Spring break visit

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...

...before driving back to Steinebach.

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...

Rorschach to Lauterbrunnen - Day 15 - Kleine Scheidegg to Gündlischwand

Saturday July 12, Kleine Scheidegg to Lauterbrunnen to Gündlischwand

We went to bed on Friday knowing that while our sunset view had been somewhat obscured by clouds, the sky at sunrise was forecast to be completely cloudless.

Whence we came:  

Looking west at a setting just-past-full moon:

Wee clouds sprouting above the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau. Given that the lenticular clouds over the Jungfrau always looked slightly behind the peak, we assumed the summit was actually out of view. The sunlit triangular peak top to the right is the Silberhorn.

Nebelmeerish over Grindelwald in the Lütschinenthal, more haze than cloud: 

Morning greetings from our shadows:

Zooming in on what we're pretty sure is the train station on the Jungfrau Joch (11,362 feet):

The Jungfrau Joch is a popular and heavily-advertised tourist destination  

Having been the only Friday night guests at Gletscherblick, we (and the black flies) were the only ones eating breakfast Saturday morning. I asked our host if we had somehow miscalculated the start of tourist season, and she said nah, the number of guests just fluctuates sometimes. Given the number of day hikers we had seen on Friday, we assume most of their business is through the Gasthaus restaurant.  

It was our last day of hiking, with ~4,900' to descend. The pass, Kleine Scheidegg, was a little below the Gasthaus. There's a hotel, and a bustling train station, with some cog trains heading between Grindelwald and Lauterbunnen, and others heading up to the Jungfrau Joch. We crossed the train tracks and started our descent. Once we were past the hubbub and buildings, Carly posed for a photo.

Our route more or less followed the cog-train route down to Lauterbrunnen.

Lenticular clouds were doing crazy things atop the Mönch. 

A slate roof made of naturally irregularly shaped tiles:

Felix Mendelssohn hiked here. The Mendelssohnweg takes hikers all the way down to Wengen, above Lauterbrunnen, but we followed the Lauberhornrennen route instead. Signage along the latter trail wrote of skiiers zipping down the mountain at speeds approaching 100km/hr. That sounds insane to me, but only one skiier, Gernot Reinstadler, has ever died on the route, during a qualifying run.

You can spend 1 hour and 20 minutes heading down to Wengen, or if you prefer to head away from Wengen, 1 hour and 50 minutes. 

At some point on the hike, it occurred to me that the only way The Little Engine That Could could have made it over the steep mountain was if it had been a cog train, something the book failed to depict.

1930 1st edition. No cogs. I feel misled.

After several miles, I thought I was getting a blister on one of my toes, despite my having stopped multiple times to tighten my shoelaces so my toes wouldn't slide forward as we hiked down. I finally sat down and took off my hiking boot, thinking I'd put on some moleskin. When I peeled off my sock, there was no blister, just a nice bloody cut caused by an adjacent toenail. This taught me (1) to be glad this happened on the last day instead of the first, and (2) to remember to trim nails, since 15 days is a long time. I put a band-aid over it and changed into sneakers, and my toes were happy for the rest of the hike.

iNaturalist couldn't identify these flowers.

Almost down: Wengen is situated about 1,500' above Lauterbrunnen.

Many of the chalets in Wengen have names. This one is named Ameise ("Ants"). 

At last, there it is, Lauterbrunnen. The famous waterfall to the right is the Staubbachfall, but if you look closely at the photo, you might see a few more; there are some 72 waterfalls in the Lauterbrunnental.

We had time to either explore Lauterbrunnen or to head further down the valley. Given the density of tourists, we decided to swing by a grocery store for snacks, then followed the Weisse Lütschine river for another three miles to Gündlischwand, the next stop on the train line. We knew we had arrived when a sign told us so. We hopped on a train--the first of five that day--to start our 7-hour trip home.

Here we are!

Ta da! 9.6 miles, 85' ascent, 4,956' descent.