|
Day 1: Edinburgh to Rosyth and Zeebrugge (10th March)
Got a late start on things, especially with trying to figure out how to strap all the stuff on my bike again. Nuraini
spent a good deal of time laughing at me as I tried to get it all together.
Nu, Christina and I set out from Haymarket and biked up the Queensferry Road to Cramond for a bit of lunch (or in my
case, breakfast). I am not used to this anymore, and it took us a couple of hours to get there, but it was worth it to see
Cramond, which is a small fishing village on the Forth, NW of Edinburgh.
Nu had to head back to Edinburgh to work, but Christina was toying with the idea of staying out of town a night, and
so continued on for a while. However, a really sucky stretch of A road convinced her to turn around and head home, as well.
Christina, guess what? About 15 minutes after where we parted ways, you're at the Forth Bridges. The view was marvellous,
but since it was only 4:15pm, I decided I'd try and make the 5pm ferry at Rosyth, and so, sorry, no pictures.
It almost killed me getting there, and I was just barely in time. I was still untying straps on my bike when they were
closing up the entry ramps. The ride was choppy, so I didn't sleep too well. The view as we passed under the bridges was pretty
cool though. A good last look at Scotland for the next few years.
Day 2: Zeebrugge to Brugge (11th March)
So, I finally got used to the rocking of the boat a few hours before we docked. The result was about 2 hours sleep and
a bad mix of subsiding sea-sickness, lack of sleep and grogginess. Not a good way to start the day.
I decided to hit Brugge for a few days and use that as a base to start things. It's only 18km from the port at Zeebrugge,
so this is not stunning progress. On the other hand, Brugge is a beautiful city in the centre. The row-houses are very Dutch:
tall, narrow, brick affairs with pulley-blocks in the gables. The streets are narrow, and there is a network of canals winding
through the city. The streets and waterways of Brugge wind in a haphazard organic fashion, instead of the symmetrical straightaways
of Amsterdam. I find this more pleasing to wander through.
So, I'm bunked up at the Snuffel hostel, in Ezzelstraat, about to head off and catch up on some sleep. Tomorrow, I'll
take a look around the city. Hope it's warmer and less windy tomorrow.
Day 3: Brugge (12th March)
Didn´t do much. Slept in, went to the supermarket for some spices and stuff and hit the butcher´s for fresh pork chops.
Belgium turns out to be really good for having lots of small shops with fresh food, like this. There´s a lot to be said for
being able to go next door to the local butcher and get exactly what you want.
Cooked up my meagre dinner (which apparently makes me "The Chef" in this little hostel), and spent the night playing
cards and sucking back Belgian beer. Mmmm... 8.5%, those naughty Trappist monks!
Day 4: Still Brugge (13th March)
Brugge is a beautiful city, and what better way to see it than spend a day in a wild goose chase for mussels? Brugge
has a permanent open-air fishmarket square. It´s a beautiful little colonade, but on a Sunday, apparently only yard-sale type
people with ten year-old dog-eatten action figures are selling anything. There are no fish, there.
So, having risen at the ungodly hour of 10:30am, specifically to help Matthew find these mussels that he was going
to cook us for lunch, we decided to scour the town for a source of fresh fish. Instead, we found beautiful church yards, swans,
way too many chcolateries, windmills, Belgian waffles sold from the back of a Volkswagen and a drawbridge that we discovered
we could raise by hand. We planned to come back after nightfall and raise it, but got too drunk and forgot. Surprise, suprise.
A few more rounds back at the hostel, and I introduced everyone to the game of Celebrity Heads. Pretty soon, everyone
in the hostel bar was coming up, asking what we were doing, then borrowing our marker and paper to start their own games.
Our favourite spin-off game was a spanish guy and a french guy playing by themselves. When we could read their tags, we still
couldn´t figure out who they were meant to be.
Day 5: Brugge to Gent (14th March)
I set out to go straight to Antwerp. I wanted to follow what my Michelin road map assured me was a national highway with
bike access, number N49 from Maldegem. However, at Maldegem, I discovered that N49 had been upgraded to an expressway *years
ago*, and was now closed to bicycle traffic.
I ended up going south to Gent, and passing through Adegem, where there is a Canadian War cemetary, with most
of those buried coming from the 1944 post D-Day push up towards the Netherlands. There were kids there from Winnipeg, Toronto,
Halifax, all over the place. And a lot of them were ridiculously young, 18, 19, 20, years old. There were a few in their 30s
but not many. You think of war veterans as old men with white hair and blue blazers in wheelchairs, not kids who never even
got to be your age.
Gent itself is an okay city. Not on my list to go back to, but not too pushy or crowded. The mediaeval core is
relatively small, and much of the downtown is new buildings. Not sure if this is due to bombardment in the world-wars, or
a forward-looking civil desgin ethic.
The skyline is dominated by 3 towers, two of them church steeples, trying to outdo each other, and the third (and
tallest) a massive belfry raised by the merchant guilds, probably just to make a point about who was in charge in the city.
There's also an entire ducal castle right in the middle of the city that got lost for a few a centuries.
It just became part of the neighbourhood, and its walls became the basis for putting up shops, pubs, houses and even
a couple of factories. Some time in the 1880´s, a few people with a lot of money and nothing better to do started asking
if anyone had seen a castle lying around lately, as all the best cities seemed to have them, and hadn´t Gent had something
like that at one time? The archival photos and drawings showing the old neighbourhood being torn down and stripped away to
reveal the castle inside it are quite amazing.
