Blogging turns out to have been even scarcer than originally anticipated over the last few days, due to a combination of (a) Ryoh-ohki�s Bluetooth card throwing some kind of obscure fit � the card�s lights show it�s getting power, but the computer doesn�t seem able to see it: (b) my forgetting the password I need to post to Blogger via e-mail from the Clie: and (c) the hotels I�ve been staying in all being more or less computer-unfriendly � nowhere to plug in the wires, or the phone systems have been digital rather than analog, or variants on the theme. Oh well. Tomorrow I go wireless again � the hotel where Peter and I will be staying for our meetings is 802.11-friendly, and so is Munich Airport.
Weather has been iffy. The night I hit Munich it was surprisingly cold, and the guy at the hotel told me they�d just had a rather unseasonable snowstorm. Sure enough, the next morning�s �panoramabilder� program on cable showed livecams from ski area after ski area, all boasting new snowfall up in the mountains � in some cases up to a foot of it. Nights have been uniformly cold, with temperatures hovering around freezing, even though days have been growing warmer than usual � upper 60s to low 70s. I�m presently sitting in a �country� beer hall in Aying, a suburb of Munich, and it�s about 70 out. Not quite warm enough for me; I�m inside. (Ryoh-ohki�s screen isn�t much good outside when the sky�s too bright.)
It�s been a frustrating few days in terms of hardware failures of one kind or another. Just when I could really use the Bluetooth to go online, I can�t do it: even the Clie is suffering because its charger seems to have gone belly-up, and the �trickle� charge from the USB-to-Clie hard link is too slow to do much good. The Clie�s implementation of the iPass local-dialing software is also acting up for reasons I don�t understand. I take all this as a subtle message from the Universe that I shouldn�t get too hung up on the hardware, and should kick back and enjoy the scenery. Nonetheless, I have my excerpt from Wizard�s Holiday ready to post, and it�s frustrating not to be able to do it today, since I know people have been waiting for it. Oh well: tomorrow is going to have to be soon enough.
Meanwhile, two nice hotels to add to the collection: the little Hotel Kaiser in Bregenz � very good value for money, a snug and luxurious kind of place � and the Brauereigasthof Aying, run by the Aying brewery. More luxurious yet, though a little more expensive than the Kaiser (which was not terribly expensive at all). Bregenz is a nice little town by the Bodensee: in some ways it reminds me of Chur, in Switzerland � a compact �old town� full of intent shoppers and good small restaurants and pubs. They were setting up the Saturday market in the marketplace when my cab arrived this morning: I was sorry I couldn�t stay, but my train schedule was more or less set in stone if I wanted to be in Aying by early afternoon. Aying is more of a village: very small, quite rural, about half an hour out of Munich on the S-bahn. A nice place for a summer day out, in slightly better weather.
The Liebhard �beer hall� across from the hotel has a surprisingly adventurous menu for such a place. One offering was medallions of venison in a juniper and oyster-mushroom sauce. Another was geschnezeltes of springbok with wild mushrooms and buttered spaezli (teeny little dumplings, often panfried when they don�t come in a sauce). I wasn�t up for anything quite so heavy, and settled on Nurnberger sausages (they�re small, and always come in sixes) with some sauerkraut, brown bread and horseradish, and a couple of glasses of the Aying brewery�s �Celebrator� dopplebock. A rich beer: you wouldn�t drink more than a couple of these.
There�s only one problem with these wonderful foreign beers. They introduce you to wonderful foreign yeasts, and the result is what Peter tends to characterize as �the horns of Elfland faintly blowing.� Or not so faintly. I think tomorrow I go back to wine, and wait for the wind to die down, as it were.
