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May 8 Monday Hazy, warm, breezy 25º C Bicycle touring Germany Luxembourg Belgium Liberation Day in many European countries
Yesterday, as we cycled along, we saw restaurants with outside terraces beside the bike paths. Lots of bike parking. Cyclists stop for a beer and sit outside in their sweaty cycling gear while watching others cycle past. It is not as prissy as anything we saw in France. Gak, the French would have a fit. Cycled past lots of people having great smelling barbecues. We have seen more picnic tables today than in all our other European countries combined. I thought I should sit myself down beside one and say "If you have any leftovers...." I need a barbecue. Sharon says she has noticed the people look a lot like her relatives back home of German ancestry, than the petite people we saw when we were cycling in France. They are meat and potatoes-size here, all right. Even the mosquitoes are bigger. We started our cycling day on a bike path which ran beside our camping spot. We thought there would be lots of cyclists by for an early morning spin, but we didn't see any. We rejoined a road and then took a bridge over to Roth on the German side. Our plan was to try for a bike shop in Germany, since German is not on a stat holiday today. No bike shop in Roth. As we cycled towards Vianden, we rode past a golden-maned horse with beautiful luxurious mane and bangs hanging over its eyes. Lots of gold-coloured horses with furry foals around this part of Germany. A huge castle chateau overlooks the townsite of Vianden. I saw bikes for rent at a train station, so we stopped to check to see if they had tires. It was a bit before 10 AM. A sign on the door's window said they opened at 9, but no one was around. We sat around and read for an hour, but still no one showed. Maybe they are on holiday? We cycled off and stopped at a large gas station that had lots of junk food. We have no Belgian francs. We asked if they take Visa credit cards for food. "Yeah, yeah," the woman clerk responded. Cycled into the city centre to see if anything was open. A huge bakery has many types of bread on display. They don't take Visa. Sharon bemoans the fact we have no currency. We haven't gone to a bank in Lux as we won't be here long and Lux money isn't accepted in Belgium (but Belgium francs are accepted in Lux). I should have stopped on Saturday when we were in Belgium, but I wanted to put on the miles instead. Riding in four countries in one day is more important than eating in the future. Isn't it? Now we have no food or money. We cycle on and come upon an open grocery store. A sign says they accept Visa. Sharon goes in --against her will. She's crabby when she's hungry! I wait with the bikes, reading a magazine. A fella who works in town sees my flag and comes over to say he has been to Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, Jasper, and Vancouver. I ask him if it is a holiday today in Lux. "No," he says. "It's a regular working day." He tells me there is no bike shop in town, but there is one in Diekirch -- twelve kilometres back in the direction we just came from. "It is hilly," he says, "but good for the legs." The fella leaves and I realize Sharon's been gone an awfully long time. I think she does that on purpose so that I will do the shopping instead. She finally reappears -- but where are the groceries? "After I got all my items, they said no to my Visa," she glumly responds. "Why?" I ask. "Is there a minimum?" "They didn't tell me!" She vents for a while. "They just said no when I went to pay after spending all that time picking out groceries." "Well, go back in and ask why," the foolish man says simply to the enraged bear masquerading in cycling clothes. I go in and ask why -- even though I am holding my head in my hands, since it was lopped off with one vicious swipe of the nasty bear's claws, and my rear end in gone too, chewed off by voracious bear teeth. "Do you accept Visa?" "Oui." "Minimum?" "Oui." "How much?" "One thousand francs." I go back out and inform Smoky the Bear. She says she had 700 francs of groceries, so I simply tell her to go back in and got 300 francs more. For someone as intelligent as myself, sometimes I'm sure a slow learner. Step into my lair, the bear said. Sharon didn't want to go back in ... but she did after I told her hunger was not her most appetizing asset. I, myself, I explained, can go without food for days -- quite happily. She eventually went back into the store and eventually returned with two small sacks of groceries. Is some of that for me? We cycle off, back towards Diekirch to get to a bike shop where I can hopefully buy a new bicycle touring tire. As we're not sure what the opening hours are in Lux, I want to make it there before noon in case businesses in Lux close for a couple of hours like they do in France. In 4 kilometres the tube on my rear tire blows. The thread we had sewn the bead with has worn apart. The tube stuck its head out for a look at the view, and instantly went flat. My fully loaded touring bicycle wobbles to a stop beside a farmer's field. I remove the bike bags from Sharon's touring bike and, leaving her to read by the roadside, I ride her bike to Diekirch. I pedal like a madman and make it to Diekirch before noon. Even better, I spot a bike shop at the edge of town. I wheel across the street to the bike shop. I notice on a sign affixed to the bike shop window that on Monday (which this is) they are open from 1:30 PM to 6 PM. It is 11:45. I see a guy inside. I try the door and it is open so I go in. He tells me, in four different languages, they are closed. I blurt out my sordid tale of woe. After some convincing he relents about being closed and sells me a 27-inch tire. Wow. My first try and I find a 27-inch tire. I thought I might have to buy a new 700 rim and do some brake adjustments. Ha. "Do you take Visa?" I ask. "No," he shakes his head. "You have no money?" he asks. "Just French francs," I respond. "Okay," he says. It cost 1,490 Lux francs. With the help of a calculator, he converted that to 35 French francs. I paid him, thanked him, took the tire, slung it around my neck, and feeling not unlike