#4 Zigzagging In & Out of NE France: June 2 - 19, 2007
North Eastern France
Entering France
Bill had us looping west from Frankfurt, even though our
cycling season was generally taking us south and east this year. The detour was to pick up one museum in
eastern France and one in western Germany, both of which had been out of reach
on previous tours. As we crossed the unmarked border from Germany into France on
the Mosel River, many of the same images struck us in our first
hours in the country as before.
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The homes and business properties in northern European
countries like Germany, Austria, and Switzerland always strike us with their
starched and neatly pressed look, with the well groomed landscaping and an
obviously high level commitment to building maintenance.
In contrast, our first looks of France were that familiar,
rumpled look. The stucco often looked like it was never painted or applied, and half or more
of the buildings looked like they were disintegrating. Fresh, new windows
and a satellite dish looked oddly out of place on exterior walls that appeared to
be otherwise ignored by the owner.
We can't ever decide if these appearance differences
between the northern and more Mediterranean countries reflect a difference in
affluence or are a reflection of divergent tastes and priorities.
The collective conflict that the French seem to have about
the US's role in their liberation in WWII is another element that always catches our eyes when we are in their
country. On our first day in
France this year, it was in a WWII memorial commemorating the crossing of the
Mosel River that revealed the unease. We carefully read the simple memorial and conspicuous in its absence was
"Who." It said "60eme" which we assumed was the 60th division or some other unit
of military might, but there was no mention of the nationality or even if it was
a
friendly or hostile force. Bill finally found the answer on the back side of the memorial:
the commemoration of the American effort was acknowledged with a monochromatic version of the Stars and Stripes.
Our paradigm swung the other way however when a large,
middle-aged French man in Lycra stopped to assist us at a junction on a rare
French bike
route. He was quick to offer help in English or German and was meticulous in
discussing the route options with Bill. He clearly had embraced the US as a
positive force in his life as he got off his titanium-frame bike to display the
"USA" logo on the manufacturer's decal. He also mentioned that he owned a BOB
trailer, which he knew was from the US. And he must be the first French person
to bring up the subject of Lance Armstrong in a
conversation without tagging it with "He could only have won by doping." This interchange was a breath of fresh air compared to the many exchanges
with French citizens who have pulled away from us when our efforts at using their language came
up short.
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Metz ("mehs")
A Ragged Start
The passing afternoon downpours that taunted us on the
dirt segments of our bike route into the city of Metz had us mopping up mud
before going into our central city hotel for the night. My new Teflon coated
hiking pants indeed did shed the muddy bits as they dried, but our rough
surfaced cycling sandals were hopelessly spattered. I was more presentable
than Bill, so after I spruced up a bit, I did the check-in
routine.
Normally I would have been delighted to be told that the bikes would spend the next
2 nights in the office instead of in a parking garage, but they too were covered in mud.
Despite the late hour on a discouragingly long day, I
remembered the budget-priced, pre-moistened wipes we had bought in Rome and Bill
remembered where he had stashed them. A half dozen small wipers did an amazingly
good job of removing the worst of the mud, at least for presentability though
not mechanical purposes. Even the thickest of the mud on the tires yielded to
our efforts. Luckily it had stopped raining in the last half hour, so neither we nor the bikes were dripping wet. The gracious young man at the desk
with a heavy French accent didn't bat an eye at our less than pristine state
and rolled our bikes into the carpeted space without hesitation.
Remembering Brittany
We weren't in Metz long and we were reminded of Brittany
on the west coast of France as it was the other pocket of the country where we
felt well received. Every one we interacted with our first day in the Metz area
was all smiles and welcoming including the cyclist on the path hours before
Metz; the hotel clerk; the 2 men whom Bill asked for directions to a
supermarket; and the checker at the market. And the next day it was the same at the
museum, the bakery, and the tourist information office. People were warm and
open and acted like they were happy to do business with us, which isn't what we
usually experience in France. And when Bill stumbled with his rusty French, all were
quick to switch to English or German or to help out by pointing, which also hasn't
been the norm for us in France.
