Watch out for Allergen 14 and unwanted software updates

“What are you doing in Karlsruhe?”

We are actually wondering that ourselves, even before our lovely waitress at dinner poses the question.

The answer is pretty simple: it’s because Karlsruhe is about 60km from Drusenheim, and that’s a reasonable day’s ride for us.

Our day starts out OK. The weather is fine as we leave Drusenheim. We’re feeling good and looking forward to the day. Instead of following our plotted route we decide to follow the “official” EV15 signs, and while it seems to be taking us further and further away from the river and what we had plotted we decide to go with the flow, and figure the route we have is a bit outdated.

We’re a bit disconcerted how far it veers away from the river, but keep going until, when we’re about 15km into the ride it starts to rain. What better way to shelter from the rain than to stop at an ice cream place? You can eat ice cream before 11am, right? Yep!

We continue on following the signs and eventually wend our way back towards the river, riding along through lush green floodplains. We are rapidly reaching the end of our time in France.

Often on this trip we’ve crossed a border with no real idea of where it was. Today I can see a line on the map on my Garmin bike computer. We stop at that exact point and bid adieu to France. We won’t be seeing her again this trip.

We’re expecting to cross the river at a bridge, but when we arrive it turns out we are taking a ferry. And the ferry is on the other side of the river as we arrive. And then it starts to rain. And the ferry doesn’t come to collect us, because a big river boat is passing through. So we pull on rain gear and wait.

When the ferry does come it approaches like a crab, sideways across the significant river current. We get on board, along with a few other vehicles and we are across the river and into the sunshine in no time. That’s microclimate at its best!

There’s a convenient restaurant on the other side. We have about 15km to go and we’re both hungry, so we stop. The restaurant is a bit odd. We wait for ages at the entrance, with waiters passing to and fro carrying plates out to tables, or back to the kitchen, and there is no acknowledgement that we’re there. Do we keep waiting? Or just go sit at one of the empty tables?

Eventually Neil flags someone down – one of the plate runners, who’s wearing a red shirt. He consults with the one in the white shirt, and they tell us to wait. So we wait again, and after quite some time they seat us at a table tucked behind a wall. Maybe they don’t like cyclists?

The menu is in all German, but there’s a vegetarian section and I pick one of the dishes. Neil’s struggling with enough reception on his phone to translate some of the menu – and the menu is huge! – so when I order, he orders the same. When our meals come out they are enormous – some crunchy fried ravioli with mountains of leafy salad on top. I do my level best. Neil eats a little more, and we head out to our bikes.

I had taken my Garmin bike computer inside with me and it had carried on beeping and being very annoying. When I get outside it seems to be having a little conniption, rebooting itself over and over. A quick Google tells me that it is probably stuffed. Just like that.

Rather than try to mess with it, I put it in the bag where I can’t see it and it can’t make me angry and we continue on, with just Neil’s Garmin for navigation. Getting into Karlsruhe is not simple – sometimes even with the best bike infrastructure, it can just be difficult. Neil confides that he’s not feeling well, hasn’t been well since lunch, and he seems ultra sensitive to the smells in the environment around us.

Riding into Karlsruhe, my main perception is grey. It just seems grey, and not just the colour of the buildings and streets. The energy seems grey. I can’t put my finger on it. Even with life around, and people going places, it seems lifeless.

Things go downhill after we reach our hotel and a not-well Neil tries to check in. So many places across Europe are now self check in, even hotels. You’d think that staying at a hotel would afford you some service, but not at this place where an ATM-looking machine provides the only way to get in. It won’t read his passport and won’t accept his booking number, which is a booking-dot-com number, not a direct hotel booking number.

After about 45 minutes, which includes waiting for some guy to check in who also seems to be having difficulty (but denies it when I ask him) and finally having to make a phone call for assistance, we are in. Then we have to figure out where to store our bikes, and that takes a trip into the nearby café for somebody to open a door, and us carrying our bikes down steep and narrow stairs to the bottom of the building.

Finally we get to our room and we are greeted by this one our bed. (At first I think it is a chocolate, and think, “How nice”.)

Neil lies down and goes to sleep, but his stomach is churning up a storm! He thinks he’s been “fished”.

Neil has a strange fish and seafood allergy. He’s not anaphylactic, but gets bad stomach cramps for a day or more after he ingests even the tiniest amount of fish.

But how? He ate the same meal as me – the vegetarian meal!

While he sleeps, I busily google what’s wrong with my Garmin. From what I can make out I have a software conflict. I updated the maps before we left Australia, and that is my downfall. My Garmin tried to update today and I cancelled it, but maybe it did a sneaky update while I was eating and broke itself because there is a conflict between the new maps which I have, and a recent update. I fire off a terse email to Garmin Australia asking for a “please explain” and then Neil wakes up, has a shower and declares he wants a beer.

We wander the grey streets of Karlsruhe for some time before we find a largely empty pub/restaurant for a beer. A helpful and friendly couple sitting nearby offer to help us translate the menu (it’s OK we can figure out beer) and as we talk, they seem to have the same feelings towards Karlsruhe as us. They are only passing through as well.

Not every place in Europe can be cute and atmospheric and a great place to be. I think we’ve just been spoilt along this route so far.

Neil’s feeling a bit like eating, so we hunt down a place were we can get a Flammekueche (aka Tarte Flambee, and a bit like a pizza, with toppings on a crispy base). The bonus at this place is that we can get an asparagus Flammekueche – asparagus season is still running strong!

With the first match of the soccer world cup running noisily in the background, Neil is busy consulting his phone, Finally he asks, “What’s a mollusc?”

Uh-oh. He’s been googling to find the restaurant we had lunch at, and has found the menu, with a convenient list of allegens under each dish. And, WTF, in the list of allergens under the vegetarian meal we both ate, is the sneaky, fishy-ish number 14 – molluscs. The bloody restaurant is passing a meal off as vegetarian that contains bloody molluscs??

I reckon it is oyster sauce in the salad dressing. Neil is convinced he tasted sesame seeds/oil in the dressing, and that’s a trigger for him to be suspicious of a bottled asian dressing.

Either way, there’s two lessons in it for us. One, Neil must check allergens and avoid anything which has 2, 4 or 14. And the restaurant needs a stern email from me telling them that bloody molluscs are not vegetarian.

As we’re paying for our dinner we start talking to our waitress, and that’s when she asks the question – just why are we in Karlsruhe? It seems even the locals find it a bit drab!

Stats for today:

• Distance: 58.44km
• Climb: 137m
• Average speed: 17.1km/h
• Average temperature: 18C
• Moving time: 3:25:08
• 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 picture was taken at a restaurant in view of all our friends. This place obviously gets crowds, just not today. And to be fair, we were chatting with some people at the time. The city just feels bare and lifeless.

Along the way today:

Click on an image to scroll through the gallery at full size.