Along German rivers with Nick 2023
Table Of Contents
- Preconception Of Germany May 18, 2023
- Frankfurters In Frankfurt May 18, 2023
- Meeting The Rhine May 19, 2023
- Castles everywhere! May 20, 2023
- The Moselle meets the Rhine May 21, 2023
- Cochem is Cool May 22, 2023
- Marx and some bourgeoisie statuary May 23, 2023
- Lingering in Luxembourg May 24, 2023
Preconception Of Germany
May 18, 2023 Filed Under Amused
Before I visited or even did any research on Germany, I added it to my map of the gaps. This is what was in my head about the country, from pop culture or hearsay or dimly remembered school. (Of course, actually going there will change this a lot.)
Most of my knowledge about Germany is in the context of Word War II. Persecution of Jews, Third Reich, et cetera. A war machine of barbed wire and mud and gasoline, fueled by an angry eugenics ideology that was a response to the crushing reparations being paid by one generation of Germans for the sins of the previous generations in World War I. That stuff is pretty bleak.
Then there’s this more modern view, where Germany is a clean, friendly place of rolling green hills and rugged mountains, where people are surprisingly nerdy about scientific research, alternative energies, outdoor adventure, and funky electronic music, and war has moved from the physical world to the less visceral world of finance. I imagine modern Germans spend half their time wearing white-collar work clothes in shiny university buildings, and the other half in hiking boots and cute little shorts, tromping around in alpine fields and making extremely sarcastic jokes to each other. I see their sense of humor as sharp, and their demeanor as friendly but emotionally aloof. A competitive nature?
Pop culture tells me they drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of sausage, but I can’t quite imagine them doing it. Pop culture also tells me they are into edgy sexual stuff, but I’ve seen German porn, and frankly it’s tame. There is one major difference though: All the women, and even many of the men, in German porn are actually smiling. In American porn everybody has an absurd game-face on that makes them look like they’re either cleaning up an unpleasant spill, or asleep and snoring with their mouth open. Oh dear, how did I get on this topic? Let’s stop.
I have a lot of German ancestry on my father’s side, which is probably why most Germans look vaguely familiar to me, and I’m fascinated by the preserved “Brick Gothic” architecture in cities like Lübeck and the way it reminds me of childhood fairy-tales, but even so, Germany doesn’t quite feel like a “homeland” for me, the way I feel about Denmark, eastern Russia, and bits of Ireland.
Frankfurters In Frankfurt
Wow, that sleep sucked.
Bike wrangling on these smaller trains is really awkward.
Grabbing a quick snack at the layover.
A fate worth avoiding, I think.
Three old dudes chillin’ on the train. Apparently it’s some kind of German ‘father’s day’ holiday today.
Negotiating the best we can with the other cyclists. At least boarding was easy.
Okay, now it’s getting cramped…
Posters in the train stations to catch a guy for tax evasion. That’s German justice!
Now things are reversed… Valoria is here, and everything else is far away.
A bit of a crowd, yep…
Aha, this is what I’m looking for!
It’s mandatory. You walk in here, you gotta get one of these.
Meeting The Rhine
Whoops! My alarm rang at 5:00am. I’m having time zone problems! Luckily I managed to get another three hours.
Hey, fancy hotel people: Maybe you should redesign your rooms instead of hanging these dumb advisory tags?
Bit awkward but we managed it.
Nick and I hauled the bikes downstairs and packed them, and this time we managed not to accidentally switch our smaller bags. I also did a quick inspection and found that my rack was missing a screw. This is why we bring spares…
Time to explore, with an appropriately themed t-shirt.
Our first destination was one from yesterday: We cycled back to the Römerberg, the big square with all the amazing buildings. Our mission was to get a picture standing in the same spot that Nick’s grandfather, Ben, stood a quarter century ago.
Here’s the original photo from 1997:
We didn’t have the right lens, but we did our best:
Nick standing in the spot where his grandpa did about a quarter century ago.
