Day 31: Ein Gut 4th

Got rolling yesterday a bit late in the morning. By mid-afternoon we were in Fulda, the mouth of the Fulda River, and the point at which our route left the German river network. That was a shame, since following a river, we've learned, ensures three things: 1) easy navigation 2) flat terrain and 3) good scenery. For the rest of the day we had the latter but definitely not the flat terrain.

At 4PM we stopped cycling and joined a large group of Germans watching the World Cup game projected on a screen in a clubhouse. I confess that I began to nod off at times, but woke up with a start each time the Germans scored, unleashing utter hysteria among our viewing party. It's difficult to describe how intensely the fans react to a goal, or even a missed goal. It's at once exciting, hilarious, and terrifying.

Besides being hilly, the day was also extremely hot and humid. Felix is coming from Delhi, were he dealt with temperatures as high as 45 Celsius. I, on the other hand, can feel the energy melt out of me as soon as the temperature crosses upwards of 30 degrees. We pulled into camp at 6PM and spent the next 15 minutes pouring cold water on our heads.

Fortunately, today was a different story: overcast and cool for the entire day, we made great time, despite a mid-morning flat tire on Felix's bike. By noon, we had joined the Main (rhymes with 'mine') River, which meant smooth, flat cycling, aided by a tailwind. We stopped mid-afternoon at a bridge and took a swim. Felix decided that it would be a good idea to jump off the bridge, which he promptly did while I watched from below.

Felix made the whole thing look so fun that I decided I should join in, so I climbed up to the top of the bridge and promptly discovered that it was really quite a long way down. But by this point a small crowd had gathered to watch the tall American jump to his death, so there was no going back. I climbed over the railing and hurled myself off -- and lived to tell the story. It did sting the feet a bit, though.

We carried on down the Main to Wurzberg, where I ate my favorite Bavarian meal: bratwurst, sauerkraut, and a wheat-based beverage. Then we spent about an hour exploring the city, which is really quite striking. It was almost entirely destroyed in the course of 17 minutes during a British bombing raid in 1945, but the major buildings and monuments have been reconstructed just as they were before the war. We also stopped for a round of gelatto. Carbo-loading -- very important, you know.

Just down the river we found our campsite, where we arrived around 6:30 and set up a tent right on the Main, with a view of the Marienburg fortress. (I strongly recommend searching 'Wurzberg' on Wikipedia just to enjoy a taste of our surroundings.) With time and energy to spare, we decided to toss a frisbee, and that quickly turned into a challenge over who could toss a frisbee across the river. Only one way to find out: Felix set off to swim to the other side (a good ways away, fighting a strong current) while I gave myself a pep-talk and did whatever else you might do if you had just bet that you could throw a frisbee across one of Germany's larger rivers. Alas, it was not to be -- my throw fell short, as did Felix's return shot.

As we chased down stray throws, though, we noticed a bridge about 300 meters up the river, and, given the great success of our earlier bridge jump, along with the strong current, decided it might be fun to jump off the bridge and float our way back to camp. We walked to the bridge but a depth-check revealed that jumping would be a poor choice, so we waded in and floated our way home, the sun setting over the steeples of Wurzberg in the distance.

Despite our best efforts to explain to people that today is a major holiday in the US, we were unable to convince anyone to put on a fireworks display for us. Instead, we're enjoying a 10PM bedtime and looking forward to another early start. Tomorrow's route takes us through Rothenburg, a fully restored medieval city, which we are looking forward to.

Km cycled yesterday: 85
Km cycled today: 120
Km cycled total: 2236

Happy 4th!
-Ben
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Day 29(?): Friends In Bad Places

Felix and I enjoyed a hot, humid and hilly day cycling along the Fulda River. We moved slowly at times as Felix adjusted to his new gear (he bought his bike, I believe, three days ago) but he was soon an old pro at clipping into his new pedals. Gear shifting technique remains a work in progress.

We both huffed and puffed our way up the few (small) climbs we encountered -- today was the first time I've seen anything steeper than a rolling meadow since Sweden.

