[Photos taken 05 August 2024, posted online 02 November 2024. Time is flying by, mornings are dark already.]
Before our departure for Germany, I ended up chatting to an acquaintance at the gym. When she heard we were headed for Munich, she strongly recommended making the trip to visit Europa-Park. After some mulling, we decided to give it a go, in spite of it being very high-season.
Finnur and I therefore went to pick up a rental car on our first whole day in Germany. As our apartment was located in a “low emissions zone” we opted for an all-electric rental car, which turned out to be both good and not-great.
It handled well on the autobahns but I ran into a lot of trouble downloading the required apps for the various charging stations, because the “app was not available in my country” (as in “Iceland”, where my phone lives). It caused a some delays, but it all worked out.
As it’s a about a 4-hour-drive between Munich and Europa-Park, we decided to drive there, stay overnight at a nearby hotel, then arrive when the park opened at 9 in the morning, and drive back in the late afternoon. En route there we checked in with Finnur’s niece, and found that they live basically on the way to the park, and we were kindly invited to dinner!
Monday 05 August 2024
Road trip time! We got going at a slightly later time than we probably should have…
Driving past the old Olympics stadium area in Munich.
We hadn’t really planned what to do on our long drive west-wards. We decided to stop and visit the town of Augsburg. Found a guy and a scooter.
Pretty standard intersection.
Perhaps you’ll find an architect in there?
Yet again trying to understand what the parking instructions were saying. Stuff like this is literally on every corner…!
The parking meter only took coins – no cards – but instead we were directed to one of these lovely apps. I now know better than to try to use easypark abroad now, as we’re registered on it in Iceland.
We were heading to downtown / the historic water management center, but had to walk a ways to get there. Saw this sun-watch on a side of a building.
Narrow steps are narrow.
No!
We ended up in this cafe/bakery/chocolatier shop on one of the main streets, as we were all getting hungry. It was somehow already 3 in the afternoon.
We ate in the back, which was very old-world-y. It was at this point that Finnur remembered his niece lived somewhere close by, and we made contact. She invited us for dinner!!
Looking, no touching!
Heading towards the water-management-system center in the center…
Found it by a large square where children were playing in temporary fountains (that flat brownish area).
As it happened, the water-management-system center turned out to be closed on Mondays! It was perhaps for the best as it was getting late.
German architecture, complete with scary bird up high.
Heading back to where we’d parked the car.
Yes, very much in Germany.
A somewhat adventurous design.
Art / graffiti.
A game store.
A portion of the Augsburg water-management-system?
Back on the road…
The landscape went from flat to hilly.
We turned off the autobahn to drive a bit north to Göppingen. There was quite a bit of greenery by the road.
These four went in to visit their niece/cousins while I went to hunt down a speedy car charger.
I started at a Shell station, but the fast-chargers insisted I install an app to start charging. The app was “not available in my country”, so that went nowhere. I drove around trying various charging locations listed in some charger-app, but they all belonged to car-dealerships and/or were hidden behind closed fences as it was past 5 in the afternoon.
I finally found a fast-charger that I could use tucked away in a weird corner by the main train-station. This was after I’d driven inside the parking lot under the station, where I’d only found slow-chargers, and had begun despairing a bit. I was lucky to spot the fast-chargers as I exited the parking garage.
It was already 6 in the afternoon by that point, but thankfully the car happily charged at 100 kW, so getting it full enough to make it to our hotel only took 20 minutes or so. It took me a lot longer just to find the station!
I finally made it back to the others, where I gobbled down some lovely fajitas! Lucky us!!
It was past 7 in the evening when we got going again, but on the plus side, that meant all the traffic was gone.
1 hour and 14 minutes to go…
If we’d been there earlier, this stretch of road would probably have been very full of cars. As it was, we sped through.
Finnur drove the whole way, as I’m the better navigator. He also didn’t mind flirting with 150 km/h (93 mph) as there is no speed limit in many places. I tried to not leave claw marks on the upholstery.
Room 2. I was so glad to find a room with 3 single beds (not bunks)!
The view out the window.
Hallway decor was … inoffensive?
The hotel was by an autobahn exit with two gas/fast-charging stations. Of course my luck had me visit the station that fought me tooth and nail, as I tried circumventing the app-requirement (“not available in my country”) by using the website instead, but no luck. It was also covered in spiders… These blue stations were on the other side of the road, and not only were they much cleaner, they also accepted regular credit cards. Bingo!
I picked the wrong charging cable to start with and it was slow going, but then I tried the other one and yet again 100 kW came my way, saving me 30 minutes of charging time. This time I had to fully charge the car, as we would be driving back to Munich the following day. It was quite nice to unwind and read/scroll on the phone for a bit.
Always use the cable that is “by itself”…! I made it back to the hotel around 11 in the evening.
