Europe 2022

15 May 2022 - 4 July 2022

Also see my Blog from our 2021 bicycle trip:

https://sites.google.com/view/drbarney/home/france

15 May 2022

We made it to the airport with plenty of time. Departing is not the difficult part. Planning was. This trip started with a technical conference in La Rochelle France May 21-25. The rest was built around that. After seeing many advertisements about Viking Cruise line and their cruise that included a stop at the Oberammergau Passion Play, I thought that would be a super trip to do with my father. I thought that tickets for the Passion Play were hard to get. There through Viking was a source, and combining it with a river cruise on the Danube sounded like a great combo.

During planning I found that there were still MANY tickets available for the Passion Play. The Viking Cruise that included it included time in Salzburg where I and my father had been several times. There was another cruise they offered on the Danube with more time on the Danube and a stop n Bratislava, where I had not been. We decided to see the Passion Play on our own, and book the "Danube Waltz" cruise, saving us $1700, which would buy a lot of Passion Play and fancy Bavarian hotels.

Easter Day my father's girlfriend tells my sister that my father won't get up from the sofa. Gena drives up there, and he can get up, but he has a cough and sore throat and a fever. She gives him an at-home Covid test and he was positive. Doris was n0t. Gena and Tom had spent the day before Easter with Dad making the traditional Easter Pie. They tested themselves and Gena was positive. Her symptoms came a couple of days later. She worked from home every day that week. Dad probably caught Covid at the market, even though he said he avoids people.

Four weeks later Dad is still fatigued, and decided he could not make the trip. Pete and I spent several hours Saturday getting travel documents together - Verify, EU dBSP. This morning I called Viking and canceled our cruise. I did a bit of repacking, to accommodate a more bicycling heavy vacation after the conference, which Pete was eager to do. Our house guest/sitter drove us to the airport. The flight is on time, but full. Hopefully we'll soon be on our way. Boise - Dallas - Paris.

16 May 2022

Bonjour from Paris. Not really. Yesterday we got on board. The plane was 20 minutes late backing out from the gate because of mechanical problems. Then we stopped, waited a while and went back to the gate. We sat there a while - most people weren't even aware that we had returned, because the Boeing 787 had windows that automatically dim to opaque. They told the flight attendants to disarm doors, which I knew was a bad sign. I turned my phone back off of Airplane mode. It started receiving texts:

American Airlines 48 from DFW to CDG departure time has changed to 9:20pm, to 9:46pm, to 10:16pm, to 11:00 pm, to 3am, to 7am, to 3pm.

Then we were told the flight was canceled and given instructions on getting hotel and meal vouchers. Thankfully by the time we got off the plane I had also received a text basically saying click here to pick your hotel and get your vouchers, so I didn't have to stand in line. The Cell service was poor and it took Pete a while to call an Uber. We shared with a woman from France who teaches Construction Management in Arizona (and who is very aware of BSU's CM department).

We had a nice hotel breakfast this morning, dipped in the pool, then shared an Uber back to the airport with the French lady and two other people. The 5 of us had lunch together in the airport using our $12 meal vouchers. They are now starting boarding. Cross your fingers.

17 May 2022

Bonjour from Paris. Yes, we did make it on our second try. Along the way we met a few other nice people who were also stranded passengers.

Similar to last year, getting through immigration at CDG was an hour+ long process. Shorter than last year, but still longer than it should be. Maybe it is because the flight got in too early (7am) and the staff hadn't all arrived? After immigration we got our bag, walked to the RER train platform and headed into the city. Very uneventful I had contacted the hotel the night before to let them know we were delayed. The room was not refundable, but I didn't want them to cancel our second night, and I asked them to let us into the room in the morning when we arrive, sort of a very late check-in. The desk manager had received that email and understood when I explained who we were. He took copies of our passport, we paid the city hotel tax and he gave us our room key. We took shower and a 2 hour nap.

Then we headed out to walk around the city. We are staying in the Opera district. We ate snacks we had brought for lunch (leftovers from the plane). We stopped for a coffee/beer in a restaurant in the Jardin de Tulleries. Then for a crepe at a little stand pulled by a bicycle. We have the walk around town seeing buildings part of travel down well. We now have the stop for a drink or food part of travel down. Pete isn't interested in museums, and has limited interest in shows. Anyone want to take a trip with me that is museum and show heavy?

We went back to the room I had more work I had to get done We watched English language news and rested (Pete slept) then we went out for a nice dinner of oven fired individual pizzas. Back to the room. I finished my work, wrote this and now we head for a solid night sleep. I need to start adding pictures soon.

Tomorrow we'll leave Paris and go part way to LaRochelle.

18 May 2022 - Paris & Beaugency

Today we met up with a colleague of mine from Paris. Years ago Laurence invited me to work with her for 10 weeks one summer. From that we started research that led to three conference papers and one journal paper. We also wrote a textbook on Pattern Recognition (aka Machine Learning, or AI). The papers were in English, the textbook was in French. It is the only full book I have written. I contributed a chapter to a "Handbook on Document Analysis", and sometimes conference papers show up (incorrectly by my opinion) as chapters in books.

I had reserved two seats in a car to Orléans for the afternoon. There is a popular service in France (the railway even links to it) called BlaBlaCar. This is what Uber claimed it was trying to do when it ORIGINALLY started years ago. It lets you catch a ride with someone who is already going that route, benefiting both parties. Now Uber causes drivers to take"extra" trips to accommodate the passengers. It is a useful service (especially in a foreign country), but not a cooperative service. This driver was nice, but she had a tiny car, and we were passengers 3&4, and she has a tiny trunk that was full, so our suitcases sat on our laps for the hour drive. It only cost us 9€ each.

We had hoped to meet up with some people we had met during last year's trip for a drink, but the primary person was out of town, and her friend didn't reply until we had arrived at our plan B.

We decided to take the train two towns west and stay in the little town called Beaugency. We passed through it last year, and rode around it exploring before leaving. It didn't have any good signage or Google maps information, and everything was closed. It wasn't a time of day when we were looking for a meal, so it was a brief stop. It is rated as one of France's top 100 little towns off the main tour route. I think all towns along the Loire are. 100 is a lot of towns.

It has a small chateau that is open with a museum on Wednesday and Saturday. A tower started in the 1100s by the Romans, but the roof burnt in a fire in the 1800s and the rest of the interior collapsed in the 1900s. There is an Abbey, and a couple of old city gates. We tried to reserve a room at a small hotel. It said it had 4 rooms available, but Pete's phone didn't have a good enough signal to complete the reservation, so we waited until we were there and approached the reception directly. Yup. We got to choose which room we wanted.

The reception gave us a map of the town, on which he marked restaurants. Pete laid down and I walked around town checking out the restaurants and the points of interest. I picked one restaurant, and sent Pete a text letting him know where to meet me. The server said it was a busy time and the kitchen couldn't take any more orders for an hour. Fine, could I sit at one of the empty tables and have a beer? There were fewer people there then than when I had walked by half an hour ago. I drank my beer. Pete arrived and helped me finish it. Two more tables were seated and given menus, but not me. The beer was empty, but the server ignored us. Pete checked out a restaurant down the street, and he left. I went inside to pay (Pete just wanted to leave), then joined him.

The restaurant was Algerian. They were happy to have us. We sat at the only table outside on the sidewalk. The service was great. The food was great. I'm glad we supported them.

19 May 2022

We reserved breakfast at this hotel. The reviews said it was more than a French breakfast, which usually only has a croissant and half a baguette with butter, jam and choice of coffee or tea. We don't mind the French breakfast, but not for 10€ each. In those cases we go to the Boulangerie ourselves. This hotel also had hard boiled eggs, ham, cheese, yogurt, orange juice and little crepes. I walked a little more around town while Pete was getting ready to take a couple more pictures. Then we went to the train station and booked tickets to Tours.

In Tours we reserved two seats in a BlaBlaCar to La Rochelle. I wrote to the driver to verify adequate luggage space. Yes, so long as we didn't each have two huge suitcases. That trip was 3 hours and cost us 14€ each. We had to wait a while in Tours before he arrived. He was 30 minute late because of traffic in Paris. His mother was in the front and we had the whole back, and our suitcases were jammed in the trunk. He didn't speak much English, but that was ok. His mom was on her cellphone for a while and he played the radio. I gave them a "famous Idaho potato pin" and they (mom) loved it. He dropped us off right at our hotel.

We showered and rested a little, then went out to grab something to eat. It was late. We didn't do much today.

20 May 2022 - Pons

We started our day late today. Today's project once we got going was to go to the little town of Pons where Pete's friend Andy has a little house. The house used to be a worker's cottage at a Cognac estate. We visited it for a few days last year at the end of our trip. Pete has fond memories of visiting here when his friends Andy and Begonia were there. That would certainly make the place more desirable. This trip was 100% geared toward retrieving our bicycles. We are still deciding where they will just be used this week in La Rochelle, then returned to be used when we come here for 3 months next spring during my sabbatical, or if they will migrate to Germany with us and be used for a bicycle tour along the Danube or Romantic Rhine. Stay tuned.

It is four stops on the local train from La Rochelle to Pons. Andy's place is a 35 minute walk from the train station according to Google. That's not a bad walk if you aren't carrying your bicycle gear. We had a bit of time so we were able to stop and look at the town along the way.

We found the key to Andy's place and gained entry. Our bikes were up in the attic where we expected to find them. I went up and handed them down to Pete. Unfortunately the tires were flat and we hadn't brought a pump. We couldn't find one at Andy's. We had to walk back to the train station with the bikes. That took extra time. We had thought about stopping at the Donjon (dungeon tower) where there is a restaurant named Donjon that Pete and Andy like and having dinner. With the extra time spent cleaning up Andy's yard from weeds and having to walk not ride bikes, there wasn't enough time for that before the last train out that evening. Pete hoped to catch the train before that, but we missed that by about 3 minutes - we saw it go past us. Pete hadn't brought the bike tube valve adapter so even when we found an auto-mechanic's shop that was open (100m from the Pons train station) , we could only inflate one of the 4 tires. That stop put us past the time of the second to last train and we waited at the station for an hour for the last train. In La Rochelle had to walk the bikes back to our hotel - not a long distance, but we'd have preferred to do a quick bike ride. Mission accomplished though.

21 May 2022 - La Rochelle

Today we had bikes, so after breakfast we took off. First on foot to find air, which the receptionist in the hotel across from us pointed us to a bike shop, then actually on the bikes.

Our first destination was the Old Port. The iconic view of La Rochelle. We visited it several times last year. It was where "everything" happens and was between the train station and our hotel last year. This year it was much nicer because not only were we familiar with the place already, but there weren't tens of thousands of people there for a music concert weekend.

We looked at Google's Bike routes overlay and headed north through a long park. Then circled back to town. We had a coffee and sweet - Baba au Rhum - at a Boulangerie on the Old Port, then headed out to circle our hotel which is south of the port, traveling along the shore. That has a nice bike route and let us see part of town we hadn't seen last year. There was even a nice beach section.

We planned a picnic for dinner. We went to the market and bought a ready to heat entree, and two side dishes. We also bought a bottle of wine. We heated the dinner in the microwave, and packed everything up and headed out. We found a spot on the grass on the south side of the harbor It was a relaxing dinner. We were opposite a boat tour launch site and an electric ferry that is part of the Yellow system, that takes people across the harbor. We did some people watching. After dinner we put trash in trash and recycle in recycle bins, then walked through the town. The port is pretty at night.

22 May 2022 - La Rochelle

Today was Sunday - our first in Europe this trip. Thus I had forgotten what Sundays means in Europe - most things are closed. The bakery was closed, but the market was open for the morning, but only the morning.

We had discussed last night bicycling for the day to an island off the north part of town. This morning I forgot we had discussed this and convinced Pete to go with me to a museum. Two that are in the part of town near our hotel had caught my eye: Musée des Automates and Musée Maritime de La Rochelle. The former has small mechanical "toys", including model trains. The second has ships and shipping history. Based on opening hours, we picked the Maritime museum. It had three sections - an exhibit with history, that started long back and was synonymous with the history of the city of La Rochelle, then went to the near present time (including discussion of a WWII submarine terminal). It had 3 ships, one of which was a weather monitoring ship, but also included exhibits on other smaller ships and sailors. Then it also had a third building with other exhibits, which we didn't get to. The ticket desk had some material in English he gave to Pete to follow along since most exhibits were not in English, Then I downloaded and had Pete open his Google Translate app on our phones so we could point at a display's text and see it in English (p.s. the research I do and people in my community do has led to this technology - finding text in images and recognizing the text, thus allowing the translation to translate and redisplay the text). In total it made the exhibits very accessible. The largest ship also had a small bar on its upper deck, so we stopped for a drink in mid-afternoon. It had a great view.

During and after the museum I was answering emails as we prepared the last minute details for the conference. The conference starts tomorrow morning at 8:30am. Remember that I am in La Rochelle on business.

The restaurants opened at 7pm, so we went to one across the street from the hotel that had a 10% off coupon at the hotel's reception desk. It was a bland steakhouse. I wouldn't recommend it to others. Last night's dinner from the grocery market was much better. After dinner we had a coffee at the hotel's bar and Pete got an ice cream sundae at Burger King. Early to bed tonight!

23 May 2022 - La Rochelle

The reason we are in La Rochelle is that there was a conference here that I was the US representative to chair the Program Committee. I set the alarm for early, and got there 30+ minutes before the conference was set to begin. The other organizers were there too. I picked up my registration package and headed to the lecture hall where the conference would take place. All was set inside university facilities. This is a single track workshop, so one big lecture hall did the majority of the work. We allowed for remote attendees. I was the only one from the US to attend, There was one student from Toronto, making two from North America. There was a contingent of 4 from Brazil, and one from Pakistan. The rest were from Europe. Our co-chair from Japan was not permitted to attend by his university and country. I think some chose to save time and money. Most who attended remotely only presented their paper and participated in very little else. Pros and cons.

I was the first to speak, welcoming the attendees and presenting some statistics. The couple of days prior I had worked with my cohorts to develop some slides and I finished them last night. Mickael gave his welcome as general chair. Then Veronique introduced the first keynote, and we were going. Keynote, coffee, oral sessions, lunch, more oral sessions, coffee, then posters. While not every talk is 100% of interest to me, they often provide ideas on which I can build, ... if I have time and resources. I make good use of the paper notepads that are provided in the convention bags.

There was a social event tonight. Unfortunately the caterers set up a drink table and an hors d'oeuvers table near each other in the corner of the historic building where the event was held. This there was a line to get anything. We grabbed something and moved away. We didn't want to stay long. Dinner was on our own. Pete and I were planning to meet Marcus and Fotenei from Lulea for dinner. They saw us and asked if we were ready to go. We all departed together.

Marcus and Fotenei had sent me an email on the 16th with an invitation to take a full time position at their university. Apparently Knut and Alice Wallenberg donated 4,2 billion SEK to enhance AI research in Sweden. The Swedish government added another 1,3 billion SEK. They aim to recruit senior international faculty and fund more PhD and postdoctoral researchers to do Brain Gain instead of Brain Drain. "The Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) is a major national initiative for strategically motivated basic research, education and faculty recruitment. It is by far the largest individual research program in Sweden." Lulea Technical University was just accepted into this program and Marcus and Fotenei are looking for a senior researcher to recruit. They picked me. I was already scheduled to visit them for 2 months next February/March. We discussed my plans for a sabbatical, existing projects, early retirement in 3 years, the US academic system having faculty on 9-month contracts, and their hopes and opportunities. They were able to offer me enough flexibility, and Sweden acknowledges non-married partners (a sambo), so Pete can probably also get a visa and health insurance. Marcus has to check on a few things and check with his upper management for this to be official, but we agreed to move forward. It will require a big change for me, but all for good things.

24 May 2022 - La Rochelle

The conference continued today. I didn't have to introduce anyone, so I could set my alarm a little later. The people we had invited to chair the oral session this morning were in the auditorium when I arrived. I checked that they were ok, and sat down. Mickael invited all the organizers to a lunch off site at a fancy restaurant in the Old Port. We had to miss the last oral presentation of the morning session. We walked to the Yellow ferry and shuttled to the other side of the port. The food was real good, but we had to rush to finish and return. We skipped desert.

