Chapter 14: Flotsam and Jetsam & Other Odds and Ends

In this last and final blog post about our Danube cycling adventure I am going to talk about German bathroom culture, storks, cigarettes, and blankets served with your morning cup of tea.

Our second day cycling the Danube happened to be a Saturday so it wasn't surprising to see large and small groups of cyclists out and about. Some time in the morning we passed a cluster of men, about eight of them, in their fifties and sixties, all wearing yellow cycling jerseys, sitting outside in a beer garden. I assumed they were drinking beer. Why not? It was mid-morning at least. I thought about stopping, too, but we were in a rhythm that didn't call out for taking a break just then. 

A short time later the group shot past us. They weren't carrying any gear so their trajectory was faster than ours. I didn't give them any more thought until later in the afternoon when they passed us again. Before I had a chance to say to Rob, "They must have stopped for another beer," we caught up to them, a row of yellow shirts, lined up almost elbow to elbow one alongside the other standing on the edge of the bike trail facing the woods.  They didn't even bother to step into the woods. I thought, "Wow, this is a free culture."

But it wasn't all that free. A few days later when I tried to get into a public restroom I was stopped at the gate. I needed money to get in. I didn't have any on me. I snuck through the gate when someone came out. 

In Australia every town has a free public restroom. In Germany you must pony up to pee.

Barricades come in many styles.

When my children were younger than they are now I read aloud to them a book called The Wheel on the School, the story of a group of children in Holland who set out to find a wheel to put on the roof of their school so that a stork will build a nest on it and bring luck to their village. When they found a large wooden wheel it began raining and school was closed while all the children stayed home waiting for the rain to stop. When I got to this part in the book, our town was flooding and Kylee and Tim were home from school waiting for the rain to stop. Maybe it was that coincidence that made the book leave a distinct impression on me. Or maybe it was just a darn good story.

I had never realized that storks were such a big deal in other parts of Europe. We found many in Germany. Following are pictures of storks, real and imagined.

This one welcomed us to the small city of Riedlingen.

See the nest up top?

Still Riedlingen. There were too many storks to take a picture of every one.

Nope, not a stork. I found it disturbing that we passed cigarette machines in all sorts of random places, alongside the road in small towns. 

I guess things balance out. You have to pay to go to the bathroom, but in other ways the German culture felt very welcoming.

We enjoyed tea at this outdoor cafe in Ulm where, not for the first time, we found fleece blankets on every chair.

Benches along the side of the bike trails invited us to get off our bikes and rest and relax.

The historic cities and towns all had cafes and restaurants sprinkled throughout their downtown plazas, places to linger over a cup of tea or a beer. We lingered long and often.

We arrived in Pasau on our eleventh day, with an afternoon to spend exploring the city's nooks and crannies before taking the train back to Munich the next day. Thankfully the train back was direct with no transfers, no opportunity for Rob to get off without me.

Neatly packed up, on the train back to Munich.

Chapter 13: For All You Fellow Foodies

When Rob and I bike tour we leave a lot to chance, while trying, at the same time, to make sure we always have enough sustenance to be able to get on our bikes and pedal to our next destination. Our meals can range from Ramen noodles to a rotisserie chicken with a bottle of wine. With our stove and pots and pans we usually do pretty well. But this trip we were traveling light and left our cooking gear at home.  

Our first morning, after a night camped in a public park in Tuttlingen, we packed up our tent and sleeping bags and wheeled our bikes outside the camping enclosure to sit on one of the benches overlooking the playing fields of the community park. It was a quiet Saturday morning, the dew still on the grass, no one else out and about. 

We had no way to cook up a pot of oatmeal or brew a cup of tea for breakfast. But we had a couple croissants bought the previous day. Croissants must be eaten fresh and these were not, but they weren't too bad with the nutella we spread on them, nutella in those little one-serving plastic containers we'd taken from our hotel in Munich. We also had an apple we shared, also from the hotel in Munich, and a couple oranges, the last of the food we'd brought with us from home in New Hampshire. And that was enough to get us on our bikes and on our way.

After about 10 miles we stopped in Friedlingen for a mid-morning snack to supplement our meager breakfast. The restaurant didn't have the morning pastry selection we are used to in the U.S. so we had to settle for strawberry cake. 

Breakfast after a night at a hotel or gasthaus, included in the price of the room, was a bit more extravagant. There was cold cereal and yogurt, hard-boiled eggs and assorted breads. And then there was always a platter that I called lunch. It held several types of cheeses and a selection of deli meats - salami and several types of bologna that were reminiscent of the many pork varieties that my mother's cousin sold in his pork store in Queens, New York.

