July 4 started with gray weather, and it was clear it was not the day to go paragliding as we had hoped. So after breakfast we hit the road, driving our little Golf for the last time. It took a couple of hours to get to the Munich Airport where we gassed up and dropped off the car. Then we had an easy ride on the S-Bahn to town and a short walk to our hotel where we would meet all the other riders.

After showers we set out to see downtown, quickly running into Greg, Mary Ann and Fabio on the street. We joined up with Fabio and took the S-Bahn a few more stops to Marienplatz, in the heart of the old town. It was past lunch time so we sat down at the first restaurant at the top of the stairs from the station, which was right next to the famous Rathaus. We each had Heffeweisen with lunch and it was nice to just sit down a while and relax, watching people going in all directions.

After lunch, we walked around the old town for an hour taking in sights – here are a few pictures, courtesy of our team photographer, Katie.

After a little relaxation back at the hotel, we successfully accomplished two missions: We found euros for Katie (in an ATM machine) and we went with Jim and found ice-cream. It was a pretty low-key day, but we’re both really excited to meet up with the rest of the group tomorrow and start riding the day after.

After a nice German breakfast featuring bread and cheese, we worked on the blog, then headed up the hill to the Honenschwangau Castle where we had a 11:25 tour booked. We took the steeper route up, then hung out until precisely at 11:25:00 (this is Germany after all). Then the machine let 15 of us scan our QR codes and pass into the castle. We got to walk through 10 rooms with a guide, checking out the original furnishings and decorations. Indoor photos were not allowed.

We took a roundabout route back, on small trails with a lunch stop. We even walked down part of the route Nathan and Beau had unicycled in 2005 along the Alpsee.

Next up was Castle Neuschwanstein, maybe the most famous castle in the world. We hiked up quite a bit to get behind and above it for some incredible views. There’s a bridge which was so crowded it had a video sign telling how many people were on it and how many more could fit (max of 200, always full). It’s crowded because the view from it is just amazing. We took the obligatory selfie, then headed up the trail for some higher up views of the two castles and the surrounding ex-fiefdoms.

The crowds thinned out immediately as we climbed. A trail sign said that the trail went to Tegelberg and the hike took 3 1/4 hours. From the map we could see a cable car going back down from the summit so decided to try and make it all the way up. We switchbacked up and up and up, with occasional view stops and a couple of snack stops.

On top, we first checked the schedule for the cable car and found we had time for a beer! We sat out on the deck in the sun, loving the view in all directions.

We took the cable car down, ears popping, dropping 1000m in no time. At the bottom, we were going to hike back home but it was only 4:45 which left 15 more minutes to enjoy the Rodelbahn! It was Katie’s first time enjoying these crazy little curvy tracks where you ride a toboggan-like sled and go as fast as you dare – super fun!! But it was too fast for taking a video.

After a nice 2 km walk home through fields of flowers, we took showers and had a little rest before dinner. We found a second restaurant that was open, a beer garden, and this one advertised vegetarian and vegan food. We both had quinoa bowls with falafel – very tasty.

Instead of just heading home we walked to the lake shore, where we watched some ducks, soaked our feet, then heard a strange horn-like sound. Maybe it was a brass band practicing in a boathouse across the lake? We heard several short “songs” and we applauded with everyone else but didn’t know what we were applauding or where it was coming from. We walked around the lake and up the trail a bit to find out. We soon found three guys in lederhosen in the forest, with giant alpenhorns! After a couple of songs, they changed positions pointing across the lake to the tall mountains for the final number and the echo was so long and amazing! Then they carried the horns down the road and set up in front of the museum, now with a crowd of over 100. It was magical. What a lucky encounter to end an amazing day!

We woke up a little sore from the last days of hiking, but were looking forward to more adventures. After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and walked up to the cable car station. We rode down to Gimmelwald and got to see a little bit of the Via Ferrata route we missed this time – a great reason to return someday! The second cable car took us down to the Lauterbrunen valley at the Stechelberg parking lot where we had parked.

We drove down the valley a little and stopped at Trümmelbach Falls, an amazing river that has cut deeply into the limestone cliffs so far that the waterfalls are actually inside the mountain.

From Trümmelbach it was a bit under 3 hours drive to the town of Trimmis, where we met Nathan’s unicycle friend, Florian Schlumpf, in his new and updated workshop. Besides the world’s best shiftable unicycle hubs, Florian makes kinetic art, clockworks etc. He calls them Time Machines. Check out his website. He gave us a wonderful tour, then we sat on his second floor deck, enjoying drinks and delicious snacks, chatting until about 5pm.