Also camped out for the first time that night. It was a pretty cold.
Day 6: Gent to St. Niklaas (15th March)
Finally got myself a decent map in Gent and managed to take some country roads to St. Niklaas, on my way to Antwerp.
Spent the day passing small farms with chickens and ducks in the front yard, and a succession of little villages,
each with one pub as the centre point. This part of Flanders is so agricultural that even the local army base had a yard with
hens, geese, and goats. Of course, their enclosure sued military-grade barbed wire, but was otherwise identical to the yards
of the neighbouring houses.
Day 7: St. Niklaas to Antwerp (16th March)
More lazy countryside Belgium until hitting the big smoke at Antwerp.
What can I say? I´m not a fan of big cities. Parts of Antwerp felt like being right back in Toronto: wide avenues
you have to sprint across so as not to get run down, entire blocks being one office building, trash in the streets, people,
people, everywhere!
But they have a Gregg's! I had myself a chicken pastie, although I got a funny look from the woman behind the
counter when I asked for it and had to point. Guess they call it something else in Dutch. (Pulp Fiction moment...)
I spent a good part of the day trying to figure out where to sleep. Found the New Central Youth Hotel, but they
wanted €18.50 a night, and had no kitchen. They were really just a pokey little hotel that had gone way downmarket and
converted a few rooms to dorms. I thought I´d try for a campsite. The city has two of them. One on St. Annastrand is beatifully
located with a view across the harbour of the old city, the other is next to the YHA in the gnarly crotch of two massive expressways.
Both are still closed for the season. There is one and only one backpackers´ in the city, and the guy already had 34
people in 24 beds.
So, the crappy hotel it was. The only plus in this was that there was a church square nearby, ringed with restaurants
and cafes, so I had a good wholesome Italian dinner, and then spent the evening in the square watching the local Arab boys
play some mighty fine football in the square and getting pleasantly pissed on Cristal and Duvel while chatting up the waitress.
Day 8: Antwerp to Zilvermeer (17th March)
Surprisingly not hung-over, I headed out of Antwerp along the Albert Kanaal. This is a big commercial canal, busy
with barges heading into Holland and Germany. At Antwerp, it´s all busy harbour offloading areas, which while legally accessible
to all, are not really great for cycling through. However, since I didn´t want to lose the canal, I dodged cranes, trains,
and aqngry junkyard dogs to follow the towpath out into the country.
The canalside ride outside the city is smooth and beautiful, and eventually lead me to one of the Landeslijk Fietsepaden,
a network of signposted scenic cycle paths that crisscross Flanders and the Netherlands. I followed these on the way to Eindhoven,
stopping for the night at Zilvermeer provincial park.
The campground there was about the closest thing you´re likely to get to Canadian style camping in Belgium: that
is to say that there were trees and water nearby. Otherwise, it´s the usual European standby of avenue after avenue of caravan
plots, separated by scraggily bushes. No fly-ridden kaibos here, but a state-of-the-art sanitary complex in stone, steel
and bright red plastic, with ranks of washbasins, a laundromat, vast washrooms and showers, with a lobby for snack-vending
machines and phones. And everything, including the showers, ran on a pre-pay magnetic key system. Ten years from now, they´ll
be tattooing a barcode on your neck at checkin.
Day 9: Zilvermeer to Eindhoven (18th March)
The Belgian countryside is ver relaxing and very flat. Field after field with grass, wheat, and livestock. It's
kind of like the prairies, but with trees from time to time, so you don't feel like you're going to ride off the edge
of the planet
I crossed the border into the Netherlands somewhere in the woods, or maybe at that little village with the goat
tied to the bike rack out front of the variety store. I don't exactly know, it's all very low-key. You just eventually
notice that the road signs are a little different.
The core of Eindhoven is a nightmare knot of freeways, tunnels, and train lines, culminating in a couple of massive
modern glass and steel boxes that seem to be malls. Clearly, this part of Eindhoven got the snot bombed out of it during the
second world war and was then rebuilt by aliens with a sick sense of humour. The market area wasn't too bad, and I got some
decent maps and some KFC, but I needed out of there pretty fast.
I eventually biked on until about 11pm, until I found a picnic area beside the path where I reckoned I wouldn't
be disturbed. If you don't count the frogs, I wasn't. Score another free night's sleep. And hours further beyond Eindhoven
than I'd planned.
Day 10: Grotel (NE of Eindhoven) to Groesbeek (SE of Nijmegen)
(19th March)
Spent the day following national bike trails up the Maas River to Groesbeek, on my way to Nijmegen. It's a
beautiful ride, and really makes me glad I'm doing this trip. The day started out foggy and wet but cleared up nicely by the
end. Even the deep fog of the first part of the day was really gorgeous.
I camped again for free, courtesy of the national park system, this time in a picnic grounds at Groesbeek Forest
park. The tent and bike system is turning out to be a godsend, moneywise. Of course, most of the budget was always going to
be food, anways.
Day 11: Nijmegen (20th March)
Nijmegen is a nice little city. It's well spaced-out, balanced between industry and neighbourhoods, and has a pleasant
downtown. Rather than just passing in and out, as has been my habit with cities thus far, I settled in at a nearby campground,
and then went back to town for a movie and a night at the cafe drinking Leffe Blonde and writing, with the occasional broken
Dutchlish conversation.
