Tegernsee

Tegernsee

All the signs are there. Everyday it gets a little bit colder, we get more clouds, more rain and less sun. The first snow flakes already fell at an altitude of 1,200 meters on the mountains near Munich. The leaves of the trees are just beginning to change their color and you can find more and more dried leaves on the floor. The TV channels began this week to release their new programming: new shows and new seasons of German’s favorite shows such as CSI, Law and Order, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, House etc (Thank God because the programming was awful). The radio stations have began to minimize (and hopefully will stop very soon) playing the “Summer Hits of 2007”. Those songs that will become the “Azerejes” and “Macarenas” of tomorrow (Eeeyyy Macarena aahha!!). The types of songs that get played over and over and over on the radio and on TV, on all types of bars and clubs, and in the stores while you are shopping and which you can’t help but to sing along since they have such a contagious rhythm and easy to remember lyrics: usually silly and meaningless. (Note to myself: I’m talking about “Vayamos Compañeros”, “It’s going to be a hot summer”, and “The questions is, what is the question”). This is just so I remember in the future which songs I’m talking about since I refuse to get them. Ok, I’ll continue with my train of thought. Everyone is returning from their 3-4 week long summer vacations and getting back into their routines. In other words what I’m trying to say is that THE FALL IS DEFINITELY HERE. Monday night I slept with the window closed for the first time since I arrived here. On Tuesday the temperature was 45 degrees when I went out jogging at 5 PM and it started to rain half way through my journey. I have to say I’m very lucky I did not catch a cold. And then last night I had to turn on the heater for the first time. However, towards the end of the week and the weekend the temperature is supposed to be around 50 for the lows and around 72 for the highs. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed in hope that the meteorologists are right since I’m going away for the weekend. But this shouldn’t surprise me. Just like we had an unusual summer it seems we will have an unusual fall. Everyone keeps telling me that it is never so cold this early in September.

This past weekend was a rather quiet one and I ended up doing what has by now become a habit every time I’m here for the weekend: visiting a lake near Munich. This time it was the turn to go to Tegernsee. We visited this vacationing town and lake for a couple of hours and had ourselves a picnic while enjoying the views of the lake and the mountains. Tegernsee is a small town about 1 hour south of Munich where lots of well-off people have a weekend home. The town, to my surprise, is very lively with lots of people walking all around, cars driving by and a rather big arts and crafts market. I said “to my surprise” because I was expecting this small town to be very quiet. On the most part the small towns in Bavaria (actually in all of Germay and maybe even most of Europe) are extremely quiet and calmed down on Sundays. They are basically ghost towns: all stores are closed, there are only a couple of cafés opened, the streets are empty and everyone is either in their homes or visiting relatives, or they are gone on a trip to nearby place. But Tegernsee wasn’t like that. Even tough the day was somewhat cold and therefore there were no people sunbathing or practicing water sports, there were still lots of people who were taking a ride on their boats.

Another thing that caught my attention is that there were lots of people doing parasailing or Han gliding from a mountain near the lake. As we sat down to have our picnic we could see the many parachute-like equipment (I have no idea what it is called) coming down!!! Mmmmmmmm….there is an idea ;-)