Back Home Wrap up

Slowly Returning to the Regular Life

Date	Dec 19th, 2022
Total This Camino:	114 miles
Total 2022 Caminos:	438 miles
Total All Caminos:	1734 miles
Total Lodging:	$ 675
Planes:	$810 Rochester -> Munich -> Rochester + $75 checked bag $680 Munich -> Rochester
Total Planes:	$ 1550
Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$13 to airport
Total Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$45
Total Food:	$ 220

Meaningful Moment

I missed everyone back home so much.

Maybe it was the short hours of daylight in Germany, on the order of 9 or 10 hours.

Maybe it was the absolutely exhausting hiking (cold, distances, terrain).

But this was much more of a challenge that I ever envisioned.

However in some sort of coincidence, on the day that I decided to stop, I came across a link to another German camino, the Via Imperii. It runs from Berlin to Leipzig, and it sounds very interesting. But I think I won't do it in December.

I took two days in Munich for sight-seeing, and it did make a difference. When I got back to Munich, I had little left to give. After the two rest days, I started to recover.

My German studies over the past two years came through. I did not discuss the meaning of life or quantum mechanics, but I did get directions, order food, find rooms and all the  other survival skills for a stranger in a strange land.

And the German studies gave me something to mentally challenge myself during the worst of the Covid pandemic, when I couldn't hike.

I still regret missing the 2020 and 2021 hiking years in Europe. My body has changed, and at some points of the Muncher Camino, I began to doubt my ability to continue at this pace. 

I guess only time will tell, altho' being unidirectional, I know what time is going to tell me.

For now, I will plan for more hikes in challenging situations. It's a good way to stay healthy, maybe not so wealthy, but also mentally acute / alert / proficient.

And those are good reasons to hike.

Random Thought of the Day

Still fighting off the jet lag.

I have multiple times now flown from the USA to Europe, and started hiking the next day.

I have yet to return to the USA from Europe (six hours ahead) and not suffer for a week, at least, from jet lag. 

Even today, I had to crash for an hour after morning yoga and lunch.

Speaking of which, I am slowly returning to my life style here.

Both Saturday and Sunday, I got out with the Genesee Valley Hiking Club for some good hiking, admittedly at much shorter distances, typically 4 - 5 miles.

Today (Monday) I made a morning gentle yoga class at the YMCA, and then returned in the evening for a half-hour session of weight training.

************************************************************************

A chocolate English Lab Retriever is a good reason to come home LOL

So I guess that is all the hiking for 2022. It started in June with Deb on the Camino Madrid. Then Carlos, Adriana and I spent four days on the Iveragh Peninsula, County Kerry. They returned to the US, and I finished the hike. And last and whatever, December's Camino Munich.

After two years of Covid, 2022 was a pretty good year after all.

Signing off ...

Day 11: Returning Home

Day 11: From Munich to Rochester

Date	Dec 13th, 2022
Total This Camino:	114 miles
Total 2022 Caminos:	438 miles
Total All Caminos:	1734 miles
Total Lodging:	$ 675
Planes:	$810 Rochester -> Munich -> Rochester + $75 checked bag $680 Munich -> Rochester
Total Planes:	$ 1550
Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$13 to airport
Total Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$45
Food:	$
Total Food:	$ 220

Meaningful Moment

On the rapid express train, met a woman from the Ukraine who was vacationing in Munich with her parents, and they are all now on the way to her home which is in Bangkok now.

Also met a woman who is headed to the airport to meet her boyfriend and they will be vacationing in Munich.

She told me that they called the combination of Deutschebahn which is the train system and Telekomm which is the phone and internet network system and the Post which is the post office are collectively referred to in Munich as the axis of evil. Lol

Also chatted with a few other people because the rapid Express train was in a combination of running late and stopping short of the airport, requiring an unexpected transfer for everybody on the training. Lol

My flight to Lisbon is delayed 20 minutes.

Random Thought of the Day

Not today. Just want to be home.

On the Road / Notable memories

07:45 Up and at'em. 

09:00 at the rapid transit system waiting for the train to the airport.