Day 12: Nijmegen to Arnhem (21st March)
The ride from Nijmegen to Arnhem was mostly along the Waaldijk, which basically keeps everybody in between Nijmegen
and Arnhem dry when the rivers flood in the spring. It was kind of nice to spend a whole day biking along above
rooftop level and being able to see all around.
The approach to Arnhem from the south is across a broad flood plain, which is bridged in two places. I cross at
the west, across what I later discovered was the NelsonMandelaBruge. I don`t think there´s a historical connection
here, just a lot of civic enthusiasm.
Arnhem was an alright city, but it felt a lot bigger and busier than Nijmegen. I might have spent longer there,
but there´s only one hostel, an HI, and it wanted €20.50 a night. I elected for "free", instead, and biked up into the
heavy forest north of the city to set up camp.
Day 13: Arnhem to Grietherort (Germany!) (22nd March)
I was awakened by somebody calling outside my tent. I found this odd, as I had specifically taken myself way, way
off the path, so as not to get busted by some park warden or late-night busybody. I came out expecting the worst, only to
find a black guy with expensive trainers and trousers too short to keep the thornbushes from scratching him, hopping
about the bush. I´m not too clear on what he was doing out there alone at 7am, miles from anywhere with no pack, jacket, etc.,
but he basically just needed to know where the nearest path was so he could get back into Arnhem. Now, I was a good half-hour's
bike ride from the nearest road of any kind, let alone buildings, so lord only knows where he appeared from. I asked him,
but he misunderstood my question, and shouted over his shoulder that he was from Africa, and then scampered back off in not-quite-the-direction
I'd pointed him in.
I figured that was as good a time as any to start off, so I packed up, biked back down into town, swung by the Airborne
monument, and then headed down the east side of the Rhein and on into Germany. The Rhein valley is very broad and shallow
here, and at this time of year, the pastures beyond the dikes are flooding up, creating marshes all over. These breed thousands
of bugs. I have no windscreen. 'Nuff said?
Finally decided to call it a day around 8:30 or so, and meandered over to the Campingplatz Grietherort, which is
not on my map. If you're out this way and feel like camping with facilites, instead of rough in the woods, I recommend this
place. It`'s a nice area, the bathrooms and showers are clean (not a given with your average private camping ground), and
the couple who run it are very nice, although the husband speaks no English. But most importantly, they have beer and deep-fried
food at the reception. I feasted down on schnitzel, sausages, and chips, and washed it down with rivers of fine German Pilsener.
€5 for the camping, €0.50 for the shower, and about €10 in food and beer, for two days. Not too shabby,
I thought.
Day 14: Grietherort to Dinslaken (23rd March)
It's all green and slow around Grietherort. How quickly all that changes. I am now approaching the point where
the Rhur joins the Rhein: Germany´s industrial heartland.
As the day prorgressed the surroundings changed from a majority of parkland and farms to a mixture of green river-verge
and houses, to pretty much houses and roads. And this is only the start. My map shows increasingly densly packed citys and
industrial areas.
I camped for the night in an NSG, a protected nature area, the onlz bit of wilderness in an urban jungle. Rest
assured that the bit where I slept was not ecologically sensitive (otherwise why were they building a bloody great road through
it?) I hardly had to use my torch, either: the light from a gigantic factorz nearby was more than enough to light up mz tent.
Day 15: Dinslaken to Entenfang (South Duisberg) (24th March)
Today was a bit of a drag.
It was all urban biking, but really gruelling. The Rhein becomes very industrial here, and there is no access
to the waterfront at some points, due to enormous factories.
The scale of some of these things is not to be believed. We simply do not have industry on this scale in Canada,
except for some mining operations. There was a single factory that it took me 20 minutes to cycle past. I think that makes
it about 6km long on one side. This was a continuous factory building operated by a single company (Thyssen somethingorother).
This thing was so big, that the company had its own fire department, trucks and all. I later learned that this is not unusual
for the larger chemical companies, and that these private fire departments work closely with public fire departments. At most
fires involving chemicals in this part of Germany, a fire crew from Bayer or Henkel will attend because they know more about
the hazards.
Even main roads are simply a bit of an inconvenience to some companies, with the underpasses and flyover pipe
bridges dwarfing the 6 lane freeways that divide their campuses. I stood on one bridge, watching a small engine shunt two
very rusty rail cars along a private rail line under the highway, wondering why they were bothering. As the cars passed
under me, I was blasted with heat from a glowing open hole in the top of each one, and I realised that these were two train-car-sized
buckets of molten metal. Looking at the rest of the yard, I saw more of this going on, and realised they were passing around
hundreds of tons of red-hot liquid metal the way we pass glasses of water at lunch.
Anyways, I was forced to come inland and try to get towards Dussledorf. This is quite difficult as every direct
avenue in this area is so overused that it has been upgraded to an expressway. So, with a bike, you must actually zigzag back
and forth, finding minor roads that take you closer to your goal, while crossing and recrossing the freeways and rail lines
that are actually going straight where you want to go.
After much frustration, I ended up at the one campground in the area, on a tiny lake, trapped between a major
highway and a train marshalling yard. It was like something out of a distopian sci-fi novel. Hundreds of urban Germans getting
their one shot at nature in a kilometre (if that) wide strip of land trapped between roaring lanes of people urgently going
somewhere else. All night, I was wakened by passing freight trains and car horns. This is not camping, as we know it.
