9 miles of adventure with my friend of 36 years: Lisa

We just spent a perfect day to escape / face the heat: Museum and beergarden!

The old Anatomie Museum in Ingolstadt, where Frankenstein performed his experiments, is a hidden gem in the oldtown. It has fascinating artifacts of medicine, diseases, tools and equipment on display, a helpful audiotour option and everything explained in German and English. The adjacent herb garden with lots of medicinal plants hosts a little cafe, where we had lunch – delicious!

My favorite part however is the herb garden

And the cafe

Afterwards we picked up my sister from work, which is a 5 min walk way, had some refreshments, then a few more refreshment, before we met my highschool friend Wendl in a beergarden to get some – you guessed it right – refreshments!

While we have all the fun here, my brother Jürgen got Covid AGAIN and is at home in quarantine. He is still suffering from longCovid for 16 months now, caught it and is sick again. 😖😖😖

As you read in my previous post, the suitcase had arrived, but my medications didn’t. Yesterday I had a doctors appointment, talked with her for ~20 min and got all my medications prescribed for 3 months! (My doctor in California refused to prescribe me anything for more than 1 month) And because I don’t have health insurance in Germany, I had to pay everything out of my pocket. So here it is: Please sit down!!!

Doctors visit: €72

6 medications + 2 over the counter medications – everything for 3 months: €155

That is way less what I pay as a co-payment for 1 months, not to speak of the doctors visit, which is ridiculously low! The US health system seems to have a disease of its own and is not able to fix it!

Fun fact: people in Germany complain about their healthcare, because they have to wait for an appointment and have a (minimal) co-payment for medications and procedures. I think they would change their attitude immediately after visiting the US and being in need of medical assistance.

Many years ago, my mom came for a visit and had a problem with an ingrown toenail. We went to urgent care, the doctor had a look (2min), sent a nurse in to take care of it (15min) and the cost was $570 for that visit!

Being in Northern Europe for the first 6 weeks, I thought it would be a smart idea to send a suitcase with summer clothes, books, projects and my teaching materials to my moms house in Germany instead of schlepping everything through 15+ countries. Brilliant idea! And I’ll pack my medicine in it, my shorts, textbooks and a few gifts for my mom of course. And I will have this suitcase shipped so it arrives right around the time when we will be here, beginning of July. Great $180 plan! Today, August 1st, it finally arrived after being stuck at customs for a month.

They have taken this suitcase apart and checked every inch of it very thoroughly. And they found illegal contents in the form of American prescription drugs in it (along with the actual prescription from my doctor)! Yes, several months worth of drugs. Little did I know that it is illegal to import drugs as a private person, so the extensive email exchange that was going on for the last month kept on getting more and more annoying. What a nuisance that was! But they finally granted me a exception and didn’t destroy or send back my suitcase because they believed me that all my teaching materials are very important to me and I need them asap! So they destroyed the drugs and send me the suitcase afterall. 😵‍💫 Bureaucracy at it’s finest!

So tomorrow at 9.30am I’m going to have a doctors visit to get all those prescriptions filled again. 😤😤😤

What I learned from this? Always have your drugs with you! Do not send them, take them with you!!!

I can’t help it, but I love old, weathered, rusty stuff! Forgotten things and deserted buildings make my heart beat faster, as I imagine all the stories that happened in this building, all the people going in and out of those doors and looking out of those windows…

Today is our last day in Muslone and it was an adventure! We decided to take a ship to Sirmione, a town at the end of a 4km long peninsula sticking out into the lake at the southern end. Unfortunately thousands of other people had a similar plan, so all of us met there today 😖 It was jampacked, the restaurants were busy, the streets were clogged, but it is a beautiful old town with an old castle – of course!

When we walked towards the harbor, Ted started running off as if a wasp got in his pants! I tried to catch up just to see him taking photos and talking to a few drivers / capitains of a group of „boat-cars / amphicars“, who were just about to drive into the lake. Over the last few days we occasionally saw a handful of them driving around the lake, but today we hit the jackpot: about 35-40 of them gathered right where we were and drove into the lake! How lucky we were!!!

And the last surprise of the day happened on our way back: we boarded the ship on schedule and started the 1.5 hour voyage back when a big thunderstorm build up. Lightnings, thunder and rain – very dramatic!

Our hope that it will be over upon arrival turned out to be wishful thinking: we ran into a bar, ate a panini there and drank a glass of wine before walking in the rain half a mile uphill to the car. A hot shower at home just felt like heaven!

Lots of houses have those small shrines with Madonna statues in them. Very thoughtful, beautiful reminders of their believes…

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It seems that we are not slowing down yet: 7 countries in July (Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Italy). So far, Ted and I still like each other, nobody slept on the sofa (yet), we laugh together, we take showers together, we cuddle and kiss 🥰 Life is good! Nobody is homesick, we have not switched on the TV since we left home – except the finals of the womens soccer game tonight! We read, play cards, talk, plan and enjoy each other’s company.

A new friend we met along the way is Sandra, a very nice person with a great attitude, remarkable personality and a big heart! Harald & Beate, enthusiastic, fun and helpful – hopefully we’ll all be neighbors in Muslone, Italy one day! And then there is Enzo, the owner of Muslones alimentari store, who teaches me something new every time we stop by: for example that the locals don’t say Gorgonzola, they pronounce it more like Gorgonzöla. Very important! And of course my niece Saskia, who visited us in Italy for 4 days (only). Saskia has 5 siblings and it is very rare to have her to ourself, because the family is so big. Having her all to ourselves was a delight, a lot of fun, comforting and made me feel proud to be her aunt!

Fun fact: with Saskia you always get the prime seating at a restaurant (I wonder why) 🤪, you get to try the very special samples of olive oil and limoncello that are not even on display 🥳, you get somebody explaining everything at a store, etc. 🤩. The neighbor guys rang the doorbell every day to invite her for a swim or a cardgame. But the downside: when you ask for the check at a restaurant, it takes forever – they don’t want us (I mean her) to leave!

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Now we are back in Germany with my mom, we enjoy being with family, but I do, I really do miss Italy! Muslone was the first location on this trip that made me very sad when we left. I did not want to leave. Saying good-bye to Enzo, waving to „our“ vacation home on the way down the hill, it hurt. I wanted to stay, I need to go back!

Todays plan was to hike down from Muslone to Gargnago, have lunch, then take the bus up the hill to Muslone. „Pfiffkaas“ as the Germans would say, it didn’t work out that way. At least the second part of the day looked slightly different.

So we started hiking downhill…

It was a beautiful hike along cobblestone trails, Olive orchards and – what used to be – lemon orchards, back in the days before lemon were cultivated and subsidized in Sicily.

But the bus didn’t come!

And the next one at 3pm didn’t show up either…

So we decided to bite into the sour apple and hike 4 miles uphill during the hottest time of the day 😤😤😤