We arrived at our destination for the night, a town called Bad Hersfeld, around 8PM. I was famished and ordered an array of different types of sausages from the open air market in the town plaza. Felix was too tired to eat so he took a nap on the bench across from me as I ate.

Just as Felix had worked up the energy to track down some food we spotted a friendly German couple admiring our bikes, and waved them over to chat. We ended up talking with them for well over an hour, poring over maps of the days ahead, and got some great advice on our route to Donauworth, where we will begin our ride south into Austria.

Daylight was fading and we were without a place to sleep, so we headed for the youth hostel marked on our map. It turned out that the hostel was only for card carrying members of a particular organization -- something we might have known were we able to understand the pages of helpful notes, all in German, that accompany our maps.

We cycled down the street to look for a park or field where we could pitch a tent, and in rapid succession met a series of incredibly friendly locals. The first was a doctor who we chatted with for quite a while before he began hunting for other local hostels on his iPhone. As he was doing that, we bumped into a few of the doctor's neighbors who offered us a patch of grass to pitch a tent in the yard. And then, just as we were about to accept that offer, we met an elderly man who spoke flawless English (a former English teacher, he told us -- would love to know more of his story) and who pointed us towards a large field that, he explained, was owned by the youth hostel but is completely unused. We settled on the latter option, and took a certain satisfaction in knowing that we would sleep on the property of the hostel that had shunned us.

Sleeping spot located, we headed into town to explore the Friday nightlife, enjoyed ourselves for a few hours but quickly ran out of steam. Felix is now sound asleep, and looking very comfortable on a mattress that he found nearby. I am matress-less but intend to be as contendedly unconscious within about 30 seconds.

Km covered today: 112
Km covered total: 2143

-Ben.
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5-Day Recap, and Felix Arrives!

Last summer, I think it was in Wyoming, my cousin Jay and I decided it would be fun to switch bicycles for an hour or so. Well, we did that and rode for about 100 yards before the whole experience was too unbearable to continue. Jay memorably described riding my bike by comparing it to riding the type of motorcycle where the handlebars are above eye-level. For my part, Jay's pedals were so uncomfortable that I felt as if my feet were pointing straight at each other. In reality, of course, my handlebar was perhaps an inch higher than Jay's, and his pedals angled just a few degrees differently than mine.

This is all to say that when you've ridden a few thousand miles on a bicycle even the slightest change makes a tremendous difference. So when I set out from Verden with my new pedals last Saturday afternoon, it took me most of the day to adjust. My knees hurt and it took me forever just to clip my left foot in. Besides a memorable lunch in Neinburg -- a city so completely built of brick (roads, buildings, walls) that it felt like a very dignified lego creation -- the day passed rather painfully and without excitement. I pulled into a campsite after only 80 kilometers.

I took advantage of my early stop and finished the 2nd Steig Larsson book. The book was, in a word, terrible. In two words, gruesomely terrible. A sample sentence: "He keeled over in pain as her steel-toed boot slammed into his crotch with 120 kg per cm of force." Poetic.

Another highlight comes when the novel's heroine solves Fermat's last theorem in the middle of an attempt (spoiler alert!) to assassinate her father, and shrugs the whole thing off as if it had been obvious. I'm sure Andrew Wiles would be delighted.

Anyway, it was nice to be done with that book. I do not intend to read the 3rd.

The next day was, as I wrote, one of my favorite of the whole trip, though not for any particularly noteworthy reason. It was Sunday, and cyclists were out in force. Not racers or people exercising, but families and couples dressed in casual clothes out enjoying the view. I stopped at a brunch buffet that had been set up on the river bank and spent nearly 2 hours relaxing, people-watching, and making many return trips to the buffet table.

By 4PM, though, things had changed. Germany was playing England in the world cup, and I can honestly report that I may as well have been cycling through a ghost country. The only signs of life were the buzz of the vuvazoolas through open windows and the occasional shouts of joy when Germany scored. I could practically keep score based on the yelling I heard when passing through towns.

