Day 13 Passau, Germany. Our Paths Cross Again

Joan's View

We turned our key into the neighbor lady (who spoke only German) and headed out. The weather continues to be beautiful. Today was extra warm, into the upper 80s even. We found an Aldi's, yet again, at break time and sat to eat some of our goodies in the shade on some steps. This little dude to the right was watching us while we ate, and we were watching him. We got no questions from Mr. Mouse, but another cyclist pulled up, from Idaho actually, and had questions for us. He came to Europe, bought a bicycle and bags, and travels by train with his bike when he gets tired of riding. 

Two small adjustments needed to be made at Aldi's. First, my steal of deal sunglasses found at Aldi's just days into the trip broke, so we dug out some electrical tape to fix those. Also, because of the lasting heat, my sensitive skin developed a rash on my thighs despite my faithful sunscreen applications. I tried to cover my rash from the direct sun without having to put full leggings on. Our supplies are limited as you can see.

A little later on the trail, guess who we saw across a field? Yep, it was Gero & Jan! They saw us before that because of our safety lights, so they slowed a little to let us catch up. The stayed in Deggendorf last night. We had more great conversations with them. Jan told us that he asked his Dad when they first started out, want to speak English or German on this trip? Gero said German, but since they've been riding with us so much, it's turned into an English speaking trip. Jan has two pet mice (how coincidental is that?), but his one mouse was sick and may be gone before he gets home. I also learned that Jan has suspension on his front seat, and Joan does not. Cobblestone streets, gravel trails, and grassy lanes can be very bouncy. 

We stopped quickly at one point to get this great picture of 2 horse riders in a creek. We caught back up, but left Gero and Jan around lunch time. We checked out this little church after I told Tony the shortcut was through this space between the church and another building. He squeezed the bike through like a pro. This church was fairly modern for Germany. It had great handles on the doors. Tony is planning on making the door for our new house so I suggested these handles would be nice.











We shared a gyro outside at a Greek restaurant and waved when Gero & Jan rode by. Back on the trail, we passed through this cool arch made of beer containers decorated with a bike. There just happens to be a nice bridge in the background.

If you remember on our first day out of Zurich, Tony navigated us to the Zurich airport. Well, he did it again. This time to a local airport. You can see we had to turn around. We also watched the plane in the left of the picture taxi down the runway.

It was really getting warm so we found a great bench in the shade overlooking the Donau to eat and recharge. Tony got this picture below.

 A few minutes later, guess who pulled up? Yep, Gero & Jan. They needed a break from the heat too. Since we are both spending the night in Passau, we decided to try to meet up for dinner. Besides that, it's really helpful with them around trying to decipher the German menu. 😏

 We started out traveling together until we had to split because they are camping and we have the airbnb. Our route took us on a bike trail right along a hydroelectric plant.

Also, there are lots of beautiful gardens in Germany, but this is one of my favorites so I had to share this picture.

 Gero and Jan rode their bike to our place. From there, we let Gero lead the way to a restaurant, and he found a delicious bistro. Jan got a burger and fries, regardless of all of the choices. Here, I enjoyed my third plate of apple strudel, and I talked Jan into getting strudel too. We all left to go back to our Airbnb where they stored their tandem. On the way, Jan offered to buy ice cream, using his allowance for whoever wanted it. Talk about impressive! Tony got his ice cream today after all, thanks to Jan. 

Tony's Extras

It sure was nice having Jan around these last few days. Of course, anyone who offers to buy me ice cream is a good friend of mine. Our neighbor, Bud, was complaining we weren't showing any fishermen. We decided to stop and get a picture for him. Yes, Bud there are many people fishing in the Danube river and many from the bank. Before you ask, we have not asked them what they have been catching.

We saw many more neat churches today again. The crucifix in one of the churches today was different, as you can see on the left. It is neat seeing God the Father holding Jesus the Son on the cross.
I took a picture of this statue of St. Sebastian. There seems to be many statues of him in the churches we visit. The statues have several arrows in him. St Sebastain (256 -288) was an early Christian saint and martyr. According to traditional belief, he was killed during the Roman Emperor, initially being tied to a tied to a post or tree and shot with arrows, though this did not kill him. 

Earlier in the blog I said how appreciative I was that Joan goes on these types of adventures with me. I still do. She is a real trooper. I stated that there are very few spouses that would go along. Well, I haven't picked on Tisha yet this trip and I am not going to start now. When I said spouse instead of saying wives, I was thinking Tisha would go but probably not Eric. However, if you could fit his golf clubs on the bicycle, Eric might go. During this trip, we went by many nice tennis courts. The tennis courts we are seeing are clay courts and well maintained. Since Eric now likes tennis, that might help get Eric on a bicycle trip, Tisha. Seems like a good time to go to bed. It is 12:54am and I am exhausted.😀

Day 12 Bogen, Germany. Hiking and Biking with our Tandem Friends from Freiburg, Germany

Tony's View

We started out today crossing the bridge that leads to the middle of another bridge. We stayed on an island last night and the bridge to it goes up to another bridge that is crossing the Danube.

On the bridge there was a wheel locked up to the railing. Somebody must have gotten the rest of the bike, oops. 

