On our bike journey towards Bad Breisig from Konigswinter we got lost. We drove enthusiastically down a long long windy fast RheinStrasse expecting it to bring us back down the hill to the Rhine, only this Rheinstrasse led to a big highway which we could not cross.

So what do intrepid travellers do?

We followed an unpaved bike track and at the next T junction turned right towards the Rhine. Oh no! we were back at the big wide road, which was by now an enormous road (in the mind you see)

So we rode back up the bike track and did not turn left to follow back our original path, we continued on and turned right and the next road which lead us to Unkel (maybe it was upper Unkel) – an absolutely drop dead gorgeous little village and then the rain came. We hid under the verandah of a “Closed” Bar” and watched the rain, and watched the rain, and watched the rain.

Eventually we decided the rain was calmer and we should press on – so we rode down the hill and met that damned road again – but this time at a bridge. and that bridge was under construction, well, the surfaces will still being completed and there was a huge machine on the centre section and a couple guys deciding whether or not to start working again. Best Beloved went to reconnoiter – and made the discovery with the use of much voice and waving of arms that yes the Rhine was over this bridge, which was so new and still covered with very large hunks of loose metal. And also yes we could take our bikes over.

So there we were walking our bikes through a construction site, past the barriers, across the very loose metal and onto a road which would lead us down into Unkel proper for lunch and then to the Rhine.

The two men – one about our age and the other a bit younger watched us in disbelief. The older man shook his head at me as I went by, and I think he only just resisted wiggling his finger round and round to suggest that we were nuts for only as long as it took us to get our city bikes, our heavily laden city bikes by him. I didn’t look back to see as I was trying to keep the bike upright in the loose metal and stop myself from sliding down the hill.

We did have Goulash soup for lunch in the village and then rode a little further down the hill and there was the Rhine, the beautiful Rhine.

Oh have you picked up yet that in this part of the world we are struggling with the language. Many do not speak any English at all it seems, and our rudimentary Dutch and Danish helps, but English is not so useful.

We left Haarlem, in the Netherlands on Friday 5th August, by train – a cheat we know but we had underestimated just how tired we would be and still had a few things to sort out on that day. We had a great breakfast with friends at the Ambassador Hotel in the centre of Haarlem and said our good byes and rode to the Haarlem station to begin our next journey. We both had very mixed feelings, excited to be heading on this bike journey, happy to be heading for New Zealand at the end of it and sad to be leaving this wonderful country and all the great people we have come to know and love and so so sad to leave the music.

We cycled from Utrecht train station to our hotel – in the museum district, around a 6.5 k ride. We meandered in the general area of the hotel later and took many pictures of the sculptures. The Netherlands always have amazing and interesting sculptures in parks and in and around the towns. The hotel itself was charming and an elegant start to this journey from a solid working life to retirement on a small piece of land in Miranda, New Zealand.

From Utrecht we cycled to Zeist Drieburg, a station outside Utrecht, and there took the train to Zevenaar – and it rained and it blew and was very nasty – which is why we had opted for the train journey. We didn’t want to start this holiday with pneumonia. So our bike riding on day two was about 18k’s in total. We did have to change trains in Arnhem and that was an event in itself. We were told there is no lift to leave the platform and believe it or not we took our bikes (our very heavily laden bikes) down a very long escalator. It was scary. I could not believe there wasn’t a lift and sure enough at the bottom we discovered a lift that took us to the platform to connect with the train to Zevenaar and there had been one on the platform we arrived on.

From Zevenaar in the Netherlands we cycled to Xanten in Germany – it was 51k journey and the wind blew very hard in our faces as often as it was possible of course. We were quite wrecked when we reached Xanten but delighted to be there and delighted by the hotel setting in the Markt. The weather was not good so we stayed two nights and thoroughly explored Xanten and the archaeological park.

Silly us – We expected interest when we crossed border into Germany, and I have to report there was no interest whatsoever in these two on their heavily laden city bikes cycling across the border. We do have photos to prove that we did so.

So of the 194 k’s suggested as a route by Google Maps we did manage to cycle 76k’s of them and we are now in Germany with many k’s to cycle yet.

PLEASE NOTE that my k’s may not be correct – but that Best Beloved is asleep, and I need his memory to compute the distance we travelled. So if you should read this post twice – don’t be alarmed if what you recall is not what you see a second time around.

