Some days things just go right. All of them. The weather. The people. The route. The food. The timing. Today was one of those days.
We were up a little late today, 6:50 am instead of 6:30 am. Nothing wrong with that, especially when your trip has no time table, no objective, no schedule. The dew was thick on the tent. I wiped it off with a towel, rung out the towel, and wiped some more. The tent was nearly dry.
With everything stuffed, packed and strapped down, we bid Willi and Eddie farewell and headed down the road. It was cooler than we were used to. I actually wore the legs of my zippy pants for the first time since leaving the states.
Today would see us make multiple country changes again. Switzerland to Germany and back again. And again.
We started on the Swiss, or south shore. In a few miles, at Waldport we crossed to the German side and entered the medieval downtown core. A bakery caught our eye as we entered town. We stopped for a few pastries, then slowly rode our bikes through town, eyeing the shops and architecture. Waldport is unique. The founders, in the 1500's, ran a small stream down the center of the town, providing fresh water. It is still there today-the trough the water ran in, not the actual water, new water flows through continuously😄.
Just outside the town a miracle occurred. I walked into a store to get Sally a Coke. There in the cooler, on sale for 59¢, were 1.5 liter bottles of PEPSI.
I presented one to Sally, waiting outside. Does this guy know how to being home the bacon, or what?
The route dropped steeply from this hillside town to a riverside path. We glided down the path, enjoying shore birds and views down the river.
I few more sunny, calm Kilometers and we were in Laufenburg. The Rhein is very narrow and deep at this point and a sturdy bridge connected the north and south banks, making a unified town that resided on both shores. In 1802, Napoleon decided that this city should be split in two, that part of the city on the south bank going to Switzerland, that on the north bank going to Germany. And so it has been for the past 213 years. To go from one side of the Rhine to the other you had to cross through a border check station, until the creation of the Eurozone, when the border stations came down.
We cycled across to Switzerland and had bread, cheese, fruit and carrots for lunch while overlooking the river, then cycled back to the German side to continue.
As we were climbing a short hill from the bridge crossing, Sally started a conversation with a woman and man walking down towards the bridge. This is when we met Klaus and Marlen Remme. Marlen grew up in the area. They were on their way to visit her father's grave. The discussion turned to graves. We had learned from Gallus that graves in Europe are temporary. After 15 or 20 years, the body is dug up and the remains discarded-somewhere-Gallus and Claudia did not know. This matches our observations. At the church gravesite in Wasserburg on the Bodensee, none of the graves were over 20 years old. At the time we thought that odd, given the age of the church. But again, at the church where Claudia's father was buried, the graves were all recent.
We related this information to Klaus and Marlen. They too, were not sure, but said they would find out when they got to the graveyard.
Marlen teaches kids with asperger's in their hometown, Berlin. We learned that they had been living in the U.S. for five years, until three years ago when they returned to Berlin. Klaus was the foreign corespondent to the U.S. for Deutschlandradio, the German equivalent of our NPR, for those five years. Previous to that assignment, he was the host of the morning news show for Deutschlandradio, the equivalent of Bob Edwards or Robert Seagal on Morning Edition on NPR (Klaus would dispute that comparison). Now, we had to have our picture taken with him, and Marlen was happy to oblige.
Their 19 year old son, Max, who grew up in Maryland (ages 10-15) was hoping to get a job with the National Park Service. Of course, this is right up Sally's alley, so we gave them all our contact information in case they wished to help Max pursue this avenue.
We parted company after about 30 minutes and continued down the Rhine.
After about an hour and a half of wonderful cycling we reached the town of Bad Säckingen, home of the longest covered bridge in Europe. It crosses the Rhine.
Our route now continued on the Swiss side.
A note about prices. Switzerland is double to triple the price on nearly everything, food included. If we buy a pastry in Germany it is about €1.40. Across the river, the same treat is about €3.30. Obviously, we try to buy our food (the only thing we are buying, because we have to carry everything on our bikes) while on the north side of the Rhine.
The route wandered out of the city, through residential areas for a few Kilometers, then entered woods for the next 15. The route was hard pack gravel, bumpy, but easy cycling. Along the way, we stopped to sit on a bench, just 10 feet from the river, for a rest.
Eventually, the track turned south, away from the river and turned from gravel to pavement. Our campground for the night was only half a mile away. We saw a large industrial looking building to our left. On the side of it was the Tesla logo. It was a Tesla dealer. We rode over to check it out. There were 50 Teslas of all colors sitting in the lot. We kicked tires (not really) and looked in windows (really) before talking to a Swiss gentleman waiting for the service work to be completed on his. It was fun.
We rode the final half mile to the campground, paid our lowest price yet, 21 Swiss Francs, and got the password to the WiFi. At 35Mb/s per second, it was our faster connection to the information superhighway yet.
Swimming in the gigantic public pool next door was free. We soon found out why. At 22°C, it was too chilly for swimming.
While cooking a dinner of carrots, cabbage, noodles and chicken broth we received an email from Klaus and Marlen, asking if we wanted to get together in the next few days. That sounded fun, and right in line with our trip objectives of meeting new people and taking the time to get to know them.
We checked out their location compared to ours. We weren't sure how far off route we could get, but we were game for the opportunity, so we emailed back that we would be happy too. We fell asleep before we got a reply.
Managing battery life on the phone requires diligence. I have fallen into this cycle of events. I use my phone at will, running down the battery. I use my small external battery to boost my iPhone back to 100%, then just before going to sleep I plug my battery into an outlet in the bathroom or one of the service panels that are sometimes scattered around the campground for the convenience of the campers and leave it overnight. My philosophy is, I can afford to have a battery stolen, but not my phone. So far, in the two weeks we have been on the road, my battery is there again each morning. Honest campers. I have a second battery if the first gets stolen.
If all days are like today, we are in for a great month of August. Perfect weather, amazing towns, wonderful people, super bike route.
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