Bohemian Rhapsody(Queen)- Munich to Bohemia,or almost - 8th June 2016

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It has been a very peaceful three days in Geretsried and we were pleased we located ourselves here away from the hustle and bustle of Munich.

Now today we have got ourselves around the outside of Munich to the east and then north to Lohberg which is in the Bavarian National Park close to the Czech border.

The easiest way was to plan the journey, at least initially; in short stages just to make sure we were always on the outskirts to be far enough out of the city traffic.

The day had started cloudy but as we got on the road the sun broke through and it looked promising although we weren’t too concerned if we had some rain as today was all about getting from point A to B with the only sightseeing to be what we saw from the road.

The roads we travelled for the first hour or so were all very rural and we got ourselves into a sequence of village,farmland,forest and this went on for at least half a dozen times. Gretchen had read that Germany is 1/3rd covered by forest and we think a lot of that is down here in Bavaria. It makes for very pleasant and interesting driving as the contrasts of green between the farmland with their crops and the darker forest quite distinctive.

In most of the villages May poles that were erected at the start of May in celebration of the season were still standing even though tradition often has them taken down at the end of that month and of course it was now June. Most however were no longer decorated so perhaps it was just a matter of time for them to now come down.

We had noticed while in Geretsried the cigarette vending machines on several street corners we had passed on various walking we had done in the town. We had never seen one being used.

Now, as we drove slowly through the narrow streets of a village we saw a man putting his €6 into a machine to buy a packet. Such things would never happen in New Zealand!

We stopped to buy some lunch in Haag in Oberbayern as it was the last place we had put in the GPS to keep us clear of Munich and it had done the job well.

Haag was an odd place with a main street that wandered along for over a kilometre with a mix of businesses and houses but nowhere to buy some lunch until we came to Norma!

Norma is another supermarket chain in Germany similar to Lidl but a bit more upmarket and organised.

We found ourselves something to eat and drink and then walked the kilometre back to where we had parked the car in the first place and set on our way to find a lay by on the A94 which would take us further east before turning north.

We didn’t have to travel too far to find a small lay-by and although a good portion of it was taken up by a large truck there was enough room for us.

It was warm enough to have a boot lunch but we soon realised just how busy the road was, something that is not always as evident when you are driving, and the noise from the traffic passing just a few metres away was noisy. So we opted to sit in the car with the music on to partially drown out the traffic noise.

While we were stopped we checked out why the A94 was as busy as it was and we noted it was one of the main roads into the Czech Republic east of Munich.

Once we got started again after lunch our pace picked up on the four laned highway, not that the rural roads had been slow to drive on, but the highway was just so much straighter making for even higher speeds.

The kilometres flew by and very soon we had to change direction onto the B588 to head north or we would have crossed into the Czech Republic which wasn’t on the plans for today.

The countryside continued as it had been all day so far with villages, farmland and forest repeating itself. This route though was much busier than this morning’s as it was a link road between the A92,a little further north of us and the A94 which we had come off from. The A92 had also originated in Munich although in the north of the city and was heading to link up with the A3 which runs diagonally to the north west across Germany.

We crossed the River Isar which also flows through Munich and provides the locals there with a place to sunbathe by and surf in as we witnessed yesterday when we visited the city.

The temperature had climbed to 26C outside the car interior but there were dark clouds in the sky ahead over the Bavarian National Park and rain looked likely as we headed into the Park and started to climb towards our destination of Lohberg.

First though we took a short stop at Regan to top up the grocery box and buy enough for 3 night’s dinners as Lohberg looks to be a fairly small village and probably won’t have a supermarket.

Leaving Regan we came across a sign on a pole we hadn’t seen since the BBA V1.

Back in 2009 we had photographed a road sign in a more western town in Germany that indicated the speed that trucks and tanks could not exceed over a particular bridge. And we had made some comment on that day’s blog that the sign appeared to be a leftover from WW2 when tanks would have shared the roadway with other vehicles. This blog had drawn a couple of comments, one of which was to put me in my place as someone who didn’t know anything about the matter. How serious sometimes people take blogs!

So this time we did not photograph the sign and nor shall we comment further although it is interesting to see them crop up on the other side of the country near a military base and another counties border, no more said. You can though refer back to the blog of 18th August 2009 to see what the fuss was all about back then.

The road climbed further into the forest and up to just on 1000 metres and the warmth of an hour ago was gone with the outside temperature dropping to 13C.

We dropped down a couple of hundred metres to the village of Lohberg and Gina guided us to the apartment where our host came to greet us and showed us upstairs. It is a huge apartment, probably the biggest we have had with its own large kitchen and a separate living room with a balcony and views across the valley to Mount Arber which we might consider walking to tomorrow if we feel we are up to the 600 metre climb in altitude.

PS:enjoy Queens great rock standard as you imagine cruising along a German highway heading for Bohemia

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