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October 6 Friday sunny Bicycle touring Germany Sherry says she's really stiff today. I tell her the second day is the hardest. After breakfast with Reinhard, we hopped on our bikes and rode through town. There was an intersection with a stop sign. The stop sign was for us. Sharon and Sherry obliviously rode straight through and a car coming through the intersection had to slow down for them. When I informed them that the red octagon with STOP printed on it means that's what we're supposed to do. Neither had even noticed the stop sign! We cycled along a signed route for Germany's Romantic Strasse for a ways. After a ways, the road became lightly traveled. Near Eganhausen, Germany, there was a steep 17% uphill. Sherry had to get off her loaded mountain bike and push again. She is complaining of having a sore knee. She hasn't been trying to keep up, so I don't think she's overstraining herself. Just kidding, fair Sher! A few kilometres farther Sharon started to bonk. She was shaky and cranky as an old bear. We didn't eat our usual amount for breakfast at Reinhard's as we didn't want to eat the poor guy out of house and home. We pulled our bikes to a stop in a quiet village. Remarkably, there was a picnic table under a tree across a dirt road from a duck pond. We availed ourselves to this unexpectedly luxury of a real picnic table and decided to make the most of it by having a hot lunch. Out came our Whisperlite stove. Soon we we're enjoying a can of ravioli with meat sauce. After the ravioli, we were still hungry, sitting around wishing we had some bananas. Sharon had just got the word out of her mouth when a large traveling grocery truck pulled up by the duck pond blowing its horn madly. Talk about service! A couple of old farm wives appeared out of side doors and made their way over to the grocery truck while expertly sidestepping cow pies. In my wildest imagination, I had never thought Germany would be anywhere this rural. The grocery truck was well stocked with everything from canned goods to fresh fruit. We spent a pile on fruit. When we finally pedaled away an hour later, our tummies were very satisfied indeed. In the early afternoon we arrived in Germany's historic Rothenburg. This is where the mayor in 1631 saved the town by drinking three litres of wine in a single draught. Supposedly the town of Rothenburg had been conquered by troops. The mayor, apparently not one to hold grudges, brought out the town mug to welcome the conquering commander. When the commander saw the size of the mug, he was taken by the humour of its immensity, and said that if the mayor could drink the entire mug in one swill he would allow the town to go free. We noticed there were lots of Japanese tourists wandering around in tour groups. We could tell that Rothenburg was not the usual little sleepy German town we had often cruised through on our overloaded touring bicycles. Sherry and I strolled into the grocery store to buy supper. Sharon stayed outside to watch our touring bikes. When we returned from our jubilant grocery buying, Sharon was engrossed in conversation with two young Americans. There is a wall around Rothenburg's old town. The wall has a walkway around its top. There are towers that nowadays allow tourists a bird's-eye view of the town and surrounding countryside. Sharon and Sherry went up to have a gander. Rothenburg was 40 percent destroyed during WW II in 1945. It was rebuilt and is one of the most intriguing walled towns in Germany. It has a beautiful location with architecturally interesting buildings. Sherry had been to Rothenburg last year with Murray, so she was our tour guide around town. She took us to the most interesting sites. After seeing the town square we went to her favourite shop in town - a Christmas store that had every conceivable bauble that I could imagine and then some. We wandered down to the opposite end of town (we had entered Rothenburg through a stone archway) to a wonderful garden with paths. A rock wall surrounds the garden. Good views are available of the river valley below. Since Rothenburg is such a popular place there are no host families for touring cyclists. They would no doubt be overrun every night with visitors. We tried to see if there were any good camping possibilities below the townsite. We wanted to explore more of Rothenburg in the morning, so the only problem with going down into the river valley to camp would mean that it entailed a stiff climb back up on our heavily loaded touring bicycles in the morning. Sharon mentioned she had seen a clump of trees perfect for wild camping a ways back on our way into town. We decided to head there and began cycling back through the garden. We were riding our bikes along a deserted garden path when two policemen walked towards us. One called out, "No bicycle riding in the garden!" These Germans take their rules seriously. I should have called out "Bonjour!" We made our way out of town on our bicycles without any more German police yelling at us. At the edge of Rothenburg, we found a road heading into a farmer's field. We pulled onto the road. In a few metres, we stopped to check our map since we couldn't see any clumps of trees in the farmer's field. A car came along the dirt road from the opposite direction. The driver looked us over slowly as he pulled to a stop beside us. He noticed my Canada flag and asked us a few questions. After learning that Hermann was a farmer, Sharon told him that her dad was a farmer in Alberta. They started talking about alfalfa yields and such. Although the German farmer spoke English well, he had a tough time getting his tongue around the word whenever he tried to say alfalfa. As he explained it with a laugh, "That word just goes to shit in my mouth." Hermann told us that he was the farmer who owned this land. We told him we were looking for a camping spot. He pointed across the road and said that there was a nice spot beside the little house where we could stay. "Come over to my farm later for some milk," he said as he pulled away. "If you get lost," he joked, "just ask for Hermann the German." We biked over and found a level spot by the little old house. While we set up the tent, Sherry checked out the fruit trees in the yard. There were apples, pears, and plums. We made supper and ate while sitting in the tent. By the time we had finished supper, it was dark. Leaving our bikes, we walked over to the dairy. Hermann showed us the barns and equipment storage. Everything was spotless. Giant milk posters plastered the walls telling people how good milk was to drink. A large stainless steel storage bin hulked in one corner, pipes coming to it from all directions. The cows, chained inside the barn, heads over a feed trough and back ends over a steel grate, were hooked to the milking machine. Hermann told us the cows never went outside in their entire life. They were born there in the barn and they would die there in the barn. Yikes. I had no idea that was how some dairies were. It seemed a horrid existence. We toured another area that hosted big tractors and farm equipment. On one wall Hermann had a huge license plate collection. He had collected car license plates from most of the states and each province in Canada. Every one of the plates had a story behind how he come to acquire it. "That one's from our rental car when we went on holidays in Ohio." Believe it or not, one of the plates he hadn't acquired was from our home province of Alberta. Sherry promised she would send him one when she got home. Did you ever do that, Sherry? Hermann invited us into his house for a glass of milk. Inside, he showed us a huge model tractor collection. The little tractors were perfectly lined up on shelves behind glass. Once we marveled at these beauties, Hermann took us into a back room. It was filled with even more model tractors. There was also a shelf with beer steins that Hermann had collected from various 10K walks. Sherry decided she was going to go on some of those walks just to get the cool beer steins. Eventually we made our way into the living room. Herman brought in a huge pitcher of ice cold milk and a platter stacked high with fresh from the oven cookies. As Hermann filled our half-litre glasses to the brim with chillingly delicious cold milk, I tried to forget those poor animals chained in the shed. |
