Bev and I decided that since we'd be riding on the train for about 4 hours to Munich today, we would walk from our hotel to the train station in Karlsruhe, carrying our backpacks and “second bags” that we each had. The walk was roughly 500 meters, which would be about five city blocks. It was yet another gorgeous sunny morning, so the walk was very pleasant and we got to the station in plenty of time to get a roll and coffee, and to buy some bread to go with the cheese we bought at the market in Freiburg yesterday. This would be our lunch on the train, as we were due to arrive in Munich at 1:00 p.m. Seth and I had communicated through Facebook and here was the plan: Seth, Nadege, Patti and baby Henri would meet us at the station at the end of our track. We then would have one hour to catch a train with them to Tergensee, a mountain resort town about one hour away, where Seth and Nadege had been before on holiday several times before. They had made hotel reservations for three rooms.
The train from Karlsruhe left right on time, but when we got to Stuttgart, the train to Munich was delayed about 20 minutes. Eventually it was announced on the train that we'd be getting into Munich about 1:10—about 10 minutes late. But we knew that would not be an issue, since we had full hour before we had to catch the train to Tergensee. The leg to Munich was uneventful, and we relaxed, did some reading and caught up on our blogging, which is hard to do every day, especially when you're staying with people, touring by day and chatting by night. Not a bad problem to have, mind you!
The train pulled into the Munich central station about 5 minutes after one on Track 16. We strapped on our backpacks and grabbed our second bags and stepped off the train, heading to the end of the track where we were to meet up with Seth and crew. As we started to walk, we saw Seth running toward us with a backpack on his back, his eyes big and friendly, but he was obviously excited. He ran up to Bev and offered to take one of her bags, and said, “We've got two minutes to catch an earlier train and we have to get to Track 37. Can we hurry and try to catch it?” Bev's German kicked in, and she responded, “Oh shit!” Then we both said, “Let's go!” and off the three of us went, running as best we could with heavy backpacks and carrying our second bags Seth, of course, kept getting out ahead of us, but kept looking back to make sure that we were still alive, as well as still on our way! As we got to Track 37, we saw the train still on the track, with Nadege, a baby stroller, and Patti, waiting by the open train door, and watching to see if we would make it. And we DID make it! Without chest pains, even! Whew! We were all laughing as we unloaded our bags on the train and Seth announced, “I've got beer!”He proceeded to pull one litre bottles of a Munich local favorite out of his backpack. Seth then explained that by catching this train, we avoided waiting an hour in the train station in Munich before the next train to Tergensee. We were more than happy to oblige, despite the workout!
We got into Tergensee about 2:15 p.m. and walked to our hotel, got checked in and found that our room had a drop-dead gorgeous view of Lake Tergensee, with the Alps in the background. We all met in the lobby and went for a walk around the resort town, along the lake, and eventually found a little outdoor biergarten where we stopped for a beer and relaxed. Since we hadn't seen Patti for so long, other than briefly at breakfast on Sunday, we had a lot of catching up to do. We then returned to our hotel, freshened up and then went to dinner at a nearby restaurant. Seth talked us into Schwein knuckel, which is pork that has a fried fat crust. We'd never had this before, but had seen it on menus throughout Germany. We found this entree to be very meaty, very good and very different from anything we'd had in Germany up to now. Then back to our hotel to bed, to rest up for the hiking we'll do tomorrow into the mountains above the lake. Is this all really happening?
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