Sunday in Germany – 19 May

Sunday in Germany – 19 May

One of the great things about cycle touring, is that you never quite know what will happen each day. This was a day that threw up a couple of unforgettable sights. The route was again along the Isar cycle way, following the river from Bad Tolz to Munich. In all we did 80 km – our accommodation is to the north of Munich and we spent a bit of time finding it (first going to the wrong street with similar name – many streets in Germany are called Bahnhof Strasse).

Not all of the route was directly along the river – right at the start of the ride we had a good little climb away from Bad Tolz with lovely rural views. A little further on we had another forest path with very tall trees.

View after first hill climb – not far from Bad Tolz
Forest Ride – Isar cycle way

The mishap of the day was that Kris lost his odometer along one of these forest paths. It was somehow knocked off the mounting on the bicycle. We backtracked a couple of hundred meters to see if we could find it but soon decided that that was a fool’s errand.

Eventually we came onto an easy path alongside the river once again. There were a lot of people out and about here, cycling and walking as it was a Sunday.

We noticed some rafts drifting down the river, with groups of people on them obviously having a huge party. They even had live music and amplifiers on these rafts. The rafts were just made of huge logs lashed together with a platform on top, so I was amazed that they took their musical instruments onto them.

Then we got to a weir, with a bridge and beer garden part way down. I didn’t believe it when Kris said one of the rafts had gone over the weir, until I saw it myself. Another one came down and I managed to capture some pictures from the bridge – they all cheer loudly as they come down the weir – just like on a roller coaster. It was one of the craziest things I have seen. The scene was made even more surreal by a Bavarian band sitting in the beer garden nearby playing folk music at their table. It was not clear whether they had just come off one of the rafts or if they were part of the beer garden entertainment.

When we got to Munich we decided to first head into the central city to see if we could find the Decathlon to buy another odometer. We first noticed that there were a lot of Police around, then we noticed that some of the streets we were coming down were closed to traffic. We found ourselves right at the starting point of a huge protest. It was a pro-EU, anti nationalism protest in anticipation of the upcoming EU elections. It was very peaceful and people of all ages were taking part. Later I read that they estimated that 10 thousand people took part. It took a while for them all to stream by. We couldn’t find the Decathlon so headed on to our hotel.

After checking in and washing up at the hotel, we headed back into the nearby Englischer Garten, the huge park in the centre of Munich. The gardens have many beer gardens in them and it was a hot Sunday afternoon, so there were lots of people around. Many were just sitting picnicking in small groups in remote parts of the gardens.

The first beer garden we found was ironically the one we went to in 2012 on our first trip – with all the dog walkers. We decided to try some different places this time. Below are some pictures of our little beer garden crawl. We had a huge bretzel, some sausage, sauerkraut and potato salad at the first one, which was very traditional. It had an Bavarian folk band but Kris thought it was a bit boring. The second was more laid back, next to a lake – probably the best one. The third was a pretty standard beer garden and the fourth was back at the hotel, on the front terrace. It began to rain heavily soon after we came in from the terrace. Little did we know that it would rain almost continuously for the next two days.

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