We saw several cool bridges today, but I will only show you a couple. Hehe. 

We did run into someone doing wild camping as you can see by the picture. His tent blended in well and his bicycle was attached to his tent.

A few miles down the road we decided to climb up to the Walhalla Pantheon which commemorates Germanic heroes. It was 435 steps from the bike trail to the top. 250 of the steps were part of the Pantheon itself. We parked our bike out of sight off the path by some railing and locked it up just hoping it would be there when we got back. The Walhalla was high up there as you can see from our pictures. The building was dramatic the whole way up. We have pictures of the outside pillars that were huge. It cost 4,50 Euros when you got up there to go in. It was busts of all the famous people. We looked and decided it wasn’t worth. They didn’t allow pictures inside. I took though from outside the door when no one was looking so we could show you what was in there. I decided to head down first to make sure the bike was okay.

We saw another beautiful chapel out in the middle of nowhere, so we decided to start our rosary for today there. We have an outside picture, but I also took a picture of the Mary Statue inside which I liked because it was a little unique.

It wasn’t too far down the road where we ran into our friends on a similar tandem bicycle we talked briefly about the other day. Amazingly, they spent 2 days at Regensburg also. They camp and are a father / son team, Gero and Jan (pronounced Yan). We spent time with them at their break site talking about bicycles and just finding out about each other. We offered and they actually took our bicycle out for a ride to check it out. Gero is an architect and Jan is going into grade 6. They are doing their own 3 week long bike trip before Jan starts back to school. They live in Freiburg, Germany and have been there for 3 years, but were previously in Australia and is where they learned to speak good English. As Gero said, German with Australian English is what they really spoke. Gero’s wife and 2 younger boys are on a vacation up north visiting relatives and spending time at the beach. Reminds me of when Wade and I went on the cross country trip and Joan, Cara and Marla went on the Price is Right Trip to Nice, France.

Gero & Jan just starting out on our tandem.

Jan giving the "We got this" signal

We took off ahead of them, and ran into another inner tube vending machine. I had to stop and get a picture of it before moving on. The picture to the right is one of the tubes we are carrying for our rear tire. We were carrying 4, now down to 3 since we had one flat.

Gero and Jan caught up and past us. We caught up with them and rode with them for miles side by side. It was a lot of fun and Jan got to practice his English talking to Joan. While riding, 

Joan got a picture of them riding beside us and another castle up on a hill.

We broke off after many miles laughs and stories because we wanted to check out another local church. We have another chance to run into them again though because they are heading to Passau.

At this local church we found a grave site with the name Schroder. There are dots above the o and when they got to America, the dropped the dots and added an e. We are seeing that in many of the local names back home.

We then enter Straubing, which is a town the size of Sidney and has at least 5 churches. We decided to go to 2 of them. St. Jakob Basilica was built in the 1400’s. Inside this was one of the most beautiful churches. It had 20 side altars, an inspiring main alter, amazing stain glass windows with the Moses window the famous one in this church.

We went on a search for St. Peter’s Basilica and finally found it. The cemetery outside the church and the church itself was very old. It was built in the 12^th century. The grave sites that we could read were 1802. I am sure there were older ones that we couldn’t read.

We headed out of town and ran into another Aldi’s and, yes, we had to stop. We then got to our final destination of Bogen and found out that they had no WiFi. So, we decided to go on anther hike up a huge hill to St. Mary’s church. This church is famous for having a pregnant Mary statue. It was a long way up there again as you can see from the pictures again. We took a shower before heading up there and I was all sweaty again before we arrived up the hill. In 1104, they found this statue floating in the Danube at the foot of this mountain. Count Aswin installed it in the chapel of the castle on top of this mountain which became the palace of the Benedictine monks. They undressed the statue and found Mary to be pregnant. Pilgrims would come from all over and make the track up the mountain for comfort and healing. This prompted many pregnant women to make the pilgrimage.

The candles have special meaning also. A particular pilgrimage takes place on Pentecost Sunday, when pilgrims take turns to carry a 120 pound candle up the hill to the church. It is said that if the candle is dropped, misfortune, war and destitution will surely follow. Legend has it that the candel fell and broke in both 1913 and 1938. The picture below shows how high Joan and I climbed for the second time in one day

We headed back to the hotel after so much hiking and biking on this busy day and went to sleep early.

 

Joan's Extras

As I waited outside of our building early this morning while Tony set up the geek gear on the tandem, a German lady towing a small cart and I exchanged, "Guten Morgens." She then came over to me to tell me that we need an electric motor on our tandem. I laughed and told her that she was about the 50th person that has told us that. She smiled and got eager to share a cute joke with me that seems to really apply in our situation so I want to share it: Two people were riding their tandem up a huge, steep hill. The front person was huffing and puffing, and putting their all into it just to get up this enormous hill. After lots of heavy breathing they finally reached the top. The front rider said to the back rider, " Wow. That was the toughest hill I've ever rode on a tandem," and the back person replied, "Tell me about it. I had the brakes on the whole time so that we didn't roll backwards."

