Day 74: Nittenau to Furth im Wald

June 25, 2022

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One feature that our guesthouse had that I noticed but mostly forgot until later in the evening was an eis cafe. When I remembered and proposed to go down to it, Dodie suggested that I get a takeout, in a cup rather than a cone. That simple suggestion rattled around in my mind, until by the time I was ready to order I was into a "becher". Now becher just means cup, but in eis cafe culture, a becher is often a pre-designed cup of many flavours, whipped cream, fruit, and sauce. Somehow, before I came to my senses, I was walking back upstairs with a concoction of three flavours, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce. Back in the room I realized I had no hope of eating this on my own. I needed to get Dodie to help me, but oh no, she had fallen fast asleep.

I started writing the blog, and eating the thing. And by the time the blog was done, so was the becher! Dodie later said she would not have been conned into eis anyway, but I could have left it. Nah. Still, I felt ill until at least 2 a.m.

Innocent looking eis pusher, the morning after.

My eis indiscretion was not over yet, because by morning I still felt stuffed and a little queasy. So this was the day that fate dealt us a 10 jammer breakfast. I have given up photographing these things, but today I snapped a couple of shots covering part of it, to help remember what I was not going to eat this morning.

Sitting in the large dining room, with the 10 jammer breakfast, I once again looked around and was absolutely struck by the quality of the surroundings. Flooring, tables, walls, windows, counters, were all formed from such immensely high quality materials and workmanship. and through a door we could observe the kitchen - a huge room stuffed with gleaming stainless steel counters and equipment.

Casting our minds to any high quality hotels or restaurants in our home area, which is after all the capital of the Province, we could name only one or two that could possibly complete with this. And yet, we were in a run of the mill guest house in a small town. It's an indicator of the great wealth of Germany in general. They did this without running an empire to speak of, and having lost two major wars. Amazing.

With the exception of the action that will be described in the town of Cham, about midway through the day, today's ride was just the ultimate in easy going cruising through super pleasant environments on mostly flat and mostly paved paths. It was so gentle and pleasant that we would have to give the Regental Radweg some sort of gold star for it.

We enjoy looking at the cereal crops, and other crops. We see barley, rye, and wheat and could not say that one of these predominates. Occasionally there are oats, but oats are definitely a rarity. No wonder we seldom see haferflocken (Dodie's fav - oatmeal) in the stores.

We usually identify fishers like this with France. But there were a fair number here along the Regen.

The Regen seems very placid, but in fact it flows quite quickly. It does look like some British fly fishing stream.

Houses and villages along the way remain plain but solid.

Lots of kms like this. We probably took the crop on the left to be rye.

The first 20 km were so easy that we did not feel hard done by when the path suddenly decided to turn to gravel and to ascend a ridge at 15%. It seems to have been a 2 km ascent and equal descent. 2 km is one of those situations at 15% where the path turns a corner and instead of quitting, continues up and up. On the descent, of course, you wonder just how much rubber you are taking off your brakes, to keep speed under control.

Roding was kind of a major town, that was next in line for us. It might have had a walking street, but we were not particularly looking for it. Certainly, we were not searching for eis!

Dodie bypassed a bicycle direction sign, accusing it of trying to send us up another ridge. It worried me, because we were then heading into a system of limited access higher speed roadways. Dodie insisted her GPS showed the way through, and she/it was right. Most often, in Germany, a way for bikes has been provided.

We rather thought we were out of stork territory, but in past days kept seeing at least one, prowling in a field. But today there were several nests on buildings. In the one below, it seems one baby has yet to leave home.

A field of daisies as we approached Cham. We have this on our own land at home, but this is the first time we have seen this here.

Cham is an ancient town, located where the river Cham joins the Regen. Since every river has a radweg, we would soon be shifting to the Chamtal Radweg. The Regen is coming from Czech, but from more east than north. Since we are going northeast to Prague, the Cham is the river we want.

Cham has several churches and a monastery, but we decided to just head right in to the altstadt. This is resided over by the Jakobs church, which is the one with the onion dome.

We arrived in the main square to find a town celebration going on. We are not sure if this was related to Johannes day, or if it was just because. There were stalls selling pizza, BBQ, and flammkuchen, and best of all there was a traditional brass and accordion band.

I went for a quick look in the church, and found a lot of people standing around - I think a wedding was going to begin, but missed seeing the bride. This particular church made use of plaster work that looks like draperies - quite unique.

Back in the square, there is a fanciful statue - not sure what kind of legend it derives from. A little kid, dressed in medieval garb and with a pretzel, seemed to like it.

Others were also dressed up (or down), apparently to commemorate Trenck the Pandur, who conquered Cham:

"Together with the city of Cham, the Trenck Festival Association will be celebrating 300 years of Count Luckner and 280 years of Colonel von der Trenck's attack on the city of Cham this year. The highlight will be the theme weekend in Cham from June 24th to 26th, 2022, when the Count - together with Franziskus von der Trenck and his wild Pandours - invites you on an exciting journey through time."

If somebody wants to figure out more about it, start here.

We eventually left town and hopped on the Chambtal radweg, again passing through green and pleasant lands, to Furth im Wald. So far we have found nothing remarkable about Furth, except that our guesthouse room is roomy.

We are very close to the Czech border here, and in fact will sleep in Czech tomorrow night, at Stod, almost to Pilsen. That opens a new phase of the trip - the Czech phase. We will be going near, but not in, the Bohemian hills. Yet our maps still show lots of hills of some darn kind. We'll see..

What gave Meaning to Life, today? Accordion music like Dodie's Dad used to play.

Today's ride: 61 km (38 miles)
Total: 4,155 km (2,580 miles)

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Bill Shaneyfelt"Czeching" off another country for the tour!
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