Where's Bertie? He's at a Stellplatz in Fürstenfeldbruck, about 25km to the west of Munich. It costs €5 per night to stay here. Electricity, water and waste are available for extra fees. (Exact location: 48.17309, 11.24340)
Weather: Varying between lightly overcast and clear sky, but feeling much cooler (mid-twenties, but low humidity).
I took my final run around the lovely Englischer Garten before we moved on this morning. It's deservedly a popular place to exercise and, having ventured over to the southern end of the park today (nearer to the city), at no point was I by myself.
Our need for groceries and a service point then forced us to move on, but the rest of the morning proved frustrating. There are only two formal motorhome Stellplatz serving Munich, one at a farm to the south, the other at the Allianz Arena to the north. The latter was nearer to us, and also had a service point we could use without a stay (€15 per night for nothing but a parking space in a location next to a busy road didn't appeal).
After 10km of driving out of our way to get there, we found that the Stellplatz is currently closed whilst it hosts a building site. A new temporary Stellplatz has been created a few kilometres away, but having driven around it, we could find no service point. That was a mighty inconvenience, as our next destination was the west side of Munich, where we wanted to remain until Saturday morning, but now we were going to be forced to take a much bigger detour to somewhere else.
The question was to where? I quickly re-programmed the SatNav to a free car park that was in the right direction and was adjacent to the motorway, thinking we could contemplate our options over elevenses. I hadn't looked at the map in detail, so didn't realise until too late that accessing that car park required us to drive past it then backtrack - another 10km of detouring. When we finally reached it we found a chap sitting on a plastic chair in the entrance claiming we needed to pay €2 to park. I have my suspicions as to whether that was a formal charge or someone trying it on, but we weren't in a position to argue, and nor was I paying €2 just to park for half an hour whilst we drank coffee and considered whether there was any other option than to drive the half-hour out to Fürstenfeldbruck. Having already done enough unnecessary kilometres for one morning, we cut our losses and headed over here.
My grumpiness didn't abate much when we got here. I knew that this Stellplatz costs €5 per night. What I didn't know was that they charge €2 to empty your toilet (almost always free elsewhere; very occasionally it's €1) and 50c per 10 litres of water (the norm is €1 per 100l; sometimes available 10c-worth at a time). That made this service point the most expensive we have ever come across. To make matters worse both parking and all services (including electricity) are paid on an honesty box system, so I feel like in paying the high service point prices, I'm subsidising all the people who choose not to pay at all (of which, I would wager, there are many). There's a lot to be said for the almost-universal German system of coin-operated service and electric points.
Enough grumpiness! We did a walking tour of the town this afternoon, hampered slightly by the tour leaflet, and the on-line audio descriptions, being in German, but assisted slightly by a hefty brochure (all literature free here) including information in English about most of the points of interest (albeit presented in a different order, requiring lots of flicking back and forth searching for the right bit of text).
The highlight was the church at the old monastery...
A relatively grand exterior...
...and another ridiculously opulent interior. No patch of ceiling and barely any wall had escaped decoration.
...but the rest of the tour was only mildly diverting, taking in sights such as the grain store...
...and the old town hall:
Whilst an inoffensive place, I didn't find the town visually interesting enough to put it into the 'worth a visit' category.
Weather: Varying between lightly overcast and clear sky, but feeling much cooler (mid-twenties, but low humidity).
I took my final run around the lovely Englischer Garten before we moved on this morning. It's deservedly a popular place to exercise and, having ventured over to the southern end of the park today (nearer to the city), at no point was I by myself.
Our need for groceries and a service point then forced us to move on, but the rest of the morning proved frustrating. There are only two formal motorhome Stellplatz serving Munich, one at a farm to the south, the other at the Allianz Arena to the north. The latter was nearer to us, and also had a service point we could use without a stay (€15 per night for nothing but a parking space in a location next to a busy road didn't appeal).
After 10km of driving out of our way to get there, we found that the Stellplatz is currently closed whilst it hosts a building site. A new temporary Stellplatz has been created a few kilometres away, but having driven around it, we could find no service point. That was a mighty inconvenience, as our next destination was the west side of Munich, where we wanted to remain until Saturday morning, but now we were going to be forced to take a much bigger detour to somewhere else.
The question was to where? I quickly re-programmed the SatNav to a free car park that was in the right direction and was adjacent to the motorway, thinking we could contemplate our options over elevenses. I hadn't looked at the map in detail, so didn't realise until too late that accessing that car park required us to drive past it then backtrack - another 10km of detouring. When we finally reached it we found a chap sitting on a plastic chair in the entrance claiming we needed to pay €2 to park. I have my suspicions as to whether that was a formal charge or someone trying it on, but we weren't in a position to argue, and nor was I paying €2 just to park for half an hour whilst we drank coffee and considered whether there was any other option than to drive the half-hour out to Fürstenfeldbruck. Having already done enough unnecessary kilometres for one morning, we cut our losses and headed over here.
My grumpiness didn't abate much when we got here. I knew that this Stellplatz costs €5 per night. What I didn't know was that they charge €2 to empty your toilet (almost always free elsewhere; very occasionally it's €1) and 50c per 10 litres of water (the norm is €1 per 100l; sometimes available 10c-worth at a time). That made this service point the most expensive we have ever come across. To make matters worse both parking and all services (including electricity) are paid on an honesty box system, so I feel like in paying the high service point prices, I'm subsidising all the people who choose not to pay at all (of which, I would wager, there are many). There's a lot to be said for the almost-universal German system of coin-operated service and electric points.
Enough grumpiness! We did a walking tour of the town this afternoon, hampered slightly by the tour leaflet, and the on-line audio descriptions, being in German, but assisted slightly by a hefty brochure (all literature free here) including information in English about most of the points of interest (albeit presented in a different order, requiring lots of flicking back and forth searching for the right bit of text).
The highlight was the church at the old monastery...
...but the rest of the tour was only mildly diverting, taking in sights such as the grain store...
...and the old town hall:
Whilst an inoffensive place, I didn't find the town visually interesting enough to put it into the 'worth a visit' category.
Time to change countries?
ReplyDeleteNo need for such drastic action. It would be unrealistic to expect everywhere we go to be a visual delight and full of interest. We'll be sticking with Germany for another good while yet - it's such a good country for pootling around in a motorhome in summer.
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