Day 16: Entenfang to Holthausen (South Dusseldorf) (25th March)
News flash: it's Easter!
I'd like to thank Carlo Bastianutto and Eleanora Geller for their Easter emails which I managed to recieve after
the fact in Cologne.
In the mean time, I started my day blissfully unaware that *everything* would be closed. It was the day my bicycle
carrier finally decided to break, and do you think I could find an open bike shop? Of course not. So, there I was, in the
middle of Dusseldorf, disassembling my baggage (Nu: I'm much faster about getting the stuff on and off, now!) and my bike
and *stomping* on my bike carrier to bend it back into shape. And it started raining on me.
So, very much behind schedule, and really hoping I'd be able to find the campground marked on my map in the urban
jungle that is Dusseldorf, I was standing at a crossroads, with mzy map out, scratching my head, when a local couple, Peter
and Sandra, rode up on a pair of those neat reclining bicycles. We discussed the best way to the campground I wanted to get
to for a while, and then they suggested that I could crash in their living room instead, as they lived much closer.
Having spent the last week and more in the tent, I took them up on their very kind offer. So, we went back to
their flat in Holthausen, and after a much-needed shower, we sat down to Good Friday dinner. The first stage of this was the
traditional egg-painting (which none of us had done in years, but seemed like a good idea). We had a proper fish dinner and
then spent a few hours talking over a bottle of wine. Anyone who knows me knows that this means I did most of the talking.
Some things I simply cannot change. :)
So, to Christmas in Edinburrgh, I can now add Easter in Germany. It was a very welcome break at an otherwise frustrating
part of my trip, and I'm grateful for it.
Day 17: Holthausen to Köln (26th March)
So, I had a good sleep in at Peter and Sandra's and then we had a proper breakfast with cereal, bread, cheese,
and some very organic-looking French sausage. There's nothing like a good start to a daz and a bit of sunshine to improve
zour outlook.
The ride through south Dussledorf was much more relaxed. There are a few really good stretches by the river, and
I crossed over by ferry to come into Köln on the East side of the river. The ride down is very nice, and with this being a
holiday weekend, a lot of people were out relaxing in the fields beside the river. A few weeks back, a lot of these people
would have been under water, I think. There are still trails of flotsam on the fields where the spring tide has receded.
The Station had space, as I hoped, and so I dumped my stuff and headed directly for the supermarket. I have a
whole chicken and some veggies and spices, and I intend to take full advantage of having a kitchen for once to make a proper
Easter dinner tomorrow.
Directly after I finished writing this, I joined a party in progress at the table behind me and drank the night
away with an Aussie bloke, a Japanese bloke, and Ronnie & Kat, a German and an Aussie. After about an hour or so, it comes
up that the two of them lived in Scotland. Where? Edinburgh? Where in Edinburgh? A hostel. Which one? You guessed, it: Princes
Street. It turns out that they met in the Cave about 7 years ago! Sadly, it was Kat's going-away party I'd joined, but since
she's now back in Melbourne, we'll all likely be seeing her on the 7th for the Reunion! Small world, eh?
Day 18: Köln (27th March, Easter Sunday)
Became conscious around noon or so, found myself in bed upside down. Couldn't actually make it out of bed for
another 2 hours. Spent the day walking around the city with Franziska and Anna, 2 German girls from Bremen. There
were actually a surprisingly large number of Germans in the hostel over the weekend, as compared to the usual high Aussie
factor.
The three of us and Theo, a very European-oriented Irish guy sat down to a proper Easter dinner:
Chicken noodle soup to start
Roast chicken, stuffed with a mix of diced apples, onion, and shallot
Spiced potato wedges
Mushroom & shallot gravy
Mixed buttered veggies
and Chocolate Easter eggs to finish up
It was all highly satisfactory, although the image of me carving the last bits of meat from the chicken carcass
to save for leftovers stayed with a few people for days. It's amazing, but because people don't cook these days, nobody is
used to seeing a whole chicken skeleton, as opposed to the occasional wing bone at KFC.
After dinner, we got invited out to a DJ'd art exhibition/underground party. As it turned out, it was literally
underground, being hosted in a vault space under a railway line. It was a very cool little happening, with a variety of new
art of all kinds, spanning drawing, painting, sculpture, mixed and found media, audio visual, and even a dark cave with a
teddy bear that had been beaten to death. As with anything, and especially new art with me, not everything appealed, but there
were some very good pieces.
Apparently, two English girls had been driving all around Europe, living in their hatchback car, and just
appeared in Köln and spent a month telling every artist they met in a bar or on the street to join them in a little exhibition.
It was a just-for-the-hell-of-it kind of thing, with no real commercial implications. There was a dead cheap bar to cover
the cost of the generator and the portable toilets outside, and everything else was just cooperative fun. It's a 2 week event,
so if you're in Köln before the 6th of April or so, ask around at the Station Bar for Simon, who plays jazz there some nights.
So, I was talking to this Simon, who's one of the artists, and finding all this out, when this girl wanders over
and then suddenly says "Hey, I know you from the hostel!" Now I'm drawing a total blank, and quickly trying to figure out
how my night ended last night and if I talked to anyone else between bidding goodnight to Ronnie & crew and passing out
on my bed. But no, she was at the Station hostel at the same time as me a year and a half ago, and a bunch of us had gone
out to a rock club in town together. Apparently, she stayed in the city, got a flat and a job, etc. Small world, eh?