10:30 train is now not going to the airport, have to transfer to another platform to get a second train.

11:00 at Munich airport

11:30 at the gate. Boarding was supposed to start in half an hour. Flight is delayed 20 minutes. ... Make that 45 minutes.

13:15 Take off from Munich. With a cat in the row behind me. 

15:45 Land in Lisbon. Flight to JFK is boarding. Ran like crazy but made it.

16:30 Boarding

20:00 Landed JFK

20:15 CLEARED Immigration and Customs

     JFK is a joke. After using global entry and getting right thru, I waited about 20 minutes for my checked-thru backpack, and had to carry it from terminal one to terminal five because there was no site to return it

     Then I had to go thru TSA again and they had TSA pre-check closed. 

22:15 Boarding in JFK for the flight home.

22:35 Wheels up.

11:50 Landed Rochester.

	S-bahn to the airport
	Lisbon weather. This why flight schedules were backed up.
	Boarding in Lisbon.

Day 10: Munich Exploration

Day 10: Munich

Englischer Garten & Christmas Market

Date	Dec 12th, 2022
Total This Camino:	114 miles
Total 2022 Caminos:	438 miles
Total All Caminos:	1734 miles
Lodging:	Hotel Royal @ $75
Total Lodging:	$ 675
Planes:	$810 Rochester -> Munich -> Rochester + $75 checked bag $680 Munich -> Rochester
Total Planes:	$ 1550
Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$
Total Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$45
Food:	$
Total Food:	$ 220

Meaningful Moment

Don't think there was one, but it was a nice day. 

Random Thought of the Day

It is super cold in Munich today. Temperature is 25° f but it feels like it's 19. I am so glad I am not hiking today lol.

On the Road / Notable memories

Took the morning for a super long breakfast, relaxing over the table and reading the newspaper.

Nice walk in Englischer Garten. In a crude description, you can think of it as Munich's version of New York's Central Park.

It was fun watching everybody out with their dogs, and watching the dogs chase each other through the snow. Looked like everyone was having a good time on this cold Munich morning.

In the afternoon took the Christmas market tour. We visited three Christmas markets.

***

Dinner time.  Try the subway one more time. Had trouble because I couldn't enter my destination. 

Turns out I was on the wrong screen, lol.

At Sendlinger Tor (Gate). Stopped in at a healthy foods restaurant for a shrimp salad and lemonade. And after this, I'll try and find a hamburger. Haha. ... Turns out I've got no room for the hamburger.

	Englischer Garten
	Marienplatz Christmas Market. Hundreds of stalls.
	See the guy in the traditional mountain wear?
	Glühwein is served hot, red or white wine, with the sugars and spices and fruit. Given that the temperature was about 22°, it was perfect for the moment. :-)
	Medieval Christmas Market
	Medieval Christmas Market. Christmas story being told by a dad to his son.
	Sendlinger Tor
	My final German meal: Fran on a bed of fruits and vegetables with mint flavored lemonade. Perfect meal for the night before you go flying.