In the evening was the Conference "banquet". Mickael had arranged a boat tour to the Fort Bryant. I had seen advertisements for it around town. It is a non-descript fort, that after being built was obsolete because the cannons had changed and couldn't be used, It eventually became a prison for a few years, then was vacant. Apparently now it is used to hold animals for some reality show. We motored out to it, then went around it and then back to the Old Port.

Then we walked over to another ship that was docked where food was scheduled. Mickael decided on lots of hors d'ourvres (and adult beverages). Again the food and drinks were inside in crowded hard to reach spaces. Eventually we got enough to focus on talking. We met lots of people we already knew and some new people too. I am very lucky to be doing research in a warm and friendly community.

25 May 2022 - La Rochelle

Today is the last day of the conference. Another oral session, another poster session. Lunch was provided. I sat down, put my coupon in front of me, and the waiter took it and returned with my meal. Just then a colleague walked by and reminded me that we had a meeting I was expected to attend. So I grabbed my tray (cardboard - recyclable) and followed him to the classroom where a Zoom session was projected on a screen and we discussed plans for the next two instances of the big conference in our field - Santa Clara California and Athens Greece. Then back to a discussion session, and then the closing session. Veronique had received the scores our best paper judges had submitted and was compiling them. We conferred and chose two papers. She sent the information to Mickael who printed up award certificates and presentation slides. Then in the closing session we recognized our winners, the companies who sponsored the awards made presentations. The list of future conferences was shown and discussed, then we closed. Lots of long goodbyes.

Several people were heading out immediately to catch the last train to Paris to return home that night. Many others would stay the night and depart tomorrow. Marcus had found a good restaurant and made reservations for 20 for 7:30pm. Per "tradition" several of those remaining would gather there for food, beverage and conversation, before going to their hotel to prepare for their departure at various times tomorrow. I'm glad to be in a friendly research community. It is from meeting people and socializing with them that collaborations have developed over my career, and each collaboration has been good in different ways.

26 May 2022 - La Rochelle

I had originally planned to spend today meeting with Mickaël and discussing plans for my 3 months in La Rochelle scheduled for April-May-June 2023. Mickaël was too tired from the conference, and while Marcus said Luleå very much wants me to visit other places to build collaborations, the details are going to be much more complicated as I am going to transition jobs, so Mickaël and I cancelled our meeting. We'll plan via email instead. Planning for international collaborations, and pursuing those collaborations is continually getting easier.

To fill the day Pete and I planned another bike ride. We headed further south than the ride we had done Sunday. La Rochelle is on the Eurovelo Route 1, which follows the Atlantic coast. I believe it actually starts in England and crosses. We ended last year's journey where Eurovelo Route 4 meets Route 1 in Sainte Nazaire. We did part of this route today. We saw lots of salt flats and oyster/mussel farms. There are coral cliffs along the sea. The weather was a great temperature, and slightly cloudy, but dry. We don't go very far because we stop quite often to read signs and look at things. The return trip is always faster.

We were planning another grocery store picnic for tonight, but instead ate it in our room, then headed out to the Old Port for a drink. La Rochelle is a nice city, but very busy with tourists, at least near the Old Port. The university has a problem with too many owners converting their houses/apartments into AirBnBs, causing a shortage of residences for the students. This is a universal problem with AirBnB. I was told the same thing in Iceland. There are no easy answers. The price difference is too high. It is a shame that a service that was originally intended to help people rent out their spare bedrooms to earn a little money has become such a global problem. It is good for the tourists to have more options, but bad for the locals (who aren't doing the renting).

27 May 2022 - Île de Ré

Our hotel reservation ended today. We got a somewhat early start, had breakfast, packed up, and checked out. We strapped all our stuff on the bikes - it fit pretty well the first time - and headed out. The plans at that point were to bike out to the Ile de Re, a pair of islands off the coast just north of La Rochelle, connected to the mainland by a bridge. We planned to stop along the way at a superstore E.Leclerc - similar to a Walmart super center, containing both groceries and merchandise. I needed a sleeping pad, and we were looking for a few other accessories. I wound up buying an inflatable pool pad, and a nice LED headlight. We had lunch in the little restaurant connected to the store at the entrance. We shared a Plat du Jour. Then we were off.

The bridge to the Île de Ré is quite long. Someone told me that it is a real stress to bike it uphill a long distance with the wind in your face. The wind was cooperative and the incline was slight and consistent. The road had a dedicated bike lane (2-ways) on one side and a dedicated pedestrian lane on the other side of the automobile lanes. I was amazed at how easy I made it up. Down was of course easy too. There was a long line of cards queued up to pay the toll, and once they crossed the bridge, there was a traffic jam as they figured out where they were going. There were quite a few bicycles making the journey. At the bottom we reconvened, I took a few pictures, then we headed inland. There was a beautiful dedicated bike path we followed. We saw beaches, fishing cliffs, ruins of a fort, ruins of a church, trees, fields, lots. What really was noticeable was how many bicycles there were. Thursday was Ascension day, so I guess that together with the nice weather forecast meant "everyone" was heading to this island for a long weekend, and everyone either brought their bikes attached to their car or campervan, or rented them from one of the local shops (We saw dozens of shops). Neither Pete nor I had seen so many bicycles in one place at one time. I mark it as a good thing that everyone was parking their cars - the outskirts of every town had a big parking lot- and walking or biking, and many people were biking between towns. There are many European style campgrounds on the island. These are little "compounds" with a combination of mini houses you can rent, of varying sizes, places to park your RV, and a few places for tents. Last year we stayed at one in a very mini house we rented, that was an elevated "box" with mattresses for 2 or 3 inside, and a retractable picnic table out front. These were all packed with tourists, and they took their bikes from these places and rode the length of the island to the beach or to the towns. The bike routes were packed with long lines of bikes. Adults, often with kids in bike seats, or bike tandems, or bike trailers. Some kids on their own bikes. Some bikes were e-bikes, but over half were conventional bikes. Ours were probably the oldest of all of them. Few people had bikes carrying gear like ours. I'm thrilled to see an example of a bike oriented community. Of course there were problems with people just stopping in the middle of the lane, instead of pulling over, causing a backup. If someone was going slow, and there was a long line of bikes coming at you, passing could be a challenge. The cars, when the path crossed a road, were very patient with the long groups of bikes traversing the street, giving us more right of way than perhaps we deserved.

There was an old fort, Fort La Pree, that according to the signs should have been open to visitors, but wasn't. Nearby was the ruins of an old church, the Abbaye des Chateliers. We stopped there. Pete had some sort of cold/flu/Covid and was sneezing a lot and had body aches - more body aches than usual. We stopped and ate lunch out of our sack of food, and Pete laid down in the shade on some grass and I took some pictures.

La Flotte was a seaside port. It had one entry and a big public area around the port full of businesses and people. Like in several places signs told bicyclists to walk their bikes.

Saint Martin de Re was encased in a fort. From the east we entered through a gate, that then had a bridge over a moat, then through another gate. The ramparts were still in good condition.

It had a big park right after we entered it. In it was a vendor with small donkeys or mules people could rent for 3EU per hour. The donkeys were wearing pants. Apparently they were initially brought to the island to work in the salt marshes and locals made the pants to protect their legs from biting insects. The next day I saw stuffed dolls for sale that were donkeys wearing those style pants.

In the middle of the town was a port, like in La Flotte, but bigger. It was so crowded at one place, we would have been better to have exited instead of pushing through a crowd waiting for a particular restaurant.

A couple of kilometers further on we paused at a picnic area beyond the Plage De La Mer Du Nord that overlooked a little bay where a vendor was renting wind surfers, wind kites and wind "wings". It had a steady wind and no waves. People were learning how to operate these water devices in a great location. It reminded me about learning how to windsurf when I was on Co-op in my sophomore year of college at a nice little lake in Pennsylvania that had a grassy beach and no motorcraft. It took me about 45 minutes of climbing up onto the board, pulling up the sail, getting pushed over by a wind gust, and splashing into the water, repeating the cycle to figure out how it was done. Then I rested, letting Scott take the board out, and when it was my turn I was able to sail across the lake, turn around and return. I know what they were going through. Boise isn't a good place for wind-water sports. We moved our sailboat to McCall, but spend our summers traveling, and thus haven't had (made) enough time to take the boat out. I need to make new seats for the canoe (time...) and move that up to McCall. Sadly shore access is limited, so even though we could drag (I bought wheels for the canoe/windsurfer) the boat to the shore, the nearest public access is 1 mile away.

Pete was tired, so I left him there to rest and poke around slowly. I headed further out to the tip of the island to explore. It was a good solution for both of us. When I was returning I stopped and bought some food at a market in a small town, and found Pete on Google Maps, set that as my destination and was guided to him "Your destination is on the left". Pete had found a spot in the woods off a small road where we set up our tent. Early to bed, but at a nearby bar/restaurant the music was still playing when I awoke at 2:30am.

28 May 2022 - Île de Ré & Poitier

We packed up the tent and our stuff and headed toward the bridge, stopping in the nearest little town to find a boulangerie for breakfast. It even sold coffee, which many Boulangerie do, but didn't have milk for the coffee. We still had a little milk left in our milk jug. France and Germany sell UHT pasteurized milk in little bottles for 80EU cents. We buy one, use it over a couple of days until we either finish it or it spoils, then buy another. That works better when it isn't a heat wave, but works.

There were lots of Saturday markets in each of the towns we passed through. My favorite is to buy a rotisserie chicken with small roasted potatoes. We didn't today. We did buy a handful of cherries from one fruit and vegetable vendor. They are in season now. I enjoy (to a point) looking at the merchandise the vendors have for sale. It eventually seems to be much the same as you pass several tents. Cherries are all we bought. It is hard to carry stuff on a bicycle. I had already packed too much. We packed more than last year - including a tent and two light weight sleeping bags and pads. I had initially done my planning as conference + Viking cruise, with a possibility of doing something on a bike with Pete. Then as you read above, the cruise got cancelled, so biking rose in the plans, but I didn't ponder what to pack for multiple weeks. A few things didn't come out of the suitcase that were destined for the cruise.

We didn't make too many stops on Île de Ré today, working harder to get back to La Rochelle and to catch a train to our next destination. We wanted to next get to Tours to visit a friend we made during our bike ride last summer. Traveling with bikes means taking local trains. To do planning I use Bahn.de. I looked at our options and stopping in Poitier looked like a good choice. Last year we went through Poitier, but only saw the train station trying to get to La Rochelle to meet my colleagues there. We would have more time on this trip.

We got into Poitier about 7pm. Poitier is built on a hill. There are roads going up, but to have a gradual slope, they are longer routes. Pete wanted to take the shorter (shortest?) route. He asked Google and must not have selected the bicycle option. His route sent us up an escalator and then up stairs. I don't like carrying my bike. I took everything off and carried bike, then went back for the bags. A nice young woman saw me struggling and just lifted up the bike and walked up the stairs with it. I followed with one part of the bags and then went back for the others. I'd still have preferred the longer route. By then I was hot and tired, so stopping for dinner became my higher priority than reaching the hotel, which was on the other side of the city. Pete's route took us through the center of the city, which we justified meant we could see part of the city. There was a city square with restaurants and music. Most tables were full. We went a bit further down one street and found a nice place with outdoor seating and some empty tables (we avoided places that were too empty as our way to judge the quality of the restaurant). We picked two menu options. Pete's was a blood sausage pie, which was great.

After dinner we looked around the town a little more then aimed for the hotel. The route Google selected still had hills and was on a heavily traveled road. The entrance to the hotel was a bit hard to find. The lady at the desk was very helpful, showing us that we could put our bikes in the room used for large meetings. The room was nice too.

29 May 2022 - Poitiers & Tours

We didn't reserve breakfast at the hotel. We asked Google for directions to the Cathedral downtown. The route did not take us back on the busy road. We did have to wait for a gap in a running race to cross a street, and there was a hill to climb. It was a much better route than the night before. It was Sunday and that means many stores are not open. We did find a boulangerie, but Google didn't show it as such. I bought our food and two beverages and we sat outside the cathedral and ate. We then took the road to the train station. We were a bit early so we went out again to find a historical tower I had seen on the map. We had to cross a traffic circle to get to and from it. Dad has maintained his PE license even though he is retired. One course he took a few years ago to keep it active was on traffic circles (aka round-abouts). He said when they were first introduced traffic entering the circle had right of way and they were big traffic jams. Then after a few years they changed the policy so traffic leaving the circle had right of way and suddenly they worked pretty efficiently. This one circle had traffic lights everywhere, for traffic entering and traffic flowing around or exiting. Half were turned off because of the race and the lights often let traffic in and not out. We watched a bus take 5 minutes to get from one side of the circle to the other, stopping at several lights and often not being able to move even when it had a green signal. Apparently the traffic designers did not take the course Dad took.

The trip to Tours was simple and from last year we knew our way around. We put Marie's address into Google. OK, we know the way. Getting through town was easy. Once we crossed the river, we had to go up hill. My bike gears were still not configured right and with the weight of the luggage changing gears was not simple. I tried once and the chain popped off. Pete was way ahead. I tried fixing it myself, but no luck. I walked it to where Pete was waiting for me a ways ahead. He fixed it and we rode the little remaining distance, after a significant time delay.

Marie was out in the street when we arrived. She showed us where the driveway was and we all went in. She has a beautiful house and a wonderful yard. She had prepared food for us so we ate. The best part was a dessert with cherries she had picked from the tree in her front yard. She had to meet guests who were arriving to rent her Gite tonight about 6pm. She was waiting for them to call to let her know their arrival status. Their call came late. We all drove to her Gite and we helped her get a few minor things in order. We then all went to the restaurant on the river we had visited last year to have a beer and wait for her to receive a call that the guests had arrived. When they arrived Marie went to welcome them and Pete and I walked down the path along the river. We stopped at a little shack/tent where some locals frequently hang out, but which was empty today. We sat and watched the boats and birds go by down the river and waited for Marie to call that she was returning.

We found a table and Marie joined us shortly. We had another beer and talked more. We had both said many times that the best part of last summer's trip was meeting people, and meeting Marie and Alain was on the top. Too bad Alain was not in Tours this summer. Toast to you Alain!

Marie drove us back to her place. We originally planned not to stay the night because she had company, but her daughter left, so Marie opened her house to us and we stayed the night.

30 May 2022 - Tours & Vierzon

We had many options according to Bahn.de on how to get to Reims. Pete wanted to pick more cherries from Marie's tree. He was comfortable on a ladder and is taller than Marie, so he could reach more cherries up higher. Marie gave us a plastic box to put some in so they wouldn't crush and we took them with us to the train station. By the time that we got to the station, several options had passed. Then I noticed that several of the next options included a bus, which wouldn't accept bikes. Pete went in to stand in the information office line. An agent was out trying to help people by getting them to use the machines. I had already tried the machines, but he thought he could help. so Pete called me in. I explained, he looked, he shrugged his shoulders and said it was not possible. He had no ideas. I searched a bit further and picked a route. We had an hour to wait. WE went to Vierson where we were also last year. Last year is where we met Camille and had lunch with her in Vierson along the river. Since we had a couple of hours, we also took the bikes to the river to eat our lunch. Then we rode around and saw more of the town. It has a nice island in the river with gardens we hadn't seen last year.

All French trains go through Paris. That was our next destination. We had to switch stations, so that would add a delay and reduce options. The route was pretty straight forward. It was amazing how many bikes were riding around Paris. The "rules of the road" for bike-pedestrian-car interaction are still developing all throughout the world. Intersections for me were often a hold your breath moment and hope you crossed "right". Definitely a problem for Civil Engineers to study. Pete stopped at a market and bought dinner we would eat on the train. WE made the train we were targeting. We got to Epernay close to sunset. Epernay is pretty close to Reims, but (1) there is no train at this hour. (2) we can't take bikes on buses, and I'm not sure there were buses at this hour, (3) there is a direct road, but it is UP HILL.

We thought about getting a room in Epernay and waiting until morning, but the number of KM was small and Google's time estimate was reasonable. We took option 3 and set out, with the plan that we would stop and camp if we got too tired or it got too late. The map said the road went through a national park, which is like a US National Forest or natural reserve, not like a US National Park.

The road was a country highway, but at this hour there was little traffic. We had our lights on. We had to walk our bikes most of the way up this v-e-r-y l-o-n-g hill. There was a parking area with two trucks parked, so we gave up and called it a night. We set up the tent and went to bed.

