Part 2
The snake speeds up upon spotting us and disappears into the grass. I have never seen a snake in Germany in the 3 years I lived here and in all my visits. Let's just wait by the car. We do not have to wait long before a car pulls up and an elderly woman gets out. "Herr Jones?" "Ja!" This is Herr Sailor's mother and she is a joy to be near. Smiling and chatting away she shows us to our apartments.
The girls and I are bunking in zimmer #8. As we open
the door there is a small kitchenette with sink, stove, refrigerator. The bedroom has a table with 2 chairs, a
king size bed, a small sofa that opens into a bed and a large schrank. The bath is a nice size and gleams. There
is a Balkon that looks out onto a pretty pasture and the rear of the farmhouse. I can hear the gentle roar of a
small waterfall out back in the trees. Barbara and Janice have a nice room, #7, that has a king size bed along
with table and chairs, sofa and a large schrank. They have a kitchenette but no refrigerator. The bath is also
very nice. Their balcony connects into ours. There is a community frig out in the hall. Price for room #8 is €
45 a nite and #7 is € 42. This does not include breakfast. We settle in and unpack our bags.
My Mom and sisters are staying at the AFRC General
Patton Hotel. They have arrived before us as they bypassed Füssen. Shortly my sister Judy calls me on one
of our walkie-talkies and invites us over to their hotel. We drive over to the General Patton and pass thru Security
here without any problems. The hotel has a direct connect AT&T telephone here to the States and making easy
use of my calling card, I try to call the mothers of the teenagers to let the girls talk to their Mom's. But no
one is home so they leave messages. Everyone in my group votes to eat supper here in the main dining room. Limited
menu but the food is filling, not badly priced and have to admit getting plenty of ice in our drinks is nice.
After eating and messing around the General
Patton a few minutes, we leave to hit a Tengelmann's for supplies and head back to our rooms. Herr Sailor stops
by to say hello after we get back and offers assistance if we need any. The teens are somewhat bored at the farm.
They go for a walk to checkout the Schwimmbad and ice stadium about one km down the road back into town. I kill
the time sitting out on the balcony watching the cows and taking notice of a huge thunderstorm moving up thru the
valley from the Eibsee area. Fortunately the girls get back in time before the storm hits us. I move inside the
room as the rain starts to pour down and the wind is blowing hard and do some reading before going to sleep. The
girl's work on the journals they are keeping of the trip. The rainstorm has cooled things down nicely.
Friday June 13th, is another sunny and warm day although not as bad as the previous 4 days. Temps in the 85 to
88 degree range and again the humidity is not bad. Our breakfast is cereal, rolls, meat, cheese and juice. This
is our short version of a German breakfast. I'm ready to go but everyone else is still in the middle of getting
ready so I take a few minutes to give our auto a quick bath. Oma Sailor is outside and we talk a few minutes. She
is a very pleasant lady with her German easy to understand. Sometimes I have trouble with understanding folks as
they talk but for some reason not this lady.
I get notice from Barbara that disaster has struck. The adapter for the hair dryers and such is MIA. They cannot finish getting ready. Adverting a catastrophe I drive to town and purchase a 220 volt hair dryer. Shortly my gang is ready to go, I call my sister on the radio and they are moving slow this morning. I tell her we'll catch up with them later in the day. We leave Garmisch and soon are at the Ettal Kloster. Usually parking is tight, but this morning (10am) there is hardly anyone here. We spend close to an hour wandering the grounds and looking thru the souvenir stands.
Moving on we head for Linderhof and it's not long before we are there. Again I'm surprised there are not many cars in the parking lot. We park maybe a 100 meters from the first souvenir stand you encounter as you start the walk up to the Schloss Kasse. There are hardly any buses in the parking lot. Every time I've been here before it has been wall-to-wall people. Making our way up to the cashier we find the next English tour starts in 10 minutes. Purchasing tickets we walk over to the Schloss finding it completely covered in canvas including the roof. There is a complete facelift to the outside in progress. However the grounds are untouched and as pretty as usual. I take a seat in the shade on a bench near the front fountain as I'm not going on the inside tour. I still cannot get over the lack of tourists here. After a while I move to the rear of the Linderhof and meet everyone coming out. We take several pictures of ourselves at the horse fountain here. I always get a kick out of seeing this part of the grounds. I have photos of my family and me taken back in 1968. Nothing has changed here since then except the shrubs are different widths and heights. We walk the grounds taking pictures and work our way over to the souvenir stands. I hit an imbiss here for a bratwurst und semmel. The teens get orders of pommes. Buying a few postcards we soon move on.
We backtrack to Hwy 23 and head north going up to Rottenbuch to visit the Kirche located here. It is only 4 kms or so from the Echelsbacher Brücke. The church is a very plain building located in a compound with several other structures. I see one souvenir stand. We park almost at the front door of the church. Upon entering my breath is taken away. A most beautiful sight! This place is equal, maybe exceeds, the beauty of the Wies. And it is virtually unknown. It is so pretty I find it hard to believe the place is not crawling with tourists. Thanks go to Greg (CooperGunner) for his recommendation to visit this incredible unspoiled place.
