Where's Bertie? He's in a car park at Riemer Park on the east side of Munich. (Exact location: 48.13189, 11.70848)
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine. Not quite as hot as the last couple of days, topping out at around 30 degrees today.
As we readied ourselves for a final walk around Hohenried Park and the shore of the Starnberg See at around 9 this morning I commented on how lovely and cool it was. Then I turned on Bertie's ignition to check his thermometer and confirmed that, at 22 degrees in the shade, the early 'lovely and cool' was what I would consider a nice summer's day at home.
Final view along the Starnberger See
Completely failed to notice this sculpture the first time we walked past it.
A quick stop at Lidl broke up what was already a short-hop to Andechs. It turned into a longer than expected pause when I discovered that I couldn't fit the tub of ice cream (which I'd only bought because I was in need of a container of that shape and size) into the freezer, so we had to eat it before we moved on.
Andechs, a detour off the obvious route to Munich, was included on the itinerary purely because there's a service point at the Stellplatz there, but as there's also a monastery we thought it would merit a look around.
With Bertie duly serviced, we discovered the flaw with the parking arrangements. Outside of the motorhome area is a massive, free and largely-empty car park, but if you read (in my case via Google Translate) the list of motorthome-related regulations at the entrance, it makes clear that motorhomes are not permitted to park anywhere but in the motorhome area. We clearly weren't going to pay the Stellplatz fee of €14 just for a quick walk around the monestary, but seemingly we weren't allowed to park anywhere else. Have they really failed to think about people in motorhomes who just want to pop by for a quick visit? What to do? We came down on the side of ignoring the regulations and having a quick look around, sandwiched between elevenses and lunch.
As it went, our monastery visit didn't take long. All of the information boards were monolingual and the tourist leaflet in English was spectacularly uninformative, telling us nothing about the history of the place, bar a few snippets about the brewery (one of the largest remaining independent monastery breweries in Germany). The main point of interest was the church, which was immaculate outside...
...and ridiculously opulent and ornate on the inside:
Back at Bertie we had the choice of finding an intermediate stop on the way to Munich, or just accepting that it was going to be a journey made slow by needing to get across the city on a Friday afternoon. We did the latter, knowing that we would arrive after schools had finished for the day - a key point as I knew our destination car park to be next to one and busy at school times.
The only other thing I knew about the car park was that it sits next to a park that is a disused airfield. What we didn't know was that within that park is a swimming lake complete with a large beach. We are currently in the grip of a heat wave. We had arrived after school (and probably work, for most people) had finished for the week. We thus arrived to find the car park full and whilst there were regularly people leaving, even more were arriving. It was a pointy-elbowed free for all and cars beat us the first couple of times we tried for a space.
We therefore decided to break the rules for the second time today, in a manner that I would usually find indefensible. I can only justify it by saying that whilst we were parked in a disabled bay, there were two empty ones next to us, and we remained in the cab seats, facing forwards, ready to move if our spot was needed. It was probably only twenty minutes before we saw people returning to one of the cars opposite us and this time we manoeuvred in a way that blocked anyone else from nipping in before us.
As it turns out, it's a perfect slot we've got here (level, end of a row with door opening onto grass), except for one detail: from tomorrow at 8am, for five days, there's a temporary ban on parking in this bank of five slots.
I had thought that come 7pm the car park would empty, but as I type this at 8.30pm, people are still arriving (notably quite a lot of eastern European white vans (Hungarian, Romanian and Bulganian; they've been coming and going all afternoon but now at least a dozen have parked up, presumably for the night). Hopefully everything will quieten down after dark, but we have to acknowledge that we are in a city on a weekend so there's every likelihood that it will be a disturbed night.
The beach at the lake in the park. When I took this snap 15 emergency vehicles (mainly fire and water rescue) and a helicopter had just arrived and as I walked back out of the park divers were just driving in. I hope who ever was missing was found safely on dry land.