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It was a delight and a relief to be able to relax this time
around in France. It was easier to take in the beautiful old architecture, the
pretty waterways, and the general ambiance of the city when we felt welcomed and
well received. And because of it, our time in France suddenly was extended. A
few flyers in the
museum we came to see had us asking more questions of the very helpful tourism
clerk and we looked forward to staying in the region.
We did laugh however at the classical "gotcha" at the museum.
We'd left Trier without seeing the 3 Roman museums because they were closed in
preparation for a special exhibit. And special it must have been as some of the better
pieces in the Metz museum weren't to be seen--they were on loan to Trier. Lucky
for us we'd still get to see them as we decided when in Trier to return there
for a day just to catch the illusive exhibits.
More To See
This often fought over, eastern corner of Lorraine which
shares borders with Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany was quickly revealing more
to see than Map Man had expected. For him, the draw had been the museum in Metz.
The museum hadn't been so grand, but the area was quickly rewarding us
with unexpected extras.
Our anticipation of the special Roman exhibit in Trier
focusing on Emperor Constantine was heightening as we were understanding how
broadly it was drawing loaned pieces. Once in Metz, we discovered that a special
exhibit on Pompeii had recently opened in the region. And our DVD lecture series
on the "Origins of WWII" had reminded us of the Maginot Line of French
fortifications, some of which were also nearby. So, taking a tour of some of
the ill-conceived fortifications quickly was added to the itinerary. Part of
this extra concentration of tourist goodies was because we were in the area
during the build up to the tourist season, but it also looked like the area was richer in
cultural heritage sights than the average.
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Languages
I'd been lamenting that we weren't making time to study
much German or any Italian and then it really seemed hopeless when we crossed the border into France. We only
spent 3 weeks in French-speaking Corsica in 2006, so we were both very rusty.
Bill can stumble through basic transactions in French whereas I can barely manage by
relying more on context than the actual words, but we were both at a loss at
first. Of course, it slowly got better. After straining to even remember the
word for "Thank you," a few more words came back to me. As usual in
France, Bill did all the talking and I
settled for picking up a few key written words.
Our museum visit in Metz held several linguistic surprises
for us however. First, we were startled by how many of our new Italian
vocabulary words put us in contention for good guesses in French. Their common
Latin origins popped up in the word used to indicate "blown" when discussing
Roman glass, the word for "wall," and one of the verbs for "to cook." Synergies
like these are little victories, but speed us along as we pick our way
through museum exhibit text word by word.
The second linguistic surprise was that the temptation to use
the French museum exhibits as prompts for reviving our Italian vocabulary was
irresistible. The words for "hat pin," "ring," "bracelet," and "coffin" don't
come up for us in conservations as travelers, but the items appear in many Roman
displays. So, after adding dozens of such slightly obscure words to our
vocabulary during our recent 10 days in Rome, we dusted them off and took them
for a spin in Metz. My electronic dictionaries were blazing as I checked our
work in Italian, translated a few dozen French words on the displays, and
conferred with the German dictionary as I challenged Bill to recall both the Italian
and the German words for some items.
Daily Necessities
Lodging
Lodging was again an early lament of ours during our short
stay in eastern France. In anticipation of the problem, Bill had booked us a
room at a favorite 2 star hotel chain in central Metz for the weekend special
price of about US$67. I am sure some abhor these Ibis Hotel rooms that are a
little too small and all the rooms look alike. But we have come to love the
predictability of the excellent beds, squeaky clean rooms, plumbing that always works,
and soundproofing that is well above average for Europe. We always get that hot shower and good night's sleep that we crave at the end of a long day.