31 May 2022 - Riems

In the morning we took down the tent and set off. Now the traffic was heavier at this hour. French drivers are pretty careful. We pushed on. The distance Google quoted didn't match what it felt like. It was mostly level now, but still slow going. We reached the down hill section and there was a mega super market most of the way down it as we reached the city of Reims. We stopped there to buy coffee and breakfast. We ate on a bench outside the store.

From the store into the town now there was a dedicated bike path. Finally. It was a straight shot to the river, then turn left, and a little ways further was Bart's apartment building. Bart greeted us and we took the luggage off the bikes and put the bikes in his cellar unit.

We visited, we ate, we visited some more. I met Bart the first time I was ever in France, in 2008 when I was on sabbatical and invited to give a talk at LORIA in Nancy. From that talk I was invited to come back for 6 weeks the next summer and in that summer I worked partly with Bart. From that we started a collaboration in in my second sabbatical I planned 3 months in Nancy working with Bart. The funding he had applied for to fund my stay wasn't approved and delivered until the end of my 3 months, so I canceled my visit to Brazil and after 3 months in Dortmund, returned for another 3 months with Bart. Then we visited for 2 weeks a couple of years ago in the middle of another European adventure (without bikes). I think my collaboration with him is longer than with any other colleague. We have also become friends, which makes it even nicer.

After talking and talking we decided to take a walk into town to look around. It is a famous historical city because of its role in history, but the buildings are mostly modern because what wasn't destroyed in WWI was destroyed in WWII. The cathedral was rebuilt, but most other buildings were built new. Bart was heading to his other home in Nancy in 2 days. He said we could go there with him and stay in his empty apartment there. He rents it to students, but it is summer break, so it is empty. He had his tickets (he does this every week), and one leg was on a TGV. Generally you can only take bikes on local trains. Bart thought you could take bikes on some TGVs with advanced reservations. He looked up and the train he was taking said it allowed bike reservations. We went to the train station to see if that was true.

The two target activities were to see the cathedral and to get the ticket information. I suggested we do the train station first, so we could get there before it closed. Bart thought we had plenty fo time because the station is open late, but he agreed we could do the train station first. The information office had already started closing, and only let in people with immediate issues. Bart explained to the "gate keeper" that we needed the information tonight and we were allowed in. art asked and his information from the web was correct. We made our reservation and bought out tickets. Checkmark. Now we could go see the town.

The cathedral interior was now closed, but we could do that another day. Bart showed us around and then we stopped for a beer. It was nice sitting outside visiting with an old friend. We stopped at a market on the way home to supplement what Bart had in his apartment. Pete made dinner for all of us. He is a great cook and loves to cook.

1 June 2022 - Riems

Bart got up early, like he usually does, and went out to buy croissants and bread for breakfast. We had planned that I would go with him to the university in the morning, and when he was done with his vital meetings we would both return home for lunch.

I set up on the spare desk in his office. After he met with his student, Aurélien, and another professor, he introduced me to the student and departed. I had a nice talk with Aurélien, asking him about his background. I through Bart had asked Aurélien to watch my TEDx talk before we met, and he had. That I find is the easiest way to introduce people to some of the things I do in my research. He said he found them interesting. None of those specific projects would be a PhD topic, but it still provides a point of reference. Aurélien has a strong statistics background, as well as Natural Language Processing. I think this will be a very nice complement to my skills. I need a break to think about future research projects, and jointly with Aurélien will develop ideas into a dissertation. Aurélien said he is interested in moving to Sweden. Through Bart I heard that interest was very strong. He wasn't aware of where in Sweden I was going to work. Luleå is very far north. He was still interested after I showed it to him on a map. Apparently his girlfriend is also interested in the move.

After I met with Aurélien, Bart met with him again. I did a little more work, then we both walked home. Pete was outside working on my bicycle. He had adjusted the gear shifters. He had done that last year. I think my bike frame is not rigid enough to hold the weight of backpacks, and thus it distorts and the gear shifters don't work right. I'm sure the adjustment will help some.

Bart made a lunch with chicken, rice and some roasted/stewed red pepper. It was good. Bart went back to work and Pete and I went off to do a Champaign tour. Bart recommended two in town for the two most famous brands: Chicquot and Pommery. The reviews for the tour/visit at Chicquot were better than those for the Pommery domain. We started there. We didn't have reservations and they didn't have any openings the rest of the day. I inquired about tomorrow and they had none available fr tomorrow either. Scratch that idea. The Pommery domain had primarily self guided tours and thus could take a larger quantity of visitors, not that there were many there. I bought 2 tickets and we entered the main room.

There were guide brochures on a table in several languages. We sat down on a sofa to read. The big wine barrel was historic. This room when it was still part of the factory could hold 300 barrels. There were exhibits about the history and the process of making Champaign. We went down into the caves. Down was through a long staircase. There was art hanging from the ceiling. At the base of the stairs was more modern art, around each corner was more. It was more an art exhibit than a Champaign facility tour. Some of that I think is because there isn't much to actually see in the Champaign making facility. Some is because Madame Pommery was the first to welcome guests into her cellars, and she added a few pieces of art to make that more interesting.

I happened to look up and notice the mechanism that held a few baskets and used to move them around the cellars. I read that was one of her innovations. There was nothing in the tour point guide indicating that at that point were these baskets. The artwork that drew your eyes up in some of the tall rooms was interesting, just for it providing a size perspective. After walking around the designated loop we ascended the stairs, had our glass of Champaign, then went through the other door. It went through some more exhibit space, and then outdoors to another building that had another art exhibit in it. After a quick look around, we headed back to the main building. We decided to exit directly from that gap between buildings. That at least gave us a nice view of some of the buildings, probably the most interesting part of this visit, even though it technically wasn't part of the tour. Maybe one of the minor domains would have a more interesting tour. Bart hasn't taken any of them, nor knows directly of anyone who has, so he had few data points on which to make a suggestion. I hadn't read reviews beyond the two major ones Bart suggested based solely on the reputation of the product.

On the way home we went to a grocery store to buy ingredients for dinner. Pete decided he wanted to make burritos, so we bought ingredients for that. Pete set up cooking, and prepared a super dinner. Not as great as he would have been able to make had we been home with a broader set of ingredients, but still very tasty. Thanks Pete!

2 June 2022 - Reims

Bart headed off to work in the morning. He is done teaching for the semester, but the job continues. He took a lunch of leftovers from the fridge and told us to make sure to eat all the rest of the perishables as he wasn't returning for a week. We had leftover burritos and a salad for lunch. They were in some ways better than last night.

We headed off to look at churches. First Saint Remi Basilica. Saint Remi was the bishop who baptized Clovis in 495. Then we went to the Reims Cathedral. That is where all the French kings since Henry I in 1027 have been coronated. The basilica and the cathedral are of similar size and grandeur. We skipped the tower climb and the treasury museum. I'll catch them on my next trip here. If Bart continues to work here, I'm sure I'll eventually return.

The map showed a Gate of Mars - Porte de Mars. We sought it out. It is a 4 arch gate from the Roman times. The description said that another building had been built around it long ago, and in the 1800s they rediscovered it when the outer building was taken down. This was at the end of the park by the train station. There was a nice path through the park we rode along. We were heading to the river, with plans to then ride along the canal back to Bart's. Accessing the canal was a bit tricky, but eventually we found a crossing to a bridge, and the bridge had an elevator down to the canal, and we then were able to ride along the path by the canal. There was a ramp back up a bank that was half the height of where we came down, and it was at a bridge right by Bart's apartment. Rest, pack, depart and head to the TGV train station outside of town.

Bart got there 5 minutes before us. We waited until it was close to time, and headed to the track. Down an elevator and Bart knew where our car would stop. He does this every week. The car was labeled, but it took us a bit to find where the bikes actually went. Some women were sitting in the seats which had to be folded up to put the bikes there. They hadn't paid attention to their seat reservations. They relocated into the seats which matched our reservation. The train wasn't full, so we just picked other seats. Bart wasn't using his reservation either, and he sat with us. We played two rounds of the Monopoly card game we had won on the Carnival cruise 3 years ago. Then we reached our transfer station. Bikes off, down and up to the next track, wait a bit, board the train, then head to Nancy.

Audrey was waiting for Bart in the parking garage. She had the keys to the apartment. Bart gave them to us, We said good bye and we all headed to our lodging.

Pete had wanted a Gyro/Donner sandwich, so we went out to a shop near Bart's apartment and got one. We really need to share those - they are always huge.

3 June 2022 - Nancy

We awoke nicely rested. I sent Bart a text saying that we had found a very flat and soft spot to put down our sleeping bags. We toasted the leftover croissants in the oven. I went out and bought butter, current jam and cherry yogurt to go with them. I also bought box of English Breakfast tea bags for Pete and a box of instant coffee packets for me. Bart's apartment was furnished with pots and pans, and that included an electric water kettle.

We did very little today. I reviewed a paper for a journal. We looked at travel itineraries. Pete found a Flixbus that had bicycle spaces and we decided to book that for 5pm from Strasbourg to Karlsruhe. Once we are in Germany, they are having a sale of a 1-month local rail pass for 9 euros. The bus will get us into Germany, and cut off some travel time. We have to arrive in Murnau south of Munich by Sunday afternoon.

After lunch we went out and tooled around downtown, rode along the river some, and eventually met Bart and Audrey at the designated restaurant for dinner. They had selected a restaurant "A la Table du Bon Roi Stanislas". This restaurant focuses on dinner dishes that would have been eaten at the time of Stanislaus. Stanislas was king of Poland, but was forced to abdicate. So at the Treaty of Vienna he was given the Duchy of Lorraine so his daughter would be from a noble family and could marry the French king. During that time he built up the decorative Place Stanislas for which Nancy is famous. They make some adjustments to the menu items to make them suitable for a 21st century dinner. The owner took our orders. He spoke both French and English. He explained what each dish contained, with much more detail than the printed menu showed. We ordered a variety. Everything was good. The conversation was good. Audrey's English is weak, or at least she thinks so. Bart translated for her occasionally. Pete and I said a few phrases in French occasionally.

4 June 2022 - Strasbourg

Today we left Nancy. Bart said to just leave the keys in the apartment and close the door - make sure we get the bikes out of the garage first. Yup. We (I) left the cheese, pate, mustard and a bottle of beer in the fridge. Pete made me check under the bed twice, but not tin the fridge. When we remembered I notified Bart. He has to stop by to pick up the keys soon, so he'll get them.

We took the TER train to Strasbourg. I was worried we were leaving the apartment too late to catch the 10am train, but we made it to the station by 9:30. I bought the tickets, and the train's platform was already announced. It was the one right by the station, so no stairs to navigate. The first car held bicycles, and there was only one bike in there. It was a peaceful trip. When we got to Strasbourg, there were 4 baby strollers around the bikes and another bike that boarded after the strollers and couldn't hang on the rack. We waited for them to disembark and we unloaded, waited for our turn at the elevator, then set a course through town.

We decided to bicycle around the inner city along the river. With a few stops for pictures, we detoured more into the middle. We had no particular destination and 5 hours before the bus to Karlsruhe. Plenty of time to enjoy seeing the city. We had Flammkuchen/Tarte Flambie for lunch. It is a VERY thin crust pizza, usually with a white sauce and the traditional version has "bacon" and onions. Pete got the Forriestrie which also included mushrooms.

We tooled around town more, eventually stopping for a coffee, then went down a side street where I saw a few tents and heard music. It had several blocks of flea markets. We aren't in the purchasing mode now. They did have a few bikes for sale. For now we have enough, although upgrading mine is a wish... if we are able to store it and use it in our next trip.

We made it to the Flixbus stop half an hour early. Another bus heading to Zurich was arriving. That meant we had the right location. A BlaBlaBus heading to Munich stopped. It didn't have bike-racks, or enough space underneath. Pete got a message that our bus was delayed 15 minutes. We aren't in a hurry. One of the drivers came to help people offload their suitcases. Then he saw our bikes and remarked about them - he was aware that we had reserved 2 bike slots. He took our under-bus luggage - my suitcase and our duffel with our helmets, and one of each of our paniers. Then the other driver came and they started loading our bikes. I was impressed with how smoothly they handled all that. Yes, they do this all the time - but I've seen chaos from other people doing routine work.

The bus had plenty of seats. We took seats up top - it was a double decker. There were 2 USB plugs by our seat, so we plugged in our phones to charge. Pete took a nap. I typed up this note.

When we got to Karlsruhe it was only 7pm. The train to Stuttgart should be a 1 hour trip, so we decided to get one leg closer to Munich and Murnau so tomorrow wouldn't be as stressful (for me, Pete doesn't experience stress). Germany rolled out a 9EU train pass where you can ride any regional train or S-Bahn, or U-Bahn or bus for 9EU per month. Buying the ticket was super easy. It was the first option in the ticket machines. The only hard part was that you could only buy one per transaction, so I had to do it twice to get one for me and one for Pete. It didn't ask for ID. We looked up the time for the next train, and had close to an hour to wait.

The train station was noticeably different than in France. There are large placards telling you when every train is leaving and to where and where the major stops were. They also list the platform from which it should leave, versus in France where they post it on the electronic screen about 20 minutes before the departure time. There are tons of shops in the train station, sort-of like a shopping mall, or maybe the shopping district in a large airport is a better analogy. When we got into the train station we passed two bakeries, a meat market/deli, several fast food places, a Wallgreens/CVS type drug store without the pharmacy, and several other small stores selling assorted wares. Just like in Paris there was a welcome station for Ukrainian refugees - coffee, tea and information. There was lots of activity. People walking all around. June is Gay Pride month, and there must have been some sort of event in Karlsruhe today. Lots of people were walking around wearing rainbow flags or blue/pink/white flags.

We went a little early to the train platform. We had two bikes to bring up the elevators and get positioned to get onto the train. The platform was mobbed. A train arrived from Stuttgart. It had the sign out front (and probably at each door) saying - do not board. The station announcers stated that this was not the train to Stuttgart, that one would follow soon, please do not board, but the crowd made it hard for the passengers to get off and they pushed their way onto the train. More announcements - do not board, this train is not the train to Stuttgart. Then was an announcement that the train to Stuttgart would depart from the next platform - I think because it couldn't pull into this track because this train couldn't depart. The crowd then mobbed the stairs and even more mobbed the elevator so people couldn't get out of the elevator. We hung back. There was no way we were getting on that elevator with our bicycles in that crowd. More announcements. Continuing chaos. Eventually they announced that people could go to the way front of the platform and cross over to the next platform there. The usual height drop from platform to track didn't exist there. They had staff there to guide us and to make sure people didn't get hit by trains (there were no moving trains there - the one from Stuttgart and the one planning to go to Stuttgart weren't moving anywhere). For us that was much easier with the bicycles to avoid two elevator trips. We got to the cars while they were still mostly empty - because everyone was piled up waiting for the elevator. We boarded and waited as the crowd entered. Eventually the train departed.

On the train there was lots of activity. The LGBTQ people were a car or two down (open doors between cars) singing songs. A woman had a baby in a carriage and she had her cellphone playing videos of English baby lullaby videos held up in front of the baby. Lots of sounds. The 9EU ticket apparently had gotten a lot of people to take a trip to Karlsruhe for the day. We spoke with the woman across from us who confirmed my hypothesis that the 9EU ticket was a combination of Germany pushing for Green, and the government trying to compensate for the rising petrol costs resulting from the Ukraine war. A conductor came by. He shouted - anyone not have a 9EU ticket, paused for 5 seconds, Thank you - and he moved on. People gradually got off as they reached their destinations. We got to Stuttgart fine.

In Stuttgart we had been checking our phones for a hotel room. I found one on Google that Pete didn't find. It was a brand new hotel - it still had the new building smell, including in the parking garage. We didn't have a reservation and the woman apologized that she only had "family rooms" for 60EU. Great, we'll take it. Super room, tea and coffee with a hot pot in the room. Super deal.

5 June 2022 - Stuttgart to Murnau

We had food from our stash plus the tea and coffee the hotel offered for breakfast and stayed until checkout at 11am. The train station was right there and the path to get to it was a lot clearer in the daylight and with knowledge of the layout.

We had to change trains at Ulm, but had enough time to ride around and explore. I had never been to Ulm before. I heard about Ulm in German language class. There is a famous German tongue twister "In Ulm, um Ulm, und um Ulm herum" (In Ulm, around Ulm, and all around Ulm). We did that. It didn't take much to find the cathedral. Then we found other old buildings. Then the river (the Danube, but we weren't ready to begin our Danube tour yet). By then it started raining, so we waited a little. When it didn't stop, we put on our rain gear and rode back to the train station.