the Michelin man, headed back up the hill toward where Sharon was hopefully still waiting alongside the road with my stricken fully loaded touring bicycle. She was. Back at the farm, we installed the new tire, whitewall out, Michelin Select 1 1/8 on the rear of my touring bike. My sew repair had lasted a grand total of fifteen kilometres. As we had cycled along the way we had seen a picnic table sheltered from the wind in a nook of the forest on a bend in the road. We cycled back toward Vianden, figuring this would be an opportune time to try out the new groceries. It was. Fantastic sliced bread. Corn flakes that are not like Corn flakes back home -- these are more like a cross with Special K. Pickles -- the first we've had in, oh, so long. Real milk. Mmmm. Granola-like trail mix without the Smarties. Cheese, tomato, banana. During lunch we looked at the map and decided to cycle north through Vianden, so we retraced our scenic route. At an intersection there is a pullout with a magnificent view of an old chateau castle. It was important during the second world war as that was where the royal family stayed. As we approached the viewing platform a couple was sitting in their suburban happily munching sandwiches. I nodded to them as we went by. We took in the entire sweep of the valley with the castle perched on a knoll and the town with its black steep-pitched roofs below. They must get a lot of snow, we surmised, and want it to slide off. We haven't seen any red clay tile roofs here. We watched the Lux flag wave lustily in the vampish wind, first blowing one direction and then the opposite, like a husband vacillating between wife and consort. As we turned to leave, the fella in the truck spoke to Sharon. He told us that smoked ham was a specialty of the region. And they just happened to have two sandwiches left over. Would we like to try them? So, we each have a slab of smoked Luxembourg ham on a half bun. I noted the ham was much less grisly than Sardinia Sardegna, and not as strongly flavored. The meat shops in Luxembourg don't greet me from three blocks away. The couple, Bob and Amy, said they were going to Canada, perhaps next summer, so we gave them our address -- or rather our parents' addresses. Bob handed Sharon his and Amy's card. They asked where we were headed next and we said we're off to Holland to see the tulips. "We live in Holland," Bob says. "You do?" I say. "I thought you lived in Luxembourg." "No," Bob replies. "We're just here on a week's holiday." They say they know someone in Chilliwack BC who has sixteen kids. They also told us that 6000 Canadian soldiers marched today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII. Amy asked me if we knew that Canada was in the war in Holland? "Where did they bury the survivors?" I quipped. She told me where they buried them. It's not good to joke too much with people who don't comprehend English that well. I always have to go that one step over the line. Sharon told me later that lots of native English speakers miss that joke too, so what did I expect? That's true. But they usually get the joke when I explain. When I bought the tire, the fella gave me 150 Belgian francs change. I bought two postcards and then got some coins for Cal, our coin collecting nephew. First, the coins I received as change were Belgian, so I asked the shopkeeper for Lux coins. He happily and carefully searched through the coins in his register. When we had cycled about a kilometre from town I realized that some of the coins I had received as change were duplicates I already had. I had enough to buy another postcard. I had wanted to buy a sketched postcard for my brother Scott, but at the time I thought I didn't have enough money. I persuaded Sharon to cycle back and go into the store, so the shopkeeper wouldn't recognize me as spending his carefully selected duplicate coins. While Sharon was gone, I kept an eye on the dam above town. I'll time you. Sharon returned on her bike and we set off again. The hills began. We cycled along Our River (not ours, but Our) until the main road turned west. Our map showed a hiking trail continuing along the river. We decided to cycle it. The first part was a very steep paved uphill. Then we zoomed down to a meadow where the pavement ended. We hiked back up the other side on our bikes, and took another paved road still higher which blatantly ended suddenly at the top along a farmer's field. We cycled back to the main road and continued cycling west to Clarvaux. Clarvaux has a huge church with church bells that clanged long and loud at 7:30 PM as we filled our water jugs. Before we descended on our fully loaded touring bicycles into town we had looked down upon the town and concluded this must be the city Gulliver's Travels depicted -- all the buildings looked like they had been designed by Lilliputians, clustered in the valley. We saw a house with a thatched roof. Does one have to mow it? Ir does a goat do the deed? This region of the Ardennes to Eiffel route is one of the most interesting scenic-wise in Luxembourg. The sun was streaming around three perfectly-shaped clouds that made it look like it was a windmill. We must be close to Holland. The other day on a bike path I felt a splat on my hat brim. I looked around to see if someone had thrown something. I didn't see anyone. Later, Sharon asked, "What's that on your hat?" It was a great white glob of gooey bird shit. Isn't that good luck? Cause if it is I should be having gobs of it. And, I suppose, I am. Just out of Clarvaux on CR 335 we cycled through a forest so densely planted that sunlight couldn't enter. We cycled a path leading through to a little stream in a thin meadow between another patch of forest. We pushed our fully loaded touring bikes down to one end of the meadow beside the brook and set up our Kelty bicycle touring tent. Just as I was falling to sleep, Sharon said, "It sounds like the toilet's running." She's always such a comedian. Oh, the real reason for my tire being kaput? An old lady passed me on the bike path. She dinged her bell repeatedly and forced me off the narrow bike lane. I heard her laugh as she raced by and then I saw her wheel cutters glinting in the sun. |
