We finished up our museum and castle marathon with a visit to the castles at Hochstadt and Neuburg.  Both of these castles are along the Danube River.  Again, we saw fabulous castles with interesting historical artifacts.  Still, nothing compares with King Ludie’s rococo style.  On the way home we stopped at yet another castle, which was imposing and dramatic on a hillside above the road. 

After all of those museums and castles we have just been spending this week bicycling all around the Bavarian countryside.  Each day we set out to a different spot on the perimeter of Augsburg and do a 50k (35 mile) ride through the countryside.  The weather has been good and the scenery has been uniformly beautiful.  Our rides right now are not too hilly as the countryside is pretty flat, with a few rolling hills.  Now, at the end of summer, the farmers are starting to harvest their corn crops to make silage for the cattle.  Every country we have been in Don has told me all about silage, which he remembers from his summers on his grandparent’s farm in Iowa.  Here in Germany he has again explained the entire process, growing, aging, cutting, chopping, fermenting and so on.  I will say, though, that for all the silage we see being prepared, we see very few cows.  I don’t know if the silage is shipped elsewhere or the poor cows are kept in barns all day.  We very seldom see a cow in the pastures, and when we do it is only six or seven, not a herd.

Often when we are driving we choose small country roads rather than the big fast highways.  We aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere and we like the quaint towns and lush green scenery.  During our recent travels we came across a directional sign which had the town we were aiming for “X’ed” out with big reflective day-glo orange tape.  What?!?  Why  did they blot out Zollhaus?  We wanted to go through there.  Well, we are going through there anyway, so there!  Being the optimists we are, we figured we could deal with a town that has been deleted from Germany.  Well, we did, but it was a challenge.  We have learned that when a town has a big red X through it that means every street in the town has been demolished.  We are talking big open ditches and bumpy gravel roads blocked off with huge construction equipment.  We crunched and bumped our way along the main road of Zollhaus, only to be turned back by huge cranes and dump trucks.  Then we tried the side road, and slipped and skidded along on more gravel, thinking surely we would come to a paved area soon.  Don could see the road we wanted next on his GPS, so we aimed for that, but once again we were foiled.  More dirt and gravel roads, bridges out, dead ends, blockades, construction equipment at every turn.  Every road we tried was blocked.  Finally we spotted a local in a car, and following along as they navigated to a secret, sneaky gravel path across a farmer’s field, and we too made it to the highway.  Now, when we see a sign with the name of the town x’ed out, we believe them!

Don has been using his GPS to navigate on all of our bike rides.  We like to stick to the smaller, less-traveled roads, and sometimes we take little gravel roads across the fields.  This has been working great for the most part, but on one ride we ran into a problem.  We met a nice German couple on Sunday.  They were cycling along the same route we were on, along the River Lech.  The gentleman told us they were headed for “See 23”.  “See” is the German word for lake, and 23 is the number on the Radwanderkarte (map of bicycle tours).  He claimed that this is the most beautiful See in Germany.  Well, we were headed that way, but of course Don couldn’t take the same route they were traveling, so we headed off in a different direction.  Don’s position was that the route they went was along the gravel levee, and we were going on a paved route.  Well, we did go on a paved route for 3 blocks.  Then from the paved route we turned onto a gravel path.  Soon the gravel path turned into a grassy field.  Then it was a single track through dense woods.  Soon brush was slapping our legs and arms and grass was dampening our ankles.  By now I was hoping Germany doesn’t have any poison oak or something similar.  Through all of this Don kept insisting that he could see our destination on his GPS and we were almost there.  The thing his GPS didn’t show us was the 10 foot wide, 4 foot deep rapidly rushing river that was between us and the road we were trying to get to.  It is true, the
road was only 50 feet away, but we couldn’t get there.  So, we turned around and went all the way back, through the woods, over the field, across the gravel, back to the paved road.  Then we started over on a new road through the woods, on the other side of the river, and we finally did make it to See 23, which looked like all of the other lakes along the Lech River—very pretty.

Don is quite enamored of European traffic circles.  He especially likes the ones in Germany.  His favorite town so far for traffic circles is Konigsbrunn and he has awarded their traffic circles the honorary Don Myrah Award.  He has taken numerous photographs of his favorites from several angles and also from the center of the traffic circle looking out into the street. I am sure that the Konigsbrunnian population is discussing that crazy man in town, photographing traffic circles.  The plan is to send copies of the best traffic circles to the Town of Truckee so they can see what a real traffic circle should look like.

They keep predicting rain, but so far we have had sunny weather.  It is now August 28 and our trip is half over.  Today we went south and east to Starnbergsee.  The terrain in this area is a little hillier and we really enjoyed doing a bit of climbing and riding through the green forests.  We did a loop starting in Starnberg and out through the countryside, almost to Ammersee, and then on to Tutzing where we had a nice lunch lakeside and took the ferry boat back to Starnberg. This lake is surrounded by very large, upscale homes.  It is quite close to Munich, so maybe people work there and commute to Starnberg.  In the countryside we saw many estates, stables and fancy car dealerships.  We have decided that this area is the Los Altos Hills of Munich.

With all of our bicycling for the last week or so, we must say that the Germans are very courteous and tolerant about bicyclists.  They pass with lots of space, don’t go too fast past us, and never honk.  Very often there are separate cycleways for us, many of them paved.  We find cycling in Germany very pleasant.