Well now that we are on the way and have a 51k bike ride under our feet we know we can do this funky thing.

Yesterday we rode from Zevenaar in the Netherlands to Xanten in Germany and the total ride was 51.12 or something very close to that. It was just over 51 k’s and we were too tired to remember the little extra there was. So for all the sceptics out there – we two will do this. OKAY!!!!

The ride included a long bridge over the Rhine – where we thought that just maybe we would be thrown from our side across the motor traffic section to the bike lane on the other side and clean off into the water as the wind blew soooo strongly. We had to walk the mid section and we rode off down the other side and the wind was blowing so hard towards us there that we didn’t even pick up any great speed which as it happens is fortunate because we had to stop to check the route very soon after we got off the bridge – had we been riding really fast we may not have been able to stop in time.

We stopped for several hours in Grieth, where we had lunch looking over the Rhine and marvelling at the huge barges, ships, a little yacht and a speed boat etc that were travelling by. We also watched a ferry boat moving continuously from one side to the other through rough and fast moving water and around the other traffic, spinning it seems in sections where the wake of a boat or two and the run of the water caused dramatic variation in the trip across the river.

I have spoken often of the wind in the Netherlands – how whenever the Johnstons are out and about the wind shifts its direction so that it hampers our ride as much as possible. It is much the same here in Germany so far.

The wind was very strong and gusty yesterday – either directly in our faces or very hard across from the right which meant if it tossed us it would toss us into the traffic.

I think I mentioned that we were tired. We did manage a bit of a walk about and found an Italian restaurant were we ate and enjoyed a little chianti and then we slept. It seems we were very tired.

We were in bed before 9pm and woke around 5.45am – Yep we were tired.

Its all that wind that makes one tired!

We are staying here 2 nights so we can explore this old Roman town. We are also staying here 2 nights so we can do our washing. So guess what – Monday the laundromat is closed.

Just as it would be in the Netherlands!!!!!!!

And we are in Germany at least 44k’s from the border and 51k from Zevenaar in the Netherlands.

These 2 oldies (did I really say that?); we are preparing for a bike ride of some 850 or 900 k’s depending on where you check. Sadly we are not training as much as we should, but we are getting together the bits and pieces that might just make the trip manageable and we are now the proud owners of Lycra.

We both have nicely padded bike shorts so that our tender parts remain intact after spending many hours on bike seats. I want you to know though,  just in case you were worried about it. We will be wearing lycra covering things. We do not intend to inflict the sight of us  in Lycra on the eyes of the world. It might cause mass hysteria or some such. I don’t want to explore what harm we may cause.

We also have mirrors on our bikes, fingerless leather backed bike riding gloves (to manage the grip as your hands become sweaty), decent panniers, and bike helmets. We look almost “cool”

or should that be “hot hot hot”  because we will be wearing lycra and feeling very very hot under the August sun.

So if you see a news item somewhere in the month of August of two people in Lycra visiting many bars and cafes on the route from Haarlem in the Netherlands through a bit of Germany and some sections of France, all relatively close to the Rhine it just could be us. Now it will be us if the persons described are as follows – two older people, one with grey hair and the other bald with whiskers speaking with an unusual accent for these parts, so maybe they could be from New Zealand – Yes I think that would be us. If they are described as last seen entering a bar or cafe, sweating profusely and gasping for cool clear liquid, Yep that would definitely be us.

Take note of that news item cause if we do not arrive at our destination in Untersiggenthal in Switzerland you may be the only person who knows exactly where we have been and then the search for two oldies in Lycra can begin.

In short – no we are not

A beer was needed to cope with the ride through cobbled streets in Bloemendahl

We are not in good shape for our ride – but we are working on it.

And we will have time to do it, the trip I mean, after all Best Beloved will have retired – (forced to retire, unheard of in New Zealand), so we have nowhere to be at any specific time in the month of August or indeed September, other than having promised grandson we will be home in New Zealand mid to end of September.

There are 31 days in August and we plan to leave here on Friday the 5th. Why Friday the 5th? Well it is rubbish day, so everything not on its way to New Zealand already, and not suitable for recycling at de Schalm, will be in the rubbish bag and out for Friday morning early and then we will leave. We will not ride far on that day as I think we will be quite tired – so somewhere handy in the Netherlands that we have not yet visited – and then we might have a rest day Saturday.

