June 24th: Munich

The year before, we started the tour in Munich, but Bowen was fixated on castles that year. Once he discovered Minecraft he decided he likes mines, and I told him that the Deutsches museum had a full scale replica of a mine. He got very excited and told me I should have told him about it the year before, but of course how was I to know that he'd like mines!

I opted not to ride into Munich this year. Part of it is that city riding is unpleasant, even more so on the triplet, but mostly because in all my European touring, the only place where I ever get flat tires is in big German cities on their bike paths. Germans love their beer, and refuse to drink from cans, preferring glass bottles. Large numbers of Germans must gather in the night on bike paths to drink beer, and then when they're done with those beer bottles, will smash them right on the asphalt bike path, especially under bridges. On my commute in Munich, I'd frequently discover a flat, and after fixing it would look up and around me to see all around my tens of cyclists also fixing flat tires. It got so prevalent that on the Munich bike path, I would get off my bike before any bridge underpass, lift my bike on my shoulders, and run through the underpass before getting back on my bike again. There was no chance of my being able to do that on the triplet, so the 32 Euro Bayern ticket seemed like a bargain. Not only does the ticket grant  you full access to all regional trains for the day (for up to 5 adults, and a practically unlimited number of children), it also granted you full access to the Munich municipal transit system, which itself is a 20 Euro value!

The problem with Bad Tolz, however, was that the train station was far enough away that we needed a taxi ride to the train station. Once on board the train, we discovered that it had a special compartment meant for families with children. Once in town, we headed straight for the Deutches museum, where Bowen had fun being in the simulated mine, which was so big that he even felt as though it would never end!

When done, we headed over to Viktualien market for lunch, buying gooseberries and the various fish snacks from various stations. Then we visited Marienplatz and the Schuster, the outdoor store where we replaced Boen's Camelbak bladder, as well as getting Bowen a new pair of sunglasses to replace the one he'd just lost the day before. Both kids asked for new helmets, but their reasons weren't legitimate, so we put them off. Xiaoqin noticed that the prices for kids cycling clothes at the Schuster were even cheaper than what I'd found in Barcelona!

We then visited the Englischer Garten by transit, getting a much needed afternoon break. Bowen started complaining agian about being tired, but of course, perked up again once he saw the playground at the Chinese tower Biergarten.

Dinner was at the Haxnbauer for pork knuckles which were huge (the full size portion is just 3 euros more than the half portion, which was enough for Bowen and I!). After that, we took the transit back to the main train station and got onto the train back to Bad Tolz.

I  contemplated visiting Alan Wissenberg at Euraide, but we were pressed for time. It was just as well, as it would turn out that he was on a trip to Sweden. Back at the Bad Tolz train station, we visited the supermarket for some milk and drinks, as it had warmed up a lot, and then took the taxi back to the hotel. It was a very full day, and I told everyone that the next day was due to be even warmer, so we should sleep early and get up early so we could leave early. The kids ignored me, of course, knowing that I was the one who'd be paying the price the next day.

June 23rd: Garmisch to Bad Tolz

We woke up to sunny skies. It was cool but not cold, and I was happy to be riding again. I had expected all the rain to make the chains on the triplet rusty and squeaky (the ebike had a crank case that protected the chain from all but the worst downpour) but other than a link or two with a touch of rust on it, the bike wasn't making much more noise than usual. I was pretty grateful that I'd brought the fender this time, though leaving the front fender behind meant that I'd had soaked shoes more than a couple of times, which was painful because I only had one pair of shoes, a victim of trying to reduce weight on an already too-heavy bike.

The ride to Bad Tolz was fairly straightforward, leading us through beautiful fields at first at a good pace --- until I made a bad shift and shifted the tandem into the big chainring/big cassette combination. I probably had no business running a 52t chainring on the bike in the first place --- I could probably downsize to a 50t big ring with no speed penalties, but I'd simply been too lazy.

Fortunately, a couple of cyclists came by and helped me with the problem, though not without a lecture about not shifting into the big-big combination. We made our way to the town of Ohlstadt, where we once again found signs for the Bodensee-Konigsee bike route. We ignored the route, cycling towards Bad Tolz. We ate lunch at Grossweil, which had a restaurant with an attached playground which was great as adults could eat a quiet dinner while the kids worked themselves up an appetite while waiting for lunch to appear.

