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?