Europe 2013: Riding Into the Sunset Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be

September 6, 2013

Today, I headed west. That is, into the setting sun. Other than that, a good day.

After a quick breakfast and a few emails I needed to send off, I called the tax-free number to figure out an important point: did I need to have my new cello with me, in order to get my VAT back? The short answer, fortunately, was no. But I had to have a clear statement from the shipping company that it had been shipped out of the EU.

So I headed out to the DHL office, cello in hand, to place it in the tender care of the gorillas who run the shipping industry. Gorillas, of course, can be gentle. But only if treated well. On the way in, I stopped at one of the street stands selling souvenirs and blew 2.50 on a sticker that says WIEN and has an appropriately medieval-looking two-headed eagle device on it, which I then affixed to the case approximately where a badge would go on a person. In any case anyone needs to know my snob story before I get a chance to explain it.

I was very lucky that Herr Ramsaier had a spare shipping box I could use. I think it saved me a bundle of money (a cello-size box would undoubtedly cost at least 75 euros from DHL/UPS). The shipping ended up being... well, "not bad" sounds weird: it was slightly more expensive than buying a one-way ticket home on the plane, which was the other possible choice. But all the flights except mine were available for the cheap price, while the exact flight combination I was booked for was going for 2100 euros instead of just shy of 600. So I would have had to rearrange my flight as well, and who knows how much more that would have cost.

Anyway, getting the shipping sorted out proved to be surprisingly easy. Still, it was with a certain amount of misgivings that I saw my cello in its shiny new case whipped away into a back room, "to be packed later." But I had all the paperwork I would need (he said hopefully), and I can but trust that my musical cargo will arrive in one piece in Seattle. It should, if all goes well, arrive two days before I do, which I find a bit humorous.

Thus I returned to the Neunteufel residence a couple hours earlier than I'd anticipated, surprising them as much as myself. Marta said lunch would happen in about an hour, so I spent the 11-12 hour dealing with last-minute emails and research on a campsite, and getting my bags packed.

For my birthday, Reinhart gave me one of his old film cameras, a Nikon F4. This was, when new, the pinnacle of Nikon's pro line, and it's bristling with controls and knobs and (joy of joys) it's powered by AA batteries instead of the weird 2CR5 batteries my new-old Canon film camera takes.

The big gamble is that I don't have any way to carry it in my carry-on baggage on the plane. It may be I can figure out a way, but the bag was pretty full on the way over. So if I can't get it into the carry-on, it's going to get wrapped with every possible soft item in my baggage, placed dead-center in the bag, and once more unto the tender mercies of the shipping gorillas.

I'm excited to have an entree into the Nikon world, although it means I need to start looking for a whole different collection of lenses, if so moved.

So, lunch, final pack, check tire pressure, last-minute group photo, final goodbyes to Reinhart and Marta and I was off, shortly before 1:30. My goal was the Rosenheim area of Bavaria. After some confusion with the GPS, I settled on a mostly-autobahn route, since I was starting so late. It projected that I would arrive in the 5:30 region, which as ever was ridiculously optimistic (I didn't arrive until nearly 8).

All went well, and there's not much to say, since autobahn is autobahn is autobahn. Around 50 km from Salzburg, I saw my first hint of the Alps as looming shadows on the horizon. Just before Salzburg, I got gas at one of the freeway rest stations (1.599 per liter, 20 cents more than anywhere not on the autobahn). They wanted another 50 cents to use the bathroom, and I was so incensed by the audacity of it that I took the next exit and told the GPS to avoid freeways.

I made it to Salzburg that way, and stopped at a market for some dinner food, but by this time the sun was so low that it was pretty much all I could see. So, blind and far too warm, I wended my way through Salzburg, at which point I decided I'd be happier with airflow to cool me down at least a little, and perhaps the blinding sun wouldn't be so bad if the road were broad and simple to navigate.

Sound reasoning, except for one thing: traffic. By the time I hit it, the GPS refused to acknowledge any route other than the autobahn, including when specifically informed to avoid freeways, so I sucked it up and rode through an hour-plus of traffic. For joy.

But I did arrive at my campsite, where I'm up far too late writing this, because I spend an hour or so trying to capture the flashes of lighting happening in an electrical storm off to the west, over the lake, which is called the Simssee. I didn't get any lightning, but I did get some cool pictures of the clouds rolling in over the lake in the dark. I eventually had to stop, worried that all the long exposures were going to blow through my battery too quickly.

And so, with some lingering disquiet about my new cello arriving without problems, I set my sights on Altstaetten, Switzerland tomorrow.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.