Date:         Wed, 23 Apr 2014 05:41:06 -0700
Reply-To:     Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Subject:      With the Westy through Germany, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

My two daughters, wife and I traveled though central Europe over Easter, mainly through parts that historically were part of the Habsburg empire. While these countries have seen a lot of  change in the past 100 years, they retain much of the Habsburg architecture and some of the habits.

We live and work west of Munich this year, so this was the starting point. Our goal was to reach the Adriatic, where we had not been before, and it would be a bit warmer for camping than north of the Alps. A bit of route research on google maps and viamichelin revealed several routing options. The quickest route is almost all motorway and goes through Munchen (D), Salzburg (A), Villach (A), Ljubljana (SLO) and Rijeka (HR). Via Michelin has routing options such as cheapest, shortest and "discovery". Many of these would instead of the new motorways and tunnels, take us on smaller mountain roads and passes through Kitsbuhel (A) and Udine (I), or Innsbruck (A), Brixen (I), then following near the (A)/(I) border in the mountains to Udine (I). Particularly the last one looked appealing. Several years ago we had been in the Meran region of Italy and liked it. I assumed this would be similar. However a cold front passed through just before our departure, so we
 were unsure ow road conditions would be at high altitude. Therefore in the end we chose the first, almost all motorway route through Munchen (D), Salzburg (A), Villach (A), Ljubljana (SLO) and Rijeka (HR).

Germany has by far the most traffic of these countries, and not surprisingly we ran into congestion when trying to go through Munich. There were roadworks on the middle ring road, and we missed turns a few times. The most annoying had no immediate turn opportunities and lead us on a motorway almost back to where we started. After some 50-60 km unnecessary extra driving we finally made it out on the east side of Munich. I had wanted to avoid Munich altogether as we live south west of Munich and wanted to go south east. However there are no significant east-west roads going south of Munich (but many north south).

More surprisingly than the Munich congestion was another hour or two of congestion on A8 in the middle of nowhere near Chiemsee. Here the local autobahn gas station profited from us and others by upping the gas price to Eur 1.70/l (Normally about Eur 1.50/l in this region.) Another tactic some gas stations have here is to raise the price 10c in the morning when people are on the way to work and don't have time to look around, then lower it in the afternoon. We had originally planned to stop in Salzburg, or one of the scenic small towns nearby. Unfortunately due to the congestion instead our stops were forced at unpleasant motorway plazas for gas and food. When finally out of the congestion we kept driving to make up for lost time and had to leave the Salzburg area for the return. Germans have a very short, distinct word for congestion "Stau". I guess that is appropriate as it seems to happen (all too) often.

After the frustrating motorway stop-and-go I was worried how it would be on A10 in Austria, which is a major European through-fare. Luckily, wherever the A8 traffic went it wasn;t onto A10. We had a congestion free trip through the Alps. Before the trip I had worried that A10 would be dull. However after the cold front all the peaks were snow covered, and the scenery was rivaling the world famous ice fields parkway between Banff and Jasper in Canada. A10 is a modern motorway, and all grades were below 5%, which was also very Westy friendly. We were able to go uphill at 90km/h in 4th on the way to the Tauern tunnels at 1400m, then coast downhill at 100-110km/h towards southern Austria. We stopped at Ossiaticher see, near Villach, and camped right on the eastern lake shore. Price was Eur 30. It is rare to get a shore spot in Europe, but Easter is pre-season. We noticed the pre-season aspect overnight when the temp fell to about 0C. There was some frost on
 the grass in the morning. Daytime highs were on the other hand a pleasant 15-20C. That's typical for the mountains. The campground was impeccably maintained and had a nice playground for the kids. 

Most people drive right through Slovenia in their hurry to reach the Adriatic sea. We stopped in a small village Prestranek. In the middle ages, the local kingpin (Furst) would usually build his castle on the highest point. In Prestranek instead the hilltop was crowned by a group of high rise apartment buildings. Socialists all over Europe favored public housing. The communists also thought that rural village people should live communally in apartments instead of farm houses (that they had owned themselves prior to communism). These Slovenian public apartment blocks had stood the test of time better than many others. (E.g. in Sweden, Britain, East Germany and Romania much of the 60's and 70's public housing stock is in dire need of renovations or tear down). However, after the abolition of centralized economic planning, the inhabitants of the apartments have had to become more independent. Previous lawns in front of the apartment buildings now housed
 chicken coops and vegetable gardens. The apartment dwellers were busy chopping and stacking wood for heating during the next winter. The apartment buildings appeared to have newly installed chimneys for wood stoves. (Before several of these buildings would be communally served by one hot water heating plant - usually providing an unreliable source of hot water for showers and heating). Overall everything appeared neat, and a good example of adaption to new conditions. Not far away a few new villas were rising. Perhaps built by the winners of the new capitalist system.

Upcoming in part 2: Croatia: Rijeka, Krk, Baska. Austria: Salzburg and Hallein.

Martin (and '85 Westy 1.9l)