Everything is a Fahrt in Germany

It feels like a rinse and repeat of yesterday: church bells to start the day and a fast exit from town on flat paths. The bikes are still humming along and the bodies feeling pretty good. Perhaps we have come to that part of the trip, where all is well and remains well.

We’re passing through more farmland today. The two main crops are corn and wheat, followed closely by vast fields of spinach. The corn is interesting. There’s so much grown here and in France, but you never (rarely) see corn turning up on a plate. That’s because it is not human food; it is pig food. You often see pig turning up on a plate. They throw it in everything.

The small farming villages are often quite … molodorous. In many villages we find there is a large and smelly barn, right in the centre of town, and with resident cows, even now in the height of summer. I’m not sure what is going on there. Are the cows so accustomed to living in barns they prefer to stay year round? Are there some “house cows” that stay living in the town during summer to provide milk? Are their buddies out in the field somewhere frolicking and enjoying the summer? So many questions.

We often see (and smell) great piles of what I can only imagine is the cow shit/straw compost that is generated during the long cold winters when the animals do all live in a barn. I want not to be a farm animal in Europe.

We also ride through pretty villages. There is great civic pride in all the villages, with baskets of flowers bursting with colour hung on bridges, fences, outside houses. The pretty villages most often have ornate and historical town gates and a cobbled central area that is often car free and lined with cafes, restaurants and bakeries. These are the kind of places we are stopping in for lunches, not the smelly farm villages.

Today is a busy day for cyclists. We have them coming at us from all angles. It’s the kind of day where you meet up with a cyclist, or a group of cyclists, and then leap frog them for the rest of the day. It’s sunny and a lovely day to be out.

We stop in Donauworth today for lunch, at a bakery where I get a vegie burger! I feel it a moral obligation to buy vegetarian food from these small places if available, so they’ll keep on making it. To be fair, most places have vegetarian food, even the restaurants we go to a night, and often in a separate section. For a pig-eating country where the vegetarian population is pretty low, that’s great!

We also share a poppy seed cake. Yum!

I regret that big lunch a short time later when we hit the hilly section of the ride. It seems to me those poppy seeds have all swelled up inside my stomach making it feel overfull as I heave myself and my bike over the series of “net down” hills.

We’re following a couple where she (a tiny she at at) is on a heavily loaded bike and he is cruising along with barely any luggage. It hardly seems fair, and we’re making up stories about why it is so. (I think he said, “If you’re going to bring that much stuff for two days you can carry it all yourself,” or, more charitably, she is an olympic cyclist doing heavy load training. Neil thinks she is on a long tour and he has just joined her for a day or so.) We come upon them parked at the side of the path and he leans over and gives her a kiss before she sets off … on a butt-nutter of a hill that Neil and I both walk up. We are coming to the conclusion that our bikes are not really geared for this type of touring (though we did do that trip over the low Tatras eight years ago on these same bikes, climbing over 1,000m on several days.)

It’s a relief to get over the hilly bit and then cruise into Neuburg an der Donau, which is a bit of a surprise package. We’re staying at a gasthaus which has a beer garden and restaurant (with an award-winning chef) … but it’s their “rest day” today. Rest days are a thing for most businesses here we are learning, but the actual day of rest can vary from business to business so there’s no way to plan.

Fortunately it’s the kind of gasthaus that has a beer fridge on an honour system so we’re table to have our end of day beer in the closed and empty beer garden which would be a great space if it wasn’t rest day.

There’s a town within the town here and as we go to explore the old, walled part of the town we see heaps of people all heading in the same direction, dressed up in traditional costume. There must be something going on!

We follow in the same direction and they are all converging somewhere that looks like a private function. We continue into the old town and it is all set up for a festival – which was on last weekend and will be on this coming weekend, but we will be well gone by then. It’s a bit hard to properly see the old town as there are rows of tents that will be humming with activity serving food and drinks and I’m sure there’ll be lots of entertainment. It’s a shame we will be moving on tomorrow.

We find a very deserted looking Italian restaurant where one of the waiters encourages us in with a big smile and a nod. We only plan to stop for a drink but they bring out the menus and we’re a bit trapped. The food is great though so it’s not a bad stop in great surroundings.

It turns out the shindig tonight is an appeasement function for the residents of the old town. The festival goes for two weekends and late into the night which is a bit of inconvenience for the people who live here, so they get a party to try to keep them happy.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 65.43km
• Climb: 220m
• Average speed: 17.6km/h
• Average temperature: 27C
• Moving time: 3:42:44
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer pictures were taken in the closed and empty beer garden at our gasthaus.

Along the way today: