Table of contents
to travel
Winter trip Upper Bavaria
Winter trip Upper Bavaria
Slip festival
Snow and ice shine on the streets, the house route is barely recognizable under the white splendor – a motorcycle tour on a sunny winter’s day is a unique experience.
Kai Schmid
01/14/1997
My feet tingle with joy. The blood rushes to the toes. My spirits slowly thaw in the warm bathtub. Comfortable warmth creeps into every pore of the body. The bath foam crackles in my ears like icebergs bursting. I put my head back, close my eyes. In my mind, I rewind the film that was shown today to the beginning. Intrusive scratching and scraping of metal on the stone floor rudely woke Sabine and me from our sleep. In a daze, I torture myself out of bed and look out the window to get to the bottom of the cause of the early morning disturbance of the peace: fresh snow. Streets and cars are covered with a fluffy white blanket, a few children have already built the first snowman, and our neighbors are busy shoveling and scraping like ants. But the crystal clear, steel blue sky promises a great day – for motorcycling. It has to be easy. In the middle of winter. Despite the freezing cold and although we are not really die-hard winter drivers. Not a hundred meters away from the house, I am already experiencing the first “winter joys”. The rear wheel tries to overtake me first on the right, then it dashes forward on the left side. It’s only with great effort that I get a grip on the adventurous pirouette. The road is as smooth as glass, my adrenaline level has reached its peak. Ergo, I am learning lesson one of winter driving: moderate throttle. The next adrenaline rush follows on the first manhole cover and with it lesson two: Every gully is your potential enemy, every dark spot on the road can lay you flat. Caution is the order of the day. From now on I look like a lynx after every little thing on the street. Despite a balaclava, the cutting cold wind stabs our cheeks like a thousand needles, and my nose feels like the tip of an iceberg. However, if I close the visor, it starts up in seconds. To make matters worse, a layer of ice immediately forms on the plastic pane from the air I breathe – and my glasses fog up immediately. Despite the beautiful weather, I have the feeling that I am constantly driving through a thick wall of smoke. So up with your mouthpiece and reduce your speed so that the wind doesn’t completely freeze your facial features. Now I understand why one of my friends, who also wears glasses, used a diving snorkel on the trip to the crystal rally in Norway: The clever guy used it to draw his breath from inside the station wagon. Admittedly, that looked a bit strange, but it put an end to the annoying fogging of visors and glasses once and for all. Munich is behind us. After we are no longer only concerned with ourselves and our packaging, we can finally keep an eye on the bizarre winter world and discover things that we might have passed carelessly at another time of the year: A stone crucifix is ”overgrown” by ice crystals as if parasites were hanging on their prey. Or the conifers. Heavily laden, they groan almost audibly under the load of snow on their branches. Hedges and fences have merged into a homogeneous mass in the midst of the white splendor with the gardens and fields. We are rediscovering our home route – fog on the Kesselberg. Like blind people, we carefully feel our way up the serpentines. There are ice sheets in some hairpin bends. I have to keep telling myself to be careful. Just don’t get reckless. Meter by meter we screw our way up towards Walchensee. It is getting lighter. The shadowy outlines of the mountains appear ?? then the soup suddenly rips open. We stand above the clouds of fog. Sun blinds. The eyes cannot adapt that quickly. Only after a little delay do we notice our soaring in all its dimensions. From the white, fluffy sea of fog far below, a few mountain peaks protrude like rocks in the surf. Simply gigantic. The layer of haze separates the world of winter from that of spring. Cold below, warm and sunny above. Usually it’s the other way around. This is because cold and warm layers of air push one another, creating completely different temperature zones. A phenomenon of winter: little by little, one car after the other sloshes out of the milky broth. Every second car crew stops to watch the fascinating natural spectacle. Only an older man has more eyes for my motorcycle than for the landscape. “In summer, motorcyclists come to the Kesselberg route like grasshoppers,” the gentleman tells me without being asked, “that is why the route is also closed to two-wheelers on weekends.” Now, please, everything, just not an endless discussion of prejudices, I guess. But nothing of the sort. He is only interested in the machine and finally comes out as a “former”: “I had one like that too … And in winter I went up to the lake.” The higher we get, the more spring-like it becomes. In the glaring sunlight, the Walchensee lies as smooth as a mirror in front of the Karwendel group. It resembles a mighty icy, almost unreal backdrop. The inns on the bank also seem like dummies to me. “Closed”. “Company holidays”. »Rest day«. There is a thick blanket of snow on the tables and benches in the beach cafes. Where else coffee and cake are served: yawning emptiness. The shutters are closed. The neighboring sailing boat rental is mothballed; Rowing boats and pedal boats lie protected on dry land. A lone skier shuffles down the road to the bus stop. A vacation spot in hibernation. Orphaned, almost scary. The chance of getting a cup of Ovaltine under these circumstances