Ulm via Augsburg

Last night, even in the hotel we were all cuddled up in our blankets as we sat on the sofa to chat before going to bed. This morning, the blanket didn't feel like an absolute requirement as we got ready. Things were looking up. Right up to the point where I got to drive through more rain. And the heavier it rained, the more I slowed down on the highway, and the higher the speed difference got between me and the missiles on the passing lane ...

Driving in general was a bit of a mess today. We were trying to follow the "Romantic Street" up to Augsburg, and from our departure point, we were able to find a sign for it rather quickly. But ... trying to follow those signs proved to be a challenge involving a lot of u-turns. Occasionally because we'd fly by a turn because the small sign to turn came without warning on a 100 road and I didn't want to slam the brakes. Sometimes because we seemed to keep losing the signs and we'd fall back to the navigation system that just wanted us to go direct to Augsburg. And sometimes because we were hungry and the bakery we just passed looked tasty.

Augsburg was a brief stop where we filled up on whatever chemical combination we preferred, took a few pictures in the square, tried to walk a little but kept on walking into constructions sites with machines that were smoking something worse than cigarettes, gave up on the Romantic street, and drove to Ulm.

For Ulm we had a more experienced tour guide to show us the main sights, as well as where to find lunch. What the tour guide didn't know though, but was spotted by one of the other travel companions on a poster, was that there was meant to be fireworks tonight. Unfortunately the details of when was "after sundown" and the details of where were "at this festival". So we waited for sundown close to the river, thinking that we should be able to spot or at least hear them from basically anywhere, and the festival was roughly 15 minute walk away. However, a solid 30 minutes after sundown, my travel companions got cold and decided that home was the preferred direction. I however remained curious.

The walking instructions were to start from town center, go to the river, and walk downstream. And that it should take 20 minutes. Now, I don't have the slowest walking pace and after 20 minutes I was all by myself, walking along a dark river, with no festival to be heard. Fortunately, I stuck with it and kept walking and another 15 minutes later I found a big crowd of people standing around some festival grounds, all looking enthusiastically up at the sky. This gave me some hope that the fireworks were yet to come. But since they didn't seem to appear immediately, I checked out the theme park first.

After checking out all the rides, a bang went off that shrunk all children to half their size, and got all the adults excited and streaming towards one end of the theme park. So I followed, based on the assumption that they all know better than me. I came for fireworks, and fireworks I received. For those keeping track: the definition of "after sundown" was 80 minutes after official sunset.

The walk back was a little more interesting than the walk there. I initially just followed the stream of people that appeared to be walking in roughly the right direction. They all disappeared though at the first parking lot, at which point I got to start navigating based on street signs, eventually spotting the tallest church tower in the world, and then attempting to remember my route to the hotel based on things like "I remember walking past this apothocary". Did I mention my phone was flat?