The crowds were getting thicker by the minute, so I zipped into the scene and Nick got a shot of me:
Standing in the spot where dad did, about a quarter century ago.
With that photo done, we barged into a random restaurant for brunch. We pointed at stuff behind the counter and they loaded the items onto a dish, then charged us all at once. Service via the point-and-grunt method! My mother would be proud.
The coffee was terrible, but we devoured the food, chatting about New York versus German cities, about bikes versus cars, about different modes of dress.
“Germany skews much more older than America,” Nick observed. “Or perhaps those are the only people we see out in the middle of a Friday?”
We strolled around a bit, getting our last looks at the magnificent square.
Little houses in a little house shop, in a house that looks like the little houses!
Don’t ask me. It’s cute though.
A cute alleyway! Nick insisted we get a photo.
Back on the bikes, we set out for another photo op, reproducing a shot from 1997 at the David and Goliath sculpture. This went a bit better. Here’s the original:
Here’s Nick in the same spot:
Nick sitting where his grandpa sat a quarter century ago.
And here’s me:
The David And Goliath fountain. Sitting where Dad sat about a quarter centurty ago.
There were some other photos we could try to reproduce but they were just on random street corners, so we declared victory and began to move west and south, picking streets almost randomly. Frankfurt was a busy place, and we encountered all kinds of goings-on, for example a trade union protest.
A labor union protest.
These little cobbled town square areas are a nice place to take a breath during a cross-town ride.
Solidarity with Ukraine!
You know you live in a real city when towers pop up along the skyline at random.
This looks like a good place for a snack! (Doesn’t every place?)
I gave him two euros for the photo. He wanted to see what it looked like after I took it. It got a smile.
It was time to head for the Main river, which would lead us to the Rhine, which we would spend the next couple days following.
But first, a run around a skate park!
We crossed the Opelbrücke bridge using a bike lane, putting us on the south side of the river. The weather was great. The wind was against us but was very mild.
Don’t philosophize at the geese without a permit!
Honk honk honk chomp chomp honk peep peep peep chomp chomp honk
Two honkers looking out for a place to snack.
This little guy sassed me and my bike for a good 80 meters.
For a while we enjoyed a charming dirt path, then crossed another bridge and met up with the Rhine to our left.
Then it was time for ice cream. Because: It was there!
MOAR SNACKS
I was highly amused by the signs visible from the shop.
I really enjoy how the modular letters fit into the sign.
For several hours we stayed on the Eurovelo route. Nick expressed interest in the mapping program I was using, so we installed it on his phone. It allowed us to use (and cache) the OpenCycle map, upon which all the Eurovelo routes are marked. Now we would both know what was ahead.
It was great to be pedaling through the countryside again, after so much city riding, and especially after those awkward trains.
A really lovely trail.
Cool trail this way!
I KNOW it has a sensible German meaning but IT SAYS FART!! Heeeeeheeheeheee
The duck approves.
Too cute not to photograph.
Around dinner time we picked another restaurant at random. I got a big chunk of fish with fries and Nick ordered some pasta. More fine conversation.
DOGLOAF
The Eurovelo route was charming. It was clearly pieced together from other things: Connected bike paths, old walking trails, decommissioned rail lines, suburban streets … even chunks of parking lot.
As we drew near our chosen campground, we realized there was enough daylight that we could slow down and relax even more.
Interesting! The USSR hammer and sickle. Symbols of communism turned into symbols of racism, thanks to Russia.
There was a snag: The campground did not accept any sort of charge card. It was cash only. I would need to find a cash machine in the morning. In the meantime, I agreed to leave my passport with the clerk overnight as a kind of collateral.
With the tents deployed and most of our gear stowed, we decided to explore the city of Mainz on the other side of the river.
Getting to the main bridge required going over a tiny bridge!
We didn’t know it at the time, but the city of Mainz was the birthplace of Johannes Gutenberg about 600 years ago. There was an amazing museum featuring early examples of mass-printed type, but it was already closed for the day.