Our first night out of Metz, we headed for French
motel chain that is a little cheaper than Ibis's weekday rates. They too have
consistent quality and usually have the double bonuses of bathtubs and hot pots
and have just added free WiFi. Even though it was midweek and we stopped early
(2:45pm), we were 1 customer too late to nab the last room and went on the road
looking for an alternative. After almost 2 hours of searching, we reluctantly took a private room in the next
village. We knew it would be nothing like our Ibis Hotel, even though it was
only about $5 less, nor would it compare to the private rooms in nearby Germany.
Bill's French teacher raved about these private rooms and I
am sure some find them rustic and charming, but the one's that appear where we
need lodging have been
overpriced and have us cringing. To us, the antiquated furnishings don't speak to an
elegant past but to being worn out. And they generally have that
Mediterranean level of disrepair that we find irksome. Like in Rome recently,
the roller shades didn't work, but here there was nothing to salvage. Instead of
being jammed as in Rome, the hardware in our "gite" was broken and missing.
Having electrical outlets in which the wiring flops out of the wall with the
outlet hardware as one unplugs an appliance doesn't endear us either--we like
using an outlet to be a mindless act--not a daring maneuver.
Our village farmhouse wasn't as tranquil as our downtown Metz
hotel as we had to listen to papa's radio talk show blare outside for a couple
of hours. And the non-smoking hotel room had been "olfactory neutral" whereas our
stuffy gite had an overlay of stale cat pee wafting into it. For a moment I'd
hoped to find a place outside our musty room to read on the ramshackled terrace,
but that seemed to be where the dozen or so resident cats preferred to pee as
the odor had me recoiling as soon as I opened the outside door. So as before in
France, we'd side with the sterile cleanliness and good repair of the hotel
chains near the freeway interchanges as we could and skip the local charm at
night.
Chocolate Sandwiches
Apparently the influx of giant supermarkets had wiped out
the village markets, as we went for about a day and a half without being able to
buy groceries. Had we ridden miles off the back road route Bill plotted, we
would have found a market but we decided to make do with the unbalanced food
inventory as we had plenty of calories on hand, just no
produce.
We had a rare dinner without any vegetables when we
usually enjoy close to a pound each. The next day, we lacked tuna for lunch
though had a package of "brick" bread in deep storage. We affectionately call a
long-shelf-life German bread "brick bread" because both its shape and
density. Usually made only of whole rye grain and perhaps sunflower seeds but without flour,
it comes pre-sliced in a heavily
wrapped package. These 1 pound square chunks of bread are about the volume of a large
donut and the color of dark chocolate, travel well, and are filling.
Our standard lunch on the road is bread, canned tuna, apples
or other fruit, and 1.5 oz of bittersweet chocolate each. On this day,
bread and chocolate was all that we had so we jokingly referred to lunch as "chocolate
sandwiches." Of course, we very carefully ate them separately, savoring the
almost chokingly dense bread and washing it down with a lot of water. The
chocolate came as a well defined second course. Clearly we'd have to become more
meticulous in planning our grocery shopping in this part of France than had been necessary
across the border in Germany.
Back to Germany
Volklingen ("folk-ling-en")
We were just getting the grocery situation in mind, the
lodging sorted out, and reviving our latent French vocabulary and then Map Man
had us briefly veering back into Germany. Unfortunately, our bad luck with
lodging followed us into Germany the first night. We arrived in our
destination town after the tourist office had closed for the day and the old
industrial town lacked the predictable layout of the river towns we'd been
enjoying. After circling around the heart of town without a clue as to where to
find lodging and not being able to make sense of help given by a local, I nudged
Bill to go into a public building that had a trickle of people entering. Most of
the businesses were closed for the day (or permanently) but there was life in
this one fine old building.
The first person Bill found happened to be an English teacher
and the people filing in were the adult students in his next class. The trim and
grinning man came out to admire our bikes, shake my hand, and to urge us to come
to his class after getting our room at a new, nearby hotel. It was late, we had
a slab of frozen Alaskan salmon thawing on the back of my bike, and we
desperately wanted to hang it up for the night. But as Bill checked-in at the
hotel, I decided we should honor the man's request. He was the second English teacher
to help us out that day, the other being in France, and it seemed time to return
the favors.
