Great write up!  I spent 18 months at FSA Augsburg in the early '80's.
 Spent some time camping at Chiemsee - so beautiful!  Would have loved to
do it in a Westy, but used rented tents and camping items.

Pete
'87 Westy "JoesVan"
'79 Westy "Aardvark"

On Wed, Apr 23, 2014 at 8:41 AM, Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@yahoo.ca
> wrote:

> My two daughters, wife and I traveled though central Europe over Easter,
> mainly through parts that historically were part of the Habsburg empire.
> While these countries have seen a lot of  change in the past 100 years,
> they retain much of the Habsburg architecture and some of the habits.
>
> We live and work west of Munich this year, so this was the starting point.
> Our goal was to reach the Adriatic, where we had not been before, and it
> would be a bit warmer for camping than north of the Alps. A bit of route
> research on google maps and viamichelin revealed several routing options.
> The quickest route is almost all motorway and goes through Munchen (D),
> Salzburg (A), Villach (A), Ljubljana (SLO) and Rijeka (HR). Via Michelin
> has routing options such as cheapest, shortest and "discovery". Many of
> these would instead of the new motorways and tunnels, take us on smaller
> mountain roads and passes through Kitsbuhel (A) and Udine (I), or Innsbruck
> (A), Brixen (I), then following near the (A)/(I) border in the mountains to
> Udine (I). Particularly the last one looked appealing. Several years ago we
> had been in the Meran region of Italy and liked it. I assumed this would be
> similar. However a cold front passed through just before our departure, so
> we
>  were unsure ow road conditions would be at high altitude. Therefore in
> the end we chose the first, almost all motorway route through Munchen (D),
> Salzburg (A), Villach (A), Ljubljana (SLO) and Rijeka (HR).
>
> Germany has by far the most traffic of these countries, and not
> surprisingly we ran into congestion when trying to go through Munich. There
> were roadworks on the middle ring road, and we missed turns a few times.
> The most annoying had no immediate turn opportunities and lead us on a
> motorway almost back to where we started. After some 50-60 km unnecessary
> extra driving we finally made it out on the east side of Munich. I had
> wanted to avoid Munich altogether as we live south west of Munich and
> wanted to go south east. However there are no significant east-west roads
> going south of Munich (but many north south).
>
> More surprisingly than the Munich congestion was another hour or two of
> congestion on A8 in the middle of nowhere near Chiemsee. Here the local
> autobahn gas station profited from us and others by upping the gas price to
> Eur 1.70/l (Normally about Eur 1.50/l in this region.) Another tactic some
> gas stations have here is to raise the price 10c in the morning when people
> are on the way to work and don't have time to look around, then lower it in
> the afternoon. We had originally planned to stop in Salzburg, or one of the
> scenic small towns nearby. Unfortunately due to the congestion instead our
> stops were forced at unpleasant motorway plazas for gas and food. When
> finally out of the congestion we kept driving to make up for lost time and
> had to leave the Salzburg area for the return. Germans have a very short,
> distinct word for congestion "Stau". I guess that is appropriate as it
> seems to happen (all too) often.
>
> After the frustrating motorway stop-and-go I was worried how it would be
> on A10 in Austria, which is a major European through-fare. Luckily,
> wherever the A8 traffic went it wasn;t onto A10. We had a congestion free
> trip through the Alps. Before the trip I had worried that A10 would be
> dull. However after the cold front all the peaks were snow covered, and the
> scenery was rivaling the world famous ice fields parkway between Banff and
> Jasper in Canada. A10 is a modern motorway, and all grades were below 5%,
> which was also very Westy friendly. We were able to go uphill at 90km/h in
> 4th on the way to the Tauern tunnels at 1400m, then coast downhill at
> 100-110km/h towards southern Austria. We stopped at Ossiaticher see, near
> Villach, and camped right on the eastern lake shore. Price was Eur 30. It
> is rare to get a shore spot in Europe, but Easter is pre-season. We noticed
> the pre-season aspect overnight when the temp fell to about 0C. There was
> some frost on
>  the grass in the morning. Daytime highs were on the other hand a pleasant
> 15-20C. That's typical for the mountains. The campground was impeccably
> maintained and had a nice playground for the kids.
>
> Most people drive right through Slovenia in their hurry to reach the
> Adriatic sea. We stopped in a small village Prestranek. In the middle ages,
> the local kingpin (Furst) would usually build his castle on the highest
> point. In Prestranek instead the hilltop was crowned by a group of high
> rise apartment buildings. Socialists all over Europe favored public
> housing. The communists also thought that rural village people should live
> communally in apartments instead of farm houses (that they had owned
> themselves prior to communism). These Slovenian public apartment blocks had
> stood the test of time better than many others. (E.g. in Sweden, Britain,
> East Germany and Romania much of the 60's and 70's public housing stock is
> in dire need of renovations or tear down). However, after the abolition of
> centralized economic planning, the inhabitants of the apartments have had
> to become more independent. Previous lawns in front of the apartment
> buildings now housed
>  chicken coops and vegetable gardens. The apartment dwellers were busy
> chopping and stacking wood for heating during the next winter. The
> apartment buildings appeared to have newly installed chimneys for wood
> stoves. (Before several of these buildings would be communally served by
> one hot water heating plant - usually providing an unreliable source of hot
> water for showers and heating). Overall everything appeared neat, and a
> good example of adaption to new conditions. Not far away a few new villas
> were rising. Perhaps built by the winners of the new capitalist system.
>
> Upcoming in part 2: Croatia: Rijeka, Krk, Baska. Austria: Salzburg and
> Hallein.
>
> Martin (and '85 Westy 1.9l)
>
>