were on the west, and encountered either riding by a busy road or riding on gravelly paths that went up and down small hills. Except for some smooth and beautiful path that we also there, it was fairly uncomfortable riding.

Before long we pulled up in front of the Tourist Information at Fussen. We have been in this town twice before, and we like it a lot. But the Tourist Information has a fountain in front that perversely just splashes down onto the pavement. Invariably this splashes us as well. On a hot day this could be fine, but we have a 100 percent record of being there in the rain. So we are always jockeying for the limited dr space on the steps in front of the building.

As with our other visits, the place was swarming with tourists. We had a decision to make. We could go into the tourist information and see what was available in a reasonable guest house (though we saw many no vacancy signs as we cycled in to town), then toddle over to Reutte (20 km) tomorrow, and the next day launch our attempt to walk, peddle, and bus over the passes. Or, we could head straight to Reutte, though it was already quite late, and save one day. Reutte, in addition, had nearby camping.

By now it had begun to rain quite heavily, and we had no idea if the road to Reute was all uphill, or anything else about it. So what did we decide? Go for it. Leave town late and in the rain and see where the chips would fall. Now that's the Grampie spirit!

However, the Grampie spirit also required some kaffee and kuchen. No use tackling the mountains on an empty stomach. Fortunately, the way to Reutte led through the main pedestrian street. That was good, because we also would appreciate a small touch of tourist chaos.

Since I never forget a bakery, I said to Dodie "I know this is a good bakery", as we pulled abreast of bakery Brunners. Now Dodie, with the decision to head to the next town having been made, was keen to get going. She said "I can't be hanging around while you search the town for a certain bakery!" "No", I replied, " I didn't say I know of a good bakery, I said I know this is a good bakery!" So I left Dodie to puzzle over those semantics and dashed into Brunners. I remembered they had good erdbeeren schnitte! What I found, though, was a herd of Asian people, crowding about and trying to buy the place out. The one sales girl was trying to cope with the requests, made in fractured English, whereas she could barely understand any English anyway. By the time they were done, I knew there was no time to allocate to actually eating something messy, so I got some mohn schnecke and some nuss schneke and ran out to rescue Dodie from standing in the street.

(She appreciated it - she says, on being read back this story!)

Now we both were united in wanting to leave town quickly, and it became an annoyance to have so many people in the street. Still, we patiently trudged along, pushing the bikes. Not so patient was a young Asian woman, who cut between us, and in so doing caught the right side of my handlebar. This jerked it forward, and the other, mirror side, backward. I got smacked by my own mirror, and my (bad) shoulder got yanked. Seeing this, Dodie tried to chase down the rude woman, presumably to leave a tire track up her back, but the girl was too fast. I appreciated Dodie's defensive reaction. I did not appreciate getting smacked by my own mirror - I am more used to attack from truck mirrors!

Downtown Fussen, a familiar place to us now that it is our third visit.

The path to Reutte gave us concern at first, as it started off as a gravel path, and then threatened to put us on road with the cars. Had that been the case, we would have pulled the plug and taken a train. Fortunately, the path settled down, wending its way safely through a series of small villages. All around stood tall mountains, though in the rain we could not see too much.

The Via Claudia signs have mostly disappeared, replaced by these

It was raining quite heavily as we approached Reutte, though it was tending still to be on and off. It was enough, though, to trigger the guest house instinct. So as we passed into town, we asked at the first hotel. 129 euros. We did not have a chance to say forget it, since they were fully booked! We arrived at the tourist information at 5:10. They close, of course, at 5:00. Still there was a touch screen hotel booking system outside. All German, of course, but when we know what to expect, we can figure it out quite well. As far as we could see, there were only four outfits in the region with any vacancy. The thing is, being car oriented, the tourist information considers anything within about 20 car minutes to be local. Grrr. We pulled out the phone to call a guest house we had spotted the previous day on Trivago. The phone must have noticed it was now in Austria, and refused to connect to a network. Grrr.

So now that the rain had let up, I said we should proceed to the camping, but keep an eye out for a guest house on the way. that's how we ran into the Hotel Das Beck. The lady inside said they were fully booked, except for a "junior suite". This sounded like it could be too small for ordinary humans, but no, she, explained, this had a bed room and a sitting room, in addition to a bathroom. 100 euros! I went back in the street for a management committee meeting, and found the other member shivering in the wet. Sold, for 100 euros!

Soon, Dodie found herself dragging bags up stairs, with me having charged on ahead. Two staff members made to help her and took the bags, asking the room number. Dodie didn't know, since I had the key. So they asked for her name. She must not have understood the question, for she did not answer right away. Consequently they asked again, this time shouting. Dodie thinks they thought she must be dim witted - making shouting a good strategy! It was a bit of a tiring ending for a bit of a damp and tiring day.

The day, unfortunately, could not end there, because all we had succeeded in doing was to position ourselves sort of near the beginning of the Fern Pass, which is the pass that precedes the Reschen Pass. We need to go over both before descending into Italy. We began by rereading an email from Trish Graham, in which she describes tackling the passes. Then we looked at our material from back home, about the shuttle bus over the Fern Pass. The hotel lady also weighed in, expressing the certainty that we had no hope of crossing the Fern Pass unaided. We decided to agree with her and Trish, and seek out the shuttle. So now we have booked the shuttle, but only for late in the day tomorrow - to give time to get to Biberwier, the town down the road that the shuttle starts at. And we booked a guest house at Nasserrieth, where the bus stops. From there, we will think about getting over the next pass. No one says we can not walk or cycle that one, but then there is also a possible bus too. One step at a time.

Our swanky hotel room, last one in Reutte!

Today's ride: 55 km (34 miles)
Total: 1,434 km (891 miles)

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