The 10 minutes we were asked to spend turned into 2 hours as
the English teacher asked us to stay for his second class. We were stunned at
the advanced language class as their reading material was centered around US
politics. We were scrambling to comment on "Why did the American people re-elect
George Bush?", "Will Bill's charisma interfere with Hillary's election campaign?"
and "What about these 3 beliefs of anti-European Americans?" It was all in a
friendly tone but none of the adult language classes we ever took dealt with
such heady questions. Fortunately, we were also invited to talk about more
familiar subjects, like the psychological challenges of replacing our working
lives with full time traveling, our European roots, and where we traveled in Turkey.
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Volklingen's Steel Mill Museum
The UNESCO World Heritage Site steel mill was the reason
for being in Volklingen, though the English classes will likely be just as well
remembered. Always hungry to understand more, the steel mill exhibit didn't
satisfy our curiosity. The audio guide was a help, but had we not already gotten
the basics of iron and steel production in our brains from other exhibits over
the last few years, the
self-guided tour would have been a meaningless swirl.
But despite the muddled presentation, it was indeed awesome
to climb on so many surfaces of this massive operation. We walked up to
platforms almost 100' above the ground, only to look up at more apparatus
towering above us. Over and over a gain we were struck by the enormous scale of
everything: the piles of coal and ore; the labyrinth of monstrous pipes; the
thickness of materials used; and the massive area the plant occupied. It's
definitely one of those "glad to do it once" activities that shifts ones
understanding of the way things work on a very deep level.
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Trier
The day after our extensive visit to the steel mill, we traveled a little over an hour by train back
to Trier to see the 3 museums that were closed in preparation for the special
Constantine exhibit. Fortunately for our endurance, it was really 1 significant
museum with secondary exhibits at 2 other sites, so we managed to see it all in
less than the available 8 hours. The emphasis was on Emperor Constantine and
especially his influence on Christianity. We had no idea that Constantine became
such a cult figure for Catholics and European leaders, and was sainted by the
Orthodox church. No photos were allowed, so we have no graphics to share from
the exhibits.
As expected, some of the missing items in the Roman exhibits
in Metz, France were on display--in fact, better displayed than they would have
been in Metz. We both started grinning as we read the details of a gold helmet
on display as we both recognized it as another missing exhibit, though this one
was missing from our visit to Novi Sad, Serbia in 2005. The sorry little Serbian museum's real
claim to fame was several gold, Roman-era helmets, but they were in restoration
for an indeterminate amount of time and unavailable to the public when we were
there. We keep a "Next Time" list by country on our hand-held computers to deal
with such frustration, but doubted that we'd ever be back to Novi Sad to view the
helmets so it was especially satisfying to happen upon them in Trier.
Just as startling as to finally see the illusive Serbian
helmets, was to hear of their discovery, I believe in the 1950's. The helmets
had begun to poke out of the soil in a farmer's field, but being fearful of
unknown objects, the farmer kept his distance rather than peeking at them--for years.
Finally, curiosity won out, and the farmer proceeded to investigate the small
gold hoard with a hatchet. The cautious approach to uncovering the helmets
resulted in completely destroying half of 1 of them, but at least 1 impressive
helmet was reconstructable.
Though we've seen thousands of Roman objects in museums and
at archeological sites during these last 6 years of travel, we continue to be in awe of the
Romans, as little of their farming and construction technology was significantly
improved upon until the 18th or 19th century. What
was achieved technologically in the 20th century always seemed so awesome, but it is diminished
by the historical
perspective of the technical sophistication in Roman times. Seeing how early
basic technology was established continues to be humbling.