The train took us to Munich Passing, a transit station slightly out of town, from which we caught the train to Murnau. In Murnau we found our hotel, La Strada. La Strada made it sound like an Italian hotel. The owners were Indian. The owner wanted to know why we didn't arrive around 2pm like we entered when we made the initial reservation. The original plan was with Dad and we were to come here after spending a few days in Munich, so a late morning departure from Munich would have put us here about 2pm. After making the reservation I received an email saying the hotel reception was only open after 5pm, plus we were taking our time coming from Stuttgart via Ulm. Oh well. He gave us our key. The room was for 3 people. It had two sections, one with a sofa. It also had a door out onto a patio overlooking the parking area. It had a table and 2 chairs. It was a nice room. It was missing a hotpot and coffee service though.

We went out into the town for dinner. I found the Karg Braustuberl. It sounded nice and traditional. The beer was theirs and the food was traditional German and yummy. After dinner we explored the downtown street a bit more and returned to our room.

6 June 2022 - Passion Play

Gerhard said he would meet us at the hotel. He got there early and was resting in his car. I didn't recognize him from the angle I viewed him from our balcony. I went downstairs and saw that it was him. It was so good to see him again.

He checked into his room and brought in his suitcase. Then we talked for a while on our patio before deciding that it was time to get going. Gerhard had done some research and decided it would be better to drive than to take the train. He thought the train was the one that had had an accident two days prior just outside of Garmish Partenkirchen. No, that was the route to Innsbruck. There is a spur route from Murnau to Oberammergau, for which one has to change trains in Murnau, which is why I chose a hotel in Murnau. He said there were parkinglots outside of Oberammergau with free bus service into town and he had chosen the one "South". He programmed the address into his Garmin navigation system and we headed out.

While there was a train accident outside of Garmish, there is also road construction there. We missed the turnoff, and when I started paying attention to his Navi we were in Garmish. That can't be right. We looked more closely, and it wanted us to go another 30 minute loop. No. I suggested we turn back. Pete and I both turned on our Google Maps on our phones. We went in search of the turn off. We passed it again, turn around and head south, and there we saw the turn off and took it. Up the hill, and there was the parking lot with big signs. Buy a parking ticket, park, grab our stuff, go tot he waiting bus, head into town.

We still had plenty of time once we arrived to walk around Gerhard wanted to get an ice cream. Then we headed in. Security check - one line for men, one for women, show our tickets, check our bags and we were in. We hung around a little. Pete saw the stand for selling "programs" but said he didn't want it because it was a book,and how would he read it. I didn't see it or wold have bought it anyway. We found our door and went in, then found our seats. We had to get up 3 times to let more people in. People in the middle didn't get there early. Then the show started.

A chorus of 60+ people started. I didn't expect music (I didn't really know what to expect). They left the stage and 100+ people entered, including Jesus. The story was a familiar one if you have paid attention. No surprises there, no modernization of the story or changing it. I could understand the narrative, but not the choral singing. Gerhard said that was hard for him too.

7 June 2022 - Murnau to Passau

We enjoyed a nice breakfast with Gerhard. I see him and all my German (and French and US) friends far to little. He had to get back for some physical therapy for recent surgery on his arm for carpel tunnel. We packed up our stuff and headed to the train station. It was simple to get to Munich. We originally were going to take the train to Passau, but decided we'd get off in Munich and bike around. I pointed us toward the English Gardens. This is a huge park that is Munich's equivalent to NY City's Central Park. It is about 6km long. The Isar river runs along the long side of it. I enjoyed coming here on a previous visit with a friend (we didn't have time to look up) from Munich and having a picnic at the Chinese Tower. I also came once on bicycle and toured around it.

In addition to the paths within the park, along the Isar there are more paths, so after reaching the north end of the park, we continued along the Isar another 6km, then got on a S-Bahn line to Freising, and then another to Passau. Passau is where the cruise Dad and I were going to take would have started. It had already left by the time we got there and got around to looking for it. We found a hotel on the Danube, and went out for dinner. Many restaurants had already shut down their kitchen, but we found a nice Italian one where we sat at a table on the sidewalk and enjoyed our meal.

8 June 2022 - Passau to Obermühl an der Donau

We started the morning with breakfast at the hotel. My soon to be new group at the Technical University of Lulea had an all day team meeting today. I agreed to attend one hour of it by Zoom from 9-10am. After breakfast it took longer than I planned to get my computer turned on and connected to the hotel wifi, but I managed to join and virtually meet the group. It is a large group. I'll meet them individually soon. I liked what they said the team was up to, and it was good to have a group looking at planning now for success in the future.

Pete packed up our stuff and got us out of the room by 10am as I was finishing my meeting. I finished putting things in the right place, then we brought the luggage out to the bikes. We started by seeing a few things in Passau that we had only send last night in the dim light. Then we went to see which river cruise boats were there. Viking had already left for the day. I was curious to see the boat we would have been on. Lots of cruise ship companies use the Passau docks. Most are on the Danube near the 3-river point: The Danube, the Inns and the little Ilt. Aerial photos show three river colors - light blue Inns with glacial silt, brown Danube and black Ilt mixing.

We thought we would make good time biking. We stopped to take more photos on our way out of town, then at a market to buy supplies for lunch, then we headed out for distance. This part of the route has a few hills as we followed the Danube which had cut through the landscape. For most of it we were on a dedicated bike path adjacent to the highway separated by guard rails. I eventually realized that there were kilometer markers we were passing. 50,4 then 50,2... I don't know where km 0 would be, but it provided a metric for how far we had gone.

We passed through a hill where they were doing road construction including our little bike path. The crushed gravel was rolled pretty smooth, and we had the ability to ride off to the side when it went down to one lane.

There were several turn offs with signage. Stopping to read it was interesting, but took time. We reached a little yacht club at the start of the Schlögen turns. Pictures of this are all over in this section. The river makes an S-turn. I thought the road and bike lane would be high above the river here, but it was way down at river level. The highway skips the turns, the bike route follows along. Turns out that the viewpoint was a 30-minute hike we could take from somewhere along the route. I didn't see signs for it was we were passing along, but a note about it later when we picked up more material about the Donau Radweg route. Oh well. Another time. Another thing we didn't do was any of the Romisher museums. There was a very interesting one I went to when I worked in Saarbruecken in 2007-2008.

As we reached the end of the Schlögen it was getting late. We reached a Gaststätte which looked inviting, but didn't have rooms, just food. Google said there were 2 Pensions across the river and we saw a little ferry boat. OK, we'll stop for the day and try that. 3EU per person for the ferry. The first Gaststätte had a sign "Ruhetag", ok across the little feeder river and try the other. It was open and had a room. She said a small room, which was what we needed, I made the reservation (verbal "yes I want the room" and she started to give me the key, but then swapped keys and said here this room has a river view. She told us where to park our bikes. We untied our luggage and went up, showered, and rested 5 minutes. We didn't want to wait long because we wanted dinner down stairs. We weer told the kitchen would close soon. Dinner was good. The waiter was nice and wanted to practice his English. He eventually brought the tablet to get our checking information. It was a nice way to spend our first evening.

9 June 2022 - Obermühl an der Donau to Ottensheim

I knew that we were in Austria when at breakfast one of the jam options was Marille instead of Aprikosen. On my honeymoon in 1989 we started in Vienna. At breakfast the jam packet on the table was Erdbeere = strawberry. I don't like strawberries. I asked the waiter in my best German (which was decent, but not as strong as it is today) - do you have any apricot jam. I used the German word for Apricot = Aprikosen. He just stared at me. I tried again with a small variation, still no luck. Finally in frustration he brought out a handful of jam packages, and the one I wanted with a picture of Apricots on it was labeled Marille. OK, that explained why he couldn't understand me (why he didn't know the high German word was still odd). I learned a new word in Austrian German.

10 June 2022 - Linz

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11 June 2022 - Linz to Grein to Melk

I had picked up a brochure that showed the Donauweg route. At the end there was an overview map and it had a comment on it about a ferry from Melk to Krems. I looked for information on it. It was hard to get the details on a phone with limited access. All the sites wanted to talk about their "package" deals. These would be train boat combos, many with a meal included. That wasn't what I wanted. When we arrived in Melk, I walked around to the kiosks for the ferry lines. One showed an 11am boat from Melk to Krems. The price was about 30EU. Quite reasonable. We would stay the night in Melk and take the ferry the next day.

12 June 2022 - Melk to Krems to Tulln

Knowing that we had until 11am to spend in Melk, we did not hurry. I went out and bought rolls. It is Sunday. There was only one bakery on the other side of town that was open. I checked a few others on my way there. There was a long line to enter and make your purchase. I made my purchase and returned to the campground. After we ate I saw the ferry ticket kiosk was open and I went over and bought our tickets. 2 adults and 2 bicycles, one way. It was pretty easy to get what I wanted. Too bad their websites weren't as easy to get through.

We hung around until boarding started, did the last packing and headed to the pier. There was no line to board, and the crew told us where to put our bicycles. There were great racks to hold the bikes. Two others were already there. We adjusted them and headed upstairs.

Between Melk and Krems is called the Wachau Valley. It is often described as the most beautiful part of the Donau river. There are little picturesque towns. Lots of churches. Several ruins of fortresses, all on a slightly curvy stretch of the river surrounded by short hills. The boat had a narrator in both German and English about the various towns, churches and ruins. We were heading downstream, so the boat goes quickly along the route.

The trip took just 2 hours, with a couple of stops along the way. When we reached Krems almost everyone disembarked. There was a set of sign boards near the harbor with information about the whole valley, much repeating what we had heard on the ship. We spent some time reading them, then went off in search of sights and lunch. We saw musicians in a Tracht leaving a restaurant. Drat. Twice missing musicians. We still decided to eat there. It turns out to be a branch of the Munchner Hofbrauhaus. I had Schweinebraten and Pete wanted a Wurst, The only Wurst available was Weisswurst with senf and a Bretzeln. I ordered it for him. Both were great, although it wasn't the Wurst Pete expected or hoped for. We'll eventually get him a Currywurst.

There really wasn't very much to Krems, so it was only 3pm so instead of staying we headed out. We kept thinking it was too early to stop, we still had energy, so no, we won't look at this Pension. We cycled 41km. We reached Tulln, which Google map showed had a campground. That will be simple. It was on the far side of town, so we got to see the town as we passed through it. It looked to me to be worth visiting after we got the site and dumped our stuff. That last few km Pete started talking with another rider. He was from Tulln. It was the first time we had engaged another rider riding along in our direction at our speed. Pete apparently did that a lot 4 years ago when he rode along the Rhine.

We headed back to the center town. The crowd had decreased in the hour since we had passed through. We decided on Eiscaffe, which in Germany is vanilla ice cream with coffee and whipped cream. That took care of the decision on whether to have an ice cream or not. The ice cream stand had a longer line. There were no more comfy seats, so we sat on the benches on the wall. I grabbed our snacks from my bike and we had cookies with our Eiscaffee. Then we drove around a bit longer and then headed back to the campground.

13 June 2022 - Tulln to Wien

We woke up to heavy dew that before we packed up and departed turned into light rain. The campground in addition to having tent spaces and RV spaces had little cabins (some the size of the wooden sheds you can buy in the US) for rent. There was one on the edge of the tent area which was not rented and had a little front porch. We moved our stuff and the tent to the porch. We finished breakfast and packed up and headed out. The rain stopped. The sun came out. We passed and were passed by other cyclers who were at the campground. It was nice to know people. People are all friendly on the route, but often you don't connect with people because you aren't physically in a position to do so.

The route between Krems and Vienna is pretty flat. There aren't hills in the distance, and the river is wide. It is sort of like the Mohawk river between Schenectady and Cohoes, or the Hudson around Albany. After 30km we reached the Stift Klosterneuburg. The signs on the bike path made it look pretty significant. I took an effort to find a route to reach it by bicycle so we could leave them sort of in our sight. Once we reached it, the signage was not good for finding where we should go or what we should see. We eventually found an open door to the church. In some ways it was like the other Baroque decorated churches we have been visiting, but a lot of it was even more ornate. It was founded in 1114 but is decorated more from he 1700s. We didn't go to the museum that has the crowned, and we didn't take a tour that would have given us more information and let us into the main chapel.

After visiting the Kloster, we went into town. I found a store to buy a reasonably priced SD card. I appear to have swapped out SD cards before the trip and had only a 2GB one that had lots of pictures in it. I backed most of them up and deleted chunks to make more space, but I'd rather not be focusing on that while traveling. Then we found a Backerei Conditorei where we stopped for a coffee and dessert. Pete bought a few more rolls in a market which we'll eat with cheese and spread for lunch.

10km further and we reached Wien (Vienna). The rain started while we were doing the last few km and searching for a hotel. It wasn't worth adjusting for. It was sun showers and didn't last too long. We first tried a hotel we saw a sign for on our way into town that emphasized being bicycle friendly. They didn't have any rooms. Back to our phones. Hotels.com, Booking.com, Google Maps. We have been looking for a couple of days and the search results keep changing. We picked one and got a very good deal when I showed the man at the desk what Booking was saying.

We parked the bikes in the Tiefgarage, and carried our bags up to our room on the 3rd floor (3rd European floor = 4th US floor). We showered and Pete turned on the TV. He found CNN and BBC in English, watched a little. Put it on mute during a commercial and took a nap. I got out my tablet, backed up some photos and wrote this.

After a rest we went downtown for dinner/snack. We saw a few sights, including the cathedral. Vienna is a big city full of BIG buildings.

14 June 2022 - Wien

Today we played tourist. We are at an upscale hotel where we booked a room for 3 nights. We included breakfast. Breakfast was "Continental" but more than the white roll with butter and jam I remember from my first trip to Europe in 1982. They had white rolls -but better quality ones-, whole wheat rolls, croissants, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, jam, honey, cereal, meat, cheese, a juice machine and a custom coffee machine.

Our plan (my plan) was to buy the hop-on, hop-off bus ticket and use that to see the town and get a tour. The hotel had brochures for that. They also had a City card brochure. Pete decided that we could buy day tickets for the public transit and download a tour guide to his tablet. That of course was less expensive but took time out of our morning. We got it done and took off. The Tabak shop was 300 feet away from the hotel, and across from it was a tram stop. We were off.

Our first stop was where the tram ended. We visited the Votivkirche where Arch Duke Ferdinand was saved from an accident and had a church built in thanks. It is more decorative than the Dom. Next to it is the Rathhaus, then the Parlament. Pete kept wanting to take the tram or a bus somewhere, but each was adjacent. So we took the tram 1 stop and walked into the Volksgarten. From that we took a tram a few blocks passing the Secession to the Naschmarkt. I thought it would be more like Quincy Market or Pikes Place Market, but it had mostly overpriced tourist restaurants, and stalls with spices, olives, Backlava, etc. We shared a falafel sandwich and continued on.

Next stop was the town center and the St Stephan's Dom. We had seen it last night from the outside. The inside was interesting, but other churches we have seen were more impressive.

Pete wanted to go see the river. Hadn't we just biked along side it for 5 days? Hadn't he seen enough of it? OK. We'll take the metro to the Prater, ride the Riesenrad (Ferris wheel), and then continue onto the river. The Riensenrad offered a good view of the city, but from a distance. After riding it Pete asked if we'd do another ride. Maybe the spinning swings? Then we passed a rollercoaster that was different than others I had seen. This one you ride in groups of 4 people laying on your stomach. We tried it. The upside down turns were fin. It would have been more interesting if we weren't jolted so much so the turns were more natural. From there we took the metro 2 stops to the Donauinsel. Looked from the bridge, went down to cross to the opposite side to return.

Pete wanted to return to the room to rest and then go out again. Metro to metro to tram to hotel. he break was longer than we expected, but not surprisingly. I suggested we get going if we were going to have dinner. We took Dad's suggestion and went 0.3 miles up the main road to a Bierhof. The food was good. The beer was good, the service was good, and we met a nice pair of gentlemen who sat down at the next table who were in Wien for a genetics conference.

It was a full day.