After lunch, we rode towards Benediktbeuern along the bike path, which quickly degenerated into dirt. Boen fell asleep again just before Benediktbuern , amd I briefly considered staying there. Benediktbuern was on a different train line, and had the problem that it had a 9:50 train to Munich instead of 9:00am train. The difference was significant, because the Bayern ticket had a restricted start time of 9:00am, and I expected the 50 minute difference to be a big deal. So we decided to go on to Bad Tolz.

 I found a couple of hotels, but all of them were far away from the train station. I would later discover that none of the hotels were near the train station simply because of zoning restrictions. I picked one mistakenly thinking it had a pool when all it had was a sauna, something not needed because of the summer temperatures. At least it was only a 40 Euro mistake.

With sunglasses on, nobody can tell that you're sleeping --- except for Mommy!

We arrived, checked in, did the usual routine and then walked over to the local greek restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we walked alongside the Isar river towards downtown. While I'd lived alongside the river in Pullach for a while, I'd never ridden down this far alongside it: river bike paths make for boring rides, and the cycle path there in Pullach was mostly unpaved anyway, so I preferred to take the train and skip that boredom. Bad Tolz was a wealthy town, however, and here the river bike path was paved.

Downtown Bad Tolz was mostly empty on a Monday evening, but the ice cream shop was open, and there was more than one. We walked around and then returned to the hotel. The hotel manager had given me two taxi companies to call for a taxi to take us to the train station the next day. I called the first one via Skype and made an appointment.

June 22nd: Partnach Gorge

It thunderstormed the night before, but no matter, as we didn't need things to dry overnight for a change! On our way to breakfast, we were treated to the sight of a "cowmute" --- shepherds driving cows to their feeding area through town. These shepherds used mountain bikes instead of walking, but it's all good!

After breakfast in the hotel, we got back onto our bikes loaded with the minimal raingear needed to negotiate the gorge. The ride to the gorge used a different path than what I'd done the previous year, thanks mostly to the switch from Komoot to Google for routing. As far as I'm concerned, I thought komoot did a better job but my wife didn't trust Google and you never argue with a woman about routing.

Riding all the way to the gorge was great, we passed hikers who would have to walk from the parking lot or the bus stop, and they would stare at us, since the triplet was unusual in Germany, as even tandems were rare. We stopped at the entrance where Bowen and Boen got to change shoes and then paid our entrance fee into the thunderous gorge. The year before, high water had rendered the gorge in-traversable, and you could still see the damage from the piles of gravel and other construction detritus clustered around the entrance.

The gorge walk wasn't as wild as the Hollentalklamm, and this being a Sunday foot traffic was continuous but by cycling to the start we'd beaten most of the hikers and so were less disturbed than on previous days. I knew of several routes past the gorge that would be worth hiking, but given that I had Boen and Xiaoqin with me I knew even the most trivial of hikes would turn into a challenge, so suggested the easiest one, which would complete a loop and even had the option of taking a cable car down to avoid completing the hike.

Sure enough, the complaints from Bowen started as soon as we left the gorge and started walking uphill. This wasn't because Bowen was incapable of doing a trivial walk --- this was a kid who was the veteran of multiple back-country camping trips and multi-day walks. The problem was that I was carrying Boen and the inequity of course got to Bowen over the course of the days. This was why I vetoed hiking trips, even though my wife much preferred hiking to cycling. On the bike, the two brothers would sing, play games, and by and large cooperate, but on a hiking trip when I only have a pair of shoulders things would degenerate into bugging daddy for a ride. The ability of children to self-entertain on a tandem or triplet always puts paid to the lies that many parents tell themselves, which is that their children cannot concentrate on anything like cycling for that long. One parent after another would tell me this, and then if/when their child finally got on a triplet with me and Bowen that same child would have no problem riding for more than an hour at a time and having fun to boot! The reality is that while I've yet to meet a child who didn't enjoy riding with their parent, for most dads, riding a tandem with their kid is a huge amount of work, and of course takes away from the me-time that cycling does represent for many parents. It's tough even for me, and I'm as dedicated a cycle tourist as you can find anywhere.

