Entering
home turf

A little bit of suboptimal planning. But sometimes days are short, sometimes longer, always depending on where I find a place to sleep. But this one was definitely long. The longest one so far. Again hardly any images, the horizontal one is even from two weeks later, when I passed the same place again. I should have taken a picture of the Roche building that all of a sudden popped up, when I approached Basel, it was really like a Fata Morgana. But I was too focused on making it. Specially knowing that I had quite a steep part at the end. And man, it was steep. But I was greeted with a lot of hospitality, thank you for that!

Biking into Germany. Actually first time ever biketouring in Germany. Sun is shining, but it’s a Sunday, which I forgot. Shops are very much closed here on that day. But restaurants aren’t, so it’s a bit easier than in France. And something new popped up. Vending machines. First one was for meat and eggs, got some sausages. Then this one, for raspberries. Almost as good as the ones for oysters! Sign posts are actually very good, never realised this before. Well, because I did not use them. And there’s another thing here which I looked very much forward to: beer gardens! With Erdinger alkoholfrei, my preferred sports drink! And those Germans, actually very friendly!

What a day! It all started nice, with cake and bretzel! I decided to go to the edge of the Black Forest, instead of following the Rhine. Very beautiful area. Lots of small allotments, vineyards and great views on the Rhine valley. I had planned a rather short day. On a break I looked at a news site and that changed my plans. Super heavy rain was announced on my way to cologne. So, I wondered what best to do. If I would go towards cologne it would be useless to take a train there as my brother was still on vacation. So I looked for trains to my hometown. All was booked for bikes, only one very early the next day was available. Decided to bike to Karlsruhe and take that early train. I had some Käsespätzle and Maultaschen and then spent the night in the train station. Pretty unpleasant, but very much not worthwhile to spend money on a hotel for such a short night. Once I arrived in Fulda, I biked to my home village in heavy rain and took a warm shower.