The book we are reading, Guns, Germs, & Steel, adds
another layer of humility to our modern age. By the time of the Romans, most of the crops we eat
today had already been domesticated, as well as the major animals we rely upon. Additionally, about 80% of the annual
tonnage of crops that are grown today are from only a dozen different species, all
of which were domesticated before Roman times. We are still amazed by how much of what
people accomplished that form the basis of our modern civilizations was in place
several thousand years ago. It wasn't until the 19th century that the technology
of steel mills like
massive Volklinger mill went significantly beyond the iron operations of
Roman times in more than the scale.
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And Back to France Again
Celts & Romans
We zigzagged across the border in Saarland or the Saar
River region of Germany and France to see the historical sights ranging from pre-Roman to the 20th
century. The border crossing nature of our sight seeing was underscored by
visiting the Bliesbruck-Reinheim archeological park, in which the French-German
border runs down the middle of the site. The line wasn't marked on the grounds
themselves but on the site map. And amusingly, the French exhibit building folks
made us exchange our ticket purchased on the German half for French tickets before
letting us enter.
The German's controlled the Celtic burial tumuli and the
Roman villa ruins; the French had the town and baths ruins. It was there too that
we saw the small visiting Pompeii exhibit (on the French side) that cleverly
demonstrated by paired items that the lifestyle in the northern provincial town
provided many of the same comforts as life in Pompeii, including glass windows, heated
floors, and fine metal and ceramic table wares. And it was there that we learned that the concept
for those marvelous heated floors originated in Greece, though it was rediscovered by a
Roman wanting to warm the waters of his fish farm.
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In launching for our day ride out to the archeological site,
we stumbled upon a pottery kiln from the 1860's in the center of our overnight town, Sarreguemines. Of English design,
the beehive-shaped, brick kiln was in operation until the end of WWII. We were reminded that the mainstay technology for firing pottery, as for
so many industries, hadn't changed much in the last several thousand years.
20th Century Madness
Visiting a couple of WWII forts on the
Maginot Line would have been a missed opportunity had we not been viewing our
DVD lecture series on the war. The Maginot defense system was discussed early in
the course, just as we happened to be approaching the very area. A helpful
tourist info clerk in Metz, France alerted us to the need for advance
reservations for the only fort open 7 days a week so, duly informed, we were confident we'd see
at least one compound.
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Fort Casso
As we listened to our lectures, the Maginot Line struck me in
a quirky way as France's Pearl Harbor. Both the Maginot Line and Pearl Harbor symbolize gross and costly
miscalculations by homeland governments as to the war they expected the aggressor
to fight.
The Maginot Line was a massive system of forts that buried the
soldiers and materials safely 100' underground and righted many of the wrongs of
the terrible trench war conditions of WWI. The only problem with the defensive line was
that the Germans went to the north of the forts, violating Belgium's neutrality,
which the French had hoped they wouldn't do. The state of the art,
budget-breaking forts were instantly useless as a defense.
In an odd way, the miscalculation with the Maginot Line was like the
misplaced confidence reflected in the US by only operating radar 3 hours a day at the time of the Pearl Harbor
bombing, even though an alert
had been sent out about the risk of an invasion. Of course, both situations were more complicated than that,
but underestimating the boldness of their opponents quickly and tragically revealed the planning
naiveté of
both Allied countries early in that war.
The day before we were scheduled for our Maginot fort tour in English at Simserhof, near Bitche, we rode right by a smaller one, Fort Casso. By chance, the
once-daily tour was beginning in 20 minutes and reservations weren't in order.
Unfortunately, the tour was only in French, but one French tourist dusted off
his rusty German to alert Bill to a few key points, including the "Watch your
step" comments. We hardly understood a word, but the charming host bulging
out of his
cotton sweat pants made us feel
welcome and engaged all with his hands-on approach to the tour. He had all 10 of us
crammed in a gun turret and selected 2 women to sit in the gunner positions
while he had a pair of men doing the heavy work of cranking on the levers to raise and lower
the massive guns.