We hiked over the summit to Graseck where we had lunch. Bowen was convinced that he wanted to take the cable car, and no amount of daddy-suasion could talk him out of it. We took the cable car down and came back to the triplet to discover locals looking at it. A couple came up to tell us how wonderful it that we were teaching the kids to travel by bike at such a young age. We told them that the weather was a challenge, and they told us that this was the last day of rain but it was supposed to get super hot after this.

After the hike, we rode back to town for lunch and then I took the kids to the swimming pool again after. I was dismayed to discover that the swimming pool only honored visitor cards once! Fortunately, my wife's card was unused the previous day, so we presented that, and so only had to pay for Bowen to enter, as Boen was free anyway.

This time we were time-limited but it wasn't a problem for the kids. While we were swimming Xiaoqin had shopped for dinner and we could have a relaxing dinner with no rain for a change. After that, we turned in, planning a visit to Bad Tolz the next day which would set us up for a visit to Munich.

June 21st Reutte to Garmisch-Partenkirchen

The year before, Bowen and I had visited Garmisch but the Partnach Gorge was closed. This year, we planned to visit again, and this time I certainly wasn't going to drag Boen and Xiaoqin up to the Hollentalklamm as a backup plan.

When planning the route, I noted that from Reutte to Garmisch, the best bike route was to ride over to the Plansee (which I hadn't seen since my first visit to Austria back in 2003) and then take the dirt path over to the Garmisch valley. I didn't find any documentation, however, on the condition of the trails, or even as to whether it was feasible on a tandem, let alone a triplet carrying panniers.

My concern meant that I started the morning by pumping up the tires of the triplet, it having become noticeably softer since the days when we left the Zurich airport hotel so long ago.

We made it to the border of Reutte before finding a zipline playground and immediately stopped for the kids to play in it. I set a time limit and then after we left we followed the bike path only to discover that the komoot-driven route had been blocked due to construction. At least we found some wild strawberries! Circling around, we found a local who told us to go on the main road, and told us that we'd have to get off and push the bike because it was steep.

Steep it was, at an approximately 12% grade, which necessitated a rest stop about three quarters of the way up, which fortunately had a pullout conveniently situated for the purpose. We never had to push the bike, however, which was a good thing, because while the traffic was fairly light, it would platoon together behind slow moving trucks and RVs, so when traffic did come by it would come by quite heavily.

The descent down to Plansee exceeded our expectations, and the Plansee gave us a beautiful backdrop of mountains in a beautiful morning light. There was still a fair amount of traffic but also enough tranquil spots where we could stop an enjoy the scenery. At the far end of the lake, we stopped for ice cream and to watch the lake cruise stop, let off passengers and take off again. The boat was so slow that we'd overtaken it in the course of our ride.

It was time for us to explore unknown territory as we rode off the pavement onto the hiking trail signed for Garmisch. The first section along the lake was easy and unchallenging, as expected, but after that the trail climbed albeit gently along a river, lulling us into a sense of complacency that all internet reports that it was a mountain bike trail were wildly exaggerated.

At the summit, the trail remained a fire road, but the descent became steep, and mountain bikers with electric motors would marvel at this giant triplet with panniers coming down the mountain. I was slipping and sliding but always felt in control, though I kept thinking that if this got harder I was going to start to be in trouble, but it never did. The GPS track on my watch was misleading, occasionally telling me when I was off-course, but passing cyclists would reassure us that we were on the road to Garmisch. We found one gate which was easily opened, but the final gate to the pavement beyond was locked. Fortunately, a pair of mountain bikers stopped to help us hoist the bike over the tree roots that were guarding the mountain bike entry, which was fortunate because once again Boen refused to get off the bike so I could roll it over the minor obstacle.

