Our journey to Italy

Note that there we are posting two entries at once. Dont forget to read the one below, about Munich. It originally failed to upload and we havnet had internet in a few days, and wont for a few more so sorry if we are overloading you! 

A stretch of what seems like incredible luck has carried us safely to Maurizio and Barbara's olive grove in the hills of Tuscany overlooking the mediterranean. 

Our journey began on Sunday morning, when, after a minor mishap involving a failure to switch trains on the subway in Munich, we managed to arrive at the correct train station exactly in time to meet our driver, Fabrice, with whom I had arranged a carpool using some rideshare website. Backstory: Last week, when trying to figure out how to get to Tuscany, and being unable to find a logical and affordable train, it popped into my head to look for a rideshare site. On my first search on the first website I found, there just so happened to be someone traveling in the right direction on the right day who could take us as far as Genoa (from where we could take a quite convenient train).! Mummy said, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," so with that mentality, we hoped for the best, but were prepared for less, and prayed it wouldn't be a disaster. However, It turned out that Fabrice was perfect. A 40-something frenchman who does freelance marketing for american companies in Germany, he travels to Nice to visit his three kids about once a month, and enjoys road biking, mountain biking, mountain hiking, and good cheese. His car was roomy, climate controlled, and had a big sunroof and plenty of space in the back for our bags and those of two other (extremely quiet female) passengers. Fabrice was on time, cheerful, speed-limit-abiding, fluent in English, and in possession of a sharp sense of humor. We took the San Bernardino through the spectacular Swiss alps and made it to Genoa with plenty of time to catch our 16:11 train to Sestri Levante, where we planned to camp at a campground. 

("the spectacular swiss alps")

(waterfall)

Communication with the campground up to that point had been a bit sketchy due to language difficulties and the uncertainty of our arrival time due to the uncertainty of which train we would be able to catch due to the uncertainty of how reliable our carpool was going to be. Consequently, we were uncertain as to how we were going to traverse the 6 kilometers between the station and the campground. However, we were relieved when we texted the campground's cell number with our arrival time and received a reply, "ok we see out of the station in front of." 

We easily found a seat on the train and relaxed a bit (however, remaining vigilant after Fabrice's warnings about pickpockets and such, who frequent trains and stations in the south). Things began to look grim again though, as the rain started to fall harder and more persistently, and the sun began to go down an hour before we had expected, because, "oh yeah, the time change was last night!" 

When got off of our train an hour and a half later and headed into the station, we were greeted by a voice: "camping?" and upon turning to face it, we beheld the next wonderful character of our story, Nino. He drove us the six kilometers the the dark and rain to the campground's front desk, where we checked in with his wife. When we asked whether we could keep our bags in the office, as they wouldn't fit in our small tent, they said, "hey why don't you just take a camper. There's one available and we'll give it to you for the same price as a tent site." (They didn't actually say it like that, but that's what they meant.) So instead of setting up a tent in the dark and rain, we had electricity, a table and chairs under a tent extension of the camper, two comfortable beds, and were completely dry. Like I think the deal with this campground is that people live in these trailers all summer, and that's camping. Here is a view of the campground, although we didn't get a picture of our own tent/ camper.

In the morning, Nino gave us a ride all the way back to Sestri Levante, and a tour! Despite speaking practically no english he explained to us that these towns were on a peninsula and there were bays on either side, and he took us to where one can look one way and see a beach, and turn 180 degrees to see another beach, looking out at a different bay, and then we all got out of the car to gaze out at the sea and the hillside towns that overlook it all along the shore.

Three coffees and an extremely comfortable 3 hour train ride later, we found ourselves in Grosseto, from whence we caught a bus up some mountains to Montorgiali and were scooped up by Barbara and brought the rest of the way to their house just in time for the Tuscan sunset. 

Turns out they only just started the olive harvest this morning (a week later than they thought, due to rain), so there's lots for us to do. I've written so much already, so I'll spare you description of the few events that have occurred since we arrived. (It's now 10 pm on Monday) By the time I post this, we will have spent a day harvesting olives. There's no internet here, so we'll have to travel to town to post. 

 

1 1/2 Days in Munich - 10/25-26

We are incredibly fortunate to have made the acquaintance (while in Slovenia) of an extrordinary guy from Munich named Ulrich (U or Uli for short).

That's him this morning, after yesterday having picked us up at the Munich Hauptbahnhof.  We had been wandering around Munich in the afternoon, hanging out briefly with the Womwn in Black, since Hoeh has a history of supporting that cause...

and finding Mariaplatz and other Munich sights - 

Note the guy in the center below.  Skinny-dipping in the English Garden is apparently commonplace.  

Playing rummy in a Biergarten drinking Radner, a sort of Sprite/beer that they like around here but we didn't!  Probably part of the glum expression...

So anyway U is an awesome guy, a single and evidently eligible engineer who has hobbies like leather work (entirely made by hand):

:

joinery, and finish carpentry with hand tools -

and other amazing talents.  He has greeted us with unsurpassable hospitality and generosity.  e.g., we are ostensibly "couch surfers," but guess who took the couch, despite the mis-matched couch length (5 ft.) and his height (6'4" perhaps)...

