July 2021

It was so nice to drive along the empty night roads. For several hours we didn’t even feel like sleeping, and then we wanted coffee. We turned off the autobahn into some village, where we bought coffee, tea, yogurt at a gas station and had a real dinner (or breakfast?) in the car. Volchiy suggested that we sleep a little right there in the parking lot by the gas station. We settled in comfortably; we had blankets and throws. It turned out to be a great resting place. We managed to sleep for 3 hours until dawn.

We arrived in Simbah in the afternoon. It was warm and sunny. We checked into our house (half of the house, with the owner living in the other half). I was absolutely delighted with the house; it turned out to be so beautiful and large. I walked around it, looking at everything. But of course, the three-hour sleep was taking its toll, so I had to go and get some sleep. Volchiy stayed to work; I don’t know how he managed it.

Just a 5-minute walk from our house there is a local open-air swimming pool. Admission costs 2 euros per person. It’s very nice there, with green grass and sun loungers. There are two diving boards, one quite high, from which I do a straight dive. The second is only about a meter above the water level — it’s convenient for diving headfirst from it.

One day in the middle of the week, a huge Maine Coon cat came to us. He looked very dangerous, and I was even scared of him, but Volchiy decided to pet him. The cat purred, closed his eyes, and we realized that in fact he was kind, he just looked very formidable.

One evening we went for a walk. Behind our house there is a low hill; first we go along a steep road, and then it dips into the forest onto a path. From the top of the hill there is a view of the farms. We walk along the path into the pine forest, farther and farther. Along the way I pick some ears of grain for us, and I’ll put them in a vase on the dresser. We come out of the forest in the neighboring village. There are very pretty houses here.

Our little town of Simbach is located 2 km from the border with Austria. One weekday, after work, we walked to Austria; it was so interesting to cross the border and find ourselves in another country. The Austrian town is called Braunau and looks much better than our Simbach :) We go to the Austrian Billa, Wolf wants to buy something Austrian. We buy a piece of blue cheese. On a bench under a tree, we each eat a piece of the cheese and head back home.

On the weekend of July 10, we are heading to Lake Königssee, where we will go hiking in the mountains. I wrote about this in a separate report.

Next weekend the weather is gloomy and cool. On Saturday, July 17, we are going to the Austrian town of Linz. I found an interesting museum there, Ars Electronica, dedicated to the latest technologies. We left the car in an underground parking garage. The museum is located on the banks of the Danube; we had tea and pie overlooking the river and went to the museum.

Unfortunately, there are no photos from the museum at all. First we went to the “cinema.” Here, the image is projected simultaneously onto the wall and the floor. The screen sizes are 16x9 meters. We were shown several videos; I especially liked the 3D video about Earth, other planets, our solar system… Then we went to explore the museum. It turned out to be too abstruse. And besides, this is a museum for extroverts :) Because you have to communicate with people a lot. Most of the exhibits are not understandable, and you have to ask the assistants to activate them or tell you about them. While we were wandering around one of the halls, a female museum employee herself offered to show us how a 3D printer works :) And then she also showed how a laser cuts out figurines. The main focus here is on neural networks, brain function, and artificial intelligence.

An entire floor is devoted to music and musical instruments. There, too, a museum employee offered to demonstrate to us how the oldest musical instrument, which could produce music on its own, is constructed. Of course, it’s interesting when something is shown and explained, but interacting with people is not really our strong suit :)

And there was also a grand piano there that somehow pressed its own keys and played music — wonders of technology.

After the museum, we decided to take a little walk around the city. The city is full of crowds. We ate delicious but very sweet ice cream (Wolf chose poppy seed for me, and I chose caramel and waffles for him).

On Sunday we stayed at home. I went for a walk in our forest by myself. I wandered into the thickets and ate blueberries. And during the week, Volchy and I went to the same forest. I wanted to show Volchy the blueberries, but we got a little off the trail and ended up going even deeper into the thickets :) It’s such a beautiful wild forest here. We ate raspberries. We were heading home quite late in the evening. We had to pass by the farm. But when we started to approach it, the dogs there started barking. Volchy said he wasn’t going there. So we went around, through the fields and meadows. I think the dogs there were most likely tied up or at least behind a fence. But these places are really wild, who knows…

On the weekend, we gathered again to go to the mountains in Austria for an overnight stay in a hut! I also wrote a separate report about this hike.

On Saturday, July 31, we say goodbye to our home. It’s very sad, but our stay in Bavaria has come to an end, and we are heading home to Düsseldorf. On the way, we’ll stop for the night in Nuremberg.

We arrived at the hotel in Nuremberg around 3 p.m. At check-in, the girl asked whether we were vaccinated. We said no. Then she said that to check into the hotel, we needed to provide a Covid test result.

The little booth where tests were done was right next to the hotel, but it was closed. So we decided to go to the city center; Volchiy found a place there where we could get tested. The center is about 3 km from the hotel. After we got tested, we went for a walk around the city. The central part of Nuremberg is quite small. The city did not impress me. But we did eat very tasty sausages.

I picked out a couple of restaurants for us. First we went to the little restaurant “Bratwursthäusle bei St. Sebald”. We were lucky — we got the last table outside, ordered Rotbier (traditional red beer of Nuremberg), and of course Nuremberg sausages! And with them, a pretzel and some cabbage. These sausages are truly the best I have ever eaten. It’s hard to describe what makes them so special. But later, after we had walked around the center, we decided to go to another restaurant, “Trödelstuben”. For comparison, we ordered exactly the same thing :) The sausages were fine, completely ordinary, no better than the ones we buy at the supermarket and fry ourselves, even though the reviews for the second restaurant were also very good! Who knows how to find the best sausages in the city….

We returned to the hotel late. We showed the test results and were let into the room :)

I really wanted some tea after all those sausages. It turned out that in order to get dishes and a kettle, we had to leave a 50-euro deposit, and then we were given a basket of various dishes — a strange system, we had never come across anything like it before.

We returned to Düsseldorf in the evening of August 1. The guys to whom we had rented out our apartment for two months waited for us. It was very nice that they had tidied up the apartment by the time we got back.

It felt like we hadn’t been here for an eternity… It took me a long time to get used to our little apartment, the balcony, the sofa. Everything seemed unfamiliar to me, a little чужим….