What is it with church bells? I get the ringing on Sundays – calling the few people who still go to church. At the service we went to last night the pastor had to wait for the bells to finish before starting. But is it really necessary to have them going (presumably) all night? I certainly hear them at 5am, 5:15, 5:30, 5:45 …
And here’s a question. Europe is on 24 hour time format. Why is it then that a 3pm, the bells ring three times and not fifteen? There is always something to ponder.
Here it seems that everything is forbidden or mandatory
Neil McKinnon, July 2023
When we stay more than one night in any place we like to get an apartment. An apartment gives more space to spread out (and believe me, these compact-looking panniers you see in the bike pictures explode when opened), often a washing machine and a kitchen where we can make breakfast for the few days we are in one place.
The Danube river. We are going to be following it now until the end of the trip. We know this river: second longest in Europe (2850km), runs from Germany right through to the Black Sea. Neil and I rode around 1000km along the Danube in 2015 in what was, until now, our most epic bike trip.
But did you know that of the ten countries this river flows through, none of them call it the Danube? In Germany/Austria it is Donau, in Slovakia/Ukraine, Dunaj, in Hungary, Duna (my personal favourite), in Serbia/Croatia/Bulgaria, Dunav and in Romania/Moldova, Dunărea.
Yet we call it the Danube, as do the French (Le Danube – but I bet it doesn’t sound anything like the way we say it) while the Spanish and Italians call it Danubio. Why can’t everybody get together and call it the same damn thing?
Today is more of a commute day (getting from A to B) with a minimum of fuss. We have a rest day coming up in Ulm which is well-needed. We mark yet another milestone today – passing the 1000 mile mark. We are now in territory we’ve not been before, distance-wise.
Today is also a real-life example of “net down”: We end the day lower in altitude (478m) than when we started (540m), but it takes an awful lot of uphill to get there. It seems that every cute little village, with its cute church and cute houses and cute cobblestones, is set on a hill and we have to go up into and down out of each one of these villages.
Greetings from a day where not much really happened
There are heaps of cyclists out today. It is Saturday so people are out enjoying themselves. And lots of people are on e-bikes. There is one particularly nasty little hill that pops up with no warning and honestly it is almost vertical. Even Neil walks up this one. While we are clomping up it there is the unmistakable whirr of electric motors and two e-bikes sail up as if they are on a flat road. Not only that but a skinny road biker on a bike that must weigh less than a feather also rides up effortlessly.
E-bikes are great. They give people who would not ordinarily be out cycling the chance to do so, and being out cycling is better than sitting on a couch or driving a petrol guzzler around – right? One day perhaps I will be a proud e-bike owner.
But some e-bike riders can be a real nuisance. Today we are caught behind a group of e-bikers as they dawdle along a narrow and flat path which leaves no room to pass. At a traffic light Neil and I sneak past them only to find a hill around the next bend. As I’m working my way up slowly the e-bike group passes with the lead rider throwing me such a smug look that I want to poke a stick through his spokes. Failing that I wish him a flat battery and get on with my own job.
We arrive in Ulm in the late afternoon and I spy a Mexican restaurant right near the apartment where we are staying. That’s dinner sorted! We are staying right near the centre of town where it all seems quite lively with people going about their business beneath the looming Ulm Münster – known to be the tallest church in the world with a spire rising to more than 160m.
Ulm seems to be a fine place for a rest day. I shall make the most of resting ????
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 cafe in the Munsterplatz in Ulm with the Munster just barely visible in the background.
It’s raining in the morning, and there is no magic reprieve in the shape of a cancellation so we must pack up and ride after one of the best breakfasts on the whole trip. By best breakfast I mean bircher muesli, really good yogurt and fruit and bread with a bit of substance, not the smashed avocado kind we Melbournites are used to.
It’s hump day. Notwithstanding that today is Thursday, for this trip it’s hump day because today we go over the hump that dominates the profile of this entire trip.
Switzerland is a bit of an outlier in these parts. It is not part of the EU but is part of the Schengen Area which means all those border crossings we did yesterday and the one we will do today do not require pulling out a passport and answering questions. Indeed, those border crossings are pretty much non-events. You barely notice them.
Where the bloody hell are we anyway? Switzerland? Germany?
It’s hard to know what country we’re in today.
The Rhine river forms a handy border between Switzerland and Germany, except over here in the area between Tiengen and Stein am Rhein, where the border becomes an almost arbitrary set of lines on the map. I’m sure there are long historical reasons for the border placement, but for a 21st century traveller it all seems a bit random. There is even a point here where you can be in Switzerland and look south (and also north) toward Germany.
Whoa, we’re half way there / Whoa oh, livin’ on a prayer
Bon Jovi, 1986
Basel seems unwilling to let us go. There are two ways to leave town on EV6 – north of the river, where you quickly enter Germany, and south of the river, where you stay in Switzerland. After a quick consultation with an EV6 forum (sample group of three responses) we choose south.
The signage is terrible. We end up at a dead end at a ship dockyard and have to backtrack a few kilometres. We give up on the south-of-the-river route, cross the river and easily find the route out of town. (In our defence, we are not the only ones this morning to make this navigational mistake.)
I spent the northern winter of 1987/88 in Basel. They were heady days. Basel was my first landing place in Europe, and as a young wide-eyed and barely travelled 24-year-old I felt like I’d been transported to another world.
With much sadness today I bid au revior to France. She’s been a wonderful host, apart from her dogged insistence on sprinkling pig on everything except the sweetest of treats, and I will miss her culture and beauty.