There actually was one other person not watching the game that afternoon: a fighter jet pilot. He apparently decided that with the rest of country indoors, it would be a good time to practice his air show tricks. (I am have no clue if the pilot was a man or a woman, so forgive me for assuming he was a he.) Anyway, I nearly went into cardiac arrest when his jet came screaming down a wheat field right over my head. It was as if Hitchcock were filming North by Northwest 2, and had replaced the crop-duster with a fighter jet (and Cary Grant with me). Anyway, the pilot spent almost 30 minutes doing pretty unbelievable loops and spins right in front of me -- I found a shady spot and enjoyed the private show.

The next day I cycled the 30km to Holzminden and hopped on a train to Bamberg to visit my friend Lisa and her family, a side trip I've been looking forward to, well, basically ever since I last visited them 18 months ago.

The visit was exactly what I needed, and consisted of two and a half days of poolside relaxation and extensive sampling of Lower Franconion cuisine. As a result of my stay in Bamberg, I have a new tent, new haircut, and clean laundry -- the latter two items thanks to Lisa's mom Gabi, to whom I am eternally indebted.

Lisa is headed off to France with friends on Friday, and her boyfriend, Sebastian, set off yesterday on his motorcycle, planning to take back roads and arrive on four days later at the same place. As we were preparing dinner on Tuesday, Gabi realized we needed bread and charcoal. Sebastian volunteered to make a run to the store on his motorcycle, and invited me along.

Now, I like Sebastian a lot, and I'm very grateful for his offer to take me for a spin. But he was -- how shall I put this -- he was not exactly sympathetic to the fact that I have spent the past month more or less living on a vehicle that accelerates only as quickly as my legs allow (that is to say, slowly). We shot out of the driveway and rocketed through the streets of Sand (Lisa's hometown), and I held a deathgrip on the back of the bike and prayed I would live to see another day. After what seemed like hours (and was, in reality, 3 minutes), we arrived at the grocery store, and I hurled myself onto solid ground and promised myself that I'd never ride anything but a bicycle again. Sebastian, for his part, laughed and remarked that we hadn't even left town. If we'd made it to the highway, he said, "we could have really gotten moving." I assured him that wouldn't be necessary.

Anyway, with great difficulty I left Bamburg on Wednesday, sorry to say goodbye to the Strasser family but excited to see Felix. Unfortunately, Felix sent word that morning that he had hit a snag, so we decided to meet in Hann. Munden, 82 kilometers down the road from Holzminden.

On my end, everything went according to plan and by 4PM I was riding south again. There are few better feelings in the world, I think, than getting back on a bicycle after two days off. I don't really know how to describe it, except to say that it feels like being allowed to breathe after a long time holding your breath, or stretch after a long time on an airplane. With rested legs, everything seems to fly by. Even if it's humid and hot (which it was) everything seems gorgeous and exciting. Suffice to say, it was nice to be back.

I arrived in Hann. Munden around 8PM and found Felix -- well, Felix found me, actually, and scared me half to death when he shouted my name -- doing laps around the train station. We celebrated his arrival with a meal in the town plaza and a trip to the ice cream shop before setting up camp on an island campsite. As the sun set, we tossed a frisbee and shared stories from the summer so far. It is good to have some company again.

Hann. Munden marks the mouth of the Wiser River, which now forks into two smaller rivers, the Werra and the Fulda. We will follow the latter for the next two days. The terrain is becoming hillier as we move south, and over the next 100 kilometers we will ascend slowly but steadily to 500 meters. The mountains are coming, no doubt about it.

Km covered Monday: 28
Km covered yesterday: 82
Km covered so far: 2031

Until later tonight!
-Ben.
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Quick Note from Bamberg

Well, I've been so busy napping at the pool and wolfing down piles of sausages that I didn't get around to writing a long post... so that will have to wait until tomorrow's five hour train ride back to Holzminden. In the meantime, here are a few photos I snapped during my first week in Germany.


The sunset over a wheat field in Schleswig-Holstein:

Cycling along the Elbe with some friendly German sheep:

Having my pedals repaired in Verden required sawing into my metal shoe cleat. Note the sparks flying everwhere (barely visible in this small photo). A very creative solution to a tough problem (the details of which would bore almost anyone but the most dedicated cyclist to tears...).