From here we drive over to the Wieskirche. It is not as crowded as I've seen it in the past. No tour buses and easy to find a parking spot. We walk up to the church and spend several minutes here, a very pretty place. The girls buy a few postcards and we move on. The day's sightseeing is about over. A good day as we got to see lots of sights and have not spent all day in the car. We stop at the Echelsbacher for a few minutes. Walking out onto the bridge, one gets a better perspective of the height of the bridge vs. driving across it. You also get a nice view of the river and valley below. We take the short walk down to a viewing stand that looks over to the bridge, be careful here as the platform has a couple of rotten boards in the floor.
We head back to the farm as it is getting to be late afternoon. I drop Barb and Janice off, but the girls and I drive over to the Partenkirchen part of town to checkout the Sommer-Rodelbahn ride. This is a stainless steel track located over by the Olympia Skistadion. The girls go for several rides having a ball. We scout out the Kainzbad located near here also. This is a very nice looking park-like swim area. They want to go swimming but we are running out of time. We have reservations to eat at the Gasthof Fraundorfer tonight and need to get moving. We pickup Barbara, drive over to the General Patton so my Mom and sisters can follow me over to the Fraundorfer. Janice is tired and elects to say in her room. Just before getting to the General Patton I stop at a gas station and pickup a vignette sticker for use in Austria. We park on Ludwigstrasse just a block or so from the restaurant. Our reservations are for 8pm and we are on time.
As always this place is packed full with Americans. We are seated near the front door with a family that is stationed in Heidelberg with the Army. Everyone gets a kick out of the young fellows performing their dances.
The meals here have huge portions and nearly everyone is unable to finish their meal. Barbara has the Toast Hawaii (€8.20). I have the Sauerbraten with mashed potatoes and semmelknodel (€8.80).
Lauren has the Schweine Schnitzel with pommes (€10.80).
Laurin has the Puten cordon bleu with
mashed potatoes and a mixed salad (€12.80). We drink several colas and eistees. After eating and talking for a
while, we walk up Ludwigstrasse a bit looking in some of the shops, but soon head back to our rooms.
Saturday June 14th, again the day is sunny and warm. We are going over to Füssen and Neuschwanstein today.
We are traveling on the road that runs past Linderhof then along the Plansee and runs into Hwy 314 near Reutte.
This is a very pretty drive. We stop along the Plansee for a few minutes to take pictures.
We meet up with my Mom and sisters at a parkplatz in
Hohenschwangau. My Mom and sister Judy have decided not to take the Neuschwanstein tour,
but my sister Penny is going with us. We hike over to the castle Kasse and find no lines. Matter of fact no one
is here at all waiting to buy a ticket. Last time I was here the line was a mile long and had dreaded this, knowing
we were in for a wait. We purchase tickets for the next tour starting in an hour. We take the bus up the hill and
walk over to the Marienbrücke killing a few minutes and getting some wonderful photos.
The English tour of the castle is a good one and
we enjoyed it very much. Our day of sightseeing is about over. I had planned the whole day for Neuschwanstein due
to my thinking it would be mega crowded. But we are able to finish up early due to the absence of tourists. We
head over to Füssen grabbing some quick lunch at the Nordsee imbiss and ice cream cones at one of the many
eis stands here. Most of the shops are closed.
We start back on Hwy 314 toward Reutte, Austria, following it over to Lermoos turning onto Hwy 187, which becomes Hwy 23 as we re-enter Germany. We are soon in Garmisch and decide to do a little window-shopping in town. We parked at the Spielbank underground garage. Most of the shops here are still open. In a short while we return to Herr Sailor's. The teens ask if they can go swimming for an hour or so and walk down to the Alpspitz-Wellenbad. I fix myself a sandwich and park myself out on the balcony. I notice another storm moving in up from the Eibsee after about 90 minutes or so and get the car to drive down to pickup the girls. I meet them on the road as they are walking back. They are somewhat upset as some fellow at the Schwimmbad accused them of sneaking into the pool and threatened to call the Police. When they offered to retrieve their ticket to show him, he told them they didn't have a ticket and he would let them slide this time. I guess trying to save face at his mistake. Anyway they vent about this for a few minutes. Back at the room everyone cleans up and as I'm outvoted we head over to the General Patton for supper. We sit outside in the courtyard enjoying our hamburgers, grilled chicken and French fries. The storm I mentioned earlier hits and is so strong, we have to move inside. After eating, the girls and I try the phones again and they are able to speak with their Moms for a few minutes. I get a nice surprise shortly after this as my daughter Lauren has been to the gift shop and presents me with a wonderful bier stein as an early Father's Day gift.
Once back at our rooms Herr Sailor drops
by to tell me he is leaving early in the morning for a horse show but should be back by 10am. I tell him we probably
will be gone by then and is it ok to pay our bill now. This is good with him and he writes out our tabs. I spend
a few minutes talking with him. He is a very nice humble man and glad I got to meet him. Back in the room I read
for a couple of hours, then organize my bags and soon off to sleep.
Part 3
