We rode into Germany by crossing the Rhine at Breisach, after freewheeling a bone chilling 20-mile descent into the river’s expansive and fertile valley. Before we even reached the border, and the river, things became distinctly more German, both aesthetically when looking at the starkly differing architecture, and linguistically when observing street signs and the fonts of bar advertisements now selling Deutches Pilsner. On the ground at least, then, the river didn’t seem as much of a hard border as it looks on a map, unsurprising given the Rhineland’s status as one of the most fought over regions of Western Europe. We headed to Freiburg, where we would be hosted, for the first time of the trip, by a wonderful German lady. We would stay for 3 nights, during which we would be shown around the medieval city, given a tour of local pubs and breweries, and take the opportunity to rest our legs for the crossing of Germany and the push to Budapest (where I am sitting inside a coffee shop writing this).
Freiburg is an incredible city with beautiful architecture, wonderfully welcoming people, fantastic food and beer, and incredibly sophisticated bicycle related infrastructure. One evening was spent having dinner with our host, Florina, and her friend Andy who was interested in our trip and immensely helpful with route queries and suggestions. Andy is a sport journalist working for the local newspaper, and invited us over to his workplace for lunch the next day. He brought with him some maps and a pair of Scandinavian thermal base layers for me thinking I might need them when crossing the black mountains; he was right about that… We had an amazing dinner out at a brewery with Florina on our last night, eating schnitzel with beer that was brewed in the large reflective tanks of brass that were the lively room’s centrepiece.
I felt almost sad to leave Freiburg; Germany has always felt to me the only place I could live outside of the UK, and I really think I could live in that town. Anyway, as is the inevitable nature of the trip, we had to keep moving. Any feeling of sadness seems to dwindle as the first snowflakes began to fall on our way in the Black Forest. This will be fun, I thought. Four hours later, with the sky still puking flakes, I was less amused and more concerned at the fact that I would soon have to pitch a tent in this shit. In retrospect though, it was all awesome. The photos, as always, don’t quite do it justice.
The next 300 miles riding across Bavaria to the Austrian border where tough, again, due to the plummeting temperatures. On one particularly cold night I learnt to keep any water I wanted to drink in the morning in my sleeping bag to prevent it becoming completely frozen. On these nights I was only ever properly warm when inside my down sleeping bag. We followed the Danube more or less to the German-Austria border, and on one night we were granted a warm place to stay inside the house of one of Andy’s old school friends. The lovely couple cooked us a meal and allowed a warm shower and a bed to sleep in. Such was, and is, the kindness and welcoming nature of the German people; a kindness that again confirmed similar experiences here in the past. In one small town we asked a man for directions to the pub only to find later when drinking a beer in that pub, the same man reappeared to check whether we made it ok, before paying for the beers we were drinking!
