I also found it enjoyable to watch the exotic cars speed by when I got close to Munich. I see a lot of exotic cars in The Hague, but they're usually parked or stuck in traffic like the rest of us. Warms your heart a little to see them zipping around at high speeds on the freie fahrt-zone on the Autobahn.
My hotel in Munich was pretty easy to find, it was just off the Frankfurter Ring. The only complex thing about it was that they had one of those parking garages with car elevators, so I found it slightly tricky to park. You had to build up speed to get climb onto the ledge of the elevator and then slam on the brakes before you hit the wall. I managed to do it without incident, but I had to go back and forth a few times before I hit the spot. With the car safely stowed, I went for a brief sightseeing in the center before going to a haxenhaus to get my dinner. Munich has a lot of tourists, and the haxenhause was a predictably industrial and expensive tourist machine. They had good food and beer, though, so I was happy.
Saturday morning I drove towards Hohenschwangau, through lots of small towns, and in the end I drove on the last part of the Romantischer Straße, which had very good views. I arrived around 10.30 in Hohenschwangau and had no problems getting a parking spot. I bought tickets for the guided tours of the castles, and walked around for a bit while waiting for my first tour to begin. The royals building these castles had a thing for swans, so there were swan-paintings, swan-statues and swan-fountains everywhere. The Hohenschwangau castle had a huge swan on top of it which made the castle look funny to me, like it was the lair of a super-villain or something...
Both the castles had pretty good English-speaking tour guides, although it wasn't always that easy to hear what they said, because some of the tourists brought along screaming kids. Neuschwanstein is the impressive one, the one that inspired the castle in Disneyland and apparently it was so expensive it almost bankrupted the Bavarian state. The mad prince building all of these castles had an unfortunate drowning accident in very shallow water, so the castle was never finished. What they did finish there is still pretty impressive (Though not on the same scale as, say Versailles or Dolmabahce Sarayi)
The scenery is pretty nice around the castles with pointy mountains, valleys, lakes and streams. It was a very sunny day, so I took a detour down to my car from Neuschwanstein, escaping the crowds of tourists by walking down some unmarked trails. I had a nice 45 minutes walk down through the forest before getting into the steaming hot car I had left at the parking lot. Airco at full blast and driving with open windows for a while mostly took care of that, but it was still not very comfortable driving in the heat. I also got very drowsy, and almost fell asleep at the wheel. I freaked when that happened, pulled the car over to the side in a small village and slept in the back of the car for 15 minutes. That helped a lot, and I was able to do the rest of the four hour drive to Austria without being too tired.
Having a navigation device in the car is pretty handy, but sometimes it takes you for a ride to places you would rather not be. This day, it took me on a scenic detour through the Bavarian countryside, sometimes on single-lane farm roads. As a result I got in pretty late to Hallstatt, my destination in Austria, supposedly the prettiest one of the lakeside villages in the Salzkammergut region (Here's the video, Lukasz :-).
Driving was more entertaining in Austria, with very active driving on the last part past Gosau. The roads are very windy, and from the road you can see the Gosaukamm, which is just gorgeous. There's no cars in Hallstatt, so you have to park your car in the parking lots outside the village, but I got lucky and found a spot on the closest one. I had some trouble finding the gasthof I was staying in (only had the printed address, and no directions to get there), but after calling the owner I managed to find it, just off the main square. I spent the evening relaxing with a weissbier on my balcony while sorting my pictures of the day on my laptop.
Sunday morning I drove to the other side of the lake, to get to the gondola taking me up to Krippenstein. From there I walked the touristy path to the "five fingers" viewing platform overlooking Hallstatt. After doing the touristy thing, I did a small hike (four hours or so) around Heilbronner Kreuz down to the bottom lift. It was still early in the season, and there was lots of snow, so I spent a lot of time walking in snow. It was nice to walk around and look at the Dachstein-mountains, but large parts of the path were really skiing areas. I enjoy more hiking in unspoiled nature. I forgot to bring sunscreen up there, so I got horribly sunburnt. In general, there was not a whole lot to do in the evenings in Hallstatt other than drink beer on the balcony and admire the great view.
Monday June 15th, I got up early, paid my bill and took off towards the Grossglockner Hochstraße, one of the most scenic roads in Austria. The weather was very gray and it was not a very good day for crossing the pass. The road itself is pretty windy and steep, so I had to switch to manual gearbox to get up at a decent speed. The road had lots of nice stopoff points, so it would have been a really nice drive if the weather had been better. I didn't bother to take the side trips to the major viewpoints, since the weather was so bad I couldn't see the view anyway. I saw a bunch of marmots on and next to the road, and that was probably the most interesting part of the drive.
