Day 22

September 9, 2021

Errands at the airport

There’s a Vegan political party in Germany. No for real. Their motto is “vegan changes a lot more.” Basically save the world from climate change by going vegan.

Today is my last full day in Europe. I have a few errands to run today, most importantly being the required covid test. But first I’m wasting a little time since hotel checkout at the Hampton isn’t until noon.

I wasn’t sure what I would do my next to last night. Originally I’d thought maybe I would ride back to Brixen, but you know how that turned out. Since I needed that covid test and the only info I could find online was about doing it at the airport, I booked a room at the Hampton Inn. I’m not sure why I didn’t book here sooner. This place is great. €80 got me a really nice room with a big bed with 4 fluffy pillows, a huge tv, a desk, a couch, a great bathroom with towels that I’ve already raved about. But the crowning moment was breakfast. I’ve been complaining about the lack of healthy stuff at breakfasts in Italy. Today I had a huge buffet selection. Pancakes, hash browns, scrambled eggs, sausage (no thanks), cereal, rolls, vegetables, fruit, croissants, yogurt, different types of juice and coffee and tea. I’m sure I’m forgetting something. It was worth the €80 alone. It doesn’t appear they have an airport shuttle. That would be the one downside. I’ll clarify that when I leave in a bit. With a good transport option I would make this my default place to stay when flying into München. I liked having my bike in the room with me too. It deserves a nice place to sleep after all it’s been through too. (I did ask about transit to the airport. They contract with someone to provide transit, but most people take the bus to the S-Bahn and ride the two stops to the airport. Easy enough.)

After breakfast I packed up and left my panniers at the hotel and rode the 9 mile round trip to the airport. It remarkable how you can bike right up to the front doors of the airport completely on separated bike trails. Not many airports are set up to permit that. The trail takes you past all of the service areas and presumably is set up to allow airport workers to commute to work by bike. I like it. It took me a a bit to find the covid test center. With the use of Google maps and a reasonably good map provided by the testing center website, I was able to locate the facility. It’s in the main shopping center of the r airport one level below all the checkin counters. I was expecting a long line, but actually I didn’t have to wait long at all to get my test. For the rapid antigen test it cost €41 to have them shove a q-tip way up both of my nostrils and another one into my throat. Quite thorough compared to the same test in the US. It was also rather unpleasant. I then wandered around the airport for 30 minutes until I got my negative rest result and then had them print me a hard copy of it. I am now free to return to the US and transit through Iceland. With that weight off my chest it was time for the next project for the day.

Every time I go to Europe I buy a few German booked to bring back with me. I used to buy Asterix and Obelix comic books, but my German has now matured beyond that stage to children’s books, usually the 8-12 yr old range. The nearest book store looked to be in Neufahrn across the Isar river from Halbergmoos. I returned first to the Hampton Inn to retrieve my panniers so I had somewhere to put my previous purchase and rode the 13 mile round trip to Neufahrn. It was an interesting ride through the corn fields. The area out by the airport is dead flat and the main roads all seem to have good bike trails along them. It would be a super place to ride a velomobile. Sadly mine is sleeping in my garage at home. Once into Neufahrn I got sidetracked at a bakery where I purchased a slice of Erdbeerschnitte. This one had a chocolate cake layer which was odd. It was okay. Better than the Himbeerschnitte yesterday, but not in my Schnitte hall of fame. Even though I sat outside to eat it I still had to fill out the German state tracking form. I gave them my US contact info. By the time they might track me down I’ll be long since back in the states.

The book store is on the town square. I found the town square easily enough, but I had problems finding the bookstore. It turned out to be rather a small affair with one copy of each book in stock. The children’s book selection was actually the broadest section in the store. While I wouldn’t say it was extensive, I did manage to buy 4 titles of interest and supported a small business in the process.

I read the first chapter already of the Zebra book. It’s a winner. It had mentioned burping multiple times.

The checkin time for my hotel tonight was 3pm at the earliest. I’d now killed sufficient time to ride back to the next hotel and pack up the bike. I am never enthusiastic about this stage of things. One, it means the trip is over, and two, it’s tricky fitting everything in the suitcase, or bike box as it was in previous years. To pack the bike up I need to remove the seat and seat mesh, both tires, the derailleur and derailleur hanger so they don’t get bent, and take the chain off so I can pull the boom with the cranks out. It’s a bit of a pain, but it beats hauling a massive box around. Once that was done I hauled the whole thing into the elevator and up to my roof level room.

Let’s talk about the room, shall we? I stayed in this hotel my first trip and I have good memories of the experience. The airport shuttle is convenient and I recall the rooms being nice. That was 6 years ago. Since then, things have aged a bit and of course business for hotels by the airport is slow due to covid. The room was clean and the bathroom was nice, but I Cohen to get the door to lock from the inside. Weird. Then I started having problems getting the door locked and unlocked from the outside. It appeared the lock wasn’t lining up quite right. I also couldn’t get the internet to connect. And then as I was walking down the stairs to go talk to reception about the lock and internet problem, I passed several bags of trash sitting outside the elevator door. Okay then....

Reception took note of the issues with internet and the lock and offered to let me change rooms which I accepted. As for the trash, well, they are renting out at least one of the rooms that had a kitchen and apparently there have been some issues with these renters thinking room service would take care of the trash for them. She said sometimes they just leave it in the elevator. The receptionist indicated a desire to see these renters kicked out. I imagine a lot of these hotels are struggling to make ends meet. I can see the attraction to taking on renters. Germany also has problems like the US does with a lack of housing, particularly affordable housing.

Beyond that, I really don’t have anything of internet to report. My flight leaves around 2pm. I’ll take the shuttle to the airport, check in my suitcase and one carryon, and then stop at the grocery store in the airport to stock up on however much German deliciousness I can cram in my pannier (likely not nearly as much as I would like.)

Sorry, no gorgeous pictures today, but here’s one just to remind you of what mountains look like.

Today's ride: 23 miles (37 km)
Total: 583 miles (938 km)

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