49N13E

Visit to 49N/13E by Ray, Oliver and Sec - 17 Mar 2001

Our submitted pictures:

OK, so this is the second confluence we visited on Saturday, 17-Mar-2001. Starting from our parked car near 48N/12E we took an Autobahn which was heading almost directly east but a little bit south. For this area we only had an old 1:100.000 map, but that was enough to decide where we should leave the Autobahn and how to approach the confluence from there. We decided to drive on the Autobahn as long as possible and exit at the small village of Metten, because that way we could visit a small castle we saw on the map, "Schloss Egg", on the way.

This time, even though we were cruising at 155mph again, we didn't miss the exit, and easily found to "Schloss Egg" where we stopped and took some pictures which are also available at our confluence page http://conflu.i.st/

After about a quarter hour we continued to our real destination, the area was quite hilly and the road wound up and down in a lot of serpentines, so we prepared for a tougher walk through the woods this time.

After missing the right roads a couple of times :) we finally arrived in direct vicinity of the confluence, on a road going around a small forest which constantly seemed about 0.6 miles away from our destination. We drove it back and forth two times, trying some smaller roads in hope that they would bring us nearer, but they all dead-ended much too early to be of any use. We almost accepted that we would have to walk the 0.6 miles through dense and wet forest, when we decided to give it another try and drive the road the other way around, which didn't look particularly promising because the forest was on a hill and the next road that we could see from here was far below; but the rain convinced us to give it a try anyway.

We had to drive over a mile away from the confluence point when we found a road which at least led back into the right direction. After taking it we saw another road which seemed to go up the hill, directly into the forest, and yes, it did. It took us to a spot only 0.1 miles away from the confluence, where we even found a good place to park the car. And this time we marked it with a waypoint in the GPS.

Following a footpath into the woods we tried to get a better impression of where North was this time (as we still did not have a real compass but the GPS). Even though GPS reception wasn't the best due to the many trees, we finally found a position which looked promising. We didn't manage to get a perfect all-zero reading from the GPS, but decided that 49/00.001N,13/00.000E was good enough and so we put up a stick on the position and took our photographs.

It was quite dark, due to the trees, the weather, and the fact that it was 5PM, so the photos aren't perfect, and the ones with flashlight look as if it was deep in the night, but I think they still give a good impression of how it looks in the area. Taking the auto-shutter picture of us at the confluence, my camera almost fell of the tree that we put it on, but I managed to catch it and we suceeded on the second attempt (only that you can't really see the stick, because Oliver is standing in front of it :).

Finding back to the car was much easier this time, we wouldn't really have needed the GPSs for that. But for finding the right way back through all the small villages that we passed on the way, the recorded track was quite helpful. We took the exact same way back, because Sec had spotted a McDonald's sign in Metten before and we were feeling a bit hungry after two confluence visits in a row in Bavarian forests. It turned out that this location actually became the most difficult to find of our entire trip after all. Not only the sign, also the McDonald's was carefully hidden. But that's another story, in case you're in the area, it's at 48/51.057N, 12/57.624E. Why can't they just put that on these signs instead of misleading arrows? Moreover, it wasn't even worth the search as we found another one immediately after taking the Autobahn back to Munich.