#scharnitz

Untitled, 2017

Thursday, 7 September 2000

Buongiorno!  Grüß Gott!  Bonjour!  

Hello and welcome to the 17 day journey of September 2000.  

Today is 7th September 2000.  Yesterday may have been a nice sunny day but from evening to overnight that changed.  As on Tuesday the 6th September, about 4 PM, my train crossed into Brennero and it became cloudy as we went down the mountain to Innsbruck.  There was no noticeable precipitation until at least some time during the night.  I managed to go to the SPAR grocery store in Igls prior to the rainfall.  

I think I woke up around 3:30 AM, since I went to bed around 8:30 PM after watching the news on TV.  It would be at least four hours until breakfast would be served, and I could not sleep any more.  I turned on my radio to the local ORF FM station.  It played German-language soft rock, or "Schlagerrock."  One song I remember was "Fliege, weiße Adler" by Nadine Norell.  Before the 4 AM news, it played an instrumental part of Swedish singer Meja's "Beautiful girl".  I recorded about fifteen minutes more until I decided that I could not go back to sleep and needed to get out of the hotel.

It was about 5 AM, it was showering a bit along the Badehausstraße, not too bad to go for a walk with an umbrella.  I had some trouble with the front door.  It used a skeleton key, which I am not particularly good at using, but I managed to lock the front door before I walked down to the Bilgeristraße.  On the video I took, I made a comment about being so happy to find the Erdnußflips that I enjoyed in Summers 1997 and 1998, the peanut flavored Cheetos-shaped corn puffs.  Along the way I found a milk vending machine, that would sell milk either by the half liter or full liter, and you would have to bring your own container.  For a liter, it cost maybe 90 cents.  There was also a sign for an on-premise potato vendor next door.  The bus stop Patscherkofelbahn, the approximate location of the 1964 Winter Olympics for men's downhill alpine skiing, had a bus scheduled to leave about 5:45 AM, that would be still at least half an hour that I would have to wait.  When I crossed Lanserstraße which went to Lans maybe a few miles east of Igls, I was in the east part of downtown.  

I stopped at the Tiroler Sparkasse to have a look at the day's exchange rates.  Since it was already September 2000, and Austria signed up to switch to the Euro in January 2002, exchange rates were quoted in Euro, and there was a US Dollar rate to the Schilling, about 15, which is much better than 13.73 to the Euro.  This was a time when the US Dollar had more value than the Euro.  This would prepare me for what I could expect when I went to Munich to withdraw money in D-Mark and hopefully also Swiss Francs.  I had a bit of an "optimistic" feeling then.  And if you watch the video, you can see a shadow of my umbrella, when I am looking at the exchange rates.

I walked along the Hilbert Straße to Patscher Straße which went down to the southeast city limit with Innsbruck with Vill in between.  At the intersection of Hilbert Straße and Patscher Straße was something like a goose, duck, turkey or chicken, that might have broken loose from its enclosure.  I remember reading as a child the story "Churkendoose", so this could have been the great-grandchild.  It flapped its wings in order to dry off.  The sun would not come up for at least two hours so the fowl across the street was not very easy to see but I videotaped it flapping its wings.  

I walked down Patcher Straße to find a bus stop to wait at.  I went as far as the Gluirschegg stop.  The bus picked me up and honored my previous day's day pass as it was good for 24 hours.  I went as far as the Landesmuseum tram stop, and transferred.  I did manage to get a ride through Innsbruck's city center.  I did not visit any of the museums until the 10th February 2012, and there is one in particular I want to return to, namely Das Tirol Panorama, which is up a hill from the Bergisel tram stop.  I did have a stroll through downtown Innsbruck, up to Maria Theresien Straße, and the weather had stopped raining.  It was close to 7 AM and the bus line J was due to arrive to take me back to Igls.  The sun was in the process of rising.  Innsbruck and environs are in a mountainous area, so even if the sun rose at 7:15 AM, you might not notice it until at least 7:45.  

On the bus between Leopoldstraße and Bergisel, a woman boarded the line J bus and did exactly what no passenger should do - be standing so close to the safety line at the front door, and speaking to the driver.  The driver did not seem to mind much.  I offered the lady the front seat next to the front door, but she declined.  I sat there until the bus arrived at Patscherkofelbahn in Igls.  The bus went up the hill to Vill, going through downtown Igls past the SPAR grocery store and the Tiroler Sparkasse and ended at Patscherkofelbahn.  By that time, it was 7:35 AM and about time for breakfast at the Pension Oswald.  I put my video camera in my room and came down to eat breakfast, the first one of the vacation.  Breakfast included bread rolls, hard boiled eggs, butter, cheese, sliced meats like ham, salami, and some locally produced jams, plus coffee and orange juice.  After breakfast I took a bath in the bathtub, which is strange for me as I usually take a shower.  While packing up, I turned the radio on and heard an ABBA cover version of "Souper Trooper" performed by the A-Teens.