seems illusory. So there is no reason to linger: the snow lies over the Werdenfelser Land like a white duvet thrown over the bed. Only here and there does a hay barn interrupt the monotonous humps. Wherever cows graze and mountain bikers ride single trails, a few cross-country skiers trace the trail parallel to the road. Anachronistic encounters. The skiers do not want to fit into our image of motorcycling, which is shaped by the green season. And we probably don’t belong in their imagination of winter sports, because we are asked again and again whether it is not too cold for a motorcycle trip. At first I only notice the colorful dots on the hill in the corner of my eye: A crowd of children are racing for joy hooting down the slopes on their sledges. The braver ones hunt in front on snowbobs; a couple of practitioners slide down the mountain on their pants. A little off the beaten track someone is being lathered. I dare and ask one of the children for his sled. Just once. I feel like the “kindergarten cop” between all the little ones screeching with joy who have probably never seen a Michelin man on a sledge. I take a run and jump on the little sledge. At a speed that seems insane to me, I immediately descend the steep slope. Unfortunately, the steering does not work the way I imagined it straight away. The boot brakes also do not have the desired effect: I am drifting dangerously off course? straight to a hill. Nothing to do. Clumsy as an albatross, I take off with my sled. The children roar. I land face first in the snow. Go down again, the kids hoot. No thanks. Once is enough. Actually it would be Sabine’s turn now. But she just shakes her head, maybe another time. We carefully feel our way towards Ammersee on small, partly icy side streets. Only now and then does it go over a stuck blanket of snow, on which the profiles at least find some hold. Much more unpredictable are the road sections that look like asphalt but are actually covered by a greasy layer of mud. The enduro tires only assume very limited liability under these circumstances? if any. In return, Sabine praises the ABS brakes of the BMW R 1100 GS, because not only once did the regulated stoppers prevent them from unplanned slides. Sooner or later, all roads around the Ammersee lead to the pilgrimage monastery of Andechs. Something like the Mecca of the dark Doppelbock in beer drink circles. In the summer, when masses of people collectively practice “moderation”, little of the secluded tranquility of a monastery can be felt: there is a beer garden atmosphere. When I enter the “Braustuberl” my glasses start to tarnish. The warmth of the dining room hits us right in the face like a club. A dome of acrid cigarette smoke hangs between the wood-paneled walls. A happy babble of voices reaches us. Hearty food is served on the tables, beer mugs go around. Bavarian cosiness. Andechs actually still has charm in winter – back in the cold. Course south, towards the mountains. We sneak down a steep, completely icy stretch at walking pace to the Staffelsee. In contrast to the Ammersee, it is one huge ice surface. Pedestrians stroll in the middle of the lake. Ice skaters perform elegant pirouettes on swept areas. We also try our hand at ice skating in thick motorcycle boots, but it remains a pathetic approach. In contrast to the much smaller Staffelsee, the two “big brothers” Ammersee and Starnberger See are not frozen over. Only a few bays sheltered from the wind are icy. There is reed grass as if it had been poured into concrete. There are apparently nonsensical jetties on solid ice. Suddenly a dog attacks me on one of these ship landing stages. He comes shot over the planks like a madman and bites himself into the thermal suit, which he probably confuses with a sausage. When the Spitz notices the lapse, his interest disappears just as suddenly as he “attacked” me before. Lake Starnberg lies motionless in front of us. No surfers. No sailors. Even the white fleet of the “Royal Bavarian Mountain Navy” hibernates in dry dock. When Frau Sommer is on vacation on the other half of the globe, the whole area recovers from the hustle and bustle of the warm season, and the fish have good time until February. “Nothing works from September to January,” says a fisherman from Ammerland on Lake Starnberg. “But at the moment I’m moving from the lake, the whitefish and trout are freshly caught.” As proof, he holds a lake trout a good fifty centimeters long in front of our helmets. However, we choose a whitefish that is more suitable for the pan. We could probably eat our fill of the giant trout for a whole week. “A reindeer, that is a salmon-like fish, elsewhere they say whitefish,” explains the sea fisherman. “Fry in butter for eight minutes on each side, refine with salt and pepper and then drizzle with lemon juice.” No question, the fish will sizzle in our pan tonight. The culinary culmination of this fantastic day. One must admit one thing to winter: it sometimes exudes an almost magical atmosphere. She enchants the home route into an unknown route. But unfortunately the winter days are damn short. Dawn is falling far too soon. When it gets dark, the airstream becomes very fresh again. On the way home, despite the heated grips, bitter cold creeps obtrusively into the gloves, then into the boots, squeezing through the visor slits. The blood pulsates harder and harder. We are freezing cold. At home we will first have to thaw ourselves in the bathtub…
Info
On a motorcycle winter tour through snow-covered Upper Bavaria, the area, which is particularly popular in the warm season, turns out to be a tourist no-man’s land.