More wheat fields, this time in Westphalia:
One of the reasons I move slowly during the day is that it takes me forever to figure out signs like this one. Even small German towns are hubs for dozens of regional, national, and international cycling routes. Amazing!

The Wiser River, my companion for about 400km.

Well, that'll have to be all for now. Until tomorrow, then!

-Ben.

Day 24: Blog Post Cop-Out

Exhausted and hoping to get an early start tomorrow, so I'm writing this post just to say I'm alive and well! Today was actually one of my favorite days of the trip so far, but if I say any more then it'll be a slippery slope and I'll be punching out a book length-post on a BlackBerry. Tomorrow, though, I'll have a computer, and will be sure to write another longer-than-anyone-but-family-would-possibly-read post. (On a related note: Grandma, I have so enjoyed your comments. I see them first thing every morning -- perfect start to the day.) For now, I've made a list of all the things I want to mention so that I won't forget.

For my esteemed cartographer-in-chief, I will add that I spent last night in Stolzenau and tonight am camped 2km down the Wiser from Ruhle.

Bamberg tomorrow, with lots of help from a train.

Km covered today: 131
Km covered yesterday: 79
Km covered so far: 1921

Guten nacht!
Ben.
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Day 23: Break-Down and Tune-Up

Couldn't find anyone up and about at the campground yesterday morning, so I rolled out without paying. Would have felt worse about that, but I had not even pitched a tent or taken a shower. As I cycled off, it struck me that I had not actually seen a single person the whole time, and the bathrooms and office had been locked whenever I checked. Spooky.

I had hoped that navigation would be simple if I just kept the Wiser on my left side, but I proceeded to spend the first hour or so of the day riding up dead-end gravel paths. At one point I ended up smack-dab in the middle of a very large river front garden, a situation I corrected by hoisting Nelly up and over the large wall that separated the property from the main road. As I scampered over I noticed that the owners, an elderly couple, had been watching me with amusement. I gave a friendly wave, shouted "Moin!", and hopped the wall, hoping they would take me for a directionally-challenged German rather than in incompetent American.

My route took me through Bremen, a large city of half a million, in the mid-afternoon. I knew I had some errands I wanted to run -- shipping home my broken tent, buying a power adapter, grocery shopping before the weekend, etc. -- but had no idea how I would find the right stores, particularly for the power adapter. As so often happens on a trip like this, though, things fell into place in the form of a cyclist named Ivan. (Well, things don't often fall into place with cyclists named Ivan, but they do often fall into place.)

About 5km outside Bremen, Ivan sped up behind me, riding a racing bike, and waited for a chance to pass. As he did, I said a friendly "Hallo!" which prompted him to slow down. We got to chatting -- he was a surgeon in Bremen, taking the day off for a ride, and spoke perfect English -- and before I knew it we were weaving our way through the outskirts of the city. He was much more adept at dodging people and cars than I, but having him guide me into the city was a huge time-saver for me, since normally that type of thing would have required stopping every minute or so to study my detailed city map. Eventually, as we climbed a large bride, Ivan theatrically shouted "Welcome to Bremen!"

I've had many Germans tell me that Hamburg is a beautiful city, and it is, in a sort of punky, grungy, industrial sort of way. (For me, the most striking part of Hamburg was the large church in the city that still sits charred and half-ruined from an American bombing raid during World War II.) But Bremen is a truly stunning city -- high steeples on the horizon, a blue river flowing down the middle, and huge brick plazas every few blocks. The streets were filled with young people (Bremen must have a university) and hundreds of people where enjoying the sun on the grassy fields that sloped down to the river. All in all, it was awfully tempting to call it a day right then and there and spend a Friday night in Bremen.

Instead, I had Ivan point me towards an electronics store before we parted ways. As he left, I wondered if had already become the sort of clingy, missing-a-screw-or-two solo cyclist that I encounter every now and then. Had I talked Ivan's ear off, desperate for company? Had he been trying to make a getaway the whole time? Was the very fact that I was asking myself these questions indicative of the early (middle? late!?) stages of a descent into madness?