We do plan on an average of 50k’s a day with a stop every 3 or 4 days so we can see actually see interesting places on the way. Now of course we can change tack at any time.

Why do I say that? Well I do have asthma and wind gets me badly – so if it is too windy we don’t want to be too far from a rest place or a train option. That is part of our planning to follow a picturesque route, but never so far from a rest or train option that we have problems if my breathing goes to the pot. My asthma is not extreme, just a bit annoying at times.

We haven’t fully worked out the route, so worse case scenario is that we will need to ride 950k’s and if we did that without rest days then we would need to average 36.53846 k’s a day. If we can ride 50k’s a day then the riding will take 19 days and that means we have 7 days up our sleeves as rest days which could mean we have 2.7142 days of riding before we have a rest day. Now that isn’t so bad – 3 days riding and a rest day. We can do that.

We also have a really great backup plan!

Son lives in Switzerland – so if we are too far from the train and too far from a bed – we will simply phone him as long as our mobiles are charged and say “come and save your parents”. And he might just do that for us.

Ready to go to the Beach at Parnassia

Now our training program is already to pot – We don’t ride our bikes in the wet, cold and drizzly weather as we don’t wish to risk a fall and bones breaking right now.

Our training program is defined in this book Cycle for Life Bike Basics + Body Basics + Challenge yourself, by Nicole Cooke – Olympic Gold Medallist Beijing 2008.

And NO it is not about cycling in the Olympics – it is about being the best and the fittest cyclist you can be from food, clothing, trip planning and then there is that word “FITNESS” planning.

Sadly the 3 x 8 week training programs we hoped to complete are now not possible. Why is that? We have only 22.4285 weeks left so cannot complete 24 weeks of the recommended training programs. So it is good there are trains, sons, rest days, and time up our sleeve.

And it will be an adventure however we get to Switzerland in August 2011.

Memorial to all Murdered Jews of Europe, also known as the Holocaust Memorial by architect Peter Eisenman with engineer Buro Happold.

This memorial is in Berlin and is dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. There is a great deal of controversy regarding the existence of the Memorial. We are not putting forward a point of view – we are simply relaying how we responded to it.

The 19,000 square-metre Memorial, which opened on May 12, 2005, consists of 2711 stones placed on sloping, uneven ground in an undulating wave-like pattern, giving visitors a feeling of insecurity as though the stones are unstable. Each of the pillars measures 95 x 237.5 centimeters with heights above ground varying from zero to over ones head.

Visitors can enter from all sides, day or night, and wander through the maze as though visiting a graveyard of nameless tombstones. There are no set paths or sign posts to guide viewers and it was designed to deliberately disorient visitors by having all the stones tilted slightly and paths that are not level.

When we walked out between the buildings and saw the memorial – our breath was taken away. It is a very powerful place. We do not know the area or the buildings around the site. We do know that this memorial covers a city block and we observed for a long time before we entered.

I am speaking only for myself.

I walked in from the end where the pillars were quickly over my head. It created some confusion for me – I had no idea where JJ was, nor where I was in relationship to where we had entered, nor how to find him again. The ground was undulating, not so you would fall, just enough to add to the confusion. It was a very sunny day and occasionally others walked across a path in my view, and were as quickly gone again. One could not hear what was outside or around the memorial – there is an other world soundlessness here. Odd times there was the murmur of a conversation somewhere.

Some people walked on the sunny paths across the memorial and others walked the shadows as I did.

One path looked like another and I felt alone, and somewhat disconnected. When I was in the shadows I had to make a decision to walk out into the sunlit path before quickly being hidden once more. It was at once eerie, frightening and powerful.

I know that this memorial has been called a sea of tombs and it is, but it is also for me much much more. This is a representation of what it must have felt like to be an unrequired group of people during the Nazi regime in Europe.

Conversations had to be muted
All activity out and about had to be discreet
All walking in daylight had to be managed
All shadows had to be feared

OR

Shadows safe
NO
daylight walking
NO
activity
OR
conversations

It also has great photographic opportunity with the scale, the strength of the pillars, light and dark, sun rays and shadows and the people.