After we said good-bye, we had a 2 hour drive through the tiny country of Liechtenstein and a corner of Austria, to Füssen, Germany. At one point in Germany, the little speed limit sign on our dashboard just showed a circle with a slash, meaning we were on an autobahn with no speed limit. We kept our speed to mostly under 100 mph but were passed at one point by someone going at least 150 mph.

It was about 7pm when we arrived at the “Romantic Pension Albrecht” and checked in. Right from our balcony we had a view of the famous Neuschwanstein Castle which was exciting. We walked downtown and found the one open restaurant and had a giant, filling dinner including pasta with lots of local chanterelles. Nathan ordered a beer Maß (one liter) and Katie ordered a small beer and was surprised when hers was 500 ml. After we ate our fill, we walked back and settled in for the night.

It was a first for us: we got up and took off WITHOUT any breakfast! It was really exciting to see blue sky and the best views yet. We walked the 5 minutes up to the cable car station and took a 15 minute ride up two cable cars through the clouds to the summit of the Schilthorn (2970m).

We went outside and marveled at the view in all directions. It was a chilly 4°C with some wind.

There is a rotating restaurant on top of the Schilthorn called the Piz Gloria. This is the place where the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was filmed. We went inside where we had a reservation for the special “James Bond Brunch”, courtesy of our hotel. As we ate, the restaurant rotated almost all the way around. While it was luxurious and lovely, we were both a little disappointed with the emphasis everywhere on 007, rather than the mountains themselves. It has changed a lot since Nathan was here in 2012.

It required conversations with four different employees to get directions to start the walk down, but once we were on the route and through the construction zone, it was great.

There were some flowers, even at the top, but there were more and more as we went forward in the season by descending. There were snow patches, some hand rails, a river to cross, but mostly pretty easy walking on the 4200′ descent.

We wound our way down to town and had a snack at the hotel, then a short nap before a yummy pizza dinner. All during our time here, we looked and looked for Swiss Ibex but only saw one stuffed in the Piz Gloria. But here are a couple of wildlife shots from today…

We had seen the weather forecast for Friday June 30 in Mürren remain terrible since a week ago: rain all day long, 25 mm. Sure enough it was sprinkling a little in the morning as we ate breakfast. Then it stopped, so we decided to do a hike where we could bail back to town when it got really wet. The route right above town started steeply – it was a bike route but I would hate to try and ride this. There were flowers out everywhere and the view across the valley kept changing and generally getting better. There were lots of happy Swiss cows with bells.

After an hour we had climbed 300m to Allmendhubel. There was the most amazing flower themed playground there, plus a carefully laid out “Alpine Flowers Interpretive Trail”. We played around on the swings, the labyrinth, narrow underground pipe tunnels, and a zip line. The labyrinth has a button you press – it starts a timer and water jets – then you run through avoiding the water jets to hit the other button to stop the timer. Why doesn’t the US have playgrounds like this?

The rain still was holding off so we headed down the backside in order to make a loop back. Due to the weather it was so uncrowded with only one family with kids at the playground and very few people on the trails. The flowers were just amazing, everywhere, so many types and so beautiful.

Eventually we were back down in Mürren. We thought a nice place for lunch would be at the start of the famous Via Ferrata so we started down it and the sun came out! It was warm and we saw another couple decked out with climbing gear starting out. So a new plan was made: back up to town to rent harnesses asap! We got to the store but it was a sad story: much too dangerous to rent gear on a day like this – you could be fried by lightening strikes. And it takes 3 hours, blah blah blah, no luck.

So we had a picnic in town, then picked out another loop trail, this time down to Gimmelwald, about 300m lower, also a carless town. The rain still held off as we cruised down the steep mountain trail and came out in the little village where Nathan stayed 11 years ago. We each had a beer in the beer garden, delicious IPA.

But as we finished, the rain did finally start. So back up to Mürren, walking the main route Nathan had done with Geoff before. There were lots of slugs and snails out here and with our umbrellas we didn’t get super wet.

We were back at the hotel and it was just after 3pm so we hung out, watched the original Heidi movie from 1937 (highly recommended). You can watch the original black & white high res version here. We wrote in the blog and then some hours later went out for a nice dinner close by. Nathan had raclette, the classic Swiss cheese/potato/pickle/onion dish. We considered the whole day a success – the hike was certainly a bonus since it was supposed to rain hard all day.

Nine hours of time difference and a short night with only 1-2 hours sleep will catch up with you. We both slept like stones for a long time. We woke up, had breakfast, checked out of the AirBnB and headed downtown on the S18 train.

We walked around and visited a couple of churches including the famous one I had never seen, the Fraumünster, with its famous Chagall windows.

