Day Thirty: Saarlouis to Zetting: (Year 30: 1997)

October 20, 2017

Flash Back to 1997:

We were still cruising along with farming, with at least one kid still mostly home, and our parents aging, but with us. Major changes were still several years ahead.

Almost all the kids had left home, but Steve and Dodie kept the home fires burning.

Dodie's dad, Walter, was always our guide and kept track of all we were doing.

People continually lined up for excellent Dodie bread and preserves.

Peter PM Kisses Sweeter Than wine

Flash Forward to 2017, France:

Our room on a walking street in Saarlouis did not include breakfast so we just rolled over to one of the three bakeries in the near vicinity. Aside from some danish to serve as breakfast, two other things occupied my attention. The first was the selection of tortes. Really nice and reminiscent of Austria. But even I am not about to have torte for breakfast (too messy). The other was the selection of little buns (brotchen). My favourites have a combination of sunflower, sesame, and pumpkin seeds on top of a brown bread. Mmmm. I noticed that they cost up to 80 cents each, so I am costing a hotel a bit if I gobble up a bunch at breakfast. (Ok, they are cheaper by the dozen).

The large central square was not filled by a market, but indeed there were a lot of market vendors set up around the edges. We bought some fruit, including grapes, since it seemed a shame to have passed through such a grape area and never having consumed a single one. It's a bit of self deception, though, because all grapes on sale here now come from Italy.

Great looking tortes in Saarlouis - but not really for breakfast.

I love bakeries with big windows -quite unlike many in Spain. Here I get to peer in while Dodie makes some sensible choices.

There were quite a few market vendors in Saarlouis today, but it was not a flat out, festive market.

The Saar bikeway as we continued up from Saarlouis passed either tilled fields or low forest, all on a nicely paved surface and generally right by the river. Early on there we some lettuce plantings that looked lovely, and a few workers doing a bit of harvesting. We never seem to see masses of agricultural workers, just sporadic little groups.

As usual, just a few workers on the scene

The typical appearance of the Saar Radweg today

The Saar has a reputation of being an industrial zone, but we did not see it, except for the area by Volklingen and Saarbrucken. It began as we passed a long, long blank faced factory building that walled off the entire opposite bank of the river. This turned out to be part of the legendary steel works of Volklingen. Soon there were a few other things to photograph, on the theme of "this must be Mordor". Some bits were in operation, and some were derelict. As it happens, the works have UNESCO heritage status, as they depict the complete production process as it was during the 20th century.

This was actually derelict. About 10 hectares of steel works shut down in 1986 and have been declared a heritage site.

The grey shape by the river is actually a single building, several city blocks long.

Saarstahl has had a few incarnations and a bankruptcy, but is still in operation with a couple of billion euros in sales.

A nuclear plant in town is a nice touch.

The river in Saarbrucken is lined by hotel and office buildings

As we have so often done, we just stuck to the river/bikeway as we passed through Saarbrucken. From that vantage point we could see some hotels and general nondescript buildings, and little else. All the while a motorway ran between us and any parts of the city that might be on our side of the river. It meant we would have had to make a serious effort to seek out what the town had to offer. Instead, we were making a serious effort to log in some kms!

In our passage through Saarbrucken we actually saw very few people, save those who were in cars on the motorway. Unlike Lyon, for example, there was no real use of the river for recreation, and not really a lot of access to it from the built up areas.

This changed slightly, and annoyingly, on the far side of town, where what must have been a 10k run to and from the French border had been organized for teenagers, in support of UNICEF. This filled the path with undisciplined clumps of kids, walking, running, careening along, looking at their cell phones or gabbing with their friends. They had clearly not been schooled at all in the concept of "keep right".

The ultimate came when two kids riding a motor scooter swerved to the extreme left (from their point of view) to avoid some clumps of kids, and were about to plow right into us. We screamed at them and they swerved back. We do like France in general, but boy we were specially glad this time to reach the French border and to escape all those kids!

The start of the 10 k race, set to clog up (from our point of view) the bike path.

Thinking ahead to the place we had booked in Zetting, we realized that the town was tiny and would not have any place to find food. No matter, Dodie observed, because we had sandwiches and fruit that we bought in Saarlouis. "And danish?", said I. "No, we already ate that". After 50 years, Dodie could easily read the silence that followed. "Well, if we spot somewhere not far from the path, we could look for some cookies in Sarreguemines", she offered.

As it happened, we came to a sign that indicated the presence of an InterMarche, just up a narrow laneway. InterMarche is a chain of large grocery stores, so it seemed unlikely. But we parked Dodie by the river and I walked up the lane. Indeed, there was a busy road and on the other side, InterMarche.

InterMarche is big enough that it is a bit daunting to just zoom into, especially with someone waiting for you. I decided to chance it. All I could find in the cookie line was some from a company called "La Mere Poulard". They were made 40 km from Mont St. Michel. Great. But the marketers had bundled three packages together. If I came back with something that big and heavy, I was sure to draw concerns about trying to break our bike racks. I decided to chance it, because with the ridiculous price of 2 euros for the lot, I could throw two packages in the river and still be in good shape.

Actually, the cookies were well received, and they are delicious. Equal I think to those from the biscuit factory in St Michel Chef Chef, on the Loire.

There is one more bit to the story. At the checkout the cashier was cleaning her belt with Windex. So I waited. Spritz, spritz, wipe, wipe. But then again, and again. During this time the belt was moving, but I was holding my biscuits. But then another customer appeared, and plunked his three items on the belt. This carried them past me, and on to the cashier. She reacted in two ways. First she spritzed the other guy's stuff. Then she appeared to be getting ready to scan them.

I am used to being ignored by sales staff, but now I piped up (in French) "What is going on here?" "Don't you see me, look, here I am!" The lady replied, confusingly, "I'm cleaning!". The other customer took decisive action. He grabbed his (now clean) items and flounced off to find another, hopefully saner, cashier. I hung in there, and handed my cookies directly to the lady, avoiding the apparently risky belt zone. She scanned them, took my money, and I was out of there. Perhaps perpetuating some stereotypes, I was thinking "This sure isn't Germany any more!"

We arrived in the tiny village of Zetting, where we had booked the only place in town, a B&B called the Myosotis. This had been highly recommended by Tricia and Ken, who passed through here about a month ago.

We had missed the fact that check in is only at 5, and our phone would need a few minutes tweaking to realize it was now in France. So we used some time to go see the church, of St. Marcel. Uncharacteristically, it was locked. But we did look at the graveyard and a war memorial plaque. The plaque honoured dead soldiers and civilians from the two world wars. The confusing part is as to which country this area was a part of when. The names on the plaque were of no help. Almost all had German family names, but almost all also had French first names. Clearly there is some history to be brushed up on here.

With the phone now working, we got the lady (Noelle) to come and open up. Even though we have been benefiting from the amazing ability of most Dutch and Germans to speak English, it was a pleasure to be able to communicate with Noelle with good clarity in her native French. That's good, because one of the things she told us was to restrain the armoire while yanking on the door, lest the whole thing tip over on our heads. Maybe we will just leave our clothes on the floor. We sort of feel we have dodged enough stuff today.

The war memorial plaque at the church in Zetting.

Today's ride: 54 km (34 miles)
Total: 921 km (572 miles)

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