I spent a few hours checking things off my to-do list (including, against all odds, finding an American-to-European power transformer) and then enjoyed a nap on the river bank. By the time I reluctantly left Bremen, it was 7PM.

A few kilometers outside town I cycled passed a man who bore an uncanny resemblance to Randy Johnson. I spent a good 15 minutes imagining riding with The Big Unit himself, laughing out loud once or twice, before wondering again if I was going insane...

I've fallen into a routine where late in the day I leave the cycling path and use a main road to cover distance more efficiently. I had spotted a campsite on the map that was a few kilometers past a small city called Verden, and that was my goal for the night. Unwittingly, though, I had taken a big short-cut on the main road, and I arrived in Verden around 9:30PM on the road that I was supposed to leave on, meaning that I had actually ridden past the campsite almost 10km down the road! (I only discovered this after spending 30 minutes in denial, studying my maps and trying to figure out what on earth I had done.) Just as I had grudgingly accepted the obvious, and was turning to leave town, my pedal snapped off.

Not snapped so much as slid, I suppose, but either way, the pedal was busted and all that remained where my left pedal had been was a thin, sharp metal rod.

Light was fading quickly and it was clear I wasn't going to make it to the campsite without a pedal. Furthermore, there was no point leaving town when I would clearly need a bike shop as soon as possible. I was not inclined to camp in a park on a Friday night in the city, so I set off to hunt for a hotel. Most towns here have so many well-marked hotels that they seem to taunt me as I ride past to a campground, but after nearly an hour circling Verden again and again, I still hadn't found a single one. Finally, a very helpful waiter pointed me to a small building. "All the hotels in town are booked for the night," he told me, which still didn't explain why they were also invisible, "but you might be able to get a room there."

Left with little choice, I knocked on the door and was greeted by an elderly couple who spoke not a word of English. They had one room that they rented out, a very nice room, actually, and it was available. I pulled out a piece of paper and rather shamelessly wrote "€20?", not having any idea what the room might cost. The woman took the pen from me and shook her head. On the paper "€60", then paused, thought for a second, and crossed that out and wrote "€30" instead. She also drew a breakfast table. Sold.

I explored the town for a bit and then slept like a rock, waking for 9AM breakfast, which was delicious. Back in my room, I was thinking of taking another shower and maybe even a morning nap before setting off to find a bike shop when my hostess came buzzing into the room, clean sheets in hand, and indicated very clearly that it was time for me to hit the road. Sigh...

I found a bike shop and showed the chatty owner and his assistant my broken pedal. They couldn't have been friendlier, and we shot the breeze for quite a while before actually getting down to work. That meant putting a new pair of pedals on (no Egg Beaters here, so I am switching to SPD -- we'll see how that goes), new clips on my shoes, and while we were at it, truing my wheel. (The wheel has been out of true for about 1000km, which means I've been riding without a rear brake. That will be nice to have fixed.) Putting the new clips on my shoes proved to be the most challenging part of the whole operation, since the old ones have been so throroughly worn down that an allen wrench no longer gripped the screw hole. The store owner had the brilliant idea of using an electric saw to create a Phillips head slot on the screw, and he looked a bit like a mad scientist as he sawed into the metal clip, sparks flying everywhere, with my shoe locked in a vice. But it worked perfectly, and the bike is in ship shape now. The only downside, of course, is that this is just one more large and unexpected expense. Two days ago was the first and only day yet this trip that was under budget...

Anyway, it's early afternoon by this point and I suppose I should be setting off. I had hoped to be in Bamberg in two days time but a quick glance at a map of Germany will demonstrate the hilarious improbability of that happening. Instead, I will probably hop a train there on the 28th, spend some time with my friend Lisa (!!), and then set-off with Felix from wherever I stopped. Sounds like a plan to me!

Km cycled yesterday: 130
Km so far: 1711

-Ben.
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Day 22: Riding Germany's Rivers

As I said, I had decided not to pitch the tent last night -- not a cloud in sight -- but woke up this morning at 4:30AM and found my sleeping back drenched with dew. Experience has taught me that the sun will dry everything completely by 8AM, but in the meantime it was chilly, so I got up to walk around and watch the sunrise over the Elbe. A beautiful sight, with the morning mist and a few huge barges on the horizon.