Most of the places we stayed served breakfast buffet-style. But at the  Gasthaus Hirsch in Riedlingen, we were served our own platter. All this for just the two of us. Do people really eat all this for breakfast? Apparently they do. I snuck a peak at the table next to us where a good-sized husband and wife were enjoying their meal. Their plate was almost empty. I wondered, if this is breakfast, what's for lunch? (By the way, notice the cucumber and tomato slices - also lunch, but a nod to being healthy.)

We also had our own basket of bread. Germans seem to be big on bread. When we were in France years ago, I would venture into every French bakery we'd pass for a look at the beautiful artistry of the pastries. In Germany, I did not find any especial artistry in the many varieties of bread and rolls I found in the bakeries. They had pretzels, too, which, honestly, I didn't think were all that great.

My heritage is 100% German. This trip brought back memories of the food my mother and aunts would serve on special occasions, for Sunday dinners, or just a regular weekday meal. Always some sort of meat - it could be pot roast or goulash, Aunt Harriet made a delicious sauerbraten - served with bread balls, potato pancakes, egg noodles, spaetzle, potato dumplings, everything smothered in as much gravy as you could stand. I loved it all, then. 

We were at a picnic held in New York City for our ethnic group recently and the wife of one of my cousins asked, "Did you eat any vegetables?" After some thought I said, "Well, we always had cole slaw. And maybe green beans." But, no, vegetables were never the main feature on our dinner plates.

I don't eat like that anymore. Occasionally I have made goulash, but I have leaned toward mostly vegetarian meals even when my son would insist that he needed more protein in his diet. Now both my kids are vegan. 

But when I sat down to dinners in Germany, I had to give a nod to my upbringing and tried to order those dishes that were reminiscent of my childhood.

On our second night we enjoyed dinner outside an old hotel in Sigmaringen, a short walk from the noisy, crowded commercial campground where we spent the night. I ordered game stew with mushrooms and spaetzle. The blob in the back is pear with whipped cream. It was really good. No vegetables other than that tomato you see.

It was only as an adult that I learned that spaetzle is a noodle dish that you make with a special spaetzle maker. I have one that my cousin sent me when she was living in Munich. My mother made spaetzle by spooning the batter into boiling water so it came out in big clumps like random-sized dumplings. I realize that I am not making it sound very appealing, but it really was delicious. Especially with lots of gravy. We never ran out of gravy. 

One day away from Passau we rode past this small beer garden in Deggendorf. It was only 11:30 but how could we pass it up? Besides, there were already some old folks sitting outside drinking beer. In Germany it's never too early for beer.

The goulash and noodles definitely rekindled those childhood memories. The noodles were nothing extraordinary but the goulash was tender and sweet. And who could complain when there was so much gravy? (Not pictured was a side salad.)

After our lunch we encountered this lovely view of the river.

In Munich many of the restaurants had menus with English translations. Not so much along the Danube. And even with our Rick Steves' German Phrase Book & Dictionary figuring out what to order could take a long time. There were just so many words, and lots that we couldn't find in the book. One night, with the help of the proprietor, I knew I was ordering fish, but not really sure what kind. It came out as a full fish, head included. 

Every time I am served a fish that comes with its head I think of my mother. We were brought up Catholic which meant Friday night dinners were fish, usually swordfish or some type of fillet. But at one point in my childhood my mother decided to get daring and started cooking trout. But she couldn't deal with the head, so we always had decapitated trout. I enjoyed the challenge of pulling the meat away from the spine, leaving the bones behind. I didn't mind the missing head. 

The fish I had that night in Germany wasn't trout but it was moist and tasty, served with a side of potatoes. It's never bothered me to look at a fish head, eyes staring up at me, while I pick away at the body.

Another time we knew we were ordering fish, but not entirely sure how it would be served. We hadn't expected breaded fish, but it turned out to be quite tasty. It came with an assorted salad. We discovered that most salads were an assortment of several different types including shredded carrots, shredded radish, beets, and cucumbers with a dressing of either vinegar and oil or yogurt.

One night, we didn't spend too much time trying to decipher the menu. We'd left our Rick Steves' guide back at the campground and nobody in the restaurant spoke English. By then we recognized a few words on the menu. When I saw a word I knew was rice along with something I knew would be meat I went with it. Rob took some random guess as well. I got the rice part right. You can see it in the back corner. Rice served with french fries was a surprise. The meat might have been pork. It was tender and had a pleasant tasting marinade.

Rob didn't do too badly either, although the egg was a surprise. Who has eggs for dinner? I guess if you are going to have lunch for breakfast then why not breakfast for dinner.