I fought the law and the law won.

You know the old adage: "When the cat's away, the mice will play!" Well, on Friday while the mice were away, the cat played--and got his paws slapped! I'll let Bob tell the story.

I rode the bike to several towns (Eschenlohe, Murnau and Oberau) north of here on Friday and explored all day. On my way back, I was pretty tired and hot so decided to stay on the main road all the way home instead of various small bike paths. The road didn't seem different than any other road, so on I went.

Then I saw the road go into what appeared to be a small tunnel, 50 meters or so, I thought. So I rode on a small raised "sidewalk" off to the side away from the traffic, and didn't think too much of the experience. 

The tunnel went on . . . and on . .  AND ON . . . for several kilometers. I was able to stay the course until the tunnel ended. I have since discovered it was the Farchant Tunnel, formerly the longest in Germany! 

Then blue lights flashed to my left and I was pulled over by the polizei(police). They were incredulous that I would venture into such a "risky" situation. I explained there were no signs about bikes or pedestrians but they read me the riot act anyway.  

I produced my passport upon request and they asked me a lot of questions: Where I was from? Where I was staying? ("At your girlfriend's house?" They must get a lot of crazy foreigners around here, huh?!)

I initially asked them (in German) if they spoke English but their reply was in German: "Your German is good enough!" So the whole conversation from then on was in German. Busted again!

As they looked at my passport and took down notes, they asked, "Is this your birthday?" I said yes. From that point on, they started pulling my leg. "Herr Tullmann, this problem will cost you a lot of money. BUT because it's your birthday, we'll let you off!" So they made a kind of joke out of the whole thing.

They had me put my bike in their van and I was sure we were headed for the polizei station. But apparently they just wanted to get me off the highway to safety.

I asked if they had ever been to America and the main guy said that they were just poor polizei but that his driver was actually rich... So more joking around. They were very nice in the end. Just doing their job and having a good time of it.

So that was it!

PS Dorothy had the camera for the day so all of the above photos are from Wikipedia, as linked above.