S had a conference in Munich in early march, so we took advantage of cheap airfares and spring break and visited the family abode together. I'd heard tell of the crocuses that bloom in the yard in the spring, but this was the first time I'd gotten to see them in person.
Spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) and common snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) were also blooming all across Bavaria.
Some highlights:
Friday 3/13: The obligatory first-day hike to Herrsching, to get out in the sun and reset the circadian clocks:
A story waiting for a separate post: the life-saver without a boat in the Busgarage without a bus...
Saturday: Obligatory walk to Andechs (can you spot it in the distance on the ridge line to the right of the road?)
Bavaria is not known for whiskey, but there's a distillery on our favorite route to Andechs. A few years ago, as we walked by on our obligatory walk to Andechs, it occurred to us to knock, and we ended up buying a tasty honey-whiskey liqueur. This year we were hoping to replenish our supply, and wouldn't you know it, when we were about a quarter of a mile away, a distillery van drove past us and parked in the distillery driveway; and when we were about 250 feet away, the van started to pull out of the driveway--so I ran ahead, and asked if we might make a quick purchase. The owner was happy to oblige; he only happened to be there because he'd had to feed the sheep.
Speaking of speaking German, that's another topic for another post...
At Andechs, we tanked up on Obazda and Brez'n. No daikon, because it wasn't in season yet.
Sunday: trip into Munich for the last day of the "Wildlife Photographer of the Year" exhibit at the Museum Mensch und Natur. In addition to the fancypants glowing images of the official show, the museum had an adjacent print exhibit of work by German kids that was just as entertaining and easier on the eyes...
The government subsidized Deutschland Ticket, which covers all ground-based mass transit except fast-speed rail, has gone up in price again to €63. This is still a steal, but we felt a need to take advantage of it. So on Monday, we took a train to Donauwörth and hiked along the Romantische Straße to Harburg. We had both forgotten that we'd actually been to Donauwörth previously--in 2023, with E and A, on our way to Solnhofen to go fossil digging--which just goes to show that if I don't blog about it, it's like it never happened... Probably says something about the Romantische Straße that the most interesting photo I took was this one:
Tuesday: Since the Alps are only 1.5 - 2 hours away by train and the weather was good, S decided to go skiing on Tuesday. I rode the train south with him, got off in Oberau, and hiked to Kloster Ettal and then to Schloss Linderhof. The day began with Nebelmeer in Steinebach...
...then brilliant sunshine in Ettal...
...and Linderhof, where the garden was all boxed up against the winter elements.
Wednesday: Did I mention that we had Covid? I caught it in the U.S. shortly before our trip, and then S caught it. We would have assumed it was just a cold had it not included a low-grade fever. This iteration was much more tolerable than the first time we had it, but it meant delaying visiting 103-yr-old Tante P until we were reasonably confident we weren't still contagious. We took mass transit to FFB to attend to some international tax law questions, then mass transit to Zankenhausen to visit P; and then we walked home.
Thursday: We walked to Etterschlag for lunch with family, then walked to Weßling for a sneak peek at a long-lost family artifact (subject for another blog post).
Friday: By the time S had figured out his conference was going to be in Munich instead of the usual Utah, the family abode had already been AirBnB-ed for one of the weekends of our stay. This motivated us to rent a car for that weekend and drive to Zurich to hear Cecilia Bartoli, Anna Sophie von Otter, and not one, not two, but THREE countertenors (including stand-out Kangmin Justin Kim) singing Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Zurich opera.
Saturday: We spent a rainy morning in Zurich at the Kunsthaus, where this Picasso face reminded me of the Geefle.
Snow was falling by the time we headed north to Konstanz, where neither of us had ever been, and where hotels cost way less than in Zurich.
Sunday: We set out for a morning constitutional, then decided what the heck, let's walk to Mainau, the "flower island" in the Bodensee north of Konstanz, where we appreciated the off-season price and off-season non-crowds.
Highlights included the butterfly house...
...and a walk through the arboretum and sculpture gardens.
For the past 25 years or so, we've had a postcard from the Berlin Alte Nationalgalerie hanging in our downstairs bathroom. It depicts Gustav Eberlein's 1879 marble copy of the Hellenistic-Roman bronze Lo Spinario. In the 19th century, it was a popular work to copy in bronze--presumably before Eberlein copied it in marble--so it was nice to see one of those copies on Mainau.
We took a bus back to Konstanz's Altstadt...
At about 11:30 p.m., United Airlines texted to say "storms! On the East Coast! We're waiving rescheduling fees!", which I thought meant "you'll be stuck in airports all day/night if you try to fly home tomorrow," so I delayed flying home by a day. This meant missing a class I was supposed to teach at Claymakers, but it also meant that after I got off the phone with United's customer service line at 1:00 a.m., I was awake at 1:15 when S went into the kitchen and there was a loud bang followed by much cursing. Apparently the oil stove that heats the house hadn't been properly maintained in, oh, probably a few years, and the soot exploded. We were glad it happened while we were there instead of when renters were there, and glad no one was hurt. We did some preliminary cleaning, then went to bed.
Monday: S went to his conference, and I went to Edeka to get a refill of this fabulous cleaner:
...and then ran a few loads of dishes and systematically wiped as much soot off of things as I could. When S came home, he vacuumed some of the shelves that needed dead bugs vacuumed before cleaning. The kitchen ended up cleaner than it had been in years, and S found someone to fix the stove later that week.
The flight home was much less exciting...