We still had fun poking around.
I find this castle quackworthy.
PFAFF!!!!
I found an ATM, and then hung out for a while at a hip-looking and expensive cafe. I was surprised to see how many German people smoke, including young people. That would explain the cigarette machine I saw at the campsite. I haven’t seen one of those in 30 years (since they were banned.)
Back across the river I paused to grab a photo of the city, because the light was calling to me.
I crawled into my tent and tried to inflate the mattress, but the pump was nearly dead and would barely move air. I sent Nick a snippy text about it. Then I scooped together a bunch of gadgets and crawled back out, and found a power outlet in the bathroom building. Since I had time to kill I trimmed my beard, then sat reading. An hour later everything was decently charged. Now I could have a nice mattress!
There was a pub next to the campground and a bunch of revelers were laughing and shouting in German until late in the night. I put in my Airpods and was able to mostly ignore it.
Very often I question the sheer amount of stuff I haul around in bike bags while touring. But on days like this it feels okay.
Castles everywhere!
More broken sleep this night, but the setting and weather were so good, who cares?
As Nick was packing up, I walked to the check-in desk and paid for our night, and got my passport back.
Then I walked around to the food kiosk and picked up the two chocolate croissants we’d ordered on the “breakfast clipboard” from the previous night.
So that’s where they mixed all their records.
Something a lot of politicians should learn…
Nick and I crossed over the river together and began following the shore. Many birds, lots of other cyclists and people out walking.
Meanwhile, Nick went a little off-map…
With such a light breakfast, we were pretty hungry in the afternoon. We picked a little cafe at random and ordered sausage and fries.
Around us, a heap of other cyclists were preparing for a group ride. We were tempted to join them, but they were going in the opposite direction.
As we rolled back onto the route, we passed the classiest fire station I’ve ever seen.
Gotta be a fire around here somewhere. Maybe if I stand up here I can spot one…
The door in the wall outside the fire station.
Clearly this is not the door to a fire station. It’s the door to “Creepybear Manor.”
Cool looking registration stickers around here.
For a while we drifted away from the river, into some low hills. The landscape reminded me of the nicest parts of river delta area, east of San Francisco back home. Vivid greens, dark fertile soil, and air that was just a touch humid without being overwhelming. Evidence of small-scale and industrial farming, and residential gardens, scrolled by on both sides of the path.
Local version of the moisture renention I see over crops back home.
A really lovely trail, far from roads.
Delightful countryside.
Nick went ahead of me. Every now and then I would drift to a stop and poke my face and camera lens into the weeds, checking out the insect life.
Bumbly!
So many colors in the grass!
Everyone is crying at the dread hypnotic flyingo of the bee of the bird of the moth!
Bubbly bug house!
“Any one of these cute townships could feel like home,” I thought, “just from the look of them, laid out across the slope of a hill ahead.”
Of course at the same time, another part of me was busily examining this feeling, and considering the ways that pop culture – like Disney films – and the stories told by my extended family combined to generate this feeling, even though I had never been here before and couldn’t even speak the local language.
A hamlet ahead on the trail.
Back on the trail.
Pausing at a nice bend in the road.
The architecture was a combination of immediately familiar, based on my time visiting Berkeley as a kid and staying in my great grandmother’s Victorian house, with mythical, as I recognized the half-timbered style from illustrations in fairytale books and computer games, with the anonymously modern and undistinguished style I’ve seen everywhere from Los Angeles to London.
This house and scene wouldn’t be out of place in Santa Cruz back in California…
A stalker in the sky.
Soon we rejoined the river, and began to see the aquatic wildlife and grander monuments again.
Honk honk!
The Niederwald Monument, commemorating the Franco-Prussian War and the unification of Germany.
The Niederwald Monument in context.
Hello, honkers!
I passed an ice cream shop right next to the trail, so of course I had to stop.
Time for a snack!
The treat fit perfectly in my cup holder. What a life!
This looks chompable! But where should I put it?