15 June 2022 - Wien

Today's goal was Schloss Schönbrun. I went to Austria and Germany with my German language class in 10th grade. We started in Vienna and ended in Frankfurt. Along the way we visited many Schlößer. A couple of them stand out in my memory. I thought one was Schloß Schönbrunn, so I wanted to see it again. I bought us tickets for the grand tour. We got to see the whole main level on the palace, and had access to a few gardens. Unfortunately this was not the Schloß I wanted. It was pretty much like all the others. The furniture was similar, the walls too. The best part was an exhibit that was located between the initial entry where they checked that you had a ticket for the right time and actually let you in about the history of the family and the building. There was another exhibit in the courtyard on the way out. That one talked about how the building transitioned after WWI. Ok, the emperor was gone. Now the country owns a building. They had to take care of it. All the court personal were out of "jobs." The new government has to take care of them now. They had to decide how to use the building.

Our next stop was the Café Sacher. There was a line, but we were seated almost immediately. We ordered the traditional/original Sachertorte, and the Sachertorte Fudge. There was a couple from France next to us. They didn't speak much German nor English. Pete mentioned to the waiter that I spoke some French and both the couple and the waiter asked me to help. I can hold two languages in my mind at once, but three is a challenge. I was able to figure out what they wanted and told the waiter. All were happy.

After dessert we walked around more. We saw the Spanish riding school. We picked up a brochure about them having an open practice session each morning. We put that on our schedule for tomorrow. We walked past the opera, and the Musikverein. We walked past the Hofburg, and Pete stopped to talk to a quartet of young Ukrainians. We walked around the St Stephen's Dom. Then we headed back to our hotel.

16 June 2022 - Wien

We had planned to check out today. We had also planned to continue with our bikes tour today. We packed up our stuff, brought it down to the lobby and headed in to town to see the Spanish riding school horses practice. I had seen an ad for that yesterday. It wasn't exciting, but was interesting. No photos allowed. There was good bilingual narration. After we went back to the hotel to get our bags.

Pete wanted to do a Mediterranean cruise. He had been talking about this since before we left Boise. He found a discount cruise site and had bought his Caribbean cruise tickets there back in Februrary. For a week he has been talking about one out of Rome that we could tack on to the end of our trip. Today he started talking about a 7-day cruise out of Athens, and flying to Athens from Vienna, and returning to Vienna. That was much better than having an 11 hour layover in Madrid, or some other combination that would take too much time to get home after the cruise. I agreed. He found two good ones. One through Greek islands, and one that included Turkey, Cyprus, and Israel. I really liked the latter. Both were about $700 each (per person). We sat in the lobby and the website said we had to wait three hours until the ticket office in California was open for Pete to reach them. Problem, problem, problem. Finally I decided to check on staying another night at this hotel. The rate was even lower than the initial low rate. We even got our old room back. We moved from the lobby to the room. It was much more comfortable. We were there most of the day. I read and reviewed three journal papers. Pete researched cruises and flights. Once he settled on one, we had trouble getting through to an agent to book the tickets.

We went out for a picnic lunch/dinner. We sat at an artistic picnic area near the Hundertwasser building (Google says it is an incinerator). As we were almost finished it started to rain. Oh yes. I had forgotten that rain was in the forecast. We finished and returned home. In the short time it took us to finish our meal the little Wurst shack cleaned up and closed up. If it was going to rain, I guess they decided they wouldn't have any business.

We did more ticket research and attempted to buy tickets. We didn't want to buy plane tickets until we knew we had a cruise ticket. Finally Pete gave up and suggested we go to the concert at the Schloß Schönbrunn we had talked about attending because we were still in town. It was the Sommernachtskonzert featuring the Vienna Philharmonic, one of the best orchestras in the world - and it was free. We grabbed our rain coats and I my umbrella, and a plastic bag to sit on and headed out. When we made the last transfer the metro was packed. They all got off at the palace. I couldn't believe so many young folk would want to attend a classical concert. That is a good thing. We followed the crowd to the grounds. There was a long line as we passed through a bag check. Lots of people hung their non-collapsible umbrellas on the trees and the fence. We wove our way closer to the front where we found a spot close to a TV screen. There was no need to bring a bag to sit on, as there was no sitting. It was a live concert, but we were watching the TV screen and listening to the audio through an amp. Not much different from watching on TV. Still it was interesting. I had watched this concert in previous years on Dad's German TV subscription. Now I also knew why so much was blocked off with fences yesterday. There was a camera on a cable to take photos from multiple locations above the crowd. It was interesting as the skies dimmed and they turned on some beam lights from the rooftops. They moved the lights, seemingly faster and at the end of the piece as the music crescendoed. There was a big cloud off in the distance where Pete saw lightning. As time passed I saw it too. It wasn't just a camera flash. The cloud grew and came toward us. As the concert was almost done the lighting increased. Drops started to fall, the lights sparkled in the light rain, and the music seemed to grow faster and the lights seemed to waive faster, as if the conductor was competing with the rain to see who would finish first. He and the musicians were under a large pavilion so they would stay dry. Lightning was another issue, but it never came close to us. The concert ended. There was no content seeming to close it. The last piece ended, and they left. No final bows etc. The audience left too. The rain was increasing. Fortunately it was short lived. By the time we were nearing the U-Bahn station, it had mostly stopped. At the station there were many security people trying to get as many people onto the trains as fast as they could. We got seated and soon the train was moving. 2 stops later we got off and transferred. Soon we were back at our hotel.

During the concert Pete had some email/text correspondence with a booking agent. There was a teachers discount, so I gave him my ID card and business card for him to photograph and send. The agent asked which cruise, and Pete said he had told him multiple times. When we returned, we still didn't have any answer back from the agent. Pete decided to go with the other cruise, which he thought he could book 100% online, but it was not that easy. He had to call an agent, and was on hold a while before getting to speak to a human. Finally he got through, and got the cruise booked. Then we had to get plane tickets. Pete uses the Google add-on that can translate webpages. That however interferes when the site tries to do a lookup and populate a field. So I had to call the site up on my phone and work my way through it in German. Not a hard thing, but it was already 1am! Then once we found what we wanted, the website couldn't complete the booking because the credit card company thought it was a fake. I received a text and an email, where I told them it was legit. Citibank then expects you to run the purchases again and they would allow it. The website however wouldn't let us run it because it had failed too many times. Try another device and another credit card. Need a multiple authentication code. Ok. Still the website wasn't happy and didn't allow it. Then to my laptop. Try a different aggregator. That worked, but just before the final click came a notice that the airline increased its price. The flight was less than 24-hours away. I agreed to the increase. Upgrade our ticket for Ryan Air to help with our luggage. Finally we had tickets. It was past 2am. I told Pete I was done. He stayed up looking for Covid policies for the ship. I went to sleep.

17 June 2022 - Wien

Even after staying up late last night we awoke relatively early today. We didn't have much on our schedule except checking out, dropping off the bikes and excess luggage and getting to the airport. Checkout was at noon, so we used the time to slowly pack. Budget airlines limit carry on and checked luggage. I had bought an upgrade for the Ryan Air flight. The Aegean Air looked like we would make it, but I can't estimate weights and didn't know how picky they would be.

My colleague wasn't available until 13:00, so we didn't rush. We attached the bags to the bikes and headed out. Vienna is easy to bicycle across. They have many bike lanes. Cars aren't as careful as in France, but are way better than in the US.

When we got to the university I emailed my colleague and he came out to meet us. We brought the bikes up the elevator and to his lab. We unloaded luggage and re-sorted a few items that had been packed for transport. He invited us to have a coffee. They have quite a bit of coffee equipment, and said they experiment with high quality beans. It was good coffee.

We were trying to take a simple city tram to the airport. We walked by the Schloss Belvedere and looked at the exterior of the building and the gardens. Then we gave up on the tram and went to the train station and took the direct airport shuttle. It was a train, not a bus and they only charged 4.30€ per person. Usually airport transit is much more expensive.

On the train Pete realized that despite talking about making sure to leave his scissors and pocket knife in the remaining luggage, it was in his bag. When we got to the airport we found our way to an outside space and he buried it under a bush. It will likely still be there when we return, but if not, no worse than if it had been confiscated at the security check, and someone will likely make use of it rather than it being destroyed.

It took some inquiry to figure out where we had to go. We had no checked luggage and had our boarding passes. The woman at the information desk was helpful. Getting through security was pretty easy. Shoes on. Laptops out. Metal detector not full body scan. No problem with empty water bottles. We passed through the duty free shop. Pete went back to put some hand cream on his hands. They have lots of samplers. We bought a chicken nugget sandwich, and passed time at a table until our gate was posted. We went to the gate. There was a scale right in front of the desk. My bag was 6.5kg. A pair of girls were sent to the desk. Their duffle bags were quite large, but I didn't hear why. We waited for the line to go down a little. Then a woman came through the line looking for people with roller bags. My suitcase was on my back. The luggage rules were printed on the e-boarding pass and technically I didn't fit, however they didn't look to see what type of ticket I had. We boarded and put our bags above and sat down. Shortly after we took off and we were on our way.

Pete struck up a long conversation with the woman seated in front of him. She was originally from Zimbabwe. She was surprised how much Pete knew about that area from his travels years ago.

The airline actually served small sandwiches and the beverages included wine or beer - all included, even though this was a budget flight.

We landed and took the"train" (μητρo) into the city and walked to our hotel. As the reviews said, it wasn't the nicest neighborhood, but the room was fine. The neighborhood did offer an assortment of great little hole in the wall restaurants. We had biryani from a Bangladeshi restaurant. It was good, but nowhere as good as what my former PhD student's wife made for us this summer though.

18 June 2022 - Athens

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19 June 2022 - Athens/Pireaus

We did not buy breakfast with our room. The night before we had found several places close by where we could buy breakfast and we set out and chose one. We sat at table on the sidewalk and ate. We returned to the hotel to get our bags, and set out for the Piraeus port. It was right on the metro line. One stop from our hotel then transfer and go several stops to the end station.

We had bought our tickets only 2 days before, so we could not check in online. We had to do it at the terminal. OK. Not pre-checking didn't seem that bad, but NCL didn't send us any real information other than the departure time, and that we had to be checked in 2 hours before that time. Most absent from the communication was WHERE we had to be. We knew the port, but at which terminal and any hints about reaching it. I took out my binoculars and could see the NCL ship. OK, that is a good sign. Pete looked on the internet which said Terminal A. It also said there was a free shuttle within the port. We started walking, and walking and walking. We didn't see the free shuttle. Maybe it was outside the port gates? We attempted to take a city bus, but a man at the bus stop was convinced the busses would not go to the terminal and we had to just had to walk on the inside route. We went back in and walked and saw the bus pass us. We tried again, but the bus didn't stop at the stop where we were waiting. Maybe we needed a secret signal? We reached Terminal A and went in. Another ship was loading and the woman who worked for it was very kind and helpful and told us Terminal B at E12, walked outside with us and pointed us in the right direction. As we left the building there were a few taxis and the drivers were sitting on a bench chatting. They asked if we needed a ride. I asked "how much to E12"? One answered 6EU. Yes, that is worth it to get out of the heat and know we were going to the right place. Pete said we could walk. I said HE could walk, I was taking the taxi. He got in too. The driver seemed to go the wrong way back to the entry end of the street and turned around, and went back passing Terminal A and then going into Terminal B. I held cash and he wasn't running the meter. He dropped us off at Terminal B. There was a large parking lot that was mostly empty A few buses and other cars/taxis were arriving. We grabbed our bags and got in line, We were quickly approached by a staff member. We handed him our passports, our covid vaccination cards and our Covid test results. He gave us yellow stickers on our shoulders to indicate that we were cleared from that part of the processing, led us past the rest of the crowd. Another agent gave us pink wrist bands, and led us into the building. We commented on how we hadreceived so little information and the woman brought us right up to a desk. We handed over our passports and she found our record. In just a few minutes she handed us our cruise cards, told us the room number and we were off. We had only carry-on luggage, so we passed luggage drop off. Our hand luggage went on an x-ray belt, we walked through a metal detector and we walked onto the ship. Well that part of the processing went amazingly smooth.

We found our room. The cabin steward was in the hallway introducing himself to all the arriving guests. Checked luggage was sitting in the hallway for many rooms. We went in and settled our stuff. The room was small, but not terribly small. It didn't have an exterior window, but we would spend most of our time in another part of the ship with plenty of view options. The room had plenty of closet and drawer and shelf space. Best was we each had a little end table by our side of the bed and a light and each light had a USB port by the switch.

We took a quick shower, laid down for 30 minutes, then went out. We were obligagted to visit the emergency dismemberment stations today, so we took care of that next. They scanned our cards and told us to have a nice trip. Checkmark! We went in search of the buffet restaurant and found it and had lunch. It had quite a variety of options. Everything tasted good. Now the trick is to not over eat, just because there is so much good food available.

We wandered around the ship. From the upper deck we could se Athens I grabbed our binoculars and with them I could see the Acropolis. The ship started sailing without any big ceremony. The Carneval Cruise had wanted everyone on deck to waive as we departed. There wasn't any audience to see us waive here.

We went to the Art Show event. It advertised free wine and prizes. We had not joined the alcoholic beverages package. As we read it the package costs $99 per day and all members of a family had to order it and you needed to order it for all days of the cruise. W weren't going to drink that much beer and wine. They also were selling a soda package and three sizes of water packages. Nope. The prizes were mostly art prints and we weren't thrilled by any of them. After raffling off the first one they threw in a bottle of wine. There were only a handful of people there. That got a lot more interest from those assembled. They raffled off two more prints and bottles of wine. We didn't win any. Had we won a print, we would have left it on the boat. We didn't like them and had no room in our luggage to transport them.

At dinner we met a nice couple from England, Neville and Michelle. The tables were crowded and they were sitting at a round for 6 people, so we asked if we could join them. When my wine glass was empty, Neville offered me a glass of wine from his beverage package. Some waiters turn a blind eye, others less easily, but he can order a glass, give it to me and 2 minutes later order another glass. We shared a lot of conversation with them. They cruise often. They gave us their opinion about several lines, and told us about the Cruise Ahead special Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) offers which they use a lot. You can basically buy a gift certificate when you are on a cruise and they will give you extra funds for it, so pay $500 and get $500 more free. Sounds like a good deal if you think you'll sail with NCL again.

20 June 2022 - Kusadasi Turkey

Today we made our first stop. 6:30am the ship docked in Kusadasi Turkey. Kusadasi isn't famous, but near it is Ephesus. We didn't disembarque until 8am. After getting off the ship we passed through a colonnade of Duty Free shops and then other shops. One of which was the local tours shop. For 20EU each we could get a van and a guide to take us to Ephesus. We had to pay 12EU each admission to the site in addition. Pete wanted to take a city bus, but having only 4 hours time I felt it was a reasonable amount to pay to make sure we got back to the ship on time. The city bus might have worked, but it would involve transfers and we didn't know the schedule. Pete agreed. I paid our fee and we waited until they had enough people to mostly fill the van. The wait was longer than I was comfortable waiting, but we waited. One of the tour guides was nice to talk with. The office had pictures of other places they take tours to. He was at one with blue pools yesterday and showed us his pictures. That is a multiple hour trip so we definitely weren't going there today. Maybe in a future trip to Turkey. One more country on my visit list.

We were 4 groups. A family from South Carolina with a 5-ish year old daughter, A man possibly from southern Europe with a 8-ish year old son and a 10-ish year old daughter, a young couple from Brazil and us. The van dropped us off at one entrance and was going to meet us at the other entrance, so we'd only walk one way and downhill. That was efficient.

Apparently Ephesus was the second largest city in the Mediterranean after Rome. They have only excavated 30% of it. It used to be right on the sea, but the river that runs through it/by it silted up the bay and after 2 millennia Ephesus is now quite inland. He said that the early silting led to swampy conditions that bred mosquitos and led the the abandonment of the city in about the 12th century CE. The guide told us quite a bit about the city. The big sites were the amphitheater and the library. There was even a latrine we visited. Not all groups were hanging close to him and he didn't wait for all to gather before talking. If you wanted to hear what he said, you had to hang close as he moved on. We mostly did, but the other groups probably didn't hear half of what he said. The Brazilian couple vanished early. Maybe they couldn't understand enough English so they preferred to se the site on their own? Unfortunately they weren't with us when we reached the end. We waited a little and looked for them, but they were not around. Time was getting close to where we'd be late returning to the ship, so we left. We didn't visit the second stop the tour advertised, the "Church of Mary" where Mary mother of Jesus supposedly died as she went to Ephesus with John who took her in after Jesus died. I didn't want to see that, so that was ok. The tour guide returned the admission ticket money to the others who had paid for that stop. One thing that he didn't say anything about was Paul's letters to the Ephesians, from which I know of the city. There was one spot where some engravings on a rock were a sign that the early Christians were there. I bet they didn't leave much record in the grand scene. The tour showed more about the city where they were living which had a multiple millennia history and thus why Paul might have been mentoring a group there.

