September 25, 2012
Looking back - what we remember most and how it feels to be back.: Hey, get us outta here!
We landed in Montreal, almost four weeks ago now, and promptly came down with colds. Maybe we actually picked them up in the crowded tube in London, or maybe it was the now alien buggies of the New World. Whichever it was, it had us coughing for three weeks, sapping whatever energy we came off the cycling with.
Still, we took 18 month old Amelia for long walks every day, and had a (Canadian) Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat with Joshua and Sabrina and friends.
We then piled our bike cases and duffel bags onto the Amtrak train, the Adirondak, and followed that with the Lakeshore and finally the Empire Builder, out of Chicago. The Amtrak lines, which are very few compared to the trains everywhere in Europe, each have names. So the "City of New Orleans", famous from the Steve Goodman song, is an actual train line and not a poetic invention.
As we passed through America on these trains, the contrast with the European countryside was stark. We saw shabby towns, with scattered factories - many shut down - and hundreds of miles barren and empty landscape. The food on the train, and what could be found in places like Chicago's Union Station was truly abyssmal. Nowhere in Europe did we find anything to match a plastic wrapped and microwaved "cheeseburger", with a side of Lay's "potato chips". In the station, McDonald's was actually an oasis of fresher and higher quality fare. Yikes!
Missoula, Montana - where we are now - is a quite nice university town. Still it is stuffed with SUVs and Box Stores. There is however one lonely and out of place bakery where you can get a reasonable Pain aux Raisins. Thank goodness!
As you can make out, the culture shock of returning to North America is pretty extreme. The thought of cycling here, amid the traffic and with no dedicated cycle ways, is not attractive. Still, we dropped in at Adventure Cycling, which is headquartered in Missoula, and bought their maps for the west coast route, and also for part of the Southern Tier. After a month, we need to get back on the bikes, and we almost don't care where!
Looking back on the route just completed, what sticks in our minds? There are dozens of categories of things that made the trip. Here are some of the main ones:
CYCLE ROUTES
The Loire a Velo, the Eurovelo 6 to Vienna, the Inn, Enns, and Neckar radwegs, the node system of Netherlands, and more, all made for the best possible cycling experience. In Netherlands, Germany and Austria, you could always count on a dedicated cycleway to any town you were trying to reach. We can not stress enough how liberating this is. By contrast, in England, narrow (and sometimes quiet) country lanes are made inaccessible by having to use or cross busy bicycle unfriendly roads to get to them. In North America, elevated expressways and other high speed traffic jammed roads an block your progress near bigger cities, and roads with no shoulders can pop up and risk your life at any time. Dedicated cycle ways? Forget it, where they exist they are seldom of use for long distance travelers.
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BEAUTIFUL COUNTRYSIDES
Europeans seem to love North America for the wide open spaces, yet we found lots of wide open and beautiful countryside in each of the seven countries we visited. Probably because we started in England in the Spring, we were very impressed with the lush green countryside there. On the other hand, the alpine meadows of Austria, the villages along the Danube, each marked by its church, the farms of Holland, and so many other landscapes were each gorgeous.
NARROW STREETS and UNIQUE BUILDINGS
A broad boulevard usually means a lot of cars, and is not very interesting. The exception is Paris, where broad boulevards house huge impressive buildings. Generally, though, we remember the towns with quaint narrow streets and huddled buildings, with unique decorations and interesting shops. Towns like this were all through the countries we were in. They are remarkable to us, as North Americans, because so few of our towns have much that is like this. Among European towns, those in Holland specialized in "huddledness". Probably because of the reclaimed land, so many buildings tilted at crazy angles. On the other hand, German and Swiss towns had the best of unique decoration, like frescoes painted on the fronts (as in Stein am Rhein) or painted crests, as in Rottweil.
TYPICAL HOUSES
The way houses look and are grouped is one of the most distinctive things about the various countries. As you travel from one to the other, the styles can change gradually, until the differences are marked, or the styles can change suddenly. In southern Austria we have the chalet style house, two story, with stucco below and wood above, shutters on the windows and window boxes at each, with red flowers. Travel a bit north and the shutters slowly disappear. A bit further north, no window boxes!