Once there, the descent to Garmish was gentle and easy, though traffic once again became intense as we got into town. We got to our hotel, and our rooms were not ready, but we parked our bike and walked over to lunch and ice cream. We explored Garmisch, and I visited the visitor center where I was reassured that the Partnach gorge was open this year and we could bike all the way to the entrance of the gorge. Xiaoqin spotted the Michael Ende park, something I'd missed on previous visit. There was a market open where we bought some hand-made pasta along with the instructions on how to cook it.

By the time we we got back to the hotel room it was available. I took the kids over to the swimming pool. There, Bowen and Boen not only did the slides (it was crowded compared to the last time Bowen and I were there, it being a weekend), but also discovered the joys of the diving boards. By the time we were finished with our swim it was raining heavily. Out came the raingear and we rode over to the grocery store to buy dinner and we got back soaking wet but at least we wouldn't have to leave again. We went to sleep knowing that everything we had would have an entire day to dry, and that the gorge was fun to be in rain or dry.

June 20th Fussen to Reutte

It had rained the night before, I noted as I walked over to install the battery in the ebike and ride it to the Hohenschwangau ticket office. The Hohenschwangau ticket office opens at 7:30am, but even at 6:57am there was already a line waiting. The office opened promptly at 7:30am and we were treated to a rare example of a German failure, which was that the credit card machines didn't work, forcing us to pay cash for our tickets. I arranged for the earliest possible tours in case the forecast about the thunderstorm was right.

I rode back to Fussen and tried to get everyone organized to meet our 9:00am entry into the Hohenschwangau, which  was actually the better tour. Bowen complained about visiting the castles again. We rode to the castle just in time to make the entry, but somehow between when we parked the bikes and when we made it up to the castle entrance Bowen's eye started swelling. By the time the audio tour started, it'd started looking bad. I asked the tour guide to let us out so I could give him some claritin, and she suggested that I take him to the hospital. I was resistant to the idea but I was told it was really close, and when it didn't look any better despite the claritin, I took him there, leaving the luggage in the hands of the local souvenir shop. One look at Bowen and everyone had sympathy for him (and me!). I told Xiaoqin and Boen to stay on their tour.

I rode at high speed to the clinic, parked the bike outside unlocked, and was ushered into the emergency room. There were a couple of people ahead of us, but they looked at Bowen and told me to interrupt the doctor as clearly what he had needed more urgent attention. The doctor looked annoyed at us, but the entire waiting room was in consensus: she should see Bowen first! The doctor looked at Bowen and concluded that he had an insect bite. “It looks scary, but if it was an allergic reaction it should have affected both eyes. He'll be better tomorrow.” She gave Bowen some prednisolone, and a second tablet to give him the next morning. “I can write you a prescription for eyedrops. It's not strictly necessary but it might make him feel better. The problem is that it's a Saturday and the nearest open pharmacy is quite far away.” She named a couple of towns whose names I were not familiar with. “How about Reutte? We're going there today.” While Reutte wasn't a big city, it was the largest village around in that part of Austria, so if there was anything open it would be more likely to be in Reutte than in any of the Austrian villages. The doctor said she didn't know but wrote me a prescription anyway.

Bowen was clearly relieved at the diagnosis and felt immediately better, so we rode back to the castles and met mommy and Boen. We took the bus up to Neuschwanstein, but missed our entry time. We explained to the security personnel about Bowen's eye. One look at Bowen and he waved away my search for my receipt from the doctor's office and gave us the next tour which was in just 5 minutes!

The tour was great and we had a quick lunch, but not quick enough as when we got to the Marienbrucke it was more crowded than I'd ever seen it. We got in, took a picture, and got out just in time to catch the bus down. The sky had clouded over, so we made a dash up the street to try to make it to Reutte before the forecasted thunderstorm.

The ride, as I remembered, wasn't very hard despite it being a climb. It was by far the easiest border crossing between Germany and Austria in the area, and I was quite happy with our progress when it started raining exactly as we reached the border, which was where the paved bike path turned into an unpaved fire road. We heard the sound of thunder and decided that discretion was the better part of valor and wait under a shelter. When Xiaoqin and I had bought rain gear for her and the kids at the REI memorial day sale, she asked if I intended to ride in the rain. I said that you buy rain gear hoping not to use it, but in any case the Partnach gorge in Garmisch would demand it. Well, now was the time to use the rain gear so I got out all the rain gear and we dressed the kids and ourselves in our rain gear.