Weather: Wall-to-wall sunshine. Not quite as hot as the last couple of days, topping out at around 30 degrees today.
As we readied ourselves for a final walk around Hohenried Park and the shore of the Starnberg See at around 9 this morning I commented on how lovely and cool it was. Then I turned on Bertie's ignition to check his thermometer and confirmed that, at 22 degrees in the shade, the early 'lovely and cool' was what I would consider a nice summer's day at home.
Final view along the Starnberger See
Completely failed to notice this sculpture the first time we walked past it.
A quick stop at Lidl broke up what was already a short-hop to Andechs. It turned into a longer than expected pause when I discovered that I couldn't fit the tub of ice cream (which I'd only bought because I was in need of a container of that shape and size) into the freezer, so we had to eat it before we moved on.
Andechs, a detour off the obvious route to Munich, was included on the itinerary purely because there's a service point at the Stellplatz there, but as there's also a monastery we thought it would merit a look around.
With Bertie duly serviced, we discovered the flaw with the parking arrangements. Outside of the motorhome area is a massive, free and largely-empty car park, but if you read (in my case via Google Translate) the list of motorthome-related regulations at the entrance, it makes clear that motorhomes are not permitted to park anywhere but in the motorhome area. We clearly weren't going to pay the Stellplatz fee of €14 just for a quick walk around the monestary, but seemingly we weren't allowed to park anywhere else. Have they really failed to think about people in motorhomes who just want to pop by for a quick visit? What to do? We came down on the side of ignoring the regulations and having a quick look around, sandwiched between elevenses and lunch.
The elevated monastery complex as viewed from the car park.
As it went, our monastery visit didn't take long. All of the information boards were monolingual and the tourist leaflet in English was spectacularly uninformative, telling us nothing about the history of the place, bar a few snippets about the brewery (one of the largest remaining independent monastery breweries in Germany). The main point of interest was the church, which was immaculate outside...
...and ridiculously opulent and ornate on the inside:
Back at Bertie we had the choice of finding an intermediate stop on the way to Munich, or just accepting that it was going to be a journey made slow by needing to get across the city on a Friday afternoon. We did the latter, knowing that we would arrive after schools had finished for the day - a key point as I knew our destination car park to be next to one and busy at school times.
The only other thing I knew about the car park was that it sits next to a park that is a disused airfield. What we didn't know was that within that park is a swimming lake complete with a large beach. We are currently in the grip of a heat wave. We had arrived after school (and probably work, for most people) had finished for the week. We thus arrived to find the car park full and whilst there were regularly people leaving, even more were arriving. It was a pointy-elbowed free for all and cars beat us the first couple of times we tried for a space.
We therefore decided to break the rules for the second time today, in a manner that I would usually find indefensible. I can only justify it by saying that whilst we were parked in a disabled bay, there were two empty ones next to us, and we remained in the cab seats, facing forwards, ready to move if our spot was needed. It was probably only twenty minutes before we saw people returning to one of the cars opposite us and this time we manoeuvred in a way that blocked anyone else from nipping in before us.
As it turns out, it's a perfect slot we've got here (level, end of a row with door opening onto grass), except for one detail: from tomorrow at 8am, for five days, there's a temporary ban on parking in this bank of five slots.
I had thought that come 7pm the car park would empty, but as I type this at 8.30pm, people are still arriving (notably quite a lot of eastern European white vans (Hungarian, Romanian and Bulganian; they've been coming and going all afternoon but now at least a dozen have parked up, presumably for the night). Hopefully everything will quieten down after dark, but we have to acknowledge that we are in a city on a weekend so there's every likelihood that it will be a disturbed night.
The beach at the lake in the park. When I took this snap 15 emergency vehicles (mainly fire and water rescue) and a helicopter had just arrived and as I walked back out of the park divers were just driving in. I hope who ever was missing was found safely on dry land.
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