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September 9 Saturday windy, but sunny Bicycle touring Germany As were bicycling along the border between Germany and the Czech Republic, I can't help thinking how easy it would be to cross into the Czech Republic on our touring bikes. No visa, no border guard's dirty looks. However, Sharon is more sensible than me.
We cycle for a ways on our heavily loaded bikes before stopping for a break, tucking behind a tree along a stream bank to cut the wind. We find it is quite pleasant in the sun. We are in Gross Waltersdorf, Germany. Sharon says she worked with a guy named Waltersdorf and decides the name is appropriate. The tree we are behind has bunches of tiny purple elderberries, similar to the ones Mom would pick and boil for hours with loads of sugar. Then, we would taste her creation and say, "Yick." Even the birds wouldn't eat them. Sharon continues to grunt up hills in a major sweat on her higher-geared new rear cluster. But she now has a new sound to accompany her. Her new wheel makes a chirping chorus like a bunch of disconcerted crickets. There is a long steep hill into Gorneau, Germany, where Ralph, the touring cyclist we met while bicycle touring in Norway, lives. At the top, I stop to wait for Sharon to catch up. An old woman points to my front pannier and asks what is in there. I give my jacket a tug and point to the pannier. "Ah," she nods in understanding. Sharon laboriously crests the hill. Unsmiling, she pedals by. In Gorneau we sit on a bus bench with our heads between our knees. Sharon complains it will take a week for her back to stop hurting. She has found previously that those muscles take extra strain when she pushes too high a gear. The street we are on-Chemnitz- is the same name as the address Ralph has given us. So we just have to find his house number, right? And we do, only going to one wrong house in the process. As we push our heavily loaded touring bikes in through the backyard gate, three old ladies in sweaters, legs spread wide apart, sit on a bench. Leaning on canes, they eye us with interest. A fourth, younger, woman, not corpulent like the three bench sisters, casts a wary eye in our direction. It's been over a week since my last shower and I'm sporting a week's worth of beard growth. Definitely not looking like what one would consider a desirable house guest. "Ralph," I croak. "Does Ralph Richter live here?" The three old ladies look on, not understanding English, even though I would suspect that one's name is said basically the same, even though it's with a western Canadian accent. The younger woman smiles. She turns out to be Ralph's mother. "Ralph is cycling in Sweden," she tells us. She calls up toward an open window on the house's third story, to her daughter, Anja. Anja comes down from where she lives in a third floor flat. The house is four stories tall. We explain that we met Ralph when we were cycle touring in Norway. We explain that we had thought that Ralph would be home by now. Kay, Anja's boyfriend, has accompanied her to talk with the strange foreign cyclists. Both Kay and Anja have taken English in school and in university. They speak and understand English quite well. Anja, bless her heart, invites us to stay. "Is that going to be okay with your mother?" I ask, not wanting to upset protocol. "It doesn't matter," Anja says. "Kay and I have our own flat." Sounds good to me. We quickly stow our bikes in the laundry room, grab clean clothes from those mysterious panniers and head for the new luxurious renovated shower that have what I would call smart doors on the shower enclosure-two wings slide around in an arced track, rather than a door that swings open and drips water onto the floor after one exits from the shower. While Sharon takes her shower I stuff smelly bicycle touring clothes into their washing machine. Fresh and clean, we eat a large piece of cake before supper. It's made from plums from a tree in the backyard. I like this bicycle touring in Germany! Anja and Kay have a six-month-old baby. Louisa stares intently at me from her table side bed. "She only looks at men," Kay jokes. Anja's younger sister, Krict, lives in an adjoining flat. They share a bathroom and kitchen. Krict is away for the weekend with her boyfriend in Berlin. Sharon and I are invited to sleep in her room. It is spotless. Germans are fastidious housekeepers. Everything is perfectly, and I do mean perfectly, arranged-from stuffed toys adorning her bedspread to an intricately arranged collection of rock crystals in a dust-free glass cabinet. Krict also collects tiny porcelain elephants. They are neatly lined up in a display-case bookshelf in her living room. There is sure an amazing difference in how different people keep house. I wonder if it has anything to do with nationality? The Germans certainly seem to be strictly neat freaks. I even noticed our cycling clothes had been taken from the washer and hung on the line in a particular order. First, all the shirts with their arms hanging down, then all of our cycling shorts, and finally our socks, with the pairs each sock hung neatly beside each other. None of this "I'll just hang up whatever I happen to pull out of the basket" for them. Gak. What's more is that the entire German nation seems to have the identical genetically inherited clean gene. They are a very orderly people, we've noticed. They follow rules to the letter. They even have an aversion to cross the street against a "Don't walk" signal. Which our cycling buddy from New Zealand, Arran, constantly broke. Arran delighted in astounding crowds of Germans in Berlin who would be waiting stoically on a corner for a walk light (even when not a single car was in sight for blocks) by boldly striding across the intersection. The Germans would gape, practically openmouthed and wide-eyed, at him. Arran loved it-the anarchist in him just dying to get out. "What is this younger generation coming to?" they were probably thinking. Of course, I also witnessed Arran almost getting run over a number of times, too. One of the most memorable was a crossing in Berlin while he was jaywalking across four lanes of busy traffic. Tied near first place was another good one I saw him do in Copenhagen when he rode his fully loaded touring bike across six lanes of traffic against the light. Hoo boy. That was a close one. Talk about thrills. But Arran says the best for him was when he and Rebecca were riding their touring bicycles in downtown Athens during rush hour traffic, honking their horns and waving their fists at car drivers while yelling, "Ella!" Arran says the car drivers loved it. The drivers got right into the spectacle, honking and waving their fists back at them. "A fantastic adrenaline high," he laughed. Yee haw! And here I thought the redneck drivers in Alberta were bad. |