Going down to Heiligenblut was very nice. There were very steep valleys filled with postcard-perfect features like snow-covered mountains, flowery meadows and lots and lots of cows. I did the touristy thing and stopped to take THE picture in Heiligenblut - the church in the middle of the valley, unfortunately not with the classic snow-covered mountain backdrop (because of the fog).
I kept on driving through Lienz, going past some really impressive mountains into the Hochpustertal, crossing into Italy. I found my hotel in Dobbiaco pretty quickly, but had some problems checking in at first, because the clerk did not speak English or German. As luck would have it, I had printed the confirmation from the hotel before leaving from The Hague, so everything was resolved when I pulled out the piece of paper. The weather was still pretty shitty, so I spent the afternoon shopping for pasta, Limoncello and maps. This was pretty much off-season, and I had a hard time finding a place to have lunch. I ended up buying some stuff at a supermarket, and imbibing it and a Paulaner in my room. Luckily I had booked a hotel with food, so dinner was taken care of. They had decent food at the place, and I got a three-course dinner every evening. The waitresses mostly spoke Italian, but I know enough of the touristy basics to get served, so it worked out. Overall, the hotel was amazingly cheap. I paid 53 EUR a night for a decent room with breakfast and a proper dinner included.
Tuesday was the day I had planned to go see the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. I had been wanting to see this since I was in the Western Dolomites two years ago, and just like thoughts of a woman you could never get, my thoughts of this mountain had grown to an obsession. I was really in despair the evening before when all I could see were clouds. I was a lot more positive in the morning, when I could see some blue between the clouds. This could work out! I drove over to Lago di Misurina and started driving the incredibly steep toll road leading up to Rifugio Aurunzo, at the foot of the Tre Cime. The road was so steep I had to drive most of the way in first gear. At first it looked like the clouds were lifting. When I got up to the parking lot at the top, though, the fog was enveloping everything. You couldn't even see the base of the mountains. I was in a bad mood starting the walk around the peaks, but I figured I'd make the best of it. At least I would be getting some hiking in. I walked around, exploring some WW1 Italian trenches on the way. This was the front line in WW1 between Austria-Hungary and Italy, so there's trenches and bunkers criss-crossing these mountains. One of the trenches was also the entry-point to a via ferrata. I didn't have climbing gear and besides, I'm really not fond of heights, so I chickened out. I saw lots of other people walking it, though veery slowly.
When I arrived at Rifugio Locatelli, the wind suddenly picked up, and the clouds around the Tre Cime cleared up. I was able to see all of them from the perfect viewing position. I was ecstatic, snapping photos like crazy and taking in this amazing view. Half an hour further down the trail, the heavens opened, and I was hiking in the rain. I didn't mind too much, I had brought gore-tex clothing, and I had seen what I came for - the Tre Cime. The thunderclouds made them seem even more dramatic, so I had a very nice hike around them, going back to the car. In total, the hike was about four and a half hours. It was still only 2 o'clock, so I figured I could go sightseeing and have lunch in Cortina D'Ampezzo. Before departing from the Hague I had briefly considered staying there, but Dobbiaco was cheaper, and closer to the trails, so I ended up there. I'm glad I did, because Cortina was a real ghost town out of season. Everywhere I went they claimed they were "chiuso per mangiare", so I couldn't have lunch anywhere. I ended up driving back to Dobbiaco. There were some really nice mountains around Cortina, but I'd rather go there in winter, in season.
I had no internet access, no weather forecasts, and the weather looked really gloomy, so I decided to leave for Switzerland the next day.
The next day, the weather was perfect, and it would have been a nice day for hiking. Instead I wasted it driving for six hours to Interlaken...hmpf! The scenery is pretty nice in the northernmost part of Italy, with lots of really picturesque villages. This changed when I went through the Brenner Pass, going into Austria. Italy looks better, for sure. On the other hand I was, for a moment, very impressed with Austria when I discovered that in places they served Schweinhaxe and beer at the gas stations. If only I had been driving with someone...
I drove through Arlberg and then through Liechtenstein, before going across Switzerland to get to Interlaken. I spent a lot of time paying road tolls, stopping four times for toll booths and one time to get the sticker for the Swiss road-tax. Also, I had to look out for speed cameras in Switzerland, since my navigation device does not do cameras for Switzerland (it is illegal...)
