Day 39: Ratholz to Fussen

May 21, 2022

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Booking.com sends us a request to review each place we stay at, but usually we have already forgotten the details by the time the request arrives. However it will be some time before we forget Hotel Jaegerhaus. In yesterday's report we had already mentioned the team of six loud talking football fan young men, and we pictured the loud family dinner, before closing off the blog for the day. But despite the hotel restaurant supposedly closing at 8, Jaegerhaus was not done with us, not by a long shot. About 20 -30 Gen x types began carousing under our window about then.

Their repertoire included standard loud and continuous talking, but also tuneless chanting. We don't know if these were drinking songs or football songs, but they all seemed to know the words. Unbelievably, they continued to 10, 11, midnight, and on to 3 a.m. We thought about going to try to shut them up, but we knew that confronting 20 or 30 drunken youth would be pointless, and maybe dangerous.

In the morning, the staffer who came on duty shook her head sadly at the mess left behind. Presumably the hotel had been plying the partiers with beer until late, but at the end they did not completely clean up. Very untypical, we thought. The morning lady apologized profusely, but of course she could not return our lost hours of sleep.

I thought about going down to record the scene and/or the noise in the night, and now I wish I had, though it would make no difference.

Back on the trail, we struggled to readjust our attitude to life, because we were still so battered and tired from the night. This turned out to be not so hard, because once again the surroundings were incredible.

For calm and meditation you can not beat these guys. I waited for the cow in the very front to raise her head a little more, but decided I had better take my shot. This was good because next second she flopped totally down. Must have had a tough night too.

Immenstadt is very close to Ratholz, so we arrived there very early. But it was late enough for the Saturday market to already be set up. Last night there had been torrential rains and lightning, and this morning it was raining lightly again. We put on all our bright yellow rain gear, but felt sorry for vendors who had to cope with the wet.

First up for us at the market was a cheese truck, and I had been looking for cheese, which is famous in this region and which is made from the real "alpen milch", which is also touted by the common chocolate brand Milka.

I was proud of myself for conducting the whole cheese transaction in German. My German life skills are so terribly weak that saying which cheese I want, how much quantity, understanding how many euros are requested, and mustering the payment is still something I feel proud about if I succeed. However there was one whole branch of the thing that I did not even try. That would be "Can I try a bit of that cheese?" "Which one would you recommend and why?" Where does this one come from, how old is it?", etc. etc. I thought I could dispense with all that because the cheese I chose looked exactly like one I had absolutely adored a few years ago, and have been looking for since.

Dodie says she was skeptical of the whole transaction from the beginning, and she was not surprised when at our lunch bench I declared the cheese had the identical aroma of old socks, and was completely inedible. she saved me the trauma of dumping the cheese by carrying it over to the waste bin for me. Oh well!

We had much better luck with strawberries, which were local and at the right price. We also saw that local spargel is still on offer.

The old town setting is great for a market. We know from our own experience that it is a pain for the vendors to get their trucks in and unload, but for the tourists like us, the ambiance works.

The giant farm houses, whether still with their original use or converted, remained very much in evidence during today's ride. But there were some subtle shifts. Newer, smaller houses of the "swiss chalet" type could be seen more, and we saw people - not in daily life but for some kind of special occasions - in traditional leder hosen and dirndls. The swiss chalet would seem to be Swiss and the dirndl is to us more Austrian, but we saw it all here in Allgau.

Sort of miscellaneous newer houses. The bike rider is probably looking mainly at the hill!

We continued, sometimes battling for space on the path, sometimes talking to the local cows, and sometimes greeting oncoming cyclists.

Eventually we arrived in Nesselwang. The sign at the entrance to town signalled another change - the form of greeting. In the north it had been "moin" or in the morning, "morgen", and further south, maybe "hallo". But in Austria it's Gruss Gott, or for short Grusdi. Here in Allgau we were seeing Grusdi for the first time.

Grias, Gruss ? German experts -can you comment? Is Grias Bavarian dialect for Gruss?

It was Dodie who spotted the bicycle welcome centre, opposite the church. This featured a covered place to sit, ebike charging, and nearby WC, and a free library of (all German) books. We took advantage of almost all of this

The Nesselwang church earned a lot of stars with its painted ceiling and gold decoration.

From Nesselwang it was sort of downhill to Fussen (except for all the steep uphills!). But at least we had some fresh electrons on board that we could squander on any tough bits. We went through a bit of forest, which was nice, but there was another big change. The impressive hills of the Allgau were replaced in the distance by the actual no kidding Alps.

Hey, those mountains are looking serious

And here at last is the Foggensee, with Neuschwanstein castle visible in the distance. We are almost at Fussen!

Dodie has been doing a great job finding places to stay (she could not have predicted Jaegehaus) and for Fussen she found "My Hostel Fussen". The word "hostel" could have been a red flag, but actually it's ok, lacking only the in room toilet and enough electrical outlets. There was also no front desk service. They just left the key, a note in German, and a telephone number that did not seem to work. One drawback was that this gave us no one to ask about securing the bikes. But we found some places somewhere in the building, and feel quite at peace about that.

Tomorrow we will cycle out to the town of Wies, to look at their amazing church, and over to the Neuschwanstein castle, if there is time. We will sleep again in Fussen, an almost unheard of two nighter in the same place.

What gave Meaning to Life today? The soothing mental effect of immense green meadows.

Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 2,286 km (1,420 miles)

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Zelda MekThe Allgau water is the best. Make sure you get some!
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1 year ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesYou must be talking about a bottled product? We certainly filled a lot of water bottles from the sink!
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1 year ago