I think about 9:45 AM I was ready to check out, and turned in my key and paid about US $45 for the night including taxes.  I went down with my luggage to the Patscherkofelbahn bus stop for Bus Line J and Landesmuseum where I would have to walk a couple of blocks to Hauptbahnhof.  It would not leave until at least 10:15 AM.  The bus was half full at the time, but when the bus got to Altes Rathaus (Old City Hall) Igls, many people boarded and I was cramped until about Sillpark.  The bus reached Landesmuseum about 10:40 AM.  I made it to the Hbf just before 11 AM.  There were no trains to Munich until 11:45 AM.  I boarded a Regional Express that went by Innsbruck-Allerheiligenhöfe, Scharnitz, Mittenwald, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and Wolfratshausen, before reaching Munich.  The ride was nice.  When the train reached Scharnitz at 12:45 PM, the last station in Austria before crossing in to Germany, the train car had stopped right in front of the restaurant that I ate on Sunday 7th June 1998, I had a Bürgermeisterschmaus plate with a half liter of Gösser pilsener and Almdudler that tastes like carbonated green tea.  That was a nice comfortable place to eat before ending my birthday weekend and going back to "home" in Munch.

About 12:50 PM, the train crossed into Germany.  I had my video camera running and saw the border crossing and "Freistaat Bayern" sign.  That was my first ever video footage in Germany.  The train stopped in Mittenwald.  I thought there would be customs formalities, but only the conductor came to check that my Eurail Pass was still valid and that I had entered in my usage dates correctly with a pen - either blue or black.  Then he said "Dankeschön, schöne Reise" and left.  It took about two hours after leaving Garmisch-Partenkirchen, for the train to arrive at Munich Pasing, so sometime about 2:47 PM.  Pasing is a major transfer station west of Hbf.  And not too far from the Hacker-Pschorr brewery, one of the breweries that is allowed to sell their beer at Oktoberfest which was less than two weeks away from the story setting.  The S-1 has, since the opening of the "Neufahrner Spange" near Aying, served as one of the two S-Bahn lines between Munich and the Franz Josef Strauß International Airport.  The other line, S-8 has its own hub, at Ostbahnhof.

The train arrived at Hbf about 3:05 PM.  I had to put the black sling bag in a locker and take the backpack with me.  Then I had to buy a MVV day pass for the U Bahn.  I had the radio with me, so I could make sort of an audio recording of being on the set of the 1985 German-language film "Sugarbaby" by Percy Adlon.  In particular between Odeonsplatz and Münchner Freiheit.  I had a reason to go to Münchner Freiheit, as I had to exchange an expired indentification card for another one that I could use in most of Germany and maybe also in the rest of Europe for a fee.  The bank I went to, would give only D-Mark, and I knew of another bank in downtown near Marienplatz, who I thought, would give Swiss Francs, as I had managed to withdraw in Summer 1998.  When I reached there about 4 PM, I was disappointed to see that the Swiss Francs were switched for Spanish Peseta.  ????????????  The bank teller told me that since the Euro was in force, the bank had to remove the Austrian Schilling and Swiss Franc ATMs.  I had enough D-Mark to last me a couple of days, but not as many Swiss Francs.  Disappointing.  But I had to go on.  Before that, I had to call the Hotel Stern where I was staying, that I would arrive about 8 PM that evening.  They said they would wait for me.  It would be about a two hour train ride to Stuttgart via Augsburg, Günzburg and Ulm.  In the meantime I walked around Marienplatz.  The toy museum was open, so they had their five bells and a cymbal machine running but I think the bells were out of service as only the cymbal was playing.  Otherwise you would hear five cowbells in descending tone before a cymbal crash.  I have a recording of it working properly from late May 1998.

I took the S-Bahn back to the Hbf and boarded the Intercity train.  It left about 4:50 PM.  It would stop at Pasing, Augsburg Hbf, Günzburg in the north Allgäu, Ulm, and along the Neckar to Stuttgart Hbf.  It was in Ulm about 6:05 PM, and I could see the Danube river as well as the gothic cathedral, it was one of the most gothic I had ever seen, similar to Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.  The train moved on to Stuttgart Hbf passing through Esslingen and Bad Canstatt, by which time it was about 7:10 PM.  The U Bahn underground subway station at Hbf, was like a two side-platform setup, with one big central platform and two outer platforms.  The hotel was at Metzstraße, so I had to take either an U1, U2 or U14.  I took the next U Bahn to Stöckach and changed to an U Bahn that would go to Metzstraße.  When I checked in, I put my luggage in my single room.  It had a sink but no toilet or shower, as it was down the hall.  At the Reitzensteinstraße, visible from my bedroom window, I remember there used to be a Citroen dealership.  It has since closed down and reopened as a used car dealership.

The hotel was still serving dinner, and I had a small gyros plate with a greek salad.  I was feeling very tired and then went to bed.  Breakfast would be served at 7 AM.  I think I went on another early morning adventure the next morning through Stuttgart.

I hope you will join me again in the next story, Friday 8th September 2000.  We will bring our country total to four out of seven.

Scharnitz: Verdacht auf Schlepperei von 5 pakistanischen Staatsbürgern!

Scharnitz

  Am 8. November 2018 gegen 04:50 Uhr konnte Beamte der deutschen Bundespolizei im Zuge von Kontrollen am Grenzübergang Scharnitz/Mittenwald aus der Ferne beobachten, wie 6 verdächtige Personen auf der B177 im Gemeindegebiet von Scharnitz aus einem unbekannten PKW ausstiegen und in verschiedene Richtungen verließen. Auf das Fahrzeug fuhr nach kurzer Zeit ebenfalls in unbekannte…