Always the people.

experienced April 2009

This has been a hard subject to consider and then write about. But I must before the memories and the strength of my emotions and feelings are reduced.

We decided to hook up with a tour guide, not being German speakers and also not being fully cognisant of the story of Dachau. We were instructed to be at the railway station at whatever time – it doesn’t really matter now.

The train was crowded, our group was spread out over the carriage and how the American guide could possibly keep track of us all I do not know. Maybe others hooked up to the group for the free ride. I know that is a silly thought. One would not ever choose to be on a free train ride to Dachau.

We continued our journey by bus through leafy suburban streets.

Then there was the walk up the long drive from the bus stop and parking area to the gates where we had our first viewing of a concentration camp through the iron gates with these words above – “Arbeit macht Frie”

in English “Work will make you free”.

From there we marched onto the parade grounds. We were moved from the parade grounds, through replica barracks, and on around the grounds …. Does this sound like your normal touristy trip – I think not, although information was imparted at every pause, the group was very quiet, very few questions were asked. The head is reeling, the mind is going crazy here, the emotions are held down, firmly shut in.

We were led like …………………. to a long brick building which was surrounded by a lovely garden, birds singing, the sun was shining, and then into the building at one end with the guide quietly talking all the while in a low resonance that kept ones attention. Here, it was explained, one was to undress and enter the shower room through the narrow door. And we just walked in! I was close to the front of the 60 + group – through one narrow door into a room with multiple shower heads on the ceiling and 2 traps in the right hand wall for the gas to be vented into the room – and I just kept walking.

I could not stop and listen.

I already know, or sensed, just what happened here and I do not know if it was the skill of the guide, or the many stories I have heard and read through my life, or if there was a presence here. It was very strong and I couldn’t stand still listening to the screaming and walked out through the only narrow door in the wall opposite to the entry narrow door – directly into the room with the ovens. You know those ones – where they burn the bodies – I continued on into the next room, which was probably an office – as they keep meticulous records

and outside to a place where I could breathe steadily once more.

Out into the sun, into a leafy part of the garden, onto a park bench where I could recover and contemplate, and when I looked up and out, I was still by this building where the others were listening to the guide.

Best Beloved joined me fairly quickly I think. We sat together and observed. There was just nothing to be said.

Outside the building I had just left there was a large group of early teens – and two young girls posed outside the open double doors to the room with the ovens. [I had walked by those doors, I think there was a ramp from the doors to the ground, I didn't see them as I abandoned the group]. A young boy took their photograph outside that room with the ovens in the background!

I assume they were waiting for our group to complete our walk through. But there was something so wrong with what I was watching, and whoever was in charge of this group was totally unaware of what was happening. I wanted to bang their heads together, they were young and innocent, and must have been prepared at their school for this visit, yet they had no understanding whatsoever of what had occurred here. They seemed to simply be on an escape from school.

There is much more to tell, I may not be able to tell it all.

The tour continued – back past the parade ground and into other special cells (for special people), and on into a museum. I didn’t go into the museum with them. I was so chilled. I sat in the parade grounds thinking, watching, looking and aching. Another school group came from a lecture hall I think, they sat, walked around and chattered amongst themselves. Where they were, was under a large sculpture of emaciated people trying to escape across the barbed wire, electrified fence – and dying. These youngsters did not look at it.

I am almost afraid to say it. Did they not look because they couldn’t deal with the idea and the knowledge of what happened here; or, did they not look because they are enured against all of this – it is so remote to them that it is irrelevant, just a history lesson.

What happened here was so evil.

It was done by men and women against men and women.

It must not happen again

We left by train for Munich on the Monday morning after the birthday garden party. Fortunately M had looked up the trip for us on the internet because we had missed the train we had intended to catch and were very surprised at all the changes that we had to make. That is, we had tickets to Zurich to Munich – and it turns out we had to change trains 5 times to get there. We had absolutely no idea. We could still have been sitting on a train somewhere in Switzerland in a yard or something and may never have been seen again.

Our tickets actually said in small print Zurich, Stuttgart, Munich – the first Swiss train conductor took one look and pretended to clip the ticket or so it seemed – because we were  not on the Zurich to Stuttgart train and I guess throwing 2 oldies off the train would not have made his day. We were on the train that we had originally planned to be on – which did not go anywhere near Stuttgart. I will look up the route and add the details of it. That is where an Oldies OE goes awry – one cannot remember all the minute details.

