Saturday the 22nd of July, I saddled up and rode to the main train station in Boulogne-sur-Mer. I had not planned to run alongside the Somme, but the tracks followed the swollen river all the way to Amiens. I needed to get off at Saint Roch to change for Rouen, but, mesmerized by the scenery, I almost missed my stop. Continue reading
On Wednesday the 19th of July, I lay in my tent at 0500, ready to go back to sleep, when I heard thunder. The storm front predicted for 1300 must be early, I thought. With a little more than four hours of sleep, I decided to break camp not to have to pack a wet tent. While I struggled to wake up and get moving, the storm rumbled over the fields well to the south, and never did rain on me. Continue reading
(I never saw the 1979 movie, but the title stuck with me.) On Wednesday, the 12th of July, Marianne and her husband Hans had invited me to dinner. I spent the morning waiting for the rain to stop. After lunch in my room, I rode to the Mauritshuis palace, officially the “Royal Picture Gallery”. I planned to visit it, the Escher Museum and take pictures of the Binnenhof (Parliament) and maybe another museum. The plans fell apart quickly. Continue reading
Under an overcast sky on the 4th of July, I rode to the Hauptbanhof in Köln (Cologne) and caught a Regional Express to Düsseldorf. Before checking in, I rode to the river, where I wanted to see the modern architecture on the waterfront. Continue reading
Thursday morning the 29th, my host Nasr went to his German class. I did my laundry, then walked east along the Mosel River to the Deutsches Eck (“German Corner”), the point of land formed by the confluence of the Mosel and the Rhine. There, I caught a cable car to the imposing Festung Ehrenbreitstein that overlooks the east bank of the Rhine River. Continue reading
On Saturday, the 24th of June, I left Kaiserslautern. The Regional Express went all the way to Koblenz, but I got off in Trier, the medieval fortress town at the confluence of the Saar and the Mosel.
From my studies of Modern European History in high school and college, I had expected the Saar valley to be industrialized for its entire length. Wrong: in this fertile, winegrowing region, the Saar weaves through a floodplain covered in crops, vineyards and woods. Continue reading
On Friday, 16 June, Caitlin brought me back from the Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center (ARMC) to recover and to wait for my follow-up visit on Wednesday. The week off the bicycle gave me a chance to appreciate one of the areas of Germany in more depth. Continue reading
On Friday the 9th of June, I enjoyed breakfast in the lounge of the Brook Lane Hostel with Arianna, a pleasant, intelligent, German-American touring cyclist. She is a special education teacher, riding down the Danube during the two-week Bavarian spring break. She rides every break she gets, and was able to dispense a wealth of useful information to me about riding, living and working in Germany. Continue reading
Monday, the 5th of June, was the day after Pentecost, celebrated as an official holiday in Bavaria. With everything closed, I chose to ride on. The weather was not ideal, cooler than before, and even cloudier than Sunday. Continue reading
Tuesday, 30 May – The expected front came through during the night, while I was translating in the hostel. With beautiful sunshine and a full extra day available, I decided to take a quick ride out to the Schönbrunn Palace to visit the gardens. Daniel had recommended that to me after coming back from the Vienna Philharmonic concert there last week. Continue reading
The Freewheeling Freelancer 