Back on the boat we had lunch, then time to hang out, then dinner. In the evening about 6:30pm we reached Patmos Greece. Patmos is a tiny island and doesn't have any docks where a big cruise liner can stop. We set anchor in the harbor and tender boats brought us to shore in groups of about 60 people. They were quite disorganized about it. The announcements we were told would happen didn't. The instructions were to stay away from the mid ship stairs until our group number was called, which it wasn't. I went to check after not hearing anything and there was a big crowd and the girl said all was on hold while they cleared a backlog below. We waited. Eventually they cleared the jam and we were sent down the stairs and onto boats. In town we walked from the dock and there were several nice looking cafes/restaurants. We had already eaten dinner. Someone said they had been there before and it had the best Greek food they had eaten on that previous trip. We kept walking. While it seemed late, it was early for Greek dinner. One woman was putting out displays for the evening opening of her merchandise store. We didn't want to buy anything and kept walking. We thought about stopping, but nothing caught our eye. Then we reached the other side of the island. The island is like an hour glass with a narrow section in the middle between two wider sections with small mountains. It wasn't a long walk. There where the road/path came out was the rocky shore and on the shore were several chairs, and a couple of tables, mostly coffee tables. We grabbed one that was unoccupied and I went to the restaurant to let the woman know we were there and place an order. She brought us our two glasses of wine and we sat there watching the waves and the sun set. I think it was a perfect way to spend the evening. The boat didn't leave until 11:59pm, but we went back to the ship about 10pm. We found the little snack haven on the rear deck of the ship and had a snack, then went to the room and watched a movie on the TV before calling it a night.

21 June 2022 - Rhodes Greece

Today we visited Rhodes. The Colossus is not there. I visited Rhodes with Scott in early January 2017. Greece was still celebrating Christmas then. Orthodox Christmas is later than western

Christmas, and they celebrate Epiphany more than Christmas. It was an interesting island, but it was cold and much was closed down for the week between their two holidays. Today it was quite warm and almost everything was open, and there were a lot of people in town visiting the island. We got to Rhodes at 8am, but we took our time getting off.

Rhodes has an old town that is still surrounded by walls. We entered by the first gate we found. We walked through the town and out a gate on the other side. Then in and through the town, mostly following the wall. The streets are lined with vendors selling much of the same thing: jewelry - some fine gold and some folk crafted, summer clothes, embroidered kitchen towels, keychains, ...

We walked around almost the whole perimeter, then headed in. We found the XXX palace. There were interesting exhibits about it outside showing the street profile and labeling what each building contained, and its state of renovation. Like in so many old cities, things are built, and then fall or are town down, then are rebuilt with something new or sometimes reconstructing the older building in facsimilie. Pete decided he didn't want to go into the Masters Palace when he saw there was a line. I told him he could sit in the shade, I'd wait in line, then he could join me, but no, he was not going, I could go in alone if I wanted. I had been inside before and didn't like his attitude - I didn't come to vacation on my own, so I said I wouldn't go in. We walked down the famous street. The French Auberge is actually managed by a branch of the French government and it was open and contained an exhibit about a US ship that used to be docked in Rhodes that ran Voice of America broadcasts for 12 years during the Cold War. It was interesting.

We went back to the boat, had a small lunch, changed into our swimwear, grabbed towels from the pool deck and went out to dip in the water at a little beach just outside the cruise terminal. Lots of people were taking dips, some just wading to their calves. I saw two parents lift their child up from the water holding them under the arm pits and carry the kid to the boardwalk to dry the kid off without contact with sand. I would have been happy just to have had a shoulder to lean on to do the one footed balance, dip and fit the sandal routine.

We rested a little, I brought my tablet downstairs to make a wifi hotspot while we were in port and take care of a couple of things I needed to. On my phone I received notice that my future colleagues in Sweden had gone and looked at the apartment I was considering and said I should take it. I sent a message thorough the Blocket website to the daughter of the woman living there saying that I was interested, but I wouldn't be moving until September, did she want me to start paying rent now, and I don't have any Swedish bank account through which to pay. What did she want? Later that evening I received a message from her, the first lines of which I could read from my phone saying that she would be visiting Lulea in August to take care of things for her mother, so renting starting in September was fine. Also she had had interest from several students, but her mother wasn't comfortable renting to them, but her mother is very comfortable renting to us. I now have an apartment!!! I also summarized the specs for my current BSU laptop and tablet and sent that off to LTU. Marcus offered that I could have 2 laptops, so that was perfect as it fits what I have and in a way that I'm very productive. I'm glad to give that a checkmark too. Hopefully they will be ordered and arrive by early September. I still haven't heard about how I will get my visa (I'm not coming from a Shengen country) and how to admit and hire the PhD student I found in France. Summer vacation is starting in Sweden. Marcus and Fotenei left Sweden for Greece via Berlin today. Marcus is convinced I'll be able to start September 1st, so somehow all these things I'm "worried" about will resolve. I only know how these sorts of things are not quick in the US.

We had dinner in the buffet, and went off to play a game. It was a trivia type game, We did well on the first section where you had to match a list of 5 things in a category the announcer stated wit hthe 5 things he had thought up to represent that category. The next sections were pop songs and movies - we didn't get any of them, and didn't even have any guesses. The last section he showed a small section of a photograph of something zoomed way in and we had to identify the item. Nobody got any of them. One was the neck of a guitar, but the wall the guitar was leaning on was 75% of the picture and was just a stone wall. Another showed the grate from a bluetooth speaker in 25% of the picture. Everyone got the Eiffel Tower but that actually showed a larger portion of the object in the image with less background. There were only 3 teams in the whole theater. We all won "prizes" a cheap necklace from Effy containing a boat anchor pendant, and a $200 coupon on any item in the shop that costs $600 or more. I'll donate the necklace to a thrift shop. I left the coupon sitting in the theater. Carnival Cruises had better games and better prizes. We then went to the Jewelry store's event. We each got a raffle ticket. The night before the raffle prize was a nice looking pair of earrings, supposedly made from diamonds. There were maybe 15 people there. Having an extra chance would have helped. I got a free necklace. The chain was cheap, but the solitaire pendant was small but deep blue. (I have a pinkish one from the Carnival cruise). I wear blue, so that can be helpful. I put it on my nicer silver chain and it looks ok. I commented to the head lady that it went well with my earrings which were blue stone (glass) surrounded with "diamonds". She asked me if the earrings were this precious gemstone they are peddling. I said no, they were part of a set I bought at a department store 8 earrings for $10. She was embarrased that she couldn't tell expensive fine jewelry from cheap imitation. I was happy that my earrings look that good. My other set I cycle through is small plastic flowers in 9 colors. Just something to add a little color. We saw Neville and Michelle there and talked with them some. On the way back to our room we stopped at the piano bar and listened to a few songs until the musician took a break, then continued to our room. We wanted the last half to 2/3 of a movie on the TV and called it a night.

22 June 2022 - Mykonos Greece

Today's island was Mykonos. Mykonos does not have a large cruiseship port, so we again had to use "tethering" where smaller boats come to our ship and we climb down a set of stairs attached to the outside of the ship and then onto a ship that holds approximately 60 passengers. That smaller boat then brings us to shore. Today the procedure went smoothly. I heard the announcements. We skipped our ticketed time and went later after "open tender" was called.

There were a few excursions we could have signed up for off Mykonos, but none were really of interest. Mykonos isn't really "known" for anything other than some super beaches further from the main town. A nearby island is the birthplace of Apollo so there is a shrine there. We didn't want to go off island. So we did the walk through the old town, swim at the beach, and have lunch at a local restaurant. The water was super clear and there were a couple different types of fish swimming around, but not many. We observed that the cruise ship itself does not serve Greek food. Real sadly they don't take the opportunity to hold informational sessions on each destination the night before. That would probably have more attendees than their other events that are poorly attended. Maybe the food thing is so passengers actually WILL eat off the ship in the ports we visit? Maybe they worry that the information session might replace people taking a tour?

There were several choices of beaches. One by the boat terminal, a tiny one beyond the old town, and then the larger one we stopped at. One cruise excursion was transfer to a beach on the other island side. We were happy staying close to town. By walking there, we were nice and hot by the time we arrived and ready for the cool water. The water isn't cold, but is cool. Cooler than I remember in French Polynesia.

We found on the return to the town after swimming that one of the windmills was actually open. They were taking donations to enter. We got to climb upstairs and see the gearing. I guess they were large originally to grind grain, but there are quite a few windmills and Greece doesn't strike me as a grain agriculture country. I'd like to see them renovate many of them and install modern dynamos and generate a limited amount of power. The design isn't as efficient as the newer windmills, but seeing them all have sheets (even if it were a newer fabric) and seeing them turn would be good for everyone. That's my opinion though.

We found a nice little restaurant for lunch and had a nice chat with a couple there from another cruiseline from London Ontario. Apparently shortly before we arrived the management asked a couple to leave because their kid was not well behaved, probably screaming and acting up. The husband (from Ontario, not the one asked to leave with the kid) is of Lebanese descent and grilled the waiter/owner about the baklava content before ordering a piece. After it arrived, he said it was very good. It was made with butter between the phylo dough leaves, and was made with walnuts. Just like his grandmother used to make at and like my coworker from Egypt taught me to make it.

We walked back to the ship. We were most of the way there when we found this restaurant. We cooled down and I came to the back deck of the ship to have an iced coffee and backup photos and write this. Pete napped and came down later.

We decided to have dinner at O'Sheehan's Restaurant. It served "Irish-American" pub food. They have an assortment of burgers. Pete thought he wanted fish and chips. Then he saw wings. I had a bowl of soup and we shared twice baked potatoes/potato skins. We each had dessert. After dinner we went to the theater and watched a show. It was a couple doing a mixture of gymnastics and dance with a hanging rope or loop. The 5' diameter "hoola hoop" the guy did a part on was coolest, rolling around the stage like a penny dropped on its side before it falls flat. The show lasted about an hour. It was the only place on this ship where we haven't seen people following the indoor masking rules. Only 20% of the people were wearing masks, even after a verbal message at the start of the show. After the show we went back to the aft deck for a snack and hung out enjoying watching the night world go by.

23 June 2022 - Argostoli, Kefalonia, Greece

Today's island was Kefalonia. Kefalonia is a big island and the ship docked in the city of Argostoli. I was on the island of Kefalonia for a week in 2016 when I was an instructor at a summer school for PhD students and young professionals in Document Analysis. That was in the town of Poros, but the organizer of the Summer School, Ergina, put together a bus tour of the island and we went to the Melissani Cave boat tour and to Argostoli. Pete had a $50 credit for tours at each port and he could have gone to the Melissina Caves, but opted not to.

We used Tender boats to get off the ship and this time we used the life boats for our ship. When we got off the ship there was a little white tour train passing by. We missed it, but I thought it might be a moderately interesting thing to do in the city. Pete Googled it to see its schedule and found bad reviews. The reviews were actually for the red and yellow tour trains. Still not enough information to find train and its rate and get on.

We walked a little down the road by the water and came across a restaurant built on a deck over the water. We stopped for a drink and some food. The cheese dish "Greek Gruyere Saganaki Cheese" was spectacular. It was a round of fresh cheese that was baked to be crispy on the outside. Before they baked it they sprinkled it with honey and ouzo and sesame seeds. When warm it was like deep fried mozzarella sticks. We also ordered bread and olive oil. We ate slowly and enjoyed the view and the shade. The restaurant was not busy so we weren't a hindrance for them.

When we were done we had looked at Google Maps and decided to walk down to the point 1.5km away. There was a beach and a marker for Sink Holes. Along the way there was a pine wooded area for 20 meters wide along the coast. Many places there looked good for swimming and a few people were in the water. It was nice walking in the shade. We found the sink holes. There was an informative sign before we got there and they were on the coast side of a restaurant. The restaurant was closed for the day. No cars in the lot. We walked around and sat in some of the chairs they had outside to add more sunscreen and enjoy the view. Apparently there are some flows of fresh water and some of salt water and that makes a general flow that turns a water wheel. There was still a wheel there. There apparently used to be a second one. We decided not to go to the sand beach on the far side of the sink holes. We walked back toward the town and stopped in the pine walk area and went in the water there. Beautiful clear water.

When we reached town we took the route into the city center and walked through it. There wasn't much to see. There were a few restaurants, but few people at them. It was mid afternoon on a hot day. We returned to the port and reboarded the ship.

24 June 2022 - Corfu Greece

Today's island was Corfu. I had never heard of Corfu before this trip. It is the island furthest to the north west part of Greece except some real tiny ones. It is a big island and a pretty big city. Because of its location it has had a lot of Venetian and British influence. That can be seen in the architecture.

The map showed a New Fort and an Old Fort. The Old Fort was further away at the point, so we thought we'd start with that. We walked along the shore then turned into the town and walked through the Old Town. The fort is a fort. It had a small museum, and then the fort part itself was all outdoors. We walked up to the top got the views, then walked down. As we were thinking of leaving I saw a path to another part of the fort we hadn't seen, so we went there. It was access to a little beach which had several people swimming or laying out on it. We went into the water. Beautiful! I'm liking this clear coolish salt water on a hot afternoon.

When we were done we had to walk with a little more intent to get back to the ship. We took a different route through the town. We skipped the New Fort. Corfu shows up on the itinerary for many cruises, the ones in Greek Islands and the general Mediterranean (Italy++). If we keep cruising we might return. It is the second island on this trip I would like to visit again.

25 June 2022 - Corfu Greece

The ship went all the way to the north-west part of Greece, then came back SE of Athens to visit Santorini. I have heard of Santonini. There was a conference, a different edition of the one I went to at the start of this summer's trip that was held here 8 years ago. I didn't attend then. People talk about Santorini. Pictures appear in Greek tour advertising. Apparently there used to be a big volcano. In about 1610BC it erupted and the central vent was blown away. In the center two small volcanos have grown since then. The last eruption was in 1950, but that was smaller. It reminds me of Crater Lake in Oregon (a US National Park that is one of my favorites). As we entered the caldera I see white on the tops of the rims. Not snow. Maybe white granite? As we get closer I see through my binoculars that the white is the buildings. All (most) the settlement is on the top ridge.

When we got to shore we took the cable car up to the top. There is a zig-zag road leading 1300 feet (400m) up. You can hire a donkey to take you up. The boat's daily news advises against walking or taking a donkey. They say it is smelly and slippery and cruel to the donkeys to have to walk up in the heat.

Pete had been planning for several days to rent a scooter to get out to the ruins on the island. He had the desk print out the names and addresses of several rental companies. We walked to one. It said we needed a motorcycle drivers license to rent the scooters which are more motorcycles than scooters. We could rent a 4 wheeled buggy, but they were more expensive and would get stuck in traffic. Pete was disappointed. We decided to walk up to the ridge. We stopped to buy a cold soda at a store, then sat and looked out at the view. Along the way we met a local woman who told us about the island buses. By the time we got to where the bus would leave, and calculated the time it would take to get to the archeological site and back and we were pushing the clock. I didn't want to chance it. We walked around the city more. We passed a bar that had an Amber Ale on its menu. We stopped. It was an Amber IPA, not an Amber. Oh well, it was a nice break. Further on we met two women from London. Santorini is famous for its sunsets. The women showed us that the viewpoint gets crazy crowded at sunset. Pete was hot and tired. We decided we would both go back down together.

We jumped in the pool on the boat. It is filled with salt water the boat takes in along the way anyhow. Almost like a dip off the shore of an island. Very cooling and relaxing. Then Pete went to talk to someone and I went up top to watch the sunset. It was beautiful.

26 June 2022 - Athens Greece

We returned to Athens this morning. The ship officially arrived at 6:30am, but disembarking was spread out with them pushing the last of us off the ship about 9am. We were able to get up and have breakfast. We ate at our favorite spot on the back deck. Our stuff wasn't that much, but Pete had his stuff all out of his bag and in several drawers and cupboards, so he had to rearrange everything. He did it pretty quickly though. My stuff stayed mostly in my suitcase. Pete had to return 2 library books and I had an employee evaluation card I wanted to drop off at customer services, so we agreed to meet at Deck 7 midship stairs/elevator. I got there and waited and waited for Pete. I gave up and went downstairs to go to shore. Pete said he had waited and waited but I didn't show and they didn't want him hanging around. We should have gone to both delivery locations together.