Day 19: Köln (28th March, Easter Monday)
Did nuthin'.
I slept in, read the newspaper, surfed the web, and went for a little bit of a fruitless wander with Franyi and
Anna in search of some night life in the city, but mainly did nuthin'.
Day 20: Köln (29th March)
Had a relatively unproductive morning, went for a bit of a bike ride up through Mülheim in the afternoon, and
came back to the hostel to meet Ronnie for drinks in the evening. Usual hostel socialising all night with various Aussies
etc., ending at around 5:30am with me totally tired (11 hours of drinking, not bad, but foolish). I'm told that Ronnie was
still up and drinking in Reception at 9am. Loving his work.
Day 21: Köln (30th March)
Yeah, so I was supposed to get on my bike and head onwards today. Unh-hunh. Tired as hell and still a little bit
drunk by the incrediblz generous noon checkout time. I just zombie-walked downstairs and paid for an extra night, then went
up and crashed for another few hours.
I had a productive afternoon, got some mush-needed washing done, changed some bank address info, etc. That worke
dout okay.
I swore I wasn't going to drink, I was just going to chill, but I figured one beer over a game of cards couldn't
hurt. I'd been playing asshole with some Aussies, and all was fairly calm, and then we did something dumb. We noticed the
Americans at the next table pulling out a deck of cards and suggested a monster game of asshole. They were really pumped about
that. In fact unusually excited at the idea of a big game of asshole. There ended up being ten of us and three decks, and
as we played, it became clear that they all played a mutant game of asshole whose main purpose was actually to be a drinking
game.
Cue 7 hours of debacuhery, culminating at the Beer Museum bar in the Alte Markt area. Second night in a row going
there for me, third straight night for one of the Aussies. Guess we're regulars, now.
Day 22: Köln to Rolandswerth (31st March)
My early start wasn't. Don't really know why I bother pretending to myself that I'll ever get going at a decent
hour. I think I broke out around 3pm. I headed down the river through that park area that I'd first cycled through a year
and a half back, the one that made me think this whole crazy trip was possible. It didn't seem so big this time around.
There isn't really much to say about today's go. I went through Bonn, circled the town squares and looked at statues
of Beethoven, but there's very little left of any mediaeval character. The old university building is pretty neat. It goes
on for several blocks, stepping over roadways like an aqueduct, and is painted in a garish orangey-pinkey shade, with white
cornerwork. The guy in the market square near the Rathaus does a mean Jägerschnitzel, but who doesn't? Mmm... Jägermeister
and pork, a match made in heaven!
I also picked up a copy of Neal Stephenson's "Quicksilver". This is a *huge* book, 900-odd pages, and quite
a weight, but very worth the reading. Now I'm starting to run out of AA batteries, as my Maglite eats them up at nights while I
read.
The only other thing of note was the floating light effect. I took a night ride to get to my camp last night,
and it was a little misty, so the other side of the river doesn't show as crisply as it might. What I at first took to be
the night-lights of 3 harbour cranes close by the other side of the Rhein turned out to be castle terraces on three successive
hills, several kilometres back from the river. I have left the open plains of the lower Rhein behind.
Day 23: Rolandswerth to Bad Hönningen (1st April)
Things looked more interesting on the east bank of the Rhein for today, so I took the ferry across and headed
down. The main point to hit was Linz-am-Rhein. Linz is a beautiful little town, and just the sort of thing I like.
Close your eyes, imagine a steep riverside hill with a bit of flat near the river. Lay a little market
square in place by the river. Protect it with some walls. Then get a bit of business and expand, running tiny little mediaval
streets back and forth up the face of the hill, like the shuttle in a loom, weaving a cloth of houses up away from the
river. Owing to the steepness of the hill, very few roads actually can run perpendicular to the river, but there's the occasional
set of stairs between neighbouring streets. All the houses and buildings in the old city centre are half-timbered and lean
a little bit in over the often one-lane streets, making things even more claustrophobic.
The train and freeway corridor that has been added between the town and the Rhein does suck a little bit, but
not much, since anything more than a block into the rat's maze and you can't see or hear anything of them.
So, my recommendation to anyone with a bit of spare time in this part of Germany is to take a lazy summer afternoon
to wander through Linz. The shopping's good, there are plenty of beer gardens and restaurants, and I'm sure some hotels would
love to strip you of some cash if you're not staying in a hostel elsewhere.
Day 24: Bad Hönningen to the Laacher See(2nd April)
I admit that I got a late start, but nonetheless, my progress was pretty slow. Why? Because some crazy old German
guy thought I, in my youth and infinite good health, wanted to haul my bike up a kilometre-long 20% grade,
followed by another kilometre at 10%! For your reference, that's an ascent of about 300 metres in 2 kilometres.
It SUCKS! I actually had to get off and push my bike for the first part, and then stopped for a rest and
a drink at the top. The view back down the valley wasn't so bad, but it took a couple of hours, between the hard slog and
the exhausted resting to get not more than 5 kilometres from last night's camp.
So, why was I doing this? Why haul all of my gear out of the nice, easily- passable Rhein Valley? Well, I
saw a big body of water on the map marked as the "Laacher See". A big lake that they call a Sea, with a campground and everything,
so close to my path, who could resist?
