Chiemgau

This is my first blog about my travel experiences. Though I dont travel a lot, I love travelling absolutely. It is a way of getting out of the routine normal daily life. Everyone of us, in one way or other, is victim to the set norms and unwritten rules of daily life. We get hardly time to relax ourselves, both in body and soul. Once we get time off our work, some would like to be at home and just idle away; but some would tend to grab the backpacks and get away. Given an option, I would like to fall into the second category.

This year has not been very eventful. Almost every holiday this year was on a weekend. Due to this and for other reasons, we didn't travel much this year. But, finally got a chance in October. We had a company-wide Workshop arranged in a little town in south-eastern Bavaria (Chiemgau region) and I just coupled it with a small 2-days outing in the weekend that followed.

One of the fountains in front of the Herrenchiemsee

Bavaria is a state in the south of Germany, called 'Bayern' in German. It has a culture of its own and stands quite apart from the rest of Germany. We had our workshop arranged in a small Bavarian town called Bernau, situated in a picturesque landscape, sorrouded by the Bavarian Alps. We started our day relaxed. A short tread from our hotel took us to the moors. Later that afternoon, we went to visit the Chiemsee. It is the largest lake in Bavaria and consists of two main islands Herreninsel (translates to Male island), Fraueninsel (Female island) and another small Krautinsel. A boat trip of about 20 mins took us to the Herreninsel. After a small walk around the island, we visited a palace Herrenchiemsee, built by a Bavarian King Ludwig II, inspired by the Palace of Versailles in France. The tour around the palace took no more than half an hour, but every room inside was elaborately decorated and worth admiring. The island also has an age-old monastery, which we didn't have time to visit.

Kampanwand

The next day, we went off to a nearby hill called Kampenwand, which was highly recommended by some of my colleagues. We went by cable car up the hill. The day was refreshingly sunny and the view from above was fantastic. On one side of the hill, we could see the entire Chiemsee with all the three islands, another lake Simsee at a distance and the little towns and fields in the neighbourhood. On the other side, lay the beautiful valley with the snow covered Alpen peaks at a distance. We trekked around the hill a little, though many were involved in light and serious mountain climbings on the stony rocks over the hill. We just enjoyed seeing them climb. We then had baked potatoes for lunch in one of the Bavarian restaurants there. Late in the afternoon, we got down and it was time to return back home. On the whole, it was a wonderful small relaxed picnic to be remembered for ever. :-)