So he suggested this morning that we go see the highest peak of the German Alps, the Zugspitze. 

We drove through a bit of Austria, with another of the Slovenia acquaintances Berndt, and a new friend, Chermane, an American ex-pat -

 We decided not to pay 50 euros to go up to the top, and instead had a nice little hike.

Then after searching for quite a while for an open restaurant,we found a great place and had an amazing lunch of dishes like Wiener Schnitzel, wild deer ragout, wild deer goulash, and dumplings with porcini-ricotta filling.  

Then we then went on to Neuschwanstein, palace of Crazy King Ludwig, said establishement also known as The Walt Disney castle 

Rake and Hoeh.

U is the perfect gentleman:

Finally we journeyed back to Munich, where the Rakehas dutifully gone out with U and Berndt to pursue important sociological research on the subject of the annual Weiss Beer- Weiss Wein ( white beer, white wine) celebration sponsored by the local Bachelors Club, an important civic organization - really, the arbiter of all significant things civic in Bavaria.  We await her findings, and meanwhile get some sleep before the drive to Italy.  Gute Nacht.

Aufwiedersehen to Vilshof

As we pull out of the station at Regensburg headed for München, we both feel quite satisfied with our 9 days in the little Bavarian village.  The Hoeh got to speak German, but didn't HAVE to.  The Rake learned a few words and even sentences!  We experienced daily life in an extended German family, in an old, small, rural town.  Completing the apple harvest, cooking for a busy mother, helping on a construction project and a website made us feel reasonably useful, though none of it was difficult or very demanding. Our hosts were utterly welcoming and open-hearted.  We even found and cooked wild mushrooms - although the famed Steinpilz (porcini) all but eluded us.... Our workday was only 4 hours, and we had bicycles and a rowboat at our disposal, and could have used a kayak as well on the little back yard river if we'd had more time.  They even have a climbing wall in their barn!  We got lots of exercise  running on the bike path and in the woods on one of many public hiking paths through the seemingly limitless forests in the region.  Staying in a place like this for a solid stretch makes it possible to glimpse some commonplace but significant elements of a local culture.

Last night Maija and Stephan rustled up a little taste of German Christmas for us, with Lebkuchen, Stollen and Glühwein.  It was a sweet little farewell and we'll miss them.

Some of our memories:

Making a squash soup wit yogurt and pumpkin seed oil

and a quiche with oyster mushrooms and caramelized onions

finding and cookong black trumpets and lactarious deliciosus

views of freshly plowed, dark soil of the valley fields

the climbing wall in the barn

the work on the barn

Zoe, Lina, Julius, Stephan, Maija

Maija making bobbin lace, an incredibly fussy and meticulous hobby with beautiful results

trying our hand at bobbin lace

looking for Schwammeln (mushrooms)

finding the big one

the river n theback yard

Zoe and King Julian

Maija's parents with their apples

And now on to Munich to visit the German guys we met in Robidišče!

Elisabeth (the Rake)'s birthday

This is the Hoeh speaking. 24 years ago, a new person was suddenly there in my house.  We called her Elisabeth. Even though her first name was really Anna.  It didn't really matter, since people call her whatever they want to, including Stan. which by the way was actually my grandfather's name!

Today we started the day by going with Maija's parents to deliver the apples we had sorted  , and many of which we had picked or picked up

to the press, which was in Regensburg and looked like this:

It turned out we had 250 kilos to add to their batch.  The deal is that you get credit according to weight of apples, then you can buy any of several juices from them at discounted prices up to a corresponding amount.

Then they dropped us off so we could spend the day as tourists in the historic and scenic Regensburg.

So we are staying with a family of energy- and environment-conscious vegetarians, and we took the opportunity today to be conscience-free sausage consumers.

Ja, we got it out of our system, maybe.

St. Peter's Dom Platz

Boat tour on the Danube.

Inside St. Peter's Dom

View from the Stone Bridge Tower

It was a lovely day.

But to backtrack a little: There is an interesting and apparently widespread but locally-varied holiday called (well, regionally varied but here called) Kirchweih, in which the anniversary of the consecration of the local church is celebrated with dancing at the foot of a very tall, somewhat festooned tree,  This one was 24 meters.

The local teenagers have a large party the night before, which we witnessed, observing scores of 16 year old girls filing back and forth to the bathroom while similar numbers of guys drank outside. One guy did come in and sit with us in the Gasthaus, finding it incomprehensible that Elisabeth was a carpenter. " Ein Zimmerman?  Ein ZimmerGIRL?? Du, ein ZimmerGirl?! Nein. Ja?" This was him the next day, apparently recovered:

Anyway, they all bounced back after their night of partying and put on a remarkable performance in their own customized versions of traditional garb. 

Unfortunately we can't show videos in this app or from this iPad, but there was a really good young accordion player too.  Even though apparently this holiday is a sort of "coming out" for drunk teenagers, in that they basically party publicly officially for the first time - all weekend - it was a truly good-faith performance they put on for a sizable crowd!   And we understand this happens all over the country every October.

So we are here til Friday and then we will go on to Italy via Munich.  Maybe we'll post again before that ...