Unfortunately, my map is not topographic, and so I had no way of knowing that the lake and everything else in
the area results from volcanic activity. That means a lot of steep cones and sharp valleys that were lava runs. And roads
going up and down them through a lack of choice.
Anyhow, after hours conquering this ungodly height, after no more than 10 minutes zipping across the plateau of
Lützingen, I was dropping another 250-odd meters back down the other side of this cone! I was not impressed.
Turns out that I could have avoided this entire trip, as the Laacher See was on the next cone over and I could just have taken
a leiseurely spin up the highway in the valley that I was rapidly coming down into.
Also, since the rim of the Laacher See basin is 400m above sea-level, I was in for another 300-odd meter climb,
in the space of about 5 kilometres. In this case, it was not neccessary to get off and push the bike, but it was a bitter,
bitter climb.
Was it worth it? Coming over the rim of an old volcano at sundown to see the tower-tops of a monastary cast their
shadows against reddened hills overlooking a deep blue lake: you tell me. The area is beautiful, and you truly feel that you're
closed off from the world by the high circular horizon of forests surround the lake basin.
That evening, though, just after I had made camp, that impression was broken. It began not long after 8pm, with
the bells of the monastary across the lake. They began tolling, and just kept going. At first, only echoes came back, but
then I began to hear the bells of other churches from beyond the rim: Glees, Kell, Bröhl, Lützing, Andernach, and probably
many others. The sun had long since set, and I just couldn't think why the church bells would ring out on a Saturday
night.
And then, from deep down in the Rhein valley, some ten kilometres away, came a sound that really is synonimous
with death. Mabe it's conditioning from too many war movies, but the long slow building wail of an air raid siren is one of
the most frightening things you can possibly hear. The tone built slowly at first until it became an urgent scream that drowned
out even the nearby monastary bells. Just when I thought it would never stop, it slowed again to silence, but only for long
enough that the last echoes had returned from the hills, then it began again. In all, it sounded three times, and each cycle took
maybe a minute, which may not seem like much, until you're in the middle of it, wondering if the world is coming to an end.
I guess for millions of people around the world, around 8 o'clock yesterday evening, it did in a way.
Day 25: Laacher See to Koblenz (3rd April)
Woohoo! All I can say about today is woohoo! Downhill!
The natural result of a hard day's slog up a vlocanic crater is being able to cover about the same distance you
went all day uphill in about half an hour downhill.
I pulled into Koblenz in the late afternoon, and hit the net, which pretty much sealed the rest of the day. Luckily
there is a campsite in town just around the corner. It's in a waterfront park, and right across a small river inlet is a huge,
huge statue of some Prussian warlord. I think it might be visible from orbit. The ignorant kids skateboarding on its pedestal
look like the fleas that they are.
The nice guy at reception directed me to a Gästhaus down the road where they served up some really good Hänchen
Mexicanische, which is Mexican style chicken. For some reason, nothing seemed odd about eating Tex-Mex chicken and rice with
a Weizbeir in a German bar.
Day 26: Koblenz to Boppard (4th April)
Okay: confession time. I've been spending a lot of my trip in Germany reading an English book. Gasp! Admittedly,
some of it does happen in Germany, but whatever.
So, I was so busy reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver that I didn't start going until 3:30 in the afternoon.
This book is the 900 page first part in a trilogy set in Europe during the late 17th and early 18th centruies. It is incredibly
dense and very geeky, and highly addictive. I wouldn't recommend it for everybody, but anybody who has sat awake through one
of my late-night drunken historical/geo-political rants and *enjoyed* themselves will love this.
Day 27: Boppard to ?(5th April)
I got some funny looks from the waitress at the campground in Boppard. We'd been chatting the night before, and
she was a little surprised to see me just leaving at 5:30 in the evening when she came for her next shift. Blame Neal Stephenson
again.
So, I put a bunch of miles in and ended up somewhere past Bingen. Found a nice scrap of ground between the highway
and the Rhein and prayed the river didn't flood up overnight. Sadly, I was so busy looking for a water and a good camp
spot late at night that I bypassed a couple of good sights recommended by Peter and Sandra, most especially a neat little
toll castle that sits in the midst of the Rhein. An enterprising idea if ever I saw.
Day 28: ? to Mainz (6th April)
Today, the weather started to turn. It had been mostly sunny until now, with some downright hot days, but it suddenly
got windy and grey.
I got a bit of a late start (surprise, surprise!), and I would most likely have skipped on through Mainz in my
usual way, except that a word leapt into my eyes off of a city map: Gütenbergsmuseum! I decided to hit the net (always a day-killer),
and then find a youth hostel and spend the whole day in Mainz.
As HI youth hostels go, this one wasn't too far out of town (only 10 minutes by bike, instead of the usual half
hour!), but it was enough for me to find it, sort my stuff, and crash.
Day 29: Mainz (7th April)
For once, I had a productive day. I hit the supermarket and stocked up on supplies, then spent a few hours at
the Gutenberg Museum. Sometimes it is cool just to play tourist. I lurked around and looked at presses from hundreds of years
ago and some spectacular engraving work, and best of all, had a look at not one, not two, but three Gutenberg Bibles!
