Prien am Chiemsee, Germany

Krug has completed all of the fixes to Rosie, so we can get back on the road!  Our next scheduled event, the Krug off-road weekend, isn’t until April 26, so we have a week or so to meander around Germany.  Looking at Google Maps I see a reasonably sized lake, Chiemsee, with a largeish island in it, Herreninsel  (“Man’s Island”, not to be confused with the much more petite nearby island Fraueninsel aka, you guessed it, “Women’s Island” – severe shortage of imagination during the island naming process, perhaps a beverage or two would have helped).

We encounter something new… apparently in Europe there are dedicated parking lots for motorhomes and only motorhomes (caravans, aka camping trailers, need not apply). You can park overnight, or in some cases for several days, in these parking lots, as long as you don’t display any “camping behaviour”. After some research, it turns out that camping behaviour means any activities taking place outside the motorhome (e.g. putting out chairs, bbq’s, etc). As long as you stay inside your motorhome, with occasional jaunts into the local area to spend your tourist dollars in the local economy, you are welcome to park.

There were two entrances to parking lots, side-by-side, and we took the wrong entrance of course. We ended up in a Marina and had to turn around (a typical 50-point turn around for Rosie) and we got to the exit gate. We paid for our 20 minutes in the parking lot (about 6 euros) and tried to get the exit gate to open. Which it wouldn’t. It turns out that the exit gate has a sensor embedded in the pavement next to the exit gate controller. When the sensor detects a vehicle it signals the gate controller to accept the exit ticket. Rosie is too high off the ground to trigger the sensor, so we couldn’t use our fully paid for ticket. Fortunately there was a call button on the gate controller, so we managed to talk to someone who eventually raised the gate for us (just to get rid of the troublesome tourists I think).

We couldn’t pull a U-turn into the correct entry gate, so we had to drive a few kilometers until we found a place to turn Rosie around. Finally managed to get into the correct parking lot!