We got pushed through the terminal. We had no checked bags to pick up. We were told an Agent would be outside to answer local transfer questions, but no one was. On the ship Norwegian was super helpful on everything. Before we boarded and after we arrived they were terrible. I saw a city but sitting nearby and suggested to Pete that we take it. It had to be going somewhere useful. We started walking toward it and as we approached it started to leave. I waived and the driver stopped and we were able to catch it and board. It was standing room only. It went toward the metro location, but then did a u-turn at the end of the port road and headed back toward Terminal A. It didn't stop there. Then it turned perpendicular. Hmmm. Then I saw a route map on the bus wall. It included Syntagma Square. That was right near our hotel. OK. I monitored where we were, noticed a map on the TV screen. It didn't extend to Athens proper... until we drove outside its range, then it changed map boundaries. Maybe it is going to Syntagma Square. It looked good. It did go there. We and everyone else got off. It was doing a loop back to the terminals. If you ever take a cruise, Bus X80 from Syntagma Square will get you to the cruise terminals. The Metro line will get you to the ferry terminals.

We walked a few blocks to our hotel. They had limited reception hours. The code Pete received didn't work on the key box. The sign on the door said go to a merchant around the corner for assistance during off hours, but it was Sunday and the merchant was closed. An American couple came out. She gave us a different box code and there we got a exterior door key. She said they were told to leave their luggage inside when they arrived a few days before, so we did the same and went out to walk around. Then Pete gets a call. Our reservation had been canceled. That's not good. We start looking for other room, then Pete sees another email in his email inbox about a reservation at a different Athens hotel. When he was booking this hotel the display price changed at the end of booking, so he canceled it and booked a different hotel, but didn't remember that nor which one was the final chosen hotel. I look through his emails and the other one seems to be the confirmed one. We finished sight seeing and then picked up our bags and went to the other hotel.

27 June 2022 - Athens Greece

We got up early to get to the Acropolis before the heat set in. Early is relative. We took the metro to the other side of the hill and found the entry. There are several things in the Acropolis site. The most famous is the Parthenon, but there were all sorts of shrines there to all sorts of gods. The visitor route passes several. Follow the crowd. Stop in the shade, read the signs, eavesdrop on the tours, move on. Eventually we entered the line to go up the hill. That's where it starts to get crowded. There are two entrances and many people only do the hilltop. The two lines merge at the base of the path up. Keep going, don't stop to take selfies. At the top they have paved the main area with concrete. That is controversial> I saw a clip about that on the BBC news on the boat. The Greeks say it allows handicapped people to see the ruins. The archeologists think it is just a way to get more people up there and takes money away from their priorities. I do agree that it is more crowded than when I was there 8 years ago, and also that it is much easier to walk around on an smooth even path. I should have worn my orange LTU t-shirt to make it easier for Pete to find me when we got separated, but we were both pretty careful and never were that far from each other. This is my third time up there. It is always under (re)construction. This time I read something I didn't catch in the past. British Lord Elgin in 1810 came with a team and took down significant parts of the Parthenon and other buildings from the Acropolis and shipped them to England. This wasn't just picking up a vase and putting it in his bag. They had ladders and winches to get up to the top of the Parthenon and on ropes bring down large pieces of the roof edging and end statuary.

The other thing I had wondered about in previous trips was how little old pieces could just wind up between new buildings. How did they transition from ignoring them to preservation? A picture/map of Athens in 1810 showed that it was quite a small town, not this huge mega city that it is now. Nothing was being built, so the pieces that were there could be built around. Years prior pieces had been used in ancient walls and roads, but in the few centuries before 1800 they just built around things.

After we went down, Pete went back to the room to rest and I went into the Acropolis Museum. This was new. It was pretty nicely set up. It was laid out like a parking garage, where you take one route up and another route down, using the same ramp, but different lanes for up and down. They had different parts of the Acropolis on each level, and at the top floor had around the ramp area the pieces from the two ends and the two rims in approximately the original layout. Here they had copies of the stone slabs and statues that Lord Elgin had stolen in 1810. I will say that they were mostly in better condition than those pieces that he left. Over 50% of the slabs are copies from the British Museum. Up on the mountain top you mostly just see the large buildings, and not all the fine statuary that was originally on the hill. Here the statuary is there for viewing. I hadn't realized how much more had been there. Also from the ground you can't see that there are two rounds of decorative carved slabs. It was nice to look at things up close.

Under the museum are archeological displays of what they found when the broke ground to build this museum. Most is walls of houses from several eras. The wound up building the museum on pylons and making an exhibit underneath the building. Most floors in the museum are glass so you can see up/down.

I texted Pete to let him know that I was done and we met at the metro near the hotel. We went out for a late lunch, then to see Hadrian's Library. I had seen that last two times I was here, but this Time Pete was able to pull together more context. One wall remains, with 6 or 7 pillars, then there are 4 more pillars. That is only 1/3 to 1/2 of the front wall. The entire area of the fenced Hadrian's Library complex was a building. After that fell down, someone built a church in the middle, and then that church was built over. The church was inside instead of next to the library. That library was a HUGE building.

That was the last thing on our tickets we were going to see. There was 1 more thing we had entry to, but we were tired and decided to skip it. It is more of the same. We went back to the room to cool off and rest. We were meeting my college friend Tasso for dinner at 8:#0.

When he got there we went out and walked around the two nearby pedestrian areas in search of a restaurant, and Tasso playing tour guide wanted us to see places with great views of the Acropolis. He commended us on our hotel choice. He helped pick a restaurant that he felt was more authentic than the others, and worked with us to pick a selection of dishes which we shared. The place was very busy. We had views of the lit up Acropolis from our seats. The food was good. They had the cheese dish I had eaten on Kefalonia, but it wasn't anything like what I had eaten. There was a picture that matched, but whatever they served looked like a commercial breaded slab of cheese that had been deep fried. Maybe the ordering went wrong? Tasso did it in Greek, but the transcription could have had an error. Everything else was very good. It took a while to get the check. We paid and walked with Tasso to the Metro station and said our goodbyes. We headed back to our hotel.

28 June 2022 - Athens to Vienna

Today we flew back to Vienna. The flight was at 11:30. Our hotel was near a metro station and that was the line that would take us to the airport. I wanted to leave between 8 and 8:30 am. It is a 45 minute train ride, and everyone says arrive 2 hours early, and airports are very crowded, etc. We didn't get out of the hotel until after 9am. The train we took was not one going all the way to the airport. We got out at the last station and had to wait 20 minutes for a train that continued to the airport. Once at the airport we had boarding passes, so once we figured out which terminal and where the security gate was, we entered. There were 3 places in the process where they checked out boarding passes. The final one was at the gate where there was a line for economy and a line for plus. I had upgraded us to plus so our bags could come. That seemed much simpler than paying to check one bag. They were monitoring what people were carrying. Once the checked you, you could site in one of two lobbies, one for economy and one for plus. Then when the flight was ready to board, they let everyone from plus walk out on the tarmac and up the stairs and get our seats and stow our bags. Then they let the economy people do the same. While we had reserved seats, so Pete wasn't in a hurry, there was limited overhead space and at the end they had a hard time finding a place for one person's carry on bag.

The flight was about 2 hours long. It was a Ryan Air partner, so no food or beverage, and plenty of sales pitches. When we got to Vienna, we grabbed our bags and headed to the train station. Then we set out to search for Pete's pocket knife. We exited the terminal, but it wasn't where we had entered. We walked around some and looked, and there was a building that was near where he buried his knife. We wandered to get closer to it and turned a corner, and there was a row of bushes. Pete dug a little and there was his knife. He dusted it off and we went inside to our train.

Once back in Vienna we took the metro one stop to the university, then upstairs in search of my colleagues. We found them, he let us into the lab and we packed up our bikes. He said the head professor was in town today and took us to meet him. We talked for while, and we said our good byes.

Time to find the route. Google shows bicycle paths, but doesn't have any distinguishing labels for the main named routes, like the Eurovelo or the Donauradweg. We headed toward the river. I had packed the Donauradweg booklet and it was not easy to find to use that to know where the route was. We wound up on the south east end of the Prater and there are 4 branches of the Donau there. Lots of bridges. We thought we had crossed the last branch, and rode on. It was hot, so we stopped for a dip in the river. There were many ramps with floats there for bathers. Then we dried off and kept going, and found we were on an island and had to turn around and back track to find a bridge. We found it and then continued on. There were finally signs for Eurovelo 6.

After riding a while we stopped at a little cafe/bierstube for a drink and a rest. It was quite hot out. Then we continued on. Further, further, further. We were in a National Park, but more like a National nature preserve. It was parallel to the river, but we couldn't see the river. It was on top of a flood protection dam. It is nice that they make good use of them. Further, further, further, then finally it was late enough, that when we found a path to the river we took it and set up our tent. It was still hot out. We climbed in leaving the fly off the top to let as much air in as possible. I didn't think we'd have to worry about dew, and definitely not rain. We played a game of Monopoly cards, but I only had ambition for one round (the card game goes much quicker than the board game). Then we laid down and soon were asleep.

29 June 2022 - Heinburg to Bratislava

We were woken early by the birds. It had cooled off, and lying with the fly pulled back was real nice. The birds didn't understand that we didn't need to get up so early. We wanted to get up early, but not that early. We went half back to sleep and got up around 6am. We packed up and started off. We reached Hainburg an dem Donau and sought out a bakery for breakfast. We saw an old city gate and entered that way. We should have entered earlier because inside the gate were stairs. So we parked the bikes, locked them up and walked up the stairs. In the main square in the ground level of the Rathhaus was a bakery and outside they had nice seating. I placed our order and when the lady delivered our coffee and pastries, Pete asked about electric outlets. Yup. We charged our phones as we waited.

We were sitting on the main square. I looked up Hainburg in the internet. The town is "famous" for Franz Joseph Hayden coming here at age 6 to get music lessons from a relative. The statue in front of is was dedicated to him. The church on the other side of the square is where he sang in the choir as a boy.The town is old and is trying to make itself a tourist destination for medieval town. There was a school group as we passed through the city gate (the Fischerstor) and a couple of docents in medieval dresses. Much of the old city walls still exist, or have been rebuilt. There are three gates still in existence, the Fischerstor, the Wienertor and the Ungartor. The latter has had a supplemental gate built angular hole in the wall to facilitate more vehicle traffic. The gate we entered had stairs, the other two had traffic lights controlling single lane traffic flow.

Up above the city is a ruins/rebuilt castle, that we opted not to visit. (being located up on a hill helps cement our decision). Up on the hill on the other side of the town by the river was labeled as having ruins of another castle, that is in much more a state of ruins, so it isn't even visible from below. We picked up the bikes and headed outward seeing the water tower. Finding the actual EuroVelo 6 route is often a challenge in a town. I thought I knew where it was, but Pete wanted to ask a woman sitting with her baby in a carriage under a tree. She pointed us where I thought it was, but that process took time. You have to look carefully, but they are there.

The route took us away from the river. This also means little shade and lots of sun. When we reached the border, Google knows nothing about bike routes in Slovakia. Fortunately we could just follow the route we were on. We went past an old bunker, and soon we were in Bratislava.

We could see the castle and worried the old town was all on a hill. We checked out a Botel on the river, but they didn't have any of their inexpensive rooms available. Pete looked up the Radisson Park Place, and they advertised $70 rooms, but he couldn't book them. We picked a couple more. AS we headed into town we stopped a couple of places to check availability and prices. As we were giving p ready to head further out of town to one we had seen, we passed another hostel and Pete suggested we try it. It wasn't in the old town, but was right outside it. Stopping riding and getting settled was very appealing. The owner/manager said yes, they had a double room, shared bath/shower - no problem, 50EU per night. Great! He saw we were on bikes and came downstairs to help us get our bikes upstairs There was an elevator. One bike at a time. We are pretty competent at this by now. He ran upstairs to meet us and opened the next set of doors extra wide. We unloaded our bags in the lobby and as we carried our bags to our room, I didn't have arms for the last one, and he followed behind us carrying it. It was only a short distance down the hall and I could easily return to grab them. The bikes we left in the lobby between the sleeping wing and the common area.

The room was very large. It had a small table with 2 chairs (too many have only one chair in a room for 2 people). It had a soft chair that could fold out to a single bed. We showered then laid down and rested a bit. I went outside briefly and it was like walking into an oven - over 90 degrees. Back inside. Finally quite late we ventured out. It had cooled into the 80s. We asked the hostel owner/manager for suggestions of a restaurant with local food and reasonable prices. I had searched Google and found a few options, but I am leery in old town downtowns about them being there for the tourists. Also a couple of them had $$$ labels. He suggested a place around the corner that was a local restaurant and a brewery. We got there at 9:29. There were no empty tables outside, but the servers downstairs told us to check upstairs for additional seating. The waiter seated us, and told us we had 1 minute to place our order. I picked a Slovakian mac & cheese dish the hostel owner suggested as one of his favorites. It translates to English as dumplings or gnocchi, but it looks like spatzle. The cheese was a fresh cheese from sheep's milk. Then it had little cubes of speck (bacon). Pete picked something similar to pirogis. He also picked a pepper & pickle side dish. He ordered a dark beer and I a light lager. Everything tasted super. The room was indoors upstairs, so no smoking and yes air conditioning. The ceiling and walls were wooden. There were crests hung around it and in a mosaic on the floor. It looked like an old German-American club.

After dinner we walked around town. One thing that was very noticeable was that there were almost no street lights. Once a business shut down, the windows went dark, so much of the streets were pretty dark. It wasn't an unsafe dark, just dark. When we got back to the hostel we could see the castle all lit up, and as we walked toward it to get a better picture, the lights on it turned off. There is no reason it needs to be lit all night.

30 June 2022 - Bratislava, Slovakia

Today was forecast to be another hot day in Bratislava. We decided last night that we would get up early and tour the castle before the day heat up. We decided to take our bicycles. It is much ore enjoyable to ride them when they are not loaded down with heavy luggage. Unfortunately the castle is up on a hill and finding a route to get there took some effort. We wound up carrying the bikes up one set of stairs, finding the non-stair route on the way down. The castle is picturesque. We decided not to enter the castle, just to look at it from the outside, and to look at the city view from its walls.

On the way down our destination was a church that had a large steeple. It is the St Martin Dom. The exterior is not that ornate, but the apse was highly decorated. Outside the cathedral were old city walls which contained an exhibit about the city's former Jewish population.It is now much smaller than before WWII. Part of the former Jewish section of town was torn down to make room for the expressway, and more tragic of a loss is the destruction in 1969 of the synagogue. The courtyard where it formerly stood included an exhibit about that. Apparently those planning the highway three times applied to tear it down and were three times told that they couldn't because it was historic. Then somehow they managed to purchase the synagogue and then tore it down anyway. Even in a city with a small Jewish population, there was a lot of outcry about this loss.

From there w biked around the old town streets. The city of Bratislava is not very large, particularly not the Old Town part, so many streets we had already seen as we first entered the town yesterday and as we walked around it last night after dinner. Seeing it in the day time when we weren't exhausted and over heated was much more pleasant. We also saw some parts we had not seen before. Overall I'd say that Bratislava is a worthy destination. The city is pretty, the people are nice, and it is not very expensive to stay or eat here.

After doing a tour we went and found a place for lunch. I let Pete choose, and he purchased the lunch while I went to a market and bought two drinks. He chose pizza and a gyro. We sat on the grass in the shade in a small park opposite the restaurant where we ate last night. Then we went back to our hotel.

We hung out in our air conditioned room and took a nap for the afternoon. Having heard back from my friend about bike storage, we could make the rest of our plans. Pete did research on the internet for our return trip, then I joined and found the exact tickets and bought them. Pete had been seeing lots of good air mile flights, but today they were not there. We finally picked one that was Frankfurt to JFK direct for 36000 miles each and $135 each. That's pretty good as cash tickets are $800-$1200 each for those dates. I researched how to get to Bavaria. When we went from the Vienna airport to the Vienna main train station the train was actually continuing to the far western end of Austria, and it had a marker on the exterior of the cars indicating bikes were allowed. I couldn't find that train in any of the train websites. I was able to simulate some of the route, and finally had it broken into 4 segments. Three were very clearly allowing bikes, although they warned that availability was subject to space, a problem as travel crowds increased, and one in one place indicated reservations were needed, but in another did not indicate such. Then Pete found the Flixbus option to Munich, which was much simpler.