After a few more hours sleep, I woke up and hit the road, following the Elbe straight west into Gluckstadt, where a ferry would take me across to the other side. In town, I bumped into the Danish couple, Robert and Bolvida, I had met the night before, and we chatted for an hour or so about obesity in America (a popular conversation topic here, based on a limited sample size) and Obama's energy policies. Bolvida told me stories of hitchhiking from New York to Los Angeles to Miama twenty years ago. Robert, a triathlete who has completed the Hawaii Iron Man, talked about some of his cycling trips through Germany, including a massive 450km day that traversed nearly half the country in 24 hours! I felt a bit inadequate chatting with him, and made a mental note to think of Robert next time 100km seemed like a struggle. Eventually they pedaled off on their nifty custom built tandem bicycle, headed for Denmark.

I found the ferry after asking several locals for directions. There was a massive line of cars and trucks waiting to board, but the boat could only accommodate about 15 vehicles at a time. It was an unbelievably inefficient process -- some of the trucks must have waited 2 or 3 hours just to get across. They have little choice, though; as far as I can tell, there are no bridges or tunnels across the Elbe. The only other option is to drive east to Hamburg and cross there.

In any event, I pedaled to the front of the line and was across within an hour, planning to follow the Elbe all the way to its mouth at Cuxhaven. That led me straight west, though, and into a brutal headwind. For 30km I had no choice, though, and the progress was slow. Most frustrating was the fact that I was headed west even though I will eventually leave Germany in the southeast -- I was quite literally headed in the opposite direction that I need to go.

The scenery was very reminiscent of Kansas, incredibly flat with miles of visibility. At one point I was cycling parallel to the Elbe, but maybe 2 kilometers south of it, and noticed a city on the horizon. As I cycled though, the grew larger and larger much faster than seemed possible. Eventually I realized that the city was in fact a massive barge, headed for Hamburg, and, from my perspective, drifting silently along an ocean of wheat.

Around 3PM, more than a little dejected about the wind and my limited progress, I pulled off the road and fell asleep in a patch of shade. When I woke up, it was two hours later and the shade had drifted to the other side of the tree, leaving the right side of my face a bit burned. I groggily resumed riding, shifting my course south, and finally fell into a strong rhythm, knocking out 50 kilometers before I pulled into a Subway for dinner. Normally I would opt for a more local option, but Subway was a staple of the TransAmerica ride I took with my cousins last summer, and the nostalgia was too powerful to resist.

Dusk was descending quickly by the time I left the restaurant, and, though I had reached the mouth of the Wiser River in Bremmerhaven, I still hoped to cross to the other side and then cycle another 10km to a campsite I'd seen on the map. Bremmerhaven was larger and more confusing than I had expected, and it took several rounds of assistance from passersby before I found the ferry. (My roadmaps are 1:150,000, rendering them essentially useless for urban navigation. Tomorrow I switch to a different map set that is 1:75,000, with even more detail in cities.) Fortunately, I rolled up just as the gates were closing for the 10PM departure, the last of the night. The crossing was quite lovely, and we chugged along next to a large cargo ship headed down-river that said Singapore on the back. It's amazing to me that even with computers and planes and super-highways, it's still efficient to send something from Singapore to central Germany via ship. Slow but reliable, I suppose.

On the other shore I turned on my reflectors and headlight and raced south as the last rays of daylight left the sky. Finally found the campground, just outside Nordenham, about 45 minutes later, and I've plopped down in what seems like an open spot surrounded by RVs. The office was closed and the showers, to my immense disappointment, were locked upon arrival.

Tomorrow I will begin my ride down the Wiser, which I'll follow for about 400km. Hopefully the route markers will be good; I'd love to pump out 200+ kilometers. First, though, some sleep is in order.

Km covered today: 131
Km covered total: 1581

Posting may be light over the next few days. My power converter has broken, and I'm not sure when I'll find a new one. Trying to conserve battery as a result. Apologies if I've left an email unanswered as a result!

-Ben.
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