The forecast called for the thunderstorm to die over the afternoon, and indeed by 3:00pm, the thunder and lightning had gotten further away, and we were getting more wet from raindrops falling from the trees than the rain, so we made the decision to dash for it. Riding down the dirt path into Austria proper was easy, but the bike route to Reutte seemed to be much longer than the direct route Bowen and I took the year before, which ironically was because we missed the bike path sign.  Both kids started complaining about the cold, but of course we finally spotted our first zipline playground of the trip 3km before arriving at the hotel. As is always the case, once we reached the hotel the rain stopped and the sun came out!

It wasn't enough to to drop off everyone at the hotel, however, I still had a prescription to fill on a Saturday. I asked the hotel receptionist about it, and to my delight she gave me the name of a pharmacy. I asked if they were open, and she said “no, but push the button and someone will help you!” I rode my bike to the pharmacy, and there found a sign to push a button but no indication as to which button it was. I walked around pushing random buttons until I realized that the sign referred to a big pillar outside the pharmacy that said “Nacht Watch” for “night watch.” There was a 1.5 Euro surcharge for using the night watch service but I was more than happy to pay the premium. The pharmacist apologized for taking a long time because filling a German prescription in Austria meant that he had to triple-check everything and all the drug names, despite everything being in German!

We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, and afterwards as promised, I took Bowen and Boen to the zipline in the fading light and had them play for 30 minutes. The hotel room was a strange split-level setup, so Bowen and I slept in the “attic”.  Fortunately, the weather had cooled off considerably after the thunderstorm, so we could sleep.

June 20th Immendstadt to Fussen

We woke up to a warm morning, and wasted precious time looping back and forth trying to regain the bike route. Because we weren't married to the Bodensee-Konigsee bike route, we decided to just use Google maps to route to Fussen, which might have been a mistake, since while we ran into other cyclists, the route they took (and which Google recommended) immediately took us up grades north of 12%, which eventually surpassed my aerobic threshold and forced me to get off the bike. Bowen was willing to get off as well, but Boen was not, forcing me to push him and the loaded bike up the steep grades.

We paused to rest at a house with a rabbit hutch and questionable tasting water. I threw away a whole bottle before a passing cyclist told me that it was safe to drink. One more steep pitch that necessitated walking went by before we descended to Nesselwang with a supermarket and lunch. Xiaoqin found a great ice cream place where we took on fortification before the final push to Fussen.

After lunch, the climbing began again, but never so steep as before, and we entered a forest which granted us relief from the unrelenting sun which made me question the rain forecast. Once at the summit however, the ride turned into a beautiful series of rolling hills in the downhill direction which were a joy and granted us great speed, with the wind cooling us off even in the sun.

For whatever reason, Boen had no problem with sleeping that day, but at the bottom of the hill, just 8km from Fussen when we stopped to refill the water bottles, he enjoyed the fountain so much that he threw a temper tantrum when it was time to leave. We stayed a little longer but he still cried upon leaving, and so it was that we rode through the Hopfen am See with Boen crying the entire way, and he didn't stop until we got within the Fussen city limits.

This was my first time staying in old town Fussen, and our Apartment Hotel told us to park our bikes behind the visitor center just outside old town. I looked at the receptionist quizzically about this, but she insisted that it was safe. I wasn't concerned about the triplet, but the ebike was obviously valuable even without a battery installed, so I locked that to the triplet using the flimsy cable lock I had anyway and hoped for the best.

Dinner was at the Italian restaurant where the waiter did a great job of pretending to be Italian even though he was plainly German, eating the fresh strawberries we'd brought into the restaurant. I told Xiaoqin about the plan for tomorrow, which was that I'd go buy the tickets, and then come back and we'd ride over together for the tours. Then, because I had zero trust in the weather forecast, we would just ride over to Reutte in Austria. Little was I to know that it was going to be far more challenging a day than I had planned.

