Where's Bertie? He's still in the parking area at the Englischer Garten in Munich.
Weather: Overcast start to the day, with the cloud breaking up as the morning went on, leaving us with sunny intervals. Still humid, but a much more comfortable temperature, in the mid-twenties.
A short, violent thunderstorm disturbed us at 4am. I then got slightly more disturbed by pondering again about our neighbour. The motorhome next to us had been sitting with all of its blinds closed and its rooflights wide open, with no sign of life, since we arrived here on Saturday evening. That had been relatively unremarkable until yesterday afternoon's rain.
We came up with lots of reasons as to why an expensive van would be left sitting unsecured and unwatertight. In amongst those theories was that the occupant(s) had gone to bed one night and died. Given that there were plenty of far less drastic explanations, we decided not to alert the authorities immediately. Then the rain started hammering at 4am and I couldn't help but think how wet the interior must be getting, whether there was a dead person inside or not.
It was thus a relief when Mick got up to make breakfast this morning, looked out of the window and announced that the windows were now shut. Soon afterwards the curtains were opened and the very-alive occupant drove away. Phew!
Our day then proceeded in a topsy-turvy manner. Usually I run first thing, before a proper breakfast, and if we're going to go out and about we do it either mid-morning or early afternoon. Today I didn't run until mid-morning (because it was cooler today, but, oooh, that humidity! It made my speed intervals session hard work). Lunch then got pushed back because we'd run out of drinking water and bread.
We pondered. We could go to the supermarket and then move on to somewhere nearer to this afternoon's point of interest. We could go to the supermarket then come back here. Either way, we would risk finding ourselves in a spot far less ideal than where we are now. Ordinarily, we wouldn't spend more than two or three nights in a location that's not specifically allocated for motorhome parking, but this is such a discreet place (and there's no pressure on space now the weekend is over), that we felt happy to stay here another night.
It finally occurred to me that the very reason for bringing the Brompton bicycle was for this very scenario - so that one of us could nip to a supermarket without needing to move Bertie. So that's what I did, opting for the shop that could be reached with the most through-park riding and the least on-road riding.
It's very rare for us to buy bottled water (tap water is fine by us), and it probably goes without saying that when we are forced to buy bottled, I get the cheapest there is (which in Germany means the 25c deposit on the bottle is more than the price of the water). It didn't for a moment occur to me today that the cheapest would be fizzy - something that only came to my attention when I opened the first bottle back at Bertie. If we want cups of tea, it looks like we'll be drinking out of Bertie's tank. And I wonder how fizzy works for cold-soaked porridge?
Today's sight-seeing excursion was based on a recommendation from a parkrunner last Saturday morning, who said we should go to the Olympiapark, not because it was the home of the 1972 Olympic Games, but because the Munich Summer Festival ('Tollwood' - comprising a craft and world-food market, combined with live music and concerts) is currently being held there. It doesn't kick off until 2pm during the week, and goes on until 1am, so putting our day further out of its usual kilter, we didn't set out from Bertie until 3.30pm and, as there's no convenient direct public transport link between here and there, we opted to save the fare and just walk the 2.75 miles each way.
Having found our way to and into the park, the obvious first port of call was the top of the Olympiaberg, to give us a high-level view of the place:
Looking down on the Olympic sports facilities.
That informed us as to where the festival ground was, and off we went.
It wasn't remotely crowded when we arrived, as shown in this snap. As we left it was getting a bit busier and as we walked away people were heading towards the site in droves and the buses were fit to burst.
The afternoon's street entertainment - a woman on top of a large ball and a man with a big puppet. Just a bit bizarre.
A couple of laps of the market were walked, during which neither of the live-music acts lured us in to watch, but we did get side-tracked by a curry vendor:
They were massive plates of food, so it was a waddle of retracing our steps along the city streets and across the park, back to Bertie, where I have plans to spend the whole of the rest of the day (all 1-hour of it!) sitting down.
As opposed to those other well-known types of ice...
Weather: Overcast start to the day, with the cloud breaking up as the morning went on, leaving us with sunny intervals. Still humid, but a much more comfortable temperature, in the mid-twenties.
A short, violent thunderstorm disturbed us at 4am. I then got slightly more disturbed by pondering again about our neighbour. The motorhome next to us had been sitting with all of its blinds closed and its rooflights wide open, with no sign of life, since we arrived here on Saturday evening. That had been relatively unremarkable until yesterday afternoon's rain.
