May 13, 2022
Wrap Up - PTA
“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” ― O. W.
This actually should be titled ATP, not PTA - automobiles, trains, planes today in that order.
It was a loooong day but every thing was pretty seamless. A quick taxi to the Salzburg train station and then a train to the Munich airport. This is usually a 1.5 - 2 hr trip, but very un-Schengenlike, we were informed when we bought our tickets yesterday that the trains have been experiencing delays due to border controls and checks and that we should be prepared for this.
Thankfully we got that warning as that is exactly what happened. The RE5 train that was supposed to take us to Munich was stopped at Freilassing, about 8 km’s away across the German border, and we had to take another train out there to catch the RE5. It appears that there was processing of refugee families coming into Germany at the station in Freilassing (and it all seemed very orderly and respectful). We made it to the Munich airport in good time, seamless check in and then the first of two flights …. 10 hours to Vancouver and then another hour (with a two hour airport layover) to Calgary. Once there we had our final 1 hour midnight drive home to Canmore. Twenty six hours hotel door to house door. Not something you want to do every day!
So another (very) short tour for us. The last three short covid tours have been local ones, more or less starting and finishing from home. This one, with two full days of international travel, was a bit of an indulgence …. I think Oscar had something to say about that too …. “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.” O.W.
It was a great trip through an area that we would both highly recommend. However, had I not been in Munich for a seminar, we would not have flown all this way just to do this short tour. It was great to be back on the bikes in Europe, and we are looking forward to being able to put together a proper multi-week tour in the near future so the travel and jet lag fatigue gets amortized over a much longer period!
Plusses for this trip:
- great weather (pure roll of the dice)
- Bike rental (but only for a short tour … otherwise our Tout’s will get jealous)
- Set itinerary (thank you Team Anderson, absolute minimal planning needed on our part)
- E-sim data card - 2 week 5 GB e-sim installed at home (scanned a QR code!) before we left - super easy and seamless use as long as you had 4G connection. We used Holafly (Spanish company) but there appear to be lots to pick from
Obstacles for this trip:
- Too short - but that’s all the time we had! Travel time too large a percentage of the overall trip. We’ll fix that!
Kirsten had an interesting observation during our Vancouver - Munich flight …. The total flight distance of that leg, just over 8,500 km’s, was less than the distance of our 2015 cross Canada trip! We need to get back into that groove!
Kirsten also noted that I haven’t included any Song Of The Day’s, as per our normal blogging mode. My thinking on this was that the daily literary (… or much more accurately… cheesy) Oscar Wilde references would be an adequate substitute. I did think about going with a ‘Wild’ SOTD theme (there’s a pretty long list … Wild Thing, Wild World, Take a Walk on the Wild Side, Wild Wild Life and on and on) but one of these each day would definitely take this into full Cheese Ball territory.
However, on the flight home, this lovely little number, Wildfire by Seafret (a English duo from Yorkshire) came up during a random play of my ‘favourites’ playlist. I hadn’t heard this an a long time. The sentiments in thus tune summed up our feeling on this trip and reflect what the world needs a little more of right now. The video is pretty moving too (IMHO).
So here’s the Song of the Trip (SOTT) Wildfire by Seafret:
I’ll leave the last words about this short Wilde adventure to Oscar:
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