Speaking of Tony putting on the brakes, he says no more bridge pictures unless they are really, really cool. He thinks every bridge is cool, but if you see a bridge picture anymore on this trip, you'll know it is awesome to Tony.

Lots of fun today with Gero and Jan! Jan is a rock climber, but broke his leg when he fell climbing a tree a few months ago. He got his cast off shortly before the trip so he is strengthening his leg with all of this cycling. Jan shared about his school life, and his friends from Germany and Australia. It's pretty impressive how great his English is at such a young age. I also learned a little more German from both of them. It helps when we can ask as we are riding, "What does that mean?" They just shake their heads at us sometimes. 🙄
Jan is also a huge reader and brought a few books along on their trip. We were impressed with that one because we all know how important it is to travel light on a bike, but Gero ok'd Jan taking his books. Is that just so awesome?

Day 11 Regensburg, Germany. Found a Flat

Joan's View

Cathedral of St. Peter

We slept in because it's a rest day. We decided to do some more laundry since we have a washer in our airbnb. It took quite some doing to figure out this washing machine though. After plugging it in and getting several errors with what seemed like wrong settings, I realized the water was not on. Whew! Now we could leave and explore Regensburg. 

St. Emmeram

We visited the two main churches that we wanted to see, Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Emmeram. We stayed at the Cathedral to hear the noon meditations and organ music. The Cathedral was huge, and St. Emmeram was amazingly ornate. There is so much history in just a small location. Leaving there, we strolled through the old streets and just enjoyed the German architecture. This one shopping street was especially cute because of the pennants that hung across the road between the buildings. Unfortunately, there is no shopping here for me though since more weight means more to haul. I'm waiting for Budapest to find some bargains. 😊

We stopped for my second taste of apple strudel so far, while Tony enjoyed ice cream and beer. From there we headed back to our place to unload the washer so that it can hopefully dry before we leave (there is no dryer here). 



We started out walking again, this time to find a grocery store. 

Along the way, we saw this beer truck parked near a restaurant refilling their beer like a gas truck refills a gas station. I guess that speaks volumes about the amount of beer consumed here. Tony first thought it was a milk truck because the driver threw out a bucket of what looked like milk, but it was really beer foam. Maybe the goat checking out the vat made him think milk, or maybe he's had too much beer.

After walking for about 20 minutes, we realized that the grocery store we were looking for, per google, is no longer there, so rather than continue on in the summer heat, we headed back to find food elsewhere. On the way, of course, Tony spotted a beverage store and got to explore the German world of buying local beer from the containers. Two locals there wanted to help Tony with his decision on which beer to get. One guy showed him what he said is the best beer in the world, but a lady was kind of arguing saying that this other dark beer is the best. Maybe Tony will share his taste results. 

Taking a break after some bike cleaning.

From there, we found a bakery. Tony bought a nice round loaf of brown bread, and I got some ham salad. Tony carried our goodies in his backpack to our place. We ate and I took a nap while Tony cleaned and worked on the bike. When I awoke, Tony said that he discovered that our tandem has a flat. He has no idea how long it's been like that since it's such a small hole.







We ate dinner at Spitalgarten, which is the oldest brewery in Regensburg. I had a hearty dose of strong horseradish on my boiled beef. Very interesting!

Tony's Extras

I oiled the chains well since we are riding in so much gravel. The dust from the gravel really affects the bicycle. Not sure what caused the flat but thank goodness I could change it in our room instead of the heat during the ride. As far as which beer was better, they were both good. All beers in Germany have a similar flavor. Besides both beers, I got a bottle of wine all for 5 Euros. What a deal and I feel pretty good writing this, LOL. 

I really like the Church St. Emmeram. It was my favorite so far. The picture to the right was of Mary breastfeeding Jesus. It just reminded me that he was fully human and still divine. It also reminds me of the connection the Virgin Mary had with Jesus.

This picture to the right shows statues of the Garden of Gethsemane. It depicts Jesus asking the Father to take this 4th and final cup away. It also shows the other 3 Apostles, completely asleep, not being able to stay awake. 

The picture below reminded me of Jane Ulrich, not Gerry Ulrich, from back in Sidney. LOL. I sent this picture to the two of them and it made the trip even more special. You see Gerry and Jane are friends of ours, and I coached their son, Matt, in soccer. He thought I was a good coach even though his parents came from Germany. At least, he was nice enough to say that. Gerry replied to our text saying "You are in an awesome part of the country. My Mother grew up near the Donau (Danube, you see he speaks German). She spent a lot of time swimming there. She's from a small village called Moos. I spent a lot of time in that area and love it. I have a lot of relatives in that area from Donau to Munich to Starnberg to Ingolstadt. Actually, I am planning to go back to Germany next summer for another family reunion." I am so glad we texted the Ulrichs about our blog. The Ulrich's are great people and the people we ran into along the way yesterday were probably related to them. 

Once last thing, when you have to hook a fire hose to a building to fill up with beer, you might have a beer issue. It's much more efficient though than hauling kegs, something Yellow Springs Brewery might take into consideration with their Strategic Plan. See I am thinking strategically for you when I am in Germany drinking beer. Aileron would be proud! 😀👍