Imanuel and Brenda's Travel Blog

We didn’t leave Prague as early as I wanted to. After the previous day’s epic sightseeing frenzy and the marathon walk to and from the campsite, we slept in a little. I checked out of the campsite and the lady said that there was a dumpsite for the waste from our chemical toilet near a shack on the other side of the campsite. When I went there it turned out to be nothing more than a smelly hole in the ground. I have my suspicions that the waste was eventually just going to end up back in the river but I dumped the tank anyway since we had been using the toilet now for a couple of days and it was a long drive. An Italian who had just arrived and was checking out the campsite looked at the dumpsite in disbelief and said, “toiletina?” I explained in English that they had said at the registration that that was the dumpsite but I don’t think he understood.

On the way out, I waved goodbye to Jeremy, a Frenchman on holiday with his friends who was on the camper next to us. I talked to him briefly in the dishwashing room and was able to practice some of my French in preparation for our arrival in France in about a week and a half. He lived in Marseille where he worked as a waiter and traveled during the off-season. He confirmed that Paris was a great place to go on holiday but very expensive. “Jeremy, ça va?” I called out from the car as we passed him. “Bien, e tu?” he replied. “Nous sont parti,” I said knowing that I probably wasn’t saying it correctly.

Viki was on the fritz once again. I thought I had downloaded all the data but was missing the key route that would take us out of the city. Since I couldn’t create new routes from the GPS, I was stuck. I studied the route in the computer briefly to orient myself. Normally, when the routes are working on the GPS, the voice prompts will tell you where to go and a close up of the map for the intersection or exit will flash briefly on the screen. As you approach the turn, you can see you position relative to the exit or intersection. This makes life much easier particularly in complicated intersections where there are more than two ways to go. Without the voice prompts, Brenda will read out the directions from the computer but it sometimes hard to know when to make the actual turn and, if the signs don’t match the labels on the maps, it may be hard to know which direction or road to take once at the intersection. Without the routing capability, the GPS helps you know where you are and tell you the roads that are coming up; however, it is much nicer with the voice prompts and the automatic zoom.

We started off well even though we were unsure of where to go and some of the roads didn’t seem to match. When it was time to get on the highway that would leads us out of the city, the directions said to keep right; however, the road branched off into three different exits. We took the extreme right, which was the wrong choice, and ended up in a long tunnel. Right away I knew we weren’t on the right road. After the tunnel, we pulled up to a median between the highway and an exit. Another car with Czech plates pulled in right behind and looked at the map for a few seconds before continuing. Perhaps Czech drivers find the roads over here as confusing as we do. We performed a suicidal (and probably illegal) U-turn to go back where we came from. Back at the mixing bowl where we had gotten mixed up before, we could only get back on the road we came from as opposed to the one we should have been on. The problem was that the road only ran in both directions for a short distance and we did not find a place to turn around.

I thought that the best thing to do would be to get back to the river and start over again; however, we arrived at a congested intersection where cars, trams and buses were all jumbled together and you could not tell where the lanes where. I tried to follow the cars the best I could and after a few turns, we were back on the road by the river. This time we took the correct road. We had to pull over to confirm it since the highway was more like a city street with cars parked on each side and intersections every block.

The southern route was much nicer than the northern route we had taken days earlier. The road was a four-lane highway and (even though it had the indentations on the right lane) we were able to make pretty good time. There were even decent-looking rest stops and we were able to stop and fix some sausages for lunch, which we ate with French bread from a Czech supermarket and spicy ketchup bought in Germany. There were mostly trucks at the rest stop and some cars stopped by for short periods. Everyone kept looking at us strange while we were cooking our lunch. Maybe they only had cold turkey sandwiches while were having a hot lunch.

I pressed on as fast as I could and soon were in Germany. We took another wrong turn near Munich but were able to get back on course relatively quickly. The first campsite we tried was Campingplatz Nord West. The book said that it had decent facilities and was easily accessible from the city. Brenda didn’t like the place as soon as she saw it. I was a bit ticked off that she would dismiss the place with only a glance at the fence and front gate. I insisted we go inside and at least take a look. The attendant was playing with his kid up front. We walked over to the office and peered inside the window, but he did not bother to ask what we wanted. I asked the lady nearby about the registration and she pointed the guy out. They thought the whole thing was a joke but I wasn’t laughing. He didn’t speak English but I motioned that we wanted to check out the facilities first. Brenda’s intuition was right on and the place turned out to be pretty run down. I agreed to drive to the next place on the list but still grumbled at having to find it without Viki’s help. There are too more campsites listed in the book for Munich-Obermenzing and Munchen-Thalkirchen. Munich-Obermenzing is very big and the book said that it could be crowded. Thalkirchen was closer to where we were so we decided to try that first.