I suppose it doesn't make much difference one way or another that I've stood within inches of a some old stacks
of paper in bindings, but it's a kind of pilgrimage, a spiritual experience. Not likely what old J.G. had in mind when he
was producing said bibles en masse, but according to Marshall McLuhan, sometimes the medium is the message. Gutenberg's
great leap forward to movable type changed the face of every aspect of society through words and letters. It was possibly
the most important step towards the invention of the computer that you are using to read this blurb, and there's absolutely
nothing to do more than 500 years later but appreciate his work and its consequences in awe.
And then go watch a schlocky Hollywood action flick in the evening. Why, Bruce Willis, why?? Sure, you've done
your Hudson Hawk, and your interminable Die-Hard incarnations (Die Hard IV: Goddammit! Why won't you die already?!), but what
about the Sixth Sense, Moonlighting, Death Becomes Her? Hell, what about the 5th Element and The Whole Nine Yards? You've
proven you can actually act, and that you can pick good scripts that still use your action-guy typecast, so why are you in
this predicatble meaningless piece of shit that is "Hostage"? This movie is so empty that I saw it entirely IN GERMAN (re-titled
as "Entführt") and still knew not only what was happening, but everything that would happen well ahead of time. I picked up
a little more German, but this does not make up for the feeling of hours of my life wasted.
Day 30: Mainz to south of Worms (8th April)
The most that I can say of this day is that I got an early start and covered a fair bit of territory. It was cold
and windy all day, and I spent the night right beside the Rhein in the tent in an NSG. That's supposed to be a protected
nature area, but the large bags of dumped garbage, industrial pallets, an oil slick and the sure signs of an angler regularly
using the spot (fish scales, assorted offal, and an old chair) suggested that I'd be alright to camp there. Or so I thought...
Day 31: South of Worms to north of Speyer (9th April)
At 9:30am on a Saturday, I am roused from my morning reading by an indignant and rather unapologetic call of "Entschuliegung!"
A flustered local went to some pains to inform me in broken Germlish that it was "Nichts OK!" to camp there. After making
sure I got the message that I was breaking the rules, this guy got back into his CAR and continued to DRIVE along the top
of the EARTHEN DIKE beside the springtide Rhein in his highly-regarded NATURE AREA!
Now seriously, I was camping outside bounds. Mea cupla. But how did this idiot miss the repetetive signs
forbidding every form of motor traffic and even *horses* from driving on this dirt track beside the Rhein? With the river
flowing almost over its banks, was it not obvious that he should not be ripping up the last flood defense of the area by driving
on it? And this is to say nothing of the unneccessary exhaust emmissions for his little off-road weekend drive with the wife,
or even how lame it is that the only way he and the missus could appreciate nature was to drive through it with the windows
up and the radio on. I've been expecting to be told off for my sleeping-on-the-cheap all trip, but not by somebody who's being
even more of a jack-ass than I am.
Day 32: Speyer to Wörth (10th April)
Speyer is a nice little town with a very impressive set of churches. I don't know why, but the Catholics and the
Evangelical Protestants chose Speyer to get into a pissing contest. The focus of the town is the Catholic Dom, from which
the market and indeed the entire town rolls forth. It is surrounded by a sprawling public graden which for some reason includes
a truly frightening playscape that incorporates a gigantic lifelike spider.
Not to be outdone, the protestants erected an ornate gothic high church on what must then have been the edge
of town. Civic growth being what it is, the church is now the focus of traffic at the opposite end of the main axis from the
Dom, with new main roads radiating out from it. Just in case anybody doubts which church is which, the atrium beneath the
latter church's tower is dominated by a giant statue of Luther holding a bible and several sheaves of paper. This overpowering
Luther and his knurled and swooping home made me think of Amish Paradise:
Think you're really rightious?
Think you're pure in heart?
Well I
know I'm a million times as humble as thou art!
Well, I guess its impolitic to think these things on a Sunday, as I spent most of the rest
of the day wishing I had Moses' touch. The Rhein was over-running its banks, and I spent a good bit of time biking *in* the
Rhein, instead of beside it. Mostly, it was just a few inches deep across the towpath, but every so often, a couple of cargo
barges would pass each other just wrong and their opposing wakes would meet around me, causing swells of a foot or two extra.
Then I'd just have to hold on and try not to get washed first into the inland swamps, or then back out into the river
proper by the back wash. Altogether a bit nerve-wracking, and bloody cold.
Luckily, I found a little inn/hostel/hut thingy surrounded by an NSG near Wörth. The place
is a little two storey hosue with a wood fire and some dorm rooms upstairs, in the middle of the woods. It's run by a Czech
family and they do a mean goulash. I made the acquaintance of several locals, assorted dogs, and some scared little kids.
Maybe it's time to shave?
Days 33-36: Wörth to Basel (11th-14th April)
You'd think after all that has gone before, I'd have plenty more to say for 4 days on the road, but there just
isn't. After so long on the road, I kind of zoned. I had my eye on Basel, a major point on the trip (at one time I fancied
it to be the "end" of the Rhein. Hah!).
There are a few scattered bits and pieces: Realising I'd passed into France at some point when I came out of the
woods and all the road signs were in French. The highly confused multi-lingual conversation when I tried to order lunch, and
couldn't switch gears from German to French. And then the guy came back at me in English, because he apparently only spoke
Alsatian, which is the regional bastard child of German and French. Coming out of a zen moment and realising that the
lumps I was seeing on the horizon were Alps! Dipping into Strasbourg and really not liking it at all. Everybody around seemed
to be incredibly dodgy, and I also saw more cops there in a few hours than in my entire trip thus far.
