Check-out time is 10:00, so it's time for me to go. Strangely, I will miss this slightly posh Junior Suite, but it's also good to get out of this Austrian Disneyland of a city.
Today there are TWO taxis at the stand, so I take a taxi to Salzburg HBF. Another 10 Euros gone for the 2.4 km drive. If my luggage was just a little lighter, I would have walked ....
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| memories of Vancouver .... |
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| all of them potential alcoholics, LOL |
I meet two more wedding guests at the train station. Strangely enough it is the same people who gave me a lift from the Sligo Pub to Strandhill in March 2017. When I tell them, she says "OH, that was YOU", LOL.
Time to buy some Mozartkugeln as Mitbringsel (they turn out to be disgusting; don't buy any at the railway station!) and to wait for my RailJet to Munich.
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| the other way to travel ... |
German police going through an Austrian train. The train crosses the border to German only a few minutes after leaving Salzburg. As expected, the police only talk to and check ID of people with Middle-Eastern or African looks. It's odd. In Istanbul, Turks always think I am Turkish, as evidenced by the number of times people just talk to me in Turkish there. But as soon as I'm back in Germany, I must fall within that ill-defined very wide range of what looks German, even with my present Indochina tan.
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| Good Bye mountains |
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| A solar farm !!!!!! |
I will have to change trains in Munich. NOT a city in I which want to get out of a train. NO, it's not the Hitler's Beerhausputsch of 1923 or the general phony and right-wing Christianity of Bavarians that trouble me in Munich. It's the memory of being threatened to switch to a school there just one year before graduating in Cologne for the sole reason that mother found yet another man. While mother moved to Munich for 3 months, I was lucky enough that my Spare Mom allowed me to stay with her in Cologne until mother came to her senses (Or should I say until her new man came to his senses?). So there: Munich is not among my favourite travel destinations !
I don't see ANYTHING of Munich; I just walk from platform 12 to platform 16, where the connecting train is waiting already. As I'm 'only' in an IC train and not an ICE, switching from the Austrian train to a German train leaves me without WiFi. But at least there are still electrical outlets at the seats to recharge the laptop.
In Stuttgart the train stops for 4 minutes, which finally allows me to have a cigarette (a bit hard to do on those 2 minute stops).
When I get to Karlsruhe, it is SUMMER. It looks and feels like 26 degrees. Checking the weather forecast later confirms it. It's HOT here. Memories of Vietnam ;-)
Today my time has come to finally invite my Great-Uncle (or similar degree of relative; I'm not exactly sure what the term is for that degree of relatedness) for dinner. As my previous 50 years have taught me, it is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to go to dinner with an older German relative in their home town and to be allowed to pay the bill. It's just NOT done. In China, apparently, it is the exact opposite. As a child with a job and an apartment, you can't get out of paying your parent's bill ;-)
I quick-check with my relative whether Spanish tapas are OK with him (I'm not sure what they are, but I'll try them) and reserve a table at Toro Tapasbar, the #2 rated restaurant in Karlsruhe.The pressure is ON. PLEASE TripAdvisor, do NOT disappoint me again with an incorrect rating. I REALLY don't want to bring my relative to a lousy restaurant ;-)
The restaurant is about 2 km from his home and he quickly agrees to tackling that distance on his and his wife's bicycles. This city is a paradise for cyclists. Designated bicycle streets, NO hills, little car traffic. The balmy evening weather doesn't hurt either.
To cut a long story short: Great Uncle's encounter with tapas is a pleasant one. We decimate the 6 small plates on our table and even manage to stuff some dessert into the last available space.
During dinner I tell him about people I've met in Vietnam and whom I will meet here in Germany. He notes "You are a very social person". I don't even need to check back in the early pages of my blog to know that this hasn't been the case for long. But I've faced my shyness demon and I've managed to learn from some very social people close to me. But I still have MUCH to learn ;-)
The food is NOT quite as good as I've had on numerous occasions in Spain. There just is something missing, something no reproducible in sterile Germany. But the Morcilla & the Rioja are fabulous !
We also have a great bit of talk about that subject matter that was treated in this blog before, usually under the heading "How many good days do you have left?". It's refreshing and relieving to hear that my dinner partner has come to conclusions that are very similar to mine. And the bit about "We are not young people starting their careers anymore and we shouldn't live by the credos anymore that might make sense for those people but DO NOT make sense for us anymore" rings the bell very loudly ;-)
Uncle has to get up at 5:00 and I have to catch a 9:00 train, so we keep the good-bye short.
As a good-bye gift, I walk away with a bottle of red wine from the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon ! This bottle I will carry around in my backpack halfway through Germany (wine is HEAVY) but I know just the person who might appreciate drinking this with me.
And I have a strong sense that if Uncle knew my co-drinker, he would heartily agree !
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