Getting there: The quickest way to get to the Bavarian foothills of the Alps from Munich is on the A 95 motorway in the direction of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Travel time: The absolute mid-season is from the end of January to mid-February. The area is most beautiful when there is a foehn wind. Then the air is extremely clear and the view is gigantic. Accommodation: The entire area is very well developed for tourism, and the selection of hotels and pensions is correspondingly large. However, some accommodations have company holidays in the off-season from the end of January to mid-February. Especially around the big lakes you often find yourself in front of closed doors. A decent double room including breakfast is available from around 100 marks upwards. The following country inns are recommended: Zur Linde, 82340 Wieling, phone 08 15 7/85 40, double room between 105 and 115 marks; Gasthof zur Post, Munchenerstrabe 2, 82266 Inning a. Ammersee, phone 08 14 3/3 23, DZ 95 Mark; Waldhaus Deininger Weiher, 82064 Grobdingharting-Strablach, phone 08 17 0/2 67, DZ 89 to 152 Mark. Further information: Tourismusverband Munchen-Oberbayern e. V., Sonnenstrabe 10, 80331 Munich, Telephone 0 89/59 73 47. Equipment: Despite the sunshine, it can be very cold. A thermal suit is therefore strongly recommended. Lined boots and two-finger gloves are just enough for one-day tours. But if you have to start driving in cold, damp weather, you should use heated grips and gloves as well as heated clothing. Literature: The motorcycle travel guide “Germany”, Volume 2, by Elke and Dieter Lobkarn, price 29.80 marks, is recommended as an appetizer. To be ordered from MOTORRAD-Leserservice, 70162 Stuttgart, phone 07 11/1 82-12 25, fax 1 82-11 65. The ADAC special “Upper Bavaria”, 14.80 Marks, offers a good insight into the region. The German excursion map “Allgau-Munich-Werdenfelserland”, scale 1: 100,000, Haupka-Verlag, 11.80 marks. The general maps, pages 25 and 26, scale 1: 200,000, Mairs Geographischer Verlag, 8.80 Marks each, provide a good orientation
Related articles
-
Winter trip to the Bavarian Forest
Iron ham 12th pictures Iron ham 1/12 Where piles of motorbikes park at the Arberseehaus Biketreff in summer, piles of icicles await in winter. Iron ham…
-
Chiemsee-Runde – Relax motorcycle tour through Upper Bavaria
Tour tips Exclusive motorcycle tours for children to follow Presented by Arturo Rivas to travel Chiemsee-Runde – Relax motorcycle tour through Upper…
-
Winter trip to the Alemannic Carnival
Iron ham to travel Winter trip to the Alemannic Carnival Winter trip to the Alemannic Carnival Fools jump The Rottweiler Fasnet is hardly inferior to the…
-
Siepmann to travel Winter tour Finland Winter tour Finland Ice age on the motorcycle To explore one’s own limits and those of the 34-year-old Guzzi was…
-
shepherd to travel Motorbike tour in Tenerife Motorbike tour in Tenerife Sloping let up Spain’s fattest volcano is enthroned on it. Millions of tourists…
-
Seitz to travel Alpine winter tour Alpine winter tour Winter for cold showers When the sun licks the ice off the streets for a short time, the…
-
to travel Winter tour Winter tour Caught cold In winter through the mountains on two wheels ?? a real challenge. And in the saddle of an almost…
-
to travel Winter trip Winter trip Caught cold If you can’t wait until spring, you should just take your home route under the wheels in winter….
-
to travel Winter equipment Winter equipment Antifreeze coat Freezing motorcyclists are to blame: after all, there are really warm things for ice-cold…
-
Motorcycle road trip through Germany
Henniges 30th pictures Henniges 1/30 Henniges 2/30 There are wonderful middle ways between cutting down a tree and leaving it standing. Henniges 3/30 The…