Capt. Larry jumped out of bed around 0300, mostly because he
couldn’t sleep, with Jane arising a
little later. We met our taxi driver in the hotel lobby around 0500, who
proceeded to drive us to the Dublin airport. We cleared security, slowing down
the process, because of Capt. Larry with his titanium knees and Jane with her
jewelry, but we finally made it to our gate. After a light breakfast in one of the
airport’s food courts, we boarded our flight for Munich, Germany. We had a
great flight on Aer Lingus, and arrived in Munich on time. We cleared passport
control and made our way to the Avis desk to pickup our rental car. We were
shocked when we arrived at the desk. The line was composed of some forty to fifty
people and at the rate it was moving, it would be one to one and one-half hours
before we were processed. There were only two agents processing the rentals with
a third agent processing the Avis Plus (or whatever they call their preferred
customers) customers. What was maddening was several people approached the Plus
agent when he was not busy doing a preferred customer, only to be told point
blank that they would have to wait in the other line. Not a very good way to
build customer relations. We waited over an hour, and when we were third in
line, the Plus agent called us over to be processed (must have been Jane’s
jewelry or faux leather pants). We got our car, a Beemer, headed out to the
parking lot, loaded our bags, jumped in, plugged our destination into the GPS, and
took off. For a very short distance. We traveled to the exit gate and had to
swipe a card they gave us to raise the gate and exit the parking garage. Capt.
Larry overshot the gate and couldn’t figure out the combination of shift
maneuvers to put the car in reverse. And a line was building behind us. Jane
reached into the glove box, only to find the owner’s manual was written in
German, and Capt. Larry finally jumped out, ran back to the gate control and
swiped the ticket. The gate lifted and he ran back to the car and peeled out of
the garage, praying that the gate would not close and damage the car.
We are underway to our destination, and suddenly everything
is more relaxing until Jane realizes that she can’t read any of the road signs
(duh!). She stares at the map and instantly becomes frenetic when Capt. Larry
asks her about some upcoming route change. Better to trust the GPS! We leave
Munich and finally find ourselves on the Autobahn. While one can travel as fast
as they want to as long as they are capable of maintaining control of their
vehicle, there is in fact a speed limit of around 135 mph. Beyond this speed and
you will likely be stopped and told to slow down as the authorities consider
that vehicle control at this speed becomes marginal. Capt. Larry was amazed at
the speeds. Doing around 95 mph, he came upon a slower car and checked his
rear view mirror to pass. He pulled out to pass and in the 10 seconds or so it
took to pass, he found a car on his tail blinking its headlight to get out of
the passing lane.
We had a two-hour ride to the Edelweiss Military Resort in
Garmisch-Partenkirchen where we would be staying for the next 6 days, and it
was a beautiful ride along the German countryside into Bavaria. Garmisch is
near the southern Austrian border, and the views of the Austrian Alps was
simply stunning. We arrived at the resort, checked in at the gate, and
proceeded to the lodge for check-in. The lodge was way beyond our expectations,
and everything was once again American. We were given a beautiful officer’s
suite with all the amenities and at a very reasonable price. We were going to
like this.
We were tired and didn’t really want to go out into Garmisch
for dinner, so we decided on American fare (something we hadn’t had for a while
and totally different from haggis!), pizza and beer in the resort’s sports bar
restaurant. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but we got our filling.
After dinner we did a couple of very necessary loads of laundry. Finishing
this, and dead to the world, we hit the hay for some needed zzzzzzz’s.
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