Looking closely, Katie was delighted to see her first Swiss lactation art.

Looking further, Nathan found the ultimate church window: Father Jerry Garcia playing a harp.

We walked around more, saw some interesting pasta for sale, bought groceries then headed back to our car in Zolikon by train.

The drive to the Lauterbrunen Valley took about 2 1/2 hours, a familiar route for me, a gorgeous drive. Katie got the car GPS going, and more importantly, the AC – it was sunny and kind of warm. The views got better and better as we climbed and finally we got to the famous town of Lauterbrunen. Just as we drove in the rain started. We headed up to the end of the road for the view, then parked at the cable car parking lot. The tramway to Mürren looked just as I remembered it from 2012 and soon we were heading up, in light rain.

From the top, It was a short walk to our hotel and we checked in. After a minute we looked out the window and were shocked to see a view of the Eiger north face.

We finished the day watching the Eiger Sanction movie. Livin’ large!

The flight to Zurich ended up being full but worked fine and got us there early – 10:20am. From the airport, we took the train for an hour to Konstanz, Germany and walked along the water front through town to the rental car office.

We got a VW Golf and some snacks, then drove back to Zurich. We met Christof by the lake and I had a nice reunion. The two of us have unicycled and sailed together in many countries for over 15 years, but due to Covid, hadn’t seen each other in person since Portugal in 2019.

We walked down to an outdoor café where Katie opted for Cappuccino but we had a couple of beers each. The temperature was perfect and it was super enjoyable. We walked back to near the car and decided we had to stay a little longer for a swim. We went in and the clean cool water was so so nice.

Christof took the bus up the long hill with his bike while we followed in the car. We drove over to our AirBnB in the neighboring town and unloaded luggage, then Christof drove us back to his house for dinner, stopping off for a few groceries. It was one of those perfect long evenings, out on the deck, relaxed and fun. We had all kinds of yummy breads and cheeses, beers, berries and more.

After dinner Christof showed us some of his unicycle stuff including a couple of the latest generation Schlumpf geared hubs. We plan to visit the creator, Florian Schlumpf himself, next weekend.

Christof noticed we were both really tired from sleeping only 1-2 hours on the plane so kindly drove us home. We said good-bye and settled in for some really deep sleep.

Thanks to brother-in-law Chris, we made it easily to the gate at SFO where a plane is soon going to take us magically to Zürich, Switzerland. We raced through security, me TSA-pre and Katie normal – it was a tie and neither of us had to take off shoes or unpack anything. So it seems like it’s easier than usual so far.

Well, maybe not that easy. First the flight was delayed 30 minutes, then another 90 minutes, leaving us only 15 minutes to change in Boston. But United had our back and gave us seats on the direct flight SFO to Zürich that leaves a little later but arrives a little earlier. That’s the plan. And it included nice free lunch vouchers for “disrupted passengers”.

We depart California for Zurich next week! We’ll start with a week in Switzerland and Germany. Then we’ll meet up with a bunch of friends for a bike tour from Munich, over the Brenner Pass in the Alps, ending in Venice. We’ll be riding from July 6-18.

It’s nice that travel is now relatively routine in 2022 but it’s no where near as convenient and reliable was it was pre-Covid. Going to Slovenia, neither my backpack nor my large bike box made it onto my connecting flight in Heathrow despite having 3 1/2 hours between flights. They both came on the next flight, 24 hours later so all was well, but just barely. To get them in time I had to drive to the airport and spend nearly two hours there.

Coming home it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t make it onto my connecting flight in Munich since the flight was so delayed they had to hold the next plane 40 minutes for me to run to make the connection. My backpack arrived on the next flight 24 hours later. The day after that, it was delivered to me in Santa Cruz at 10:30pm, 27 hours after it landed.

My bike box finally arrived two days after I did, but on a flight from Frankfurt – maybe because it was so big? It was handed off to the courier service but took 35 hours to be delivered, finally arriving at 12:30am three days after me. In all cases there was no damage but the software systems that give the status were pretty pathetic. They crash, they don’t get updated, they do not inspire confidence. I would give the British Airways system a grade of C and Lufthansa’s a D. Luckily the people I talked to were better, doing their jobs as best they can.

In Ljubljana, I ended up with my baggage less than 10 hours before I needed it to start riding. At home in Santa Cruz, my bike was delivered 9 hours before my next ride which was at least consistent. I shouldn’t complain but FFS! Well, maybe I just got what I paid for. Going to Greece I paid the $100 bike fee for the first leg but never paid for the second. Coming home I wasn’t charged at all.