September 10, 2014
Riedlingen - Ulm
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At breakfast, I had an unsatisfactory conversation with a fellow cyclist of around 50 years old. I am not at my best in the early morning, and my social skills in any language were not well served by the previous night's beer and wine.
Barbara's knee problem had eased. We had decided, without saying as much, that today would be a sort of fitness test. If she didn't suffer we would continue. The way was not completely flat and there was a long climb to Ehringen town centre and then some more, until we were above the valley, overlooking the towns's industrial quarter. We stopped to eat on a bench. The man with whom I had spoken at breakfast joined us for a break. We had a much more satisfactory conversation. His name was Herbert from near Kempten in Bavaria, a former metalworker. He suffered from Parkinson's disease. He told us he had to take extensive medication and was prone to falling off his bike [five times so far, he said] He was aiming for Passau, having, like us, started the Donauradweg at Donaueschingen. Respect. Rather bizarrely, he was wearing a Cagliari shirt, of the Serie A football club from Sardinia. Each to his own.
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A sharp descent followed our lunch break, then a few kilometres of village and farmland, before riverside paths took us into Ulm. We left the river and lodged in the Ibis Budget hotel, not a massive bargain at €55, but they did have a bike shed. Most of Ulm city centre was rebuilt after WW1I. The RAF and USAF having spared the minster, which has the tallest steeple in the world at 479 metres. We didn't climb it, nor even enquire whether it was possible. nor did I climb it in 1965 when I was last here, with a school-friend. We had hitch-hiked from Middlesbrough and spent a night in the Youth Hostel. I even remembered the address, Grimmelfingerweg. A trip up the minster stairs might have sparked a rebellion in Barbara's knee, which seemed to have settled down again, fitness-test passed, if not with flying colours.
We had encountered more touring cyclists in the last two days, than in any of our previous cycle touring trips combined. Most were German, riding typical German touring machines with butterfly handlebars, dynohubs and often Rohloff gears. We may have stood out as being eccentric, certainly foreign, Barbara on her Specialised Rockhopper and me on my 1980s British tourer with 531 ST frame. The whole enterprise seemed quite bürgerlich, most riders being of a certain age and class. I wondered how many of them had been into the revolutionary politics of the late 1960s, followers of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, say.
“Hey Ulrike, now we're old and the ideals of revolutionary socialism have been laid low by the power of capital, how do you fancy a long bike ride?”
“Andreas, have you gone soft in the head?”
“Don't be like that, liebchen. They say the Donautal is very beautiful this time of year.”
They're both dead of course, separated from their brains, which, I read, were subject to clinical analysis at the University of Tübingen, presumably in an attempt to discover what distinguishes a blood-thirsty terrorist nutter from someone who drives his or her kids to piano practise in a VW Polo. The findings were, evidently, inconclusive. What remains of them is probably spinning in its jars.
The forces of economy were driving us forward again and so for tonight's dinner I went out in search of a town centre supermarket. I sat out in the street with a beer first, before, after enquiring of an elderly lady at a bus stop, I found another REWE in the basement of an up-scale department store. I'd missed it on the first pass.
Today's ride: 82 km (51 miles)
Total: 858 km (533 miles)
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