Day 09: Dachau

Things I learned from our tour guide

	The entrance to the Dachau memorial. There is a distinction between a death camp and an extermination camp. Dachau was a death camp. 20% of the people, approximately 40,000 of the 200,000 who entered the camp, never left.
	Did this as part of a tour to make sure that I understood what I was seeing. Carlota did a phenomenal job. In an extermination camp like Auschwitz, 95% of the people who went in never came out.
	The camp entrance. The railroad tracks are for an ammunition factory that the prisoners were conscripted to work in. The concentration camps were not a secret. They were created in 1933 by passing of a law.
	Walking through the gates. Concentration camps were legalized and made widely publicly known because they were originally designed to hold the political opponents of the Nazi regime, specifically communists and social democrats.
	"Work makes you free" Or "Work makes freedom" Regardless, you get the idea.
	Prisoner barracks. It was later after Kristal Nacht that the Jews, solely for being Jewish, began being sent to the concentration camps.
	Many of the barracks have been torn down. After the war the barracks at the camp were used to house resettled Germans from previously conquered countries. Families lived in them.
	Foundations of barracks that no longer exist. When the entire camp was opened as a memorial in 1965, these family quarters were torn down so as to not confuse visitors with what they were seeing.
	Watchtower and barbed wire fencing. By 1942 Dachau became a labor camp to support the approximate 130 factories around the area. The German camp commander knew this was the opportunity to become very wealthy by selling out labor.
	Walkway between the watchtowers and the barracks foundations
	The crematorium. The crematoria at Dachau, as best determined, were used to incinerate bodies of prisoners who had died in the fields or elsewhere in the camps, as opposed to a deliberate extermination program like at Auschwitz.
	The most emotional part of the tour is entering the waiting room, where prisoners were stripped, then going through the door into the disinfectant room and then into the so-called "showering rooms", where the doors were sealed and the gas applied. Finally we walked into the crematorium room with the ovens. It's really hard to believe what happened there.
	Jewish memorial to those who died. The tears started in the crematorium  waiting room, and by the time I made it to the ovens, I was crying.
	The inscription says, "To honor the dead, so that the living remember"
	A barracks for 60, by the end of the war was holding hundreds and hundreds.
	The colors represent various oppressed groups, for example, political prisoners, social undesirables, Jewish people.
	A sculpture that memorializes those who threw themselves against the barbed wire rather than continue to go on in the camp.
	In short, may the example of those exterminated here show those who live how to live in peace.  Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way.

Day 09: Munich

Date	Dec 11th, 2022
Total This Camino:	114 miles
Total 2022 Caminos:	438 miles
Total All Caminos:	1734 miles
Lodging:	Hotel Royal @ $75
Total Lodging:	$ 600
Planes:	$810 Rochester -> Munich -> Rochester + $75 checked bag $680 Munich -> Rochester
Total Planes:	$ 1550
Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$5
Total Buses / Trains / Taxis:	$45
Food:	$20
Total Food:	$ 220

Meaningful Moment

I don't think there's anything particularly special today, not including my separate blog about Dachau.

In the evening I walked around the highlights again like Marienplatz and Viktuelleplatz and St Jacob's Church again.

Had a half meter long white sausage, that's about 18 in. Part of the pleasure of walking around the open air Christmas markets.

And at the end of the night stopped in at a Starbucks again, this one in the main train station. ... Because it's very near my hotel.

And it is quite obvious that the temperature is dropped at least 10° since I was hiking. It's a lot colder in Munich yesterday and today.

When I was hiking the high and low was respectively approximately 39 and 30° f. Now the high and low respectively is 30° and 20° f.

Random Thought of the Day

Gets dark so early. As soon as I got done hiking, it was night. I suspect that's part of the reason for some of the emotional and mental and spiritual issues that I've had on this Camino.

Another factor that was very similar to my Irish hiking both times, my Swiss hiking and this hike is that I'm all alone at the end of the night instead of with other hikers.

***

The Munich transit system is basically an honor system. There aren't turnstiles to which you must insert a ticket. You just pay and you get on board.

On the Road / Notable memories

Every time I see somebody out with their dog, I miss Gimli in, Deb's chocolate lab.

And of course I miss my Zeke, my Best Friend's rescue from Utah, who crossed the rainbow bridge almost a year now.

	Safety on the train General: Keep walkways, doors and  fire extinguishers places free of packs. Store your packs on the storage racks or between or under the seats. Informed trained personnel of suspicious observations and incidents. Press the emergency door release only in case of emergency and only when the train is not moving.
	To close the door: push the button and let go again when the door is closed.
	Board only worth a validated ticket. Writing without a ticket can double the amount due to almost 60 euros. So therefore basically take care of this before you get on board.
	Getting off of the train in an emergency.
	Marienplatz Christmas festivities
	New city hall
	1/2 m long white sausage
	One more visit to St Jacob's Church where it all began 10 days ago.
	Main transit system station Starbucks
	The barista wrote on my chocolate cake box, much happiness in your German pursuits
	Christmas music at the new city hall in Marienplatz