That night, before bed, I received a call from an Austrian phone #. I picked it up and the hotel asked me when I was planning to show up. I said that we were arriving by bicycle so didn't know. We back'd and forth'd a bit before I realized that she'd mistaken my reservation for tomorrow for today! I corrected her mistake and she apologized.

June 18th Grunenbach to Immendstadt

We woke up somehow refreshed and ate the scrumptious and generous breakfast laid out by our hostess, who had a little girl a little younger than Boen. She was so impressed by our bike that she asked to take a picture, and in exchange I extracted a picture from her as well.

The climb out was steep but very manageable in a refreshed state while the day was still cool. We made it to Oberstaufen by 10:00am, and stopped at the first sports shop that we saw. They told us they weren't a bike shop and so couldn't effect the repairs we needed, but that Oli's bike shop could. We rode around for a bit before finding it across the street from the train station. There, the mechanic saw us, and motioned us around to the mechanic's side of the business. In the time it took for me to take Bowen up the steps to use the bathroom, he'd had a new bolt installed.

“How much was it?” “The price,” he told us, “is a smile on your face!” With that kind of service I laughed and tried to find a replacement bladder for Boen's camelbak, which was leaking whenever it was filled any more than a quarter full. He didn't have any in stock, so told us to look for the main branch of the shop past Immendstadt.

I suggested the swimming pool to Bowen and he jumped on it. They were running a special that day, 2 hours for the price of one, so we paid the fee and went in. The slide was great, and I took Boen down it several time with Bowen, and after they tired of it we went to the baby pool and I had a swim in the lap pool as well.

Refreshed, we bought lunch at the supermarket and had a picnic in the town's Kurpark.

After lunch, it was time to ride to Immenstadt. I booked an apartment close to the town center: it was priced high as there wasn't much availability despite it being midweek, a mystery I was never able to solve. Unfortunately, our plans hit a snag once we got onto the bike path, which was that between the efforts of the swimming pool and the mid-afternoon sun, Boen fell asleep!

We stopped and Boen napped for about 20 minutes before waking up and was ready to go. The path to Immendstadt goes on the north side of the lake, opposite the main highway, which made it a beautiful and quiet alternative, and granted us views of the lake only interrupted by the train tracks running alongside it.

The lake was gorgeous, and when we found a suitably shaded spot with a nice vantage point, we stopped and rested, taking pictures, letting Bowen and Boen lie down on the bench as the world went by.

Unfortunately, at the break spot, I discoverred that my Canon G7X II was now broken: the lens cap/shutter mechanism had gotten stuck, and the lens would never fully open or close ever again. I considered replacing it, but not at European prices, especially in a situation where I'd never be able to get my VAT tax back. Luckily, prior to the trip, Xiaoqin had acquired a state of the art Pixel 3A XL, reportedly the best smartphone camera in the business. I turned on RAW mode on her phone, and would later discover that it was a worthless endeavor: the good photos was entirely because of the on-board photo-merging/pinning software, and nothing you did in Lightroom could compensate for that.

The bike path took us right into town, where our navigation system told us to leave it and go under a tunnel where we emerged into a neighborhood that adjoined a major road with a ton of traffic. Nevertheless, we were committed but the owner of the apartment waved us in and told us that we could easily just park our bikes outside the house all night and not have any problem, but that he wanted to be paid in cash. With our cash reserves too low to pay him right away, we moved in, took an inventory of what needed to be bought for dinner, and I took the ebike out to find an ATM.

After that, I walked over to the supermarket, which was described as 100m from the apartment, but in reality was closer to 200m. I bought a selection of groceries suitable for dinner and breakfast, and then walked back. After showering the kids and laundry, I made dinner, since we were all too tired to walk back to town for dinner.

I looked at the map and the forecast, which was for rain in the afternoon. We were close enough to Fussen to conceivably make it there tomorrow. If the rain forecast played out, Fussen was potentially a better place to be in, since it had good train connections to other places worth seeing, and the castles were obviously a good place to spend a rainy day. Moreover, it was big enough to have car rental places, so we could for instance, visit Garmisch and other must-sees on our itinerary without losing time. It would change our route, but weather should always change your cycling plans if your desire is to have fun rather than just be riding for the sake of riding.