Seeing Bavaria

It’s been a minute. Let me get you up to speed.

A first teaser of the beautiful shots from the Alps I got today :)

Reflections

Since Dresden, we’ve been to two places. Bamberg, for two weeks; and Munich, for a bit less than that. We intended to stay longer in Munich than we ended up doing, because we had some paperwork to get to back home. Even as digital nomads, doctor’s appointments and bureaucracy will force you back more often than you would think; at least that has been our experience up to this point.

I do not have a lot of photos from Bamberg. We stayed some 20km outside the city, fairly far out in a tiny village. Most of our walks were not as scenic as they sometimes are elsewhere. When we did go to Bamberg, my photography was not exactly up to par; there is essentially nothing I have from there that is worth posting.

This is one of the reasons this post is so substantially delayed: It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that there are places I could not take any good pictures of. In the end, I decided I want this to be a photography rather than a travel blog, and therefore it’d be fine to not have pictures of a place.

The situation is only slightly better for Munich. To be completely honest, a lot of energy that I previously put into photography is currently being diverted to work, so these posts will likely remain infrequent for the foreseeable future. When we go out to see something truly scenic, I’ll capture some cool photos, but my motivation to take the camera out on a day-to-day basis and really invest the time to find the small things has suffered a bit.

I suppose this is one of the many cases of my inability to focus on a single thing for an extended period of time. I experience this with music, going to the gym, learning languages, chess, my pet programming projects – virtually every aspect of my life. It turns out I can get reasonably proficient at almost anything, but then my motivation for it kind of drops off eventually when I find the next thing. Right now, I’m more focused on my job and learning Russian, for the practical reason that I’m getting married next March and my current Russian is not sufficient to have proper conversations with my fiancèes side of the family.

We didn’t do anything particularly post-worthy in August except for a trip to New York, which turned out to be very post-worthy, and after getting through all the editing I’m very excited for the next post! However, my work on this blog will continue to be infrequent, so let’s see when you get those pictures.

Alright, with all of that personal stuff out of the way, let’s get into it!

The last Dresden photos

Before I get to Bavaria: On our last day in Dresden, we went to the most famous part of the sandstone mountains, and I got a few nice shots I’d be remiss not to include in this post.

We went to the Bastei, the most well-known structure within the Dresden sandstone mountains, on our last day in Dresden. Unfortunately, the weather was not quite on our side, and it ended up being very cloudy. Therefore, the images I ended up getting are very moody. They do have character though – and they do look much better if your browser and screen support HDR ;)

View from (not of!) the Bastei.

And an almost equally scenic shot just around the corner.

Munich

Alright, as promised, on to Munich and the Alps. Here is what I have.

We tried to make the most of our limited time in Munich. People had lots of opinions on the city before I went, so expectations were high. What we ended up experiencing was, I believe, very in line with what most other people say: The nature is gorgeous, the parks are incredible, but the city doesn’t really feel like a city all that much. All the supermarkets close by 20:00 (in all of Bavaria; they have to, legally!) and by 22:00 it’s pretty much all deserted.

We only went to the city center once. As all city centers, it was crowded and a bit too stressful with our easily overstimulated four-legged companion.

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The Marienplatz in Munich – 1/3

Other days, we went to the English Garden, the Nymphenburg or – possibly my favourite – simply down the Isar river.

A pavilion in the English Garden.

A random boat rental somewhere along the Isar.

The Wave, a man-made constant wave for surfing enthusiasts in Munich.

We only ended up having a single weekend to ourselves for exploring the alps. Because the alps were still a one-hour drive away, going on the weekend really was the only option. Since Liza’s birthday happened to fall on a Monday, we also took that day off to travel to the Walchensee, one of the many lakes around Munich with a great view of the mountains.

That Saturday, we drove an hour to pretty much the outermost foothills of the alps. When we got there, we were faced with the choice of taking a cable car or hiking up to the upper station ourselves, which would have taken around ~2.5h and covered roughly 400m of elevation. Needlessly to say, we were more than happy to pay for the cable car ride.

The trip up took fifteen minutes, and by the end of it, we felt we had fully arrived in the Alps.

The view that greets you from the cable car.

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All the things you would expect to see this far out in the mountains. – 1/3

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And our royal partner in crime – we came prepared to carry her, but she did 10km of alpine hiking all on her own! – 1/2

We took the Sunday to recover, and on Monday, we were out and about again. In the early morning we got up, and after a quick breakfast, for the second time in a row we were off on the A95 southward-bound. It wasn’t precisely birthday weather: As a matter of fact, it was raining when we left Munich. After consulting several weather apps, we determined that the rain would be moving southwards, just like us, but slower.

When we got to Walchensee after an uneventful one-hour drive, it was overcast, but at least not rainy. It was clear it’d only be a matter of time before the rain caught up with us, so we didn’t waste any time. Once more, being faced with the choice of paying up for a quick cable car ride to the top or hiking two hours, we chose the former.

The view down from the cable car.

And the slightly overcast view over to the alps!

Lastly, the birthday girl! 🎉 With extraordinarily dramatic lighting.

This time, we didn’t really hike as much as go for a walk with a little bit of elevation here and there. The views were great, and we spent maybe 45 minutes before heading back down. We had intended to go and rent a boat; however, when we got to the rental place, it turned out that boats were unavailable due to a storm warning.

We ended up exploring the town of Walchensee a bit, with the acute awareness that we didn’t have a lot of time before the storm we had left in Munich in the morning would catch up with us.

An empty cafe in Walchensee, awaiting the storm that is following us.

Our view as we were leaving Walchensee with the first raindrops on our skin.

Ultimately, it took the storm some three hours to catch up with us from Munich. As we drove through the mountain passes back to the city, the rain came down on us as if mother nature wanted to compensate for the previous heat waves in a single morning. However, when we came back to Munich, the sun was out again and it was as if nothing ever happened.

Liza had to leave Munich for work later that day, and I followed just two days later. We ended up traveling to Hamburg and on to New York just three days later. But more on that in the next post!

Alright y’all, that’s it. This took way too long to type out. It’s currently 22:30 on a Thursday evening, and I am typing this blog post from my hotel room in Berlin because if I don’t finish this post right now, I may never find the time. Startup life is so much more time-consuming than whatever I was doing before. Also, I’m getting married in March and still have to get to something like B1 Russian so I can somewhat communicate with Liza’s friends and family who do not speak English.

On the bright side, I do have photo material that needs posting: In early August we were in New York, and I got some nice shots I’ll have to post sooner or later. I promise I’ll post them sometime before the end of October.

Thank you for sticking around, and see you next time :)