We came up with lots of reasons as to why an expensive van would be left sitting unsecured and unwatertight. In amongst those theories was that the occupant(s) had gone to bed one night and died. Given that there were plenty of far less drastic explanations, we decided not to alert the authorities immediately. Then the rain started hammering at 4am and I couldn't help but think how wet the interior must be getting, whether there was a dead person inside or not.
It was thus a relief when Mick got up to make breakfast this morning, looked out of the window and announced that the windows were now shut. Soon afterwards the curtains were opened and the very-alive occupant drove away. Phew!
Our day then proceeded in a topsy-turvy manner. Usually I run first thing, before a proper breakfast, and if we're going to go out and about we do it either mid-morning or early afternoon. Today I didn't run until mid-morning (because it was cooler today, but, oooh, that humidity! It made my speed intervals session hard work). Lunch then got pushed back because we'd run out of drinking water and bread.
We pondered. We could go to the supermarket and then move on to somewhere nearer to this afternoon's point of interest. We could go to the supermarket then come back here. Either way, we would risk finding ourselves in a spot far less ideal than where we are now. Ordinarily, we wouldn't spend more than two or three nights in a location that's not specifically allocated for motorhome parking, but this is such a discreet place (and there's no pressure on space now the weekend is over), that we felt happy to stay here another night.
It finally occurred to me that the very reason for bringing the Brompton bicycle was for this very scenario - so that one of us could nip to a supermarket without needing to move Bertie. So that's what I did, opting for the shop that could be reached with the most through-park riding and the least on-road riding.
It's very rare for us to buy bottled water (tap water is fine by us), and it probably goes without saying that when we are forced to buy bottled, I get the cheapest there is (which in Germany means the 25c deposit on the bottle is more than the price of the water). It didn't for a moment occur to me today that the cheapest would be fizzy - something that only came to my attention when I opened the first bottle back at Bertie. If we want cups of tea, it looks like we'll be drinking out of Bertie's tank. And I wonder how fizzy works for cold-soaked porridge?
Today's sight-seeing excursion was based on a recommendation from a parkrunner last Saturday morning, who said we should go to the Olympiapark, not because it was the home of the 1972 Olympic Games, but because the Munich Summer Festival ('Tollwood' - comprising a craft and world-food market, combined with live music and concerts) is currently being held there. It doesn't kick off until 2pm during the week, and goes on until 1am, so putting our day further out of its usual kilter, we didn't set out from Bertie until 3.30pm and, as there's no convenient direct public transport link between here and there, we opted to save the fare and just walk the 2.75 miles each way.
Having found our way to and into the park, the obvious first port of call was the top of the Olympiaberg, to give us a high-level view of the place:
That informed us as to where the festival ground was, and off we went.
A couple of laps of the market were walked, during which neither of the live-music acts lured us in to watch, but we did get side-tracked by a curry vendor:
They were massive plates of food, so it was a waddle of retracing our steps along the city streets and across the park, back to Bertie, where I have plans to spend the whole of the rest of the day (all 1-hour of it!) sitting down.
There's a fine line between risking making a fool of yourself or doing the right thing when you come across suspicious circumstances. My neighbour went off to Barcelona for a holiday and had asked me to be watchful over their property and she even told me some time before they went that a friend may be parking a motorhome on their drive. When it arrived I sent them a text, having forgotten about being informed so on that occasion it was me who looked as bit daft rather thsn averting some sophisticated burglary.
ReplyDeleteAlways good to have watchful neighbours, even if it does result in the occasional false alarm. We had a panicked 'someone's just taken your car!' call a few years ago when we returned early from a backpacking trip - but in that scenario I'd far rather have the false alarm than not receive a report of a real issue.
DeleteThe added factor when alerting the police to a potential wellfare issue is that they're likely to cause damage to property by breaking in, and I wouldn't have wanted to provoke that when there were so many other plausible explanations.
Always squeeze the bottle when you pick them up - fizzy water bottles are always rock hard :-)
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what Mick said when I realised the error! I would defend myself by explaining that I took them off the shelf in plastic shrink wrap, so didn't have to handle the bottles, but that excuse falls down at the point where I removed them from the packaging to put them into my backpack once I'd bought them. I just completely failed to register their feel.
Delete