Previously the Amsterdam ticket office had printed out the stops for us to get where we were going – the “lazy” one didn’t do that for us and we could have been sorely embarrassed and lost. And just maybe – because the Dutch do not admit to mistakes – she didn’t print the stops out because she had in fact booked us on the wrong train. Fortunately we hadn’t reserved seats as well.

It was a very interesting trip but bits were quite harrowing. We went to Munich, Rottenburg op de Tauber (a medieval town in all respects except their toilets had reached late 19th century standards and were pretty yuck) and Berlin. We visited the Dachau concentration camp which was the really harrowing one for me. We went there on a tour which did mean we received all sorts of information – but I am a really visual person – and the tour guide led us like lambs into the room where people got undressed to go into the showers – through a narrow door into the shower room and I was out of there so fast. I couldn’t go back because of the crowd so had to go forward through the shower room directly into the crematorium – and then out through the next room (I have no idea of the purpose of that room maybe record keeping).

We also visited the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie as well as the newish Jewish memorial which is a stunning memorial again with a very harrowing journey underground through the stories of the holocaust.

We did drive by Hitler’s bunker area – now a very unassuming car park and walked down the road under the newer Linden trees as Hitler had had the original ancient Linden trees chopped down so he could see his troops march by better – or maybe so they could see him better.

We saw many other wonderful buildings, the Brandenburg gate and more, enjoyed a meal at the original Munich Hofbrauhaus as well as having a meal of pork red cabbage and potatoe in a Munich beer garden. The beer garden was lovely and great fun until an obnoxious American decided to tell us his life story, and how very polite we are – we didn’t tell him to get lost – we just left once we had eaten when he was annoying someone else.

A Birthday in Untersiggenthal or was it a visit to Bad Säckingen?

We have just been to Switzerland for A’s (M’s partner) birthday, followed by a meandering through Germany.

The party was held in their garden, the weather was great and the garden looked absolutely lovely all set up for the day. Lots of tables, umbrellas, a couple of barbeques, food, flowers, live music and great people.

And one of the birthday presents was not an external hard drive as suggested in this picture.

M had set up a volley ball net and the youngsters played volley ball – and one older one did as well. I didn’t see Best Beloved playing volley ball but it seems that he did.

There was a lot of preparation – including creating salads for about 60 people, and there was so much pork to BBQ. All New Zealanders out there can relate well to that. The BBQs were all being used well into the night.

It turns out everyone had been asked to wear a hat – and A and I just had to have new hats – and that was a great experience in itself. The day before the Garden Party we all went from Switzerland to Germany, just across the Rhine, to buy hats at a wonderful hat shop in Bad Säckingen.

New Zealand needs such a wonderful hat shop. There was a hat for everyone, and for every purpose, (hunting, shooting, fishing, garden parties, weddings, summer, winter, fashion, small, large, many colours, many fabrics and many different fibres, terribly English and much much more) and we tried on so many. A and I had wonderful new hats to wear at this birthday garden party – and we were so busy we didn’t take any photos to show the garden, or our hats.

The photo of the boy playing with the water spout on the fountain was taken because he reminded us so much of Tomas – and behind it happened to be the hat shop, still no name but if you find the fountain and you will also find the Hat Shop. It is on the road up from the very old wooden bridge, Holzbrücke, which is the link between Stein in Switzerland, and Bad Säckingen in Germany. We have walked across this bridge many times. I found the video of the bridge on Youtube. It is of a ride through Holzbrücke, which happens to be the longest covered wooden bridge in Europe at 203,7m. It is actually the ride from Germany back to Switzerland.

We did also collect cakes and other bits and pieces for the party while there – so you can see that it wasn’t just a fun hat excursion.

Bad Säckingen seen from the Swiss town of Stein – over the Rhine to Germany. It is a rural town according to Wikipedia – located in the very south of Germany next to the Swiss border and lies on the southern edge of the Black Forest area. It doesn’t seem very rural to us from New Zealand, and it is so beautiful. It has wonderful architecture, history, stories, great urban sculpture, perfect gardens, great cake shops, bars, restaurants, and bargains and every time we have been there – beautiful weather.