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We expected a 20 minute tour, but it lingered on for 3 hours.
We were disappointed to still have over an hour of riding left for the day when
we popped up to the ground level for the last time at 6 pm, but Bill put us out on the main road to flatten the route.
Fortunately it was late enough that the traffic was down and we had a quiet,
twilight ride into Bitche.
But I had received my wish, which was to see 2 forts, not just 1, for the depth of
understanding the second visit would provide.
Simserhof at Bitche was the 4th largest fort in the network and
the tour was in English, but it was a much more sterile experience. We walked
the long halls and rode in the trolley for the special effects presentation,
but we didn't visit the turrets, peek out the gun holes, or pop out emergency
exits as we did at Fort Casso. We dutifully confined our visit to the basics, like the electrical
generation room, the infirmary, and the kitchen. Our more contained visit made
us so glad we'd had the
impromptu experience at Fort Casso the day before, despite getting in for the
evening later than we like.
Heritage Detour
Another hop across the border into Germany was to visit
tiny Minfeld, the ancestral home of one of Bill's father's relatives who left
Germany in the mid-1800's to avoid military duty in yet another war. Bill's
inquiry as to the location of the old cemetery led us to one that was almost
exclusively post-WWII graves.
Bill ducked out of the rain to ask at the nearby flower shop
where the old, not the new, cemetery was. After a discussion that taxed his
German vocabulary, he left with the understanding that the old cemetery didn't exist
anymore. Puzzled, he tried another tack, which was to ask the same shopkeeper to check the telephone book
for the family name.
Indeed, there were 5 listings that all appeared to be in 1 household.
His lack of prior research and the unremitting rain made it
feel like he'd done enough and we went on without even a photo. The unremarkable
town was preparing for a festival and any possible picture subjects were
concealed behind traveling carnival wagons.
Despite the cold rain, we pulled into the cemetery at the
next, larger town. A systematic search of the headstones again revealed that it was
almost exclusively a post-WWII graveyard. Like at the cemetery at Minfeld, we
spotted a couple of old headstones against the perimeter wall. Now we wondered if
we had indeed visited the old cemeteries of both towns but that they had largely
been destroyed during the war, save the graves on the perimeter. It was a
sobering, odd twist on the devastation of war: to even have the long-dead
obliterated.
This larger town cemetery did host the local military
memorial and we found 1 man with the family name on the "Missing in Action"
list from WWII. It was a meager find, but it gave a little bit of closure to the
rainy day quest for family roots.
Leaving France
After border-hopping to take in the best of the area's
sightseeing and to make an attempt at finding some ancestral connections, we found ourselves departing France with a glow of success. After our
early glitches of
'chocolate sandwiches' for lunch, a goofy private room at a 'gite', and getting
the hang of finding groceries in the region, we got it right. Bill had great
success with regional tourist office brochures for selecting fresh, local 2 star
hotels and we got better at guessing in which towns we'd be able to buy food.
Though we encountered a few people who denied any knowledge of English until
they disapproved of our French language skills, many more were quick to help
with English or German. And we had the good fortune in our last several days in
France to fine wonderful artisan bakers who had delightful assortments of chewy,
tasty breads. Though they weren't the more wholesome whole grain varieties, they
were full-favored, heftier white breads that we'd miss. We knew our
museum-oriented sightseeing binge was behind us and that our stimulation would
come more from the scenery along the way than special destination events for the
next month or 2.
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So, we feasted on our last batch of
shredded carrots in vinaigrette sauce, said goodbye to the country
for this year, and headed back across the German border. As hoped, the price of
berries plummeted and the availability skyrocketed. In our first half hour back
in Germany we delighted in buying 6 pounds of berries and cherries. They were
scrumptious and couldn't be passed up at the bargain prices. We ate a pound each
of strawberries and raspberries minutes after buying them. We weren't surprised
to find them in Germany and not in France, but continue to be baffled by this
difference in produce prices and availability that we'd seen before.
