Ride for Passion - So Many Roads, So Little Time

European Alps 2010
FOUR countries, SEVEN days, 1300kms….. & ONE Spectacular Ride in the Alps

Day 6 (Salzburg to Munich)

Knowing Munich is a stones throw from Salzburg, we had a relaxed & sumptuous breakfast and left a lil late.

Enjoying some sunlight just outside our B&B

Heading from our B&B towards Salzburg

Although being the penultimate day of our dream road trip, it was going to be the last day of scenic riding, therefore I had 3 route options from Salzburg to Munich- The A10 Autobahn, The secondary road B304 and some interior roads passing thru remote German villages. We decided on the last option.

Passing thru outskirts of Salzburg & heading out of the city

Initially, I was not sure if the interior roads would be suitable for my fully laden RT, but I must tell you, it was a fabulous ride thru narrow but well maintained tarmac country roads, with scattered village communities, farmers tilling the land, large harvesting machines doing their job and the occasional large tractors on the road pulling a trailer or wagon. Just had to look out for ‘fresh’ cow dung on curves as we could lose traction on slippery…….

The smell of freshly cut wheat grass and other smells associated with farm work just made us soak in the atmosphere, which I bet can never ever be achieved by any other means of transport other than a motorcycle.

This was a small gravel stretch of roadwork, but my fully loaded RT handled it very well

After a while of riding I asked my lieutenant on the intercom to get ready for the border crossing pic whenever it comes, and she tells me, ‘we are already half way in Germany’. So I guess the Austrian-German border must be demarcated somewhere between the fence of 2 nice farms along the way!! Anyway our route ran thru Freilassing, Waging, Traunrent, Altenmarkt, Obing & Wasserburg. On these roads the speed limit was 70 or 80kmph and it dropped down to 50 in the villages. BTW, all through our Alpine trip I noticed that many of village/town limit board also doubles as the speed limit board, coz when I pass the board announcing the village/town name, the speed limit on my GPS automatically dropped to 50. Valuable lesson for future rides.

Probably with week-end etc we were seeing quite a few of these Motorhomes/RVs

No, that’s not a WINDOWS desktop theme!!

On the way we stopped for lunch at Wasserburg at the Landwirt Schaft Restaurant & enjoyed one of the best meals of our trip. Great ambience, excellent service, friendly & courteous staff and most importantly lip smacking food which consisted of Fried fillet of Zanddr with potato salad and Bavarian style vegetable Ravioli with our standard soft drink- Fanta. And all this at a reasonable price (by European standards ofcourse).

Earlier, just as we pulled into the parking lot of this restaurant, a bunch of vintage & classic oldies from Triumphs to EMWs to BMWs etc. rolled in mostly ridden by tough looking middle aged riders who were cool, but definitely looked they seriously knew how to turn a wrench and maintain/run these exotic beauties. All through this trip, we have seen everything from mopeds to scooters, to café racers to vintages to trikes to almost everything on 2 wheels. So enjoyed the close-up of these bikes now.

An immaculate looking Yammie

I guess today this johnny was not in a mood to run by himself!

After a relaxed lunch, we pass thru Ebesberg and set our GPS to our base Hotel Forchammer in Pliening, on the outskirts of Munich. So we bypassed the city and arrived directly at the hotel.

It was a mixed feeling of relief & joy at successfully completing the road journey part of this wonderful trip without any issues, but at the same time there was a lil sadness that it is all finally over. We check into our accommodation and again the wonderful Rhodesian Ridgeback doggie named Apollo is there to greet us. Ofcourse, my wife did not seem too amused for that part.…. We parked, unpacked had a wash and straight headed for Munich city on the motorbike. Being some public holiday on that day, the city was not too crowded and finding a parking was very easy. Besides, in Munich city, you can almost park a motorbike anywhere- no issues, no parking fees. Cycles are also very common as most people use them to commute/sight seeing including the Mayor of Munich who I am told commutes to office on a bicycle. Also, for your general information, Munich is rated one of the safest city in whole of Europe. In Munich city most of the touristic places are within walking distance from the Marienplatz. We however took a guided 1 hour tricycle tour piloted by our friendly guide Mark who gave us an excellent city tour with all detailed description on the main attractions such as Hof garden, English garden, Nymphenburg Palace, St. Peters Church, etc and also showed us the open park where people are allowed to sun bath….. in the nude during summer!!

Sight seeing in Munich city