I had no hotel room booked for Interlaken, but I was hoping for the best. I was visiting slightly off-season and there's a large number of hotels there. Turns out, there was no problem getting a decent hotel with parking and wi-fi. This being Switzerland, it was almost twice the price I paid in Austria and Italy.
Interlaken is the hiking capital of Switzerland, and the tourist machine is well oiled with lots of restaurants, hotels and easy access to the hiking paths through trains to the starting points of the lifts. For me, having a car, it was even easier with large, cheap parking lots right at the bottom of the lifts.
Having internet in my room, I had finally been able to check the weather forecast and it was not good. It looked halfway okay for Thursday and really bad for Friday, so I decided to go to the top of the Jungfrau on Thursday. It would have been bad to go up there and not have a view.
At first I balked at the price for the tickets to go up to the Jungfraujoch - 110 euros just to take the train from the valley floor to the top of the mountain. (Incidentally, that is more or less the price of a return ticket to Paris from The Hague...)
The trains are very crowded, and people come from all over the world to see this. Every year 500.000 tourists go up to the Jungfraujoch in these trains, so it's pretty much one of the most popular tourist attractions in Europe. It's pretty crowded at the top, but the view from the sphinx observatory was pretty good. From the observatory you can also access the Aletch glacier. I walked for about one hour to get to the Mönch-hütte, below the summit of the Mönch. It wasn't a very inspiring walk, but it was nice to "hike" at 3600m, and I was pretty eager to do something after having been cooped up for an hour with hundreds of Indians on the train.
The train ride down was very long and boring. It took about an hour and a half to get back down to Grindelwald. I spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for hiking gear in the excellent shops in Interlaken, and had a couple of beers on the hotel roof watching the sunset over the Jungfrau.
The next morning it was raining and there was fog covering all the mountains around Interlaken. I figured it could be different once I got 1000m further up, so I drove to Grindelwald and took the gondola up to First. Up there, I was just above the clouds, and I started walking towards Faulhorn, a popular hike around Grindelwald. Unfortunately, the weather changed quite rapidly, so soon I was hiking in wind and rain, and by the time I got to the top of Faulhorn I was walking in thick fog, rain and heavy side-wind. So much for seeing the fabulous view from Faulhorn. The benefit of bad weather, of course, was that there were no other tourists out, so I walked pretty close to several grouses on my way up to the summit. The hike only lasted about four hours or so, and it was only 600 meters or so of elevation, but it felt more strenuous, because of the bad weather. I drove back to Interlaken and spent a fair amount of time heating up in the shower. I decided then and there that there was no point in moving on to Chamonix, since the weather forecast for the next couple of days looked pretty bad. Luckily, I hadn't booked any hotels, so I could just drive home whenever I felt like it.
I tried to send my mother a text message but couldn't get through. I was pretty upset over this. In the period when I was traveling, my mother was hospitalized, so I had been sending her text messages every day (since I could not call her, see earlier blog post about Dutch phone service...), but for some reason inside Switzerland I could not send messages, with any carrier. I wrote a complaint to T-mobile customer service, but they just replied that for certain countries they had no reciprocal agreement for text messages, and they couldn't list which countries these were. I'm really starting to regret switching cell phone carrier now.
I spent the evening having dinner at a really excellent Italian restaurant close to "Interlaken west". They had really good food and it was also fairly cheap.
Saturday I got up at 8 and started driving back to Holland. People were driving really slowly in Switzerland, but the pace picked up when I crossed the border into Germany. I drove past Schwarzwald before my navigation unit routed me through France, Luxembourg and Belgium. I was back home around 19.00.
Overall: I did 3000 km driving in 9 days - way too much for driving alone. I managed too see most of the stuff I wanted to see, like the castles in Bavaria, the Tre Cime, and the view from to the top of Jungfraujoch. I did manage to go hiking in the Salzkammergut, but it wasn't as good as I expected. Will definitely try Carinthia instead the next time I go hiking in Austria. The Dolomites is my favorite region for hiking, but the weather was bad the days I was there. Better luck next time, hopefully. The Jungfrau-region was pretty crowded, and "industrial", so not my favorite kind of hiking. Also, the weather was really bad the one day I hiked there, so overall I didn't get to do as much hiking as I wanted to. I guess I was just trying to fit too many destinations into my trip. It would probably have been better to just pick two destinations and have one fallback destination if the weather had turned bad.
Unfortunately I did not make it to Chamonix either, so I will have to save that for some time when the weather is nicer...
Here are my pictures from Bavaria, Austria, Tre Cime and the Jungfrau area.
