Bike Adventures in das schöne Deutschland

Our spirits soared as we pedaled out of my Bucharest classroom on that perfect Friday afternoon (Good Friday is not a holiday here in Romania; the Easter Sunday Resurrection is considered so vastly more important, that a holiday on Friday is not necessary), dodging the afternoon rush-hour traffic on the ring road, sometimes pedaling easily, sometimes wobbling under the unaccustomed weight of the panniers, but quickly and surely accustoming our city legs into their new roles. We thrilled at the preposterous prospect of wheeling our bikes right into the airport, and checking the saddlebags and bikes as our luggage. Well, that’s exactly what we did, except for a comedy of errors that involved Lufthansa personnel bagging and taping the bikes, and then us unbagging them again to remove the front wheels so they would fit into the oversize luggage security X-ray machine and then reassembling them, rebagging them, and re-taping them. My front wheel caused endless beeping by the terrorist sensor—there must have been some miscellaneous horrid stuff I picked up on the tire outside one of the environmentally suspicious industrial sites we had just ridden past. But with only minutes to spare, we were air-borne. We found first-hand that it’s no longer as easy to travel with a bike as it used to be. New rules by all the airlines as of this past November even slap a fare onto each bike now. But let’s think positive—a bit of money down the corporate drain is not going to spoil this adventure!

We collected them easily at the Frankfurt airport, made the proper adjustments (air into the tires, realigned the handlebars with the handy-dandy bike tool, etc.) and headed for the Flughafen Bahnhof for the train to Schifferstadt, where old friend Judy (Janzen) and Eugen Berkel waited for us. A further steep learning curve involved unraveling some the mysteries of the fabulous German trains system, mastering the negotiation of long escalators with loaded bicycles, and realizing that German train doors do not open by themselves as you wait, bike at the ready, to transfer out of your rail car to the train at the next platform. No indeed. There’s a button you need to push yourself. He/she who hesitates is lost, or at least, is taken to the next station where all hope of meeting your finely coordinated rail connection is now gone. Our new opportunity to explore Mainz, for that is where we by default now found ourselves, introduced us to the wonderful bicycle-friendly German system of bike trails that go right through every city and village, over every hill and dale, and along every river, vineyard and forest glade. Our visit to Judy and Eugen had to be postponed for a day, but that schedule adjustment enabled us to hear a couple of their sons in musical action. First, there was an impromptu tuba performance at home by Karl and in the evening, we heard Mattias play the horn in the orchestra at an Easter concert in Baden Baden. How wonderful to catch up on old friendships!


Easter Sunday saw us leaving the train at Saarbrücken to begin our fabulous 7-day biking trek that took us down the Saar River valley, then the Mosel River valley, a bit of the Rhine River and lastly, another bit of the Main River. In total we pedaled about 300 mostly pristine kilometers through pastures, forests, postcard-perfect villages, vineyards and more vineyards, over countless bridges, past river castles, and through proudly preserved medieval towns. A Zimmerfrei (pension) or inn was always exactly where and when we needed it, as was the frequent Biergarten and Weinstube. The huge complimentary or inclusive breakfast always gleaned enough sandwiches for picnics in perfect places along the riverbank several times a day. This thriftiness, of course, freed us to unleash a bit of extravagance upon the evening meal, and those Germans do know how to cook!

Our route: We followed the Saar