All in all, though, it was almost 200kms of biking and solitude. About half of it was forest riding and the other
half riding on the top of artificial canal sections. It is kind of an odd feeling, having a major river right beside you,
pretty much lapping at your feet, and a few feet to your left, a dike dropping off by five stories to the surrounding ground
level. You don't know whether to be afraid of heights, drowning, or both together.
But eventually, I made it to Basel, and tacked a fifth country onto this little adventure. I had forgotten how
expensive Switzerland was, but was quickly reacquainted with the facts, to the tune of sepnding €100 between lunchtime
and going to bed. For ther record, that was two meals, a beer, a newspaper, 1 hour on the internet, and 2 nights at Basel's
only backpacker hostel.
Day 37: Basel (15th April)
So, Basel Backpack is a cool place to stay. It's owned and run by a Thai family and includes a restaurant where
they do really good Thai food for dead cheap. For Switzerland, that is. It's not really a long term place, although some people
do get stuck there for a little while. But it's got a bar, and the staff and owner are cool.
The other great thing is that they give you a public transit pass good for the duration of your stay. I decided
that my muscles deserved a rest, so I left my bike and rode the trams all day. I just took a book along and rode about half
the routes out to their ends, seeing all the different phases of basel, from the old urban core out through the suburbs to
the farms and back. Basel is a nic city which manages to balance modern architecture and business with livability and heritage
buildings. I'm not saying it equals Edinburgh or Avignon or Brugges in appeal to me, but it's liveable, I think.
I ended my evening watching a few games of petanque (or boules or bocce) in the square by the cathedral. It was
mostly men playing, but there were a few women and some kids. From some of the conversations I caught, a lot of these folk
don't otherwise know each other by way of being family or co-workers, but just show up in the square and play or chat with
whoever is there. This is something that is missing from a lot of large cities. I also can't think of much of an equivalent
in New World cities or towns over a certain size. We seem to have lost the idea of common spaces and connecting with other
people in them.
Days 38-41: Basel to Konstanz (16th-19th April)
Well, this is supposed to be the last push, right? Up to the start of the Rhein, at Konstanz, where it spills
from the Bodensee. Even if it takes a week, I'm fine for time. I just can't quite shake the feeling that something isn't right...
Anyways, after the open flat valleys of the Rhein below Basel, it's nice to get into the hills again although
here, the Rhein has cut a steep channel in the landscape so that it's often neccessary to ride up on a road above and away
from the river itself. I don't like doing that, which is why I don't get too far on the first day, while I try to keep close
to the river and get constantly blocked by impossible stairs and slopes in the footpath that clambers along the Rhein bank.
It's also why I don't really take much notice of the Swiss national bicycle route signs.
What I do take notice of are signs to Augusta Raurica, the remains of a Roman trading colony on the Rhein. These
are worth a few hours' stop if you're in the area. There is a nicely preserved underground well and some cellars under the
forum, but the jewel in the crown is the small amphitheatre. Well, I guess after what I've seen in Italy, this one seems small,
but in fact it's no mean effort in its own right. They are currently doing restoration work to make it usuable again in a
few years. I think it'd be pretty neat to go back there for a performance. I believe the capacity may end up being about 400
or so, which is a nice size audience.
In fact, I recommend this whole section of the Rhein for a good amble, be it by cycle, foot, or car. For a good
deal of this length, the river is the border between Germany and Switzerland, with beautiful mediaeval towns on either side
at every bridgeable point. And the bridges themselves are worthseeing. A lot of them are timbered covered bridges on stone
pilings. New concrete monsters connect international freeways and bypasses, but these wooden bridges stand at the core of
the old roads into the city centres. It just adds to the impression that time rather forgot this place.
The obvious do-not-miss is the Rhein Falls. I'm eager to see how the many (many, many) photos I took of this powerful
beast turn out, but I cannot imagine how they will come even close to illustrating the breathtaking experience of being
there. From the castle keep above the falls, there is a long descent by stair past the very heart of the falls. Every time
that you think a platform or grotto cut through the rock has brought you as close as you can be to the falls, you realise
there's even more. I'm glad that I came when I did, before the tourist season was in swing, because this is the sort of place
to spend hours alone with one of the great forces of nature.
Another nice city for a visit is Schaffhausen. It comes at a nice bend in the Rhein, just past the falls, and
is of the sort of moderate size that means there are good shops and nightlife, but not too much sprawl. The town is overshadowed
by a curious and unique circular fortress, the Munot. Sadly, I arrived to late in the day to have a look inside, but the outside
is interesting enough. It is built into a hillside, with a great sheer slope down the townward side, planted with grapes,
and a wide dry moat on the upper side which is now a sort of zoo enclosure for a herd of endangered deer.
These 4 days on the river were nice and relaxed. I enjoyed how each day had its own new marvels again, and I was
pretty happy with this as an end to the Rhein journey, leaving me some free time. And then, on the last day, a few hours from
Konstanz, I got a look at a decent map for the first time in a long time. Now, I had already taken not that the national cycle
route I was on went well beyond the Bodensee, but I took this to be an extra leg that allowed the route to cnnect well with
others. I now found that the Rhein actually also feeds into the Bodensee from the southeast trailing off up into the mountains.
Oh, dear.
|