The gradual Austrian change is contrasted with the dramatic change from northern Germany into Netherlands. The Germans have stuccoed houses, with single ridge line roofs. The Dutch have brick houses, with the ridge lines snubbed off. The change happens literally as you cross the border!
COWS
The varieties of cows are just about as variable across the countries as the varieties of houses. Cows in any country have the well known property that they always arrange themselves in a field so that the whole scene looks its best. We took dozens of photos of cows (plus every other sort of farm animal) and we remember their beauty fondly.
CHURCHES
There are of course churches in Canada, but with the exception of in Quebec they are fairly low key affairs. The hockey arena is more likely the central institution of a Canadian town.
In Europe, with the exception of Netherlands, the churches are a big big thing. They may have lost their dominant role in the cultures, but they still dominate the architecture of the towns. If you are looking for the centre of a town you have reached, or you want the market street, then you only have to go to the church. The church is easy to find too, it is the tallest building in town - still.
Naturally, with the prominence of the churches, we took a lot of photos of them. Those large enough to be cathedrals, or monasteries often feature insane amounts of exterior decoration. Insane or not, they are beautiful and impossible to ignore.
CHURCH INTERIORS
Insane exterior decoration is only the introduction to the amazing church interiors. Some are completely covered in gold, some have swarms of pink cherubs, some have complex and colourful ceiling frescoes, some have unique stained glass, some have walls painted in stripes and zig zags. Again, insane or not, they are impossible to ignore.
ARCHITECTURE
Churches, houses, streets are all architecture, but there is even more. Here are some of the buildings we loved. There were lots more, particularly in Paris and London and Vienna!
CHURCH BELLS
The sound track for our trip was church bells. Since there are churches in every town, there is the music of church bells too. In some cases there were Carillons playing tunes, but often there was just bong bong. Bong bong from a variety of churches at once, with bells of different voices, is music too. The haunting sound of church bells heard down a German river valley is something that will stay with us.
FOOD
We found grocery store food throughout Europe to be very high quality, and often organic. In England, Sainsbury's had small packages of yummy stuff - just right for us. Occasionally we tried out restaurants, and found that it was almost impossible to get a bad meal, no matter where the place was and what it looked like.
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MANHOLE COVERS
Churches inspire you to look to the heavens, but my normal mode is more like stumbling along looking at my feet. So that's why I notice things like manhiole covers. Manhole covers are normally quite prosaic. However some enlightened jurisdictions pay attention not only to their big ticket attractions but also to simple things like this. I first noticed that in Stein am Rhein, but lots of other places have noteworthy manhole covers!
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COFFEE
After the first shock of receiving a teeny tiny cup of coffee at my first cafe in France, I never did get over the smallness of the cups. On the other hand, on returning to within shipping range of Amazon.com, I just almost bought a Nespresso machine. Only at the last second did I come to my senses and realize that I am not the guy to pay even the $1 cost of a (homemade) teeny tiny coffee.
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GEFAARS
We had promised our kids we would not get killed on the trip. Generally that meant we would look both ways before crossing the street, just as we had taught them when they were young. However the risk of being run over by a bus was just one of the many risks that the thoughtful road builders had worried about for us in the various countries. We were warned about so many risks (in German - gefahr) that we started to choose a gefahr of the day. Lebensgefahrs - life threatening risks - were of course the elite risks, but we did not discount the risk of falling off a ramp into the river, slipping on drifting sand, breaking a leg or twisting a wheel in a cattle grate, etc.
CHANGING PRIORITIES
Right now, changing priorities are not a problem for us. This trip has only whetted our appetite for more bike travel, and specially more bike routes in Europe. We may spin around Hawaii, noodle down the Washington to California Pacific Coast, ride the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes in Idaho, and start out on the Southern Tier in the meantime, but Europe - fire up those bakeries - 'cause we'll be back!
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