At breakfast we met a delightful German couple, followed by our delightful hostess Irene. They were here for a few days of biking while we were here for a few days of hiking. She is learning to ride a bike while he has ridden since he was young so he’s a little worried. We chatted about our reasons for coming all the way from Australia just to walk. Later we needed a translator to ask the manager if we could stay longer, but we got two. A booming voiced man yelled across the room (he was obviously a ‘trans’ later) and our new friends did the same from only two tables away. Then another man came in to make a booking (he was part of an old car rally) but the owner focussed more on the driving bit, encouraging him to walk more.

So a great start to the day. I stood outside the tourist info centre for half an hour until I realised it had been closed for half a year, then my phone jammed because I had sent a rather long video to someone who didn’t receive it, and couldn’t call Corrie to let her know I was about to have a breakdown. But there was another info office, on the other side of the river. I was after hiking info and I had been told about a PD Warrior class that ARC, where I do mine had come over to Bad Tolz to do some training, and why not join a class.

I was excited that I would be meeting some Germans on a different level. I went to the hospital where this was all happening and they told me the classes were only open to those who had been patients and the classes were for their rehabilitation. I am waiting for confirmation from Sydney in the meantime.

As you enter the mall, at the top of the hill (the town centre is on a large hill), the mall (two semi trailers wide) drifts down about two hundred metres to the Isar River, about twice as wide as the mall. There is a long bridge before the road sweeps up on to another hill with restaurants and hotels. The river has islands of tennis ball size white rocks just like the Ganges, the trivia, or to be more kind, the irony is that the only shop that fronts the river is a 4 star Indian restaurant.

Back to coming down the mall, nearly all of the buildings have decorated windows, some with a central painting at the top, quite beautiful with some more ornate. I walked down the mall last night and there were some cars coming and going through the mall. I thought what a pity, but as I walked through today there were no cars, so probably they are banned at certain hours.

.

So today it was a fairly long walk along the Isar River which lurched alongside a busy highway for fifty metres. We passed more people on foot and on bikes than we did on all our other adventures in Germany.  Wearing short sleeves, we enjoyed the shade of the forest trees for it reached a hot twenty two and the first cloud-free day in a long time.

On our final leg we met a young mum and her baby daughter. She noticed my accent as I started running towards the little girl who was immodestly running towards me. I must have had my stilted Parkinsons’ look on my face which would scare anyone. She agreed, and ran back much more quickly towards her mum, who was not as discerning as her daughter and began to talk with me. She was German but sounded American and we had one of those (‘it’s great to speak my own language with someone’) talks. So we talked about life and change and Covid lessons as we walked together for a pleasant while.

We are looking forward to seeing how our friend enjoyed her first post training bike ride went with her now very anxious husband.