I did a little work related activities, progressing so I could check one more thing off my to-do list. Then we decided that it was late enough, but not too late so we would go for dinner. Dinner last night was very good and very affordable and the menu had so many things on it, that we decided to go to the same restaurant again, but not to wait until 9:30. It was still after 8pm when we got there. After dinner we went directly back to the hotel as we had already explored the city adequately. Pete picked a movie on Netflicks in the common room and we stayed up way too late watching that.

1 July 2022 - Bratislava to Bavaria

Pete and I have agreed that we have seen and done a lot of things this summer and it is ok to close this chapter and start the progression back to the US and eventually to Idaho and then to Sweden.

We are now on a bus from Bratislava to Munich. From there we will take a train to a small town SE of Munich where our friend Gerhard (who accompanied us to the Passion Play on June 5th) lives. He has agreed to store our bicycles until we return next summer. We were looking yesterday at taking a series of trains to make the journey. Then Pete found that the discount bus service FlixBus had buses running that route and they had bicycle racks with availability. That will make the trip much simpler than taking 4 trains in 3 countries to make the journey. Schools in Slovakia ended for the season yesterday and schools elsewhere in Europe are probably on a similar schedule meaning that "all" of Europe will soon be leaving their homes for their vacations, and empty seats on trains and adequate space for bicycles may be limited. This will be much easier.

This morning I received an email from my colleague in Sweden with my signed contract. I was told earlier not to worry about that, but it is still comforting to have that slightly more official document indicating that this transition is not part of my imagination. He CCed several other people who will help me with assorted tasks that I need to make - including little things like setting up an email address (they can't do this until I join, but they have told me what my email address will be (elisa.barney@ltu.se), finding an office for me for when I join, information on how I go about hiring PhD students and PostDocs, and more importantly, assistance getting a visa so I can be more than a short-term tourist in Sweden.

Mostly today on the bus I did little things on my tablet and phone, took a short nap and enjoyed the view as we drove across Austria.

It started to rain as we approached Germany. The route the driver chose as we reached western Austria seemed odd. Lots of tiny streets and country roads through small towns instead of following the Autobahn or larger highways. They make the journey often and I presume they know the route. Maybe the shorter distance saves adequately on expensive gas that the time isn't an issue.

Sights in Munich were familiar, even to Pete. I noticed some sights near the train station I hadn't noticed before. There is a permanent circus, Circus Krone, a Biergarten Augustiner-Keller, an Old Botanical gardens, plus several buildings I hadn't noticed before. I need to spend more time in Munich. There is so much to see there.

It took a couple of false starts to figure out which direction to walk to get to the main train station. Attaching a small compass keychain to our bags would be helpful, but so would lots of other things we could bring and carry

As we approached the train station I went to an automat and bought our two July 9EU train tickets and 2 bicycle day passes. Two men stopped to ask us us questions. They had missed their train and wanted to know which track to find their train. They were to go through Ulm. Munich track 17, Ulm track 7, but they missed the Munich train so track 7 in Munich wouldn't help them. I looked up an alternate route for them on my phone. They didn't speak German nor English well, and barely the numbers. Pete understood and took them to the yellow train schedule and pointed out the trip I found. They seemed to be willing to go to track 17 for the NEXT train to Ulm. It was on an ICE and they had tickets for an IC, but someone else will have to help them straighten it out. There is only so much that we can do.

We had to rush to get to our train. It was on the track on the totally opposite side of the station. We rode down the platform we were on because it was mostly empty, then walk rushed across the head of the station and down the platform on the other end and found our train. There was plenty of space. We got on and soon after the train departed. We didn't have to transfer. Soon we arrived in Feldkirchen. We rode to Gerhard's house. It was a nice simple ride, and on the main highway there was a separated bike lane. I recognized his house from the camper parked in the driveway. We leaned the bikes against it and went through the gate. He was in the wintergarden and we could see each other through the window. He came out. It was great to see him again.

He introduced us to his girlfriend Marie-Magdalene. He hadn't told me about her. He apparently didn't tell her that we would be arriving. She went into his kitchen and put together Abendbrot. We ate and talked. I did a lot of translating. Gerhard had school English years ago, but doesn't use it in his work. Magdalene is from Poland, so she learned Russian. German was forbidden - that surprised me as East Germany was in the Eastern block. She moved to Germany 20 years ago and speaks German fine. She only knows a few words of English. Pete can speak some German and often can keep going if he is "primed" with a few missing words along the way. Other times I translate longer stretches. They put our bikes in his back shed and we brought our bags inside. Gerhard gave us the whole house tour. It doesn't have a large footprint, but it is tall with a basement and attic, and everything is neatly organized so it hold a lot. Magdalene's granddaughter came over to pick her up. She works locally and lives with her grandmother part of the week to save on commuting.

Gerhard's wife, whom I knew, died last summer. He is trying to disperse her clothes. At the Passion Play he offered me some of her Dirndls. She was very small, so I didn't think they would fit me, but he insisted that she wore them long, so there was a chance. In June there was the other logistic of me getting them as a visit to Feldkirchen wasn't in our plans. Here we are now. Magdalene's granddaughter doesn't wear Tracht, but Maria had a plain black skirt which she tried on and liked.

They added cushions to the two sofas in the living room and then sheets and pillows and covers. They were planning to remodel the living room tomorrow, paint it and add a new fold out sofa bed, but our arrival pushed that off by a day. The two beds they provided for us were very comfortable. We kept telling them that we could set up our tent and sleep on our pads and sleeping bags. They wouldn't have that, and didn't quite catch that their offerings were luxury in comparison, even if they weren't as nice as they wanted to offer. We appreciated their thoughts and all that they offered.

2 July 2022 - Bavaria

Pete and I slept well. Marie-Magdalene showed up at 8:30 with a basket full of food for breakfast as we agreed upon a 9am breakfast. She went way out of her way to make a special breakfast - breads, jam, cheese, hams, tomatoes. We set up the table outside and ate and talked. Gerhard suggested we go for a walk. I said sure, but not big mountain climbing. We didn't need the complication of taking a train up to the top of the Wendelstein mountain or anything like that. He and Madalene agreed upon the Jensbach path. OK. I wasn't familiar with it.

We drove to get there, parked the car and started walking. Lots of people were out to enjoy the weather and scenery. The stream has been actively tamed with many weirs made of concrete and stone, very even across the stream. In one place there was a phalanx of 2 foot diameter concrete and metal posts to cause the logs from upstream to push to the side and not flow downstream causing more damage or obstruction. Part of the stream is below an avalanche zone. We had packed sandwiches and stopped at a bench up high to eat, then took a different path downhill past some less tame waterfalls. The path was narrower and in one place I was glad to borrow Gerhard's walking stick to give me a third leg to push in the mud to prop me up toward the "wall" away from the slope down to the stream. Pete thought it was too much uphill, but I thought it was a nice dayhike.

When we returned to the car we drove to a restaurant to have some ice cream. There was a wedding reception going on so most of the place was blocked off for them. Gerhard talked with them to find out where we could sit. That table was next to some smokers and the wind pushed it right to us. We moved and told them we had to sit in this other table and they permitted it. Three of us had Eiscaffe and Magdalene had an ice cream sundae.

We drove on and Gerhard saw signs that the Maxlrein was having a craft and Tracht fest. He asked if I wanted to stop. If we had time, it would be nice to look around. I didn't want to buy anything. They thought they didn't either, but Magdalene found a gift for a grand child she wanted. Gerhard and Maria and I had been to Maxlrein together for Morgentanzl in the past. Magdalene doesn't dance, at least not folkdance. I haven't danced in a few years - Covid is not conducive to large gatherings of people close together, plus in Boise there aren't options. Gerhard is still in mourning about his wife Maria. Someday it will return.

As we were leaving Maxlrein I pointed out to Petet the castle/palace that give the Bierstube the name. He saw the towers with the onion domes on top and thought it was a church. Nope, just ornamentation. As we were driving home I pointed out a church in the distance with onion domes and said that was a church. Gerhard suggested we stop there. Hl. Dreifaltigkeit Weihenlinden is a Rococo church from the 1760s. Outside on both sides are pictures describing miracles that people in that era had where they prayed to Maria and their prayer came true. I think Gerhard brought our little American Schuhplattler group (3 from Alt Washingtonia and Scott and I orphans from Troy) there when we were in town for the Bruckmühl Gaufest in 2008. I only remembered once I saw the exterior displays. It was worth seeing again, and for Pete to see once. Gerhard tried to stop at another church on our way home, but it was closed.

Magdalene made noodles with mushroom and onion sauce for dinner.

After Magdalene left we walked to the cemetery with some fresh flowers to plant. Pete got separated from us on the walk over, but looked for my Google Maps dot. Along the way he found the flower disposal area and picked out some roses that were still in very good shape and brought them. He then used Google Translate to have something to say as he put them in a vase at her grave. That was very sweet of him. When Gerhard sent me the email in the fall telling me that Maria had died, I collected all the pictures I had of us at various dances over the years, printed them, labeled them and put them in a sympathy card (which I translated) and sent it to him. He said in Oberammergau that it was the first time after her death that he cried. Crying is healthy. He cried again as we discussed Maria at her grave.

Gerhard had me go upstairs and try on Maria's Tracht. Amazingly it fit. To bodice was a bit snug, but fit ok. I found one I really liked that was green and maroon. Later that evening after Magdalene left, Gerhard dug out a CD and played it. We danced a couple of dances I went back upstairs to put on the dress. He hasn't danced since Maria died.

3 July 2022 - Bavaria

The trip to Frankfurt via local trains takes a while so I wanted to leave on the 10:07 train. Pete wanted to get to Frankfurt early to check in early and enjoy his Hampton Inn by Hilton hotel room. I suggested breakfast at 8:30 to give us enough time. Magdalene arrived at 8am with a loaded basket of breakfast goodies. Pete and I helped set up the table and pushed the beds aside. We packed our stuff. We asked Gerhard if in addition to the bicycles we could leave our big black duffel there filled with the tent, sleeping bags and pads, and a few other assorted items. He agreed it would fit in the attic. That will make our return trip much easier. We did the last packing of it, and of our bags which will return with us. Gerhard wanted me to take more of Maria's Tracht. I negotiated also leaving those at his house. I don't have space to carry them. I won't wear them in Idaho. Then I'll have them there when I visit. He agreed and said to put tags on the hangars. I picked out a second outfit, a blouse and an Unterrock, and put four hangar hanging on the door of the cabinet. I moved others around to put pieces in the closet organizing things a bit more. Most stuff is where it was last August. Gerhard is now ready to make a bigger effort to sell things. The room also has all Maria's sewing supplies, including thread and fabric. Not all her sewing was Tracht. There is lots to clear out.

It was pushing 10am as we were leaving the house and I asked Pete if he had his train ticket. No, it was in the black duffel. OK, I'll buy you another one. Gerhard had turned around by then and we pulled into his driveway. Pete went and got the ticket from the bag. I suggested we just stay and relax a while as we missed the train and could wait there or at the train station. We helped bring the sofa outside so Gerhard could prep for his living room re-painting project. Then we went to the train station. Gerhard waited a few minutes with us, then said goodbye to return to his house. His brother was coming to help. We were fine waiting by ourselves. I'm glad we had the opportunity to visit.

The train today did not go direct, so we had to transfer. It was an easy transfer and we only had small bags to carry, and no bikes!! If we had made the 10:07 train, then the train out of Munich to Nuremberg would have been soon after. At 11:07 train there was a gap in Munich, so we found seats up on the balcony to wait on. We saw our train pull in and went down. That train was another full train. Good thing we didn't have bikes. We found seats and sat down and watched it fill up. It departed. Munich to Nuremberg, Nuremberg to Würzburg, Würzburg to Franfurtsüdbahnhof. There is a bus that would take us to a few feet from our hotel leaving in a few minutes. We missed one that was pulling out as we got outside, but the next was only 7 minutes later. We got on it. Great. There was something happening at the stadium, and traffic was blocked. The S-Bahn might have been quicker, even though it departed less frequently and was a slightly longer walk upon arrival. No way we could have planned for the traffic jam.

We checked into our room, dumped our stuff and went out for dinner. There weren't a lot of choices in that area. Mostly restaurants in each of the major hotels. I picked one that sounded interesting - Zoom Restaurant Glocal Dining. The food was ok. The service was slow. Back to the room, and sleep. Our flight was at 8:35am. All the news said airports were crazy busy, so we should get there by 6:30. The airport is close, but walking is not an option. There is an airport shuttle bus from the hotel. Also the S-Bahn goes there. Ok, S-Bahn. It leaves every 15 minutes. Need to plan for if we get there with a 14 minute wait. It will be an early morning.

4 July 2022 - Flight home

We got up early. I had reserved bagged lunches since we were too early for the 6am free hotel breakfast. I pulled the two bottles of water out and left them on the front desk. They can't go through security and we had our water bottles. I consolidated the two bags into one. We headed off to the S-Bahn station. It was a new station and was mostly empty. We waited 10 minutes for our train. Lots of airport employees were on board. One stop to the airport. Find our terminal, follow signs. Find our check in counters. There is the line. Long, but manageable.

I had checked us in the night before, but couldn't get boarding passes. I went to an automated kiosk to get our boarding passes. I could get Pete's but not mine. The spaces in my name get removed by United's system and there I have only my middle initial where my passport has my middle name. They don't match. Stand in line. Pete takes the bags and sits with them while I wait in line. I asked a guy if there was line for no-bags - no. Wait longer. As I got closer they came through to do passport checks and asked me if I was alone without bags. Yes. Here, go in the Business class/Gold line. Good. I talk to the clerk. Need Pete's passport too, even though he has his boarding pass, we are on the same ticket. PEEEET! I get him and his passport. The woman had started on another passenger, and her colleague wanted us to wait, but she said she still had physical possession of my passport so I should go first. A few clicks and two new boarding passes and we were on our way. Pete had to stop and get a clearance sticker on his passport - no wait, and we could go. Grab our bags and head toward the gate.

We stopped to eat the stuff in our lunch bag. Yogurt and juice packs can't go through. The line was short for immigration control. Then was short for security. We got to the gate with plenty of time, They had nice chairs with raised feet looking at a large screen with travel information and other gentle relaxing scenes. I played the capture the paper airplane game on my phone when it came around. Then boarding began and we had to get up. The line was long, but went quickly. They were loading through two doors. When I bought our tickets I had picked seats in the middle section row 76 where there were 3 seats empty, hoping to get an empty seat next to us. The system had moved us forward behind a bulkhead which would have not had place for our handbags under the seat ahead of us, so I moved us back. That seat remained empty giving Pete a little more space to stretch out. There was room in the compartment above for my bag and in the adjacent compartment was totally empty giving room for Pete's bags.

I watched four movies on the screen during the flight. Pete watched some and dozed some. Soon we were landing. The flight was 8 hours, but went fast. Food service was real yummy. We bought our tickets through United, but this flight was run by Singapore Airlines. I had Pete download the Customs and Border Patrol App and fill it out. The line for people with CBP apps had one other family in line ahead of us. We went through quickly. We had no bags to wait for and left. I realized we would be able to make the 2:30 bus to Albany, so I booked us tickets for it.

We took the Airtrain to Jamaica and the E-train to near Times Square. Pete suggested we were in NYC and had 2 hours before our bus, so let's walk around and see some things. OK, you can choose. He starts heading north. We wind up at the south west corner of Central Park. We sat down on the grass and ate the rest of our bagged lunch. Then after resting a while went to the metro and took the train to Hudson Yards. A block walk to the bus stop - it is just on a street. Ask one of the men wearing a "Megabus cleaner" t-shirt where the bus for Albany was. Walk there, and climb on. The bus driver was chill. He knew the bus would be mostly empty so we cold take our carry-on luggage on the bus with us. It was easier for him than for him to handle our bags putting them underneath. The bus departed in a few minutes. I half slept, half watched out the window, with intermittent cell phone viewing. Soon we were in Albany. Jim was there to get us and soon we were at Shelly's. Our European trip was over. We'll visit family for a week or so, then head to Idaho to get ready to head to Sweden. One adventure done, another ready to begin.