April 28: Oberammergau to Augsburg

We got up on the 28th and packed for our trip to Augsburg. We had booked our train trip online: the RB 59562 to Murnau, then change to RB 59522 to München-Pasing, then catch the ICE 956 to Augsburg Hauptbahnhof. I was a little concerned because we'd taken a bus into Oberammergau and while I assumed we were taking a train out, the evidence was conflicting. On the one hand, one unofficial website explained that the RB trains are the Regional Bahn "workhorses" of the German train system. Then another site talked about taking the RB bus (with the same number) from Oberammergau.

In reality, it didn't matter. Here is the Oberammergau train station:

The "bus station" is a bus stop 10 feet away.

Judy went down to check out of the hotel, and our kindly proprietors offered to put all our luggage in the car and bring it to the station. "Go, walk around the town. We will meet you at 10:15." Our train was at 10:38. So we did walk around, and pretty much everything was closed, but it was a gorgeous spring day and the temperature was in the 60s without a cloud in the sky.

We got to the "train station" at precisely 10:15 (working on that German precision) and our proprietress was waiting in the car with our luggage.

I would so stay with these guys again. I have been reviewing all of our experiences on TripAdvisor (34 reviews so far) and Pension Dedlerhaus gets a "5" out of 5 stars across the board.

So the only train serving Oberammergau pulled into the "station" shortly thereafter, and we got on as a bunch of folks with bicycles got of. We had our pick of seats, and indeed cars. It was a pretty big train, with very people climbing on board at Oberammergau. I think we could've all had our own car, and the scenery on the leisurely trip to Murnau was truly bucolic.

The track from Oberammergau dead-ends at Murnau, and we all got off and walked across to where the next train starts. This was another RB, but it had some double-decker cars. We didn't use these, choosing a car next to the bicycle car so we could tuck our luggage against the wall. This train did fill up as we made our way toward München-Pasing, and it ran a lot faster: probably up to about 140km/hour (about 80mph).

When we got to München-Pasing, we had about 15 minutes to get to our next platform. Good thing. We are lugging a lot of heavy luggage, and you go down into a tunnel to get between platforms, then climb back up. And I mean climb. No escalators. So we were huffing and puffing and wheezing when ICE 956 pulled up. The ICE trains are capable of speeds in excess of 340km/hr, although I don't think we approached that. It's a half hour from Munich to Augsburg.

Not knowing any better, we'd paid an extra €4 for reserved seats on the train, and I was feeling supremely competent ("competence" being the highest goal I can aspire to here) having figured out exactly where on the platform our train car (7) would pull up to. We got onto a very full train, and found it full of pretty-drunk and very-unhygeinic 20-somethings. There were two seats left, but we definitely shouldn't have reserved and probably should have just looked elsewhere and hoped that we didn't get bumped.

Oh well.

The trip to Augsburg is short, and thankfully our hotel (InterCity) was immediately adjacent to the train station. It was a perfectly adequate place, but it cost as much as anywhere we've stayed, and on top of it they wanted €15/day for internet and another €15/day for breakfast. We declined.

On the bright side, there was a Turkish street cafe down the road with .5 liter beers for €2 and a great Turkish salad for €4.50. That is a real deal here.

We walked around a lot, stopping first at St. Anna's where Martin Luther had stayed back when he was in a fix for questioning indulgences. We found that there was a church service at 10:00AM the next day and decided to come.