Huzzah! It fits perfectly in the cup holder.
Nick was still ranging ahead of me, and we kept in touch over text, occasionally sending photos back and forth of whatever caught our eye. This was castle territory: The Rhine is absolutely crawling with castles, keeps, fortresses, et cetera.
Somewhere in the last couple of centuries the practice of cannibalizing stone from an old castle to build a new one ground to a halt as internal combustion made it far easier to refine and transport new building materials like concrete and steel – while simultaneously making these structures useless as defense – and nowadays they’re maintained for their aesthetics more than anything else. Which is fantastic, frankly. I would cycle down this river even without castles to look at, but they really kick it up a notch.
If we had more time we’d go strolling around it.
Assmannshäuser is quite a name.
Cross carefully to the castle.
If I had oodles of money to dispense, I could probably book a few nights up in one of these…
Look up anywhere and you’re likely to spot a castle.
Many a feast has been chomped behind those windows!
Eventually I closed the gap with Nick, who was catching a truly amazing vibe down by the shore of the river at a small cafe, sipping a microscopic espresso. It looked so perfect that I was reluctant to disturb him: I got the feeling he was making a specific memory that would bounce around in his mind for years.
Espresso down by the river. What a life!
We chatted about modes of transport, and political movements.
So quaint!
Can I hack this?
We also discussed the riding schedule. Our stretch goal was a campsite called “Campingpark Sonneneck”, about ten miles outside of Koblenz. We were making good time, and if we could get all the way it would give us more time to look around Koblenz before we turned west up the Moselle.
Dang, espresso really makes Nick pedal fast…
No wall is safe from plant attack!
Woman with wine and a weiner.
We rode near each other, then with me directly behind Nick to draft him, for the remaining miles. We talked about starting up an audiobook together, but were enjoying our music too much.
The tourist information tree.
We saw plenty of the different modes of transportation from our discussion. Trains, cats, barges, boats…
Sending a shipment of scrap metal upriver.
Not a lot of cars can fit on this ferry.
Such a teeny little car!
More amazing vegetation in the late afternoon sun, more photo opportunities…
“Only narrowness can birth wideness. All else goes to the sea.” -F.G. Paff I’m not sure what it means or whether I agree with it, but there you go.
Right down by the river we saw a lot of small plots of land with gardens and shack-like houses on them. We couldn’t decide on the purpose of these. Some appeared to be exclusively for gardening. Some were barely habitable, and didn’t appear to be insulated or electrified. Some looked lived-in. Were these properties used for vacationing? Was this considered some kind of low-income or government-assisted housing? We couldn’t figure it out.
Cuter than castles.
Quite a lot of gardening going on in these little plots.
Some structures are just not going to last as long as the castles…
Meanwhile, above and around these plots, the fancy towns and castles kept coming at us.
I’m definitely an American of a certain age, because when I see this, I think of the intro to the old Scooby Doo cartoon…
It’s weird how quickly one gets used to seeing castles everywhere. Any one of these would be a marvel back home.
So fortressy!
If people wanted to build structures of this size, and in this location, in modern times, they would use different materials and a different design, and the result would probably need a whole lot less maintenance. But, am I glad these grand old buildings were retrofitted? Yes I am!
One could read an entire epic history about any of these places, if one had the time…
I wonder if there are really good weasels in this town?
“Dangit, why does he keep riding past all the pizza places?”
Just like the critters back home…
We pushed the pedals and chugged along, but it was fully dark when we arrived at the campsite. The attendant said the place was full, but if we wanted, we could set up in the space next to the cute little mini golf course. It wasn’t much room, and there might be some noise, but we counted ourselves lucky.
Another site, another setup.
Tent is up, bike is parked. Ready for sleep.
We rolled our bikes over to the site and I sent Nick out immediately to run to the pizza joint in the middle of the campground and ask if they could still make us food. Turns out they could, so we ordered two personal pizzas and glasses of orange juice. We chowed down with gusto. I wasn’t sure if we were being rude by picking up the slices directly rather than cutting them with a knife and fork, but I was too hungry to care.