The facilities at Thalkirchen turned out to be pretty decent. There seemed to be many rules posted all over the campsite and the attendant, although polite and helpful, had a dictatorial air about him and seemed frustrated if you didn’t understand all the instructions and asked him to repeat himself. We were worn out from sightseeing in Prague and Munich was supposed to be a short stopover. The main purpose of the stop was to visit the BMW museum, which I had passed years before in my previous trip. I was impressed by the seashell-shaped building and resolved to visit it on my next trip. I suggested that we did not go to town that evening but stay in the campsite to rest and do laundry and that we not look at the guide book for fear that we would find several other sites that we just had to visit and turn this into another epic city tour.

As it turns out, the BMW museum was under construction and only a small portion of the collection was on display showing only the most significant vehicles. I was glad we visited nonetheless and was able to buy a scale model of a BMW F650GS enduro motorcycle for the display case at home since that is the same model I currently own. While we were there, the museum was practically invaded by a group of Japanese visitors. Judging by the fact that the museum had a Japanese speaker on staff, it seemed that they routinely get large numbers of visitors from that country. I had to wait in line quite a while to get my model motorcycle as the Japanese group seemed intent in buying everything in sight. Perhaps the exchange rate was a lot more favorable for them than for us because I really had to think about it before coughing up the cash for the model. The museum is located in the Olympic Park in Munich and the architecture all around is impressive, modern and sleek, representative of the German obsession with cleanliness of lines and practicality. The BMW headquarters are housed nearby in a tall building made up of cylinders with the BMW spinning prop logo on top. There is a big complex being built nearby. Perhaps it’s BMW’s response to Volkswagen’s Autostadt.



We did end up walking the town center but our heart wasn’t really in it since we were so tired. The historic center, which is mostly reconstructed as with most German cities that were destroyed during the war, was concentrated along a main street beginning at a plaza with a large fountain under an imposing arch. It was Sunday and the street performers were out in force including, among others, a chamber music group with powdered wigs and ruffled shirts as well as a Tibetan music group in traditional garb. Of course, there were the mandatory half a dozen human statues that we had seen in every other city. We went into one church that was unique for it’s simplicity and because it didn’t look like a church from the outside. The main street ended in a grand plaza with a huge gothic church completely overloaded with statues and decorations. We sat at a small courtyard near the church for a while but did not have the strength to go in.






On the way back, we took the surface train or S-bahn instead of the subway or U-bahn that we had taken in the morning because otherwise we would have to change buses in order to get to the campsite. In the end we had to go back and take the U-bahn. Something seemed to be wrong since the S-bahn that would take us to the bus didn’t seem to be running. I’m sure I heard an announcement about it over the loudspeakers but I could not understand what it was all about. We asked a conductor that was off-duty and he pointed us to a nearby bus station but we could not figure out which bus we needed to take so we went back to the beginning. Once again we needed to rely on the bus drivers to tell us which stop to change buses at and which stop the campsite was at. The bus that went to the campsite was a small bus called a “Taxi bus” and did not make all the stops nor where they advertised. Again, the bus drivers were very accommodating and the last bus even dropped us off right in front of the campsite as opposed to the nearby bus stop.

All the guidebooks nowadays tell you that credit cards are widely accepted and that ATMs are widely available but that is not always the case. Most of the attractions and museums do not take credit cards and neither do many supermarkets or campsites. You also need cash for bus and train tickets. You really need to remember to withdraw cash so you don’t get caught down the line. That is exactly what happened to us in Munich. We forgot to get cash when we were in the city. After dinner and resting for a while, we revolved to go back to the area around the train station and get cash. The problem was that we weren’t sure whether the bus would stop at the station nearest the campsite since it was after 8:00 pm. The attendant had briefly pointed out the station that was in service after hours but I still didn’t know how to find it and didn’t feel like asking him again given his aversion to repeating himself. After half an hour of chasing the bus around, it finally picked us up somewhere and took us to the station.

We wandered around for another half an hour looking for an ATM only to discover that there was one right next to the station. It was late and there were few people around. We felt a little bit anxious even though there was no indication that this was a bad neighborhood. We sat at the bus stop to wait for the bus. The bus took a long time to arrive and, when it did, it seemed to be going in the wrong direction. Brenda decided to ask the bus driver anyway and he said to hop on. There were a group of Spaniards waiting for the bus next to us and they too followed Brenda’s lead, asking the driver and hopping in after us. Again, if it wasn’t for the bus driver we wouldn’t have known where to get off. The maze of streets was even more confusing in the dark and since there were only two parties on the bus, he didn’t need to make any other stops. He dropped us off at a station we didn’t recognize, so I asked “campingplatz?” He pointed the way and it turned out we were just a couple of streets down from the station closest to the campsite. In the end, Munich left us just as tired and without much to show for it but a scale model of a motorcycle and a load of clean laundry.