But the next morning a German man who invited us to shelter
from a downpour in his carport urged Bill to route us onto the French side of
the Rhine for our day's ride. He said that the bike route was prettier on that
side. We usually yield to local advise and so back to France we went. "But only
for the day" Bill said, as it was Saturday and shopping for food and finding
lodging would be more difficult in France than in Germany.
Indeed, the newly built bike route
was lovely and we had a pleasant day's journey on the French side of the Rhine. The crisis came when it was time to take the ferry back across the river to Germany, as the ferry was out of order. It
was too many miles to the next bridge, so now the scramble was on for food and lodging on
the French side. The markets in both countries would be closed all day Sunday,
so we needed to fill out our pantry for the evening's dinner, plus Sunday's
meals, and ideally, through lunch on Monday.
Prior bad experiences had taught us that the villages in this
part of France had no markets, so we'd have to make a detour inland to a bigger
town to find one. Markets would start closing between 5 and 6pm and it was now 4pm.
A German cycling couple on the path advised us to possible places to find
food and lodging. After following some annoyingly deceptive town center signs,
we had wrapped up our food shopping by 5:30, but the hotels were full. Saturday
night in France can be a problem and we were competing with the lodging demands
of village weddings.
We pressed on towards the next possible bridge into Germany,
desperately hoping to find something before then. We'd happily squandered our
time on a leisurely day admiring the scenery and waiting out thunderstorms and
weren't pleased to be doing a forced march when we should have been eating dinner. More detours on the bike path
took us farther out of our way and handwritten signs for a wedding in the next village dashed
our hopes of finding a room in the lone hotel.
One hotel in the previous village was completely unstaffed because of a local wedding
and the stillness at this next hotel foreshadowed a similar story. I was
relieved to hear a sniffle from the window above as we rang the bell, hoping the
hostess was in. She happily switched from French to German and urged us to wait
as the caller on the phone might be cancelling their reservation. Unlike the
night we stayed in a tacky "gite" because of fully booked motels and hotels,
here we
scored a cancellation and got a lovely, quiet room for about the same price as the gite. It was so
quiet in fact that we overslept almost 2 hours in our north-facing room.
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Strasbourg, France
Strasbourg hadn't been on the itinerary but when we were
only a day's ride away, Bill decided we should again postpone our departure from
France. The archeology museum and its impressive cathedral were enough of a draw
that we again zigzagged along the German and French sides of the Rhine River
depending on the advise of the local riders to reach the city.
Strasbourg's German
heritage immediately showed in the "fachwerk" or timbered old buildings and the many
waterways added to the charm. The on-again off-again bike paths into and within
the city earned our praise for their efforts and our hope that they will persist
and eventually
connect all the segments. The profusion of young, daytime prostitutes; the
excessive number of street-side alcoholics; and too-frequent whiffs of stale pee
reminded us of the French city scene that we hadn't yet experienced at our
smaller venues this year in
France.
So after a 2 night stay in Strasbourg, for at least the third time in the week, we said goodbye
to France. We had more carrots in vinaigrette sauce and found a favorite bread
at the nearby bakery so as to close our visit on a happy culinary note. We then
looked forward to indulging in strawberries once we crossed back over to the
German side of the Rhine.
Where We Are Now July 5, 2007: Bolzano (Bozen), Italy
We did finally stay in Germany and meandered through the
Black Forest on our way to the Italian Dolomites. The forecast of every other
day showers instead delivered daily thunderstorms but we
found enough shelter to allow us sit out many of them. It was warm enough
during most of the storms that we took to reading until it calmed down again.
Usually during such storms it's cold and there is no place to hide so we just
keep going, but not here.
It wasn't long until we were in western Austria and on a horrific bike
route: 10-15% grades on gravel and in the rain--yikes! We availed
ourselves of public transportation and quite unplanned, arrived in Italy last night.