Charging all the things!
Two words you learn fast in Germany.
Then it was time for some bodily functioning, and charging of gadgets. We didn’t stay up very late, owing to tiredness. Nine hours of cycling today!
The Moselle meets the Rhine
May 21, 2023 Filed Under Curious, Introspection
Well, it’s not a great round of sleep, but it’ll have to do.
A pretty bad night according to my fancy watch. My sleep apnea mouth insert was not working right. Bah!
Reading the morning memes.
I packed up my stuff relatively quickly, though I had to unroll the tent again because I accidentally wrapped my headphones and GPS tracker inside it. Nick had commandeered one of my folding chairs and was browsing memes while slowly waking up. He looked so comfortable I decided I would leave him be and go take a shower.
Oh boy, shower time… Looks a bit grody… Here we go.
I’m keeping these on, thanks.
I wheeled the bike over to the restaurant just in case, but it was closed. The shower was alarmingly grody, so I changed out of my clothes while standing in my biking sandals and showered with them on. Still way better than no shower at all!
Nick packed up, and on we went.
Putting the bike shoes back on.
As a Californian, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how many brick arches there are around here.
I bet this town has exactly the right number of pets.
*slurp*
I wonder if that’s what the baker actually looks like?
We found a groovy bakery in the next town, and sat down to a solid breakfast.
Place the money on the right, get the snacks on the left!
Gotta keep the butter cool.
Not bad for an all-you-can-eat ten dollar breakfast.
Just as we were starting to chomp, Nick realized he’d forgotten his battery back at the campsite, so I spent some time browsing train schedules and moving photos around.
So this is what that kind of wall looks like when it hasn’t been maintained for a couple dozen years. Hmmm.
After that we rode along the riverbank, absorbing the pleasant air and sun.
A few hours later we stopped for drinks at a roadside restaurant, just because we could. I got hot chocolate and he got a coffee drink.
We talked a lot about urban planning, about the paranoia his parents had about strangers and getting lost that was imposed on them by the suburban life, about how different it was when I was a kid. We tried to think of ways we could adapt urban environments, so they were better for families, and turned people away from the madness of car-based environments.
Remember back in the day when they would haul cargo upriver by tethering it to teams of horses? (Me neither.)
It’s hard to tell what’s going on here because it’s a bit rusted, but it looks like … that king is stabbing infants with the end of his sword…?
Arrr the Monk Wino and Captain Craggy, and their friend … Mr. Duck.
We pedaled on, drifting apart and then back again. Soon we threaded into Koblenz, a large town sitting at the juncture of the Moselle and Rhine rivers, and stopped in a plaza. There we found a tall monument depicting the history of the region.
Nearby was a pedestal with a section-by-section breakdown:
Contemplating such a massive span of time, and scraps of earlier conversations, Nick sat down to work through some things in his head. I walked around and gazed at the people and ate a snack.
From there we squiggled a bit farther north and found some other interesting sculpture, eventually reaching a park right at the confluence of the rivers, with an enormous statue of Kaiser Wilhelm overlooking the slowly churning water.
Tourists, musicians, and locals wandered around.
It was a nice day for lingering, but we did have more ground to cover. We rode west, following the Moselle. Going was very, very slightly tougher because now we were headed upriver instead of down.
We stopped at a greek cafe up a hill, next to a train station. I got gyros and wolfed them down, and Nick got some tortellini which he ate at a more sensible pace. I planned a train ride for tomorrow to make up for lost time.
As we were readying the bikes, I noticed a few tiny bricks set into the street.
On closer inspection I got a chilling reminder of what had happened here before, and during, World War II.
How do you make amends, as a government or a nation, for an act of murder that was so complete that there is no family, even extended family, left to return stolen property to? When they’re dead, and the people who killed them are dead, and the officials and the lawmakers who were “just following orders” are dead by firing squad or rotting in prison, and your bombed-out, ruined country is now one enormous crime scene, how do you set it right?
