Day 90: Oppenheim to Mainz

July 28, 2014

No rain this morning - so we came out of another night of camping without getting soaked. Our tent has a fairly sprinkling of other touring cyclists around it. This is a situation we like, since so often we feel like the only ones in Europe foolish enough to be dragging camping gear. A quick tally the other day showed we have stayed in guest houses just over 50 percent of the time on this trip. I am not sure if we can drive that below 50 percent in the remaining time. - Probably not, since we have already paid for the airport hotel at Frankfurt. So by rights that makes us "credit card tourists", a category we had previously distained. Maybe it's ok, though. Our equipment (like a gazillion flashers, and triple reinforced tires) is based n North American thinking. It could be time to "get with the program" and tour more like Europeans, when in Europe.

I was able to set myself back up by the restaurant, and add the captions to yesterday's photos, while charging electronics from the plugs that Michael had so kindly provided. Unfortunately, doing this prevented us from meeting our fellow camping cyclists, including Niko - from Venice, who we had met 30 km south and directed to this camping.

The path along the Rhine, heading for Mainz, continued to bear out our suspicion that the great stuff does not start right yet. First we went through a bit of light industry, then by a road, and then winding inland a bit, through a couple of towns. There was nothing wrong with any of it, certainly nothing unsafe, but it was just normal. We did come to a point where the path showed us the curve of the river, with vines on hills along the west bank. Then we were taken into the vines, always a treat, really. Part of the treat is trying to figure out the particular pruning system in use, and looking at what they use to fix the vines to the wires. Two months from now, of course, the treat would include imagining eating several kilos of the luscious fruit.

Here for the first time we can see a village and slopes with vines

St Urban - in a small village. Joshua - this is your same St Urbain from Montreal

Going more or less along the Rhine shore allowed us to attend (sort of) to a pesky problem brought out in the Guestbook by Arthur. That is, a lack of reportage on gefahrs - warnings put forward by the ever cautious Germans, for everything from poison caterpillars to slippery steps. Arthur did allow that the recent maus buzzard warning was pretty good, but he still thinks the volume is low. So here are three gefahrs, anyway, to help boost our gefahr rating:

Gefahr that the dog can not read this sign and you will step in dog pooop!

Tree branch might fall on your head gefahr.

We were at Mainz quite quickly, thanks to our fairly long day yesterday. Mainz has a broad riverfront area, and paradoxically no signage to tell you when to turn left to reach the Dom and square. We, of course, are old hands now, and zoomed in to our "favourite" cafe, the Dom cafe.This is not our favourite, necessarily because of the food (though they do have a lot of super tortes),but because it sits on the Dom square. The natural order of things is to have the church, the square, and the cafe - with outdoor seating. Anything different or innovative just leaves us unsettled.

So we sat at the Dom cafe and prepared for our version of Avi and Violet's birthday party. We skipped the cake and went straight to the ice cream. Dodie got a Nuss Knacker and I got a Birne Helene. They were great, but we had to admit, only big enough to make us hungry. Still, Avi and Violet, even if we left your party hungry, we were thinking of you!

Now it was time to attend to another "chore". Since we first came to Europe (three years ago) we have noticed but never commented on the phenomenon of the "Donner" shop. They are in every town, and offer that meat product that rotates vertically in front of a heating element, and gets sliced off, to be served in a falafel type bread. These shops are always run by people from the east, normally Turkey. We can see that they serve two functions: Like taxi driving in some cities, its a place for immigrants to get a foothold. Also, hamburgers just don't sell here, schnitzel is the standard. But Donner is a chopped meat hamburger type concept, and so seems to be the schnitzel alternative.

In Canada too, there are donner shops, though not to the extent we see here. The thing I wanted to check was that at home the general product is called "schawarma". And there is another thing called "shish kebob". Here, there is donner, and "kebap". So, with Dodie waiting more or less patiently, I went into a donner shop and questioned the hapless Turkish owners. "What is the difference between donner, kebap, and schwarma?" "What is this meat?" "Is only one kind of meat used?"

I think their answer was that all the names refer to the same thing, and that there is no ground meat variant, only turkey bits make up the roll. I am not sure that this is quite accurate. Maybe more research is needed. Thankfully, from Dodie's point of view, we are now leaving the continent.

By the way, of course I bought some - to compare flavour with Vancouver. I asked for something small I could walk with. But what came was a major overstuffed thing that you could only eat at a table. So I took a seat, and promptly got stung on the bum by a wasp. Dodie was upset , not for me exactly, but because of the risk that this could hinder our cycling - which means her cycling.

My second surprise came when I thought I would really do the donner thing right by added a soft drink to the party. I chose one from the cooler, marked Grapefruit. As is common here, you need a bottle opener. But I got that and shoved a straw in. Immediately the thing foamed up and over. Strange. I took a sip. Beer! I didn't ask for my money back, or anything, but brought the bottle back to the people. This has alcohol, I sputtered! They just looked at me as if I was from Mars. Pretty close. Canadians just do not take bottles of beer from drink coolers, unless its in an outlet of the Liquor Distribution Branch. And Grampies - don't do beer any which way, even Grapefruit Beer. (Sorry Dave).

Ou next stop in town was the Radhaus. This is a play on words. Rad is the short form of fahrrad, which generally means bicycle. Anyway Radhaus is a play on Rathaus, which is the city hall. We went to theRadhaus only because it is owned by Jurgen's (from Bodensee) brother - Dieter. We just wanted to say hi. But they said Dieter only works one day or so a week. He can be found instead working on his boat. I hope I have this right and am not getting anyone in trouble! Jurgen?

Now (since I seemed to have recovered from my wasp attack) we were looking for where to go next. Bingen (down the Rhine) was a candidate, and so was Wiesbaden (across the Rhine). Since we had no good maps for these, we set out to findthe Tourist Information. 45 minutes later we found them, hiding in a concrete complex near the new concrete rathaus and beside a modern shopping complex. Dodie went in and reamed them out for not being where any tourists are. They said yes, they know. As for maps about the way to Bingen or Wiesbaden? Hey, this is Mainz TI, why should we know about anything 10 km away?

So we dragged out tails across the bridge to the east side of the Rhine. No way to go to Bingen now, we had wasted too much time eating eis and donner and looking for TI. No motive to go to Wiesbaden, we knew nothing about it. Ergo, we just went to the camping, and set up our tent. There is a covered table nearby. We have spent the last four hours chatting with fellow cyclists. Sitting across the table from us is David, from Anderen, a village in Drenthe, an eastern province of Netherlands. He is cycling to Andermatt (the source of the Rhine) and back. He has three weeks!

We, of course, only have one day. Tomorrow we will cruise in to Frankfurt (according to the forecast - it will be in the rain) and try to pick up our duffel bags from Erika's brother's colleague, near the airport. Then we will check into what we expect will be the rather lame Ibis Airport Hotel, and await our fate (deportation back to the land of no good bakeries).

The Mainz Dom features a lot of stone carving like this

A ship leaves the Main an enters the Rhine

How things change. Now we are reduced to buying schwartzwald cake like this

Today's ride: 30 km (19 miles)
Total: 4,640 km (2,881 miles)

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