July 15, 2014
Day 77: Schliengen to Freiburg
The route from Schliesen to Freiburg skirts the western edge of the Black Forest, and is more properly part of the Rhine valley than the forest. So that makes it reasonably free of hills, but mainly it is a cruiise through fields of crops. some of these in themselves are pretty interesting - such as large plots of asparagus. All along, too, are fruit trees - apple, pear, plum, and cherry. Some of these are clearly part of orchards, but many seem to be just sitting out there by the path. The cherries, unfortunately, are now overripe while the other fruits are not ready yet. It really hurts to be crunching through lovely cherries, now lying on the path!
As usual, churches along the way provide points of interest, not to mention spots for a rest inside their cool interiors. Surprisingly, each church seems to come up with something unique, though all of course follow a basic pattern. The first church up, St Barbara's parish church in Steinenstadt (I think it was) was trying on a really crazy idea. Their main altar picture of Jesus depicted someone who does not look like me! That is, the image is unbearded and has short, light hair. Even some fair haired, blue eyed Jesuses we may have seen have beards. I mean, the Gilette razor company has been around a long time, but not that long!
Neuenberg had two historically interesting things on the go. But before we get there, let's backtrack to the three virgins, from yesterday. Recall that they were accompanying St Ursula, the one whose arm ended up on Reichenau?It turns out that Ursula was a British princess, who came to Europe to be married. Before doing that, she set off on a round Europe pilgrimage, which is how she ended up leaving attending virgins and herself, strewn about. St Ursula and the virgins is a very widespread story. It is said she came with 11,000, and that they were all killed, and lie under Koln cathedral. In a rare flirtation with reality the church now doubts the 11,000 figure. It could be more like 11, of which we have seen three!
Anyway, the three virgins were written up by a project that documents the mysteries of the Upper Rhine, funded in part by the EU. These are the people who put up yesterday`s plaque.Today, in Neuenberg, was the next one. It is a wooden cross that was found by fishermen in the River.It was housed in the chapel of the miraculous cross - I am not sure what miracles were involved. In WW II the chapel was destroyed, but the cross survived.
We got a guidebook to all the mythical places of the upper Rhine. There are 22 listed. Good news - we don't appear to have any further ones on our route! You can check it all out, though, at www.mythische-orte.eu
Ahh, Neuenberg's second interesting thing: They just finished ten days of the Nepomuk Festival. Nepomuk is a Czech saint who was drowned at the order of Wenceslaus, in 1393, for backing the wrong Pope (Roman vs Avignon). Later accounts state that he was the confessor of the queen of Bohemia and refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional. Maybe that is what got him killed. He would be most popular in Czech, but has some following around Europe generally. So somehow, here we are with Nepomuk days.
Nepomuk days seemed to be a street festival type thing, with booths selling food and beer. Today they were actively disassembling these booths, and taking away the parts in tractor drawn trailers. The street with the booths was also the bike route. So first one and then another tractor driver tried to bully us off the road. We were having none of it. With the second one, anyway, we shouted back when shouted at, and gave the guy a severe waggling of the finger.
We stopped quickly at one further church (before Freiburg, that is!). This was at Kirchhofen, and it turned out to be a Maria pilgrimage church. Inside were plaques thanking Maria for having helped. But outside, over the gate, were ominous skull images. These did not scare us off!
As we drew nearer to Freiburg, we entered a new agricultural zone. Now we were in a valley and both sides were covered in grape vines. According to a guide book we got later, Freiburg itself -due to 700 hectares of vines- is the German city with the most wine originating from within the city limits. When there are vines, we always end by getting drawn up among them, up and down hills. That happened this time as well, but it is fun to slowly pass the vines - assessing their health and progress, and seeing which pruning system is being used.
From one hill top we could see Freiburg in the distance. It seemed very large, and with quite a few tall buildings. Ten for about 10 km we threaded our way through outskirts. For a further 2 km we threaded through denser city. We were in this area, puzzling over which way to go, when a man who had been stuck behind us on the cycle path offered to guide us to downtown. The man spoke carefully and slowly, but in reasonably good English. He was so sweet and modest,we liked him right away. He said it was complicated to get downtown, and it was, rather. We asked to go to the Tourist Information, but the man really wanted to show us the Munster (Cathedral) first. We went inside together and found that the man - Hermann - knew an awful lot about the Church - the weight of its bells, the subjects of its stained glass windows, the number and organization of the organs, etc. Hermann ran into some friends inside, and introduced us as "guests" from Canada.
Later, on the way to Tourist Information, Hermann said he was proud to have been born in Freiburg and expected, one day, to die here. We passed the three rathauses, and Hermann revealed that he had been a baker in the town for 35 years, but now was a city councillor! Tourist Information found us a place to stay and took a reservation fee. Hermann agreed to lead us to the place too. When we arrived, the proprietor recognized Hermann as a member of the city government and took the opportunity to complain about the reservation fee.
We had really chosen the right person to run in to.
Hermann left us to go shower and said he would maybe phone us later, and show us more of the town. We went out to find some food, and somehow failed to connect, with the cell phones. When we got back to our room, there was a large card from the Munster in our door - showing the bakers' guild stained glass window - and inside was Hermann's card and two city pins. So nice!
What we have seen of Freiburg so far is a town with an extremely large pedestrian only old core. There are lots of old buildings, but most is reconstruction following war damage. The munster fabulous, and has an incredibly interesting restoration program going on. However, this sure is not the quaint Black Forest town I once envisaged. To boot, when I asked Tourist Information about the best places to find cuckoo clocks, the man suggested somewhere in the Black Forest, not here. There are one or two shops, though, and we will look at them tomorrow just for fun. Had we been relying on the original plan of buying a clock here, it would have been unfortunate.
We had detoured to Freiburg because of the clock idea, but in fact we found instead a wonderful man, and a great walking town to spend a little time in. So we think it came out just fine.
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Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 3,835 km (2,382 miles)
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