I don’t know. These little bricks are obviously no compensation. I’ve done a fair amount of reading about what happened on the path to World War II and how it played out, but not much on what the Germans did afterward…
I made a note to do that, then dragged my mind back to the present, and the fine weather. The steep vineyards along the river were ridiculously pretty.
It felt like a privilege to be here, during a narrow slice of history where things are relatively peaceful.
As I passed through a quiet intersection I heard a kid’s voice coming from a side yard. He said “Alahoo Akbar, reep reep, Alahoo Ahhkbarr,” and made a bunch of snorting noises like a pig. I was confused, then suddenly realized he was saying this at me, because he saw I was wearing a bandana, and decided that it must be some kind of keffiyeh under my bike helmet, and was mocking me with a religious phrase he connected to them.
I felt quite incredibly offended on behalf of everyone in the Middle East, and turned the bike around slowly, and rolled back by the yard. The kid who’d made the noises was still muttering nonsense to himself and kicking a soccer ball against the gate. I didn’t say anything, but grinned rather intensely at him, and when he saw me he jerked back, then stiffly gathered his ball and about-faced to walk to his friend at the far end of the yard. If I’d had more forethought I would have said something sarcastic to him in English. Hopefully I at least surprised some caution into the little shithead.
The incident was unsettling, and made me very thoughtful about the degree to which I was able to assume that the people around me in this foreign country meant me no harm. I mean, I’d known going in that I already looked very German, so as long as I didn’t open my mouth I could blend in; to the degree that a dude riding a recumbent festooned with too many bags could blend in anywhere. It honestly never occurred to me that they might also assume I was Middle Eastern because of my freaking bandana, which is, okay, an exceptionally thick white cotton cloth with an elaborate pattern on it in bright red ink, but generally smaller than any keffiyeh. Were Germans looking at me with some suspicion because of that? Was the shitty rambling of this little kid just an overt sign of an internal bigotry churning below the surface of the adult minds all around me?
I passed out of the town and down a steep hill, then zig-zagged to the campsite. The woman at the booth spoke broken English and was very friendly, though I also detected a strange note of nervousness in her demeanor, and I couldn’t help thinking it was the bandana again. It probably wasn’t. But the sense of discontent lingered with me.
I looked for Nick on my map and saw that he’d blown past the campsite. I called him and told him to read his texts, which he did. He turned right around. “Dang, I was just cruising along, feeling good. I could have gone a bunch more miles today I think.”
I ordered a giant glass of ice with tapwater in it, and they brought it to me, plus a refill. For that I was charged six dollars. Nick hemmed and hawed over the menu and eventually chose a rhubarb soda, which tasted a bit like a carbonated sports drink but came in a very nice tall glass.
We chatted about cultural differences, and the presence of so much designer label clothing around us. Nick pointed out that it was very expensive to get a drivers license in Germany. I opined that it was typical of Europe to make rules designed specifically to shut out the lower classes, as if they weren’t allowed to exist. I came to Germany expecting to find everything either the same as or better than the United States. Better land, better customs, better laws… Instead I’m finding that it’s a mixed bag, and some of the stuff they do seems outright crazy. I thought crazy was a mode that belonged only to Americans.
We found an open patch and set up our tents, then I bought more laundry tokens in the restaurant.
Two 7-minute showers and two washing machine runs.
The majestic entrance to the showers and toilets. So grand!
Pssst HEY KID, wanna buy a smoke?
We loaded laundry into two machines. Then we sat around organizing the campsite for a bit, then just reading our devices. One of the dryers ate two of my coins, so we consolidated.
Evening at the campsite.
By the time our laundry was done it was fully night, and we snuggled in, listening to the occasional bird calls from the swampy inlet on the far side of our little peninsula. It felt a bit like summer camp. Tomorrow we would wake up and go climbing around on ropes, and decorate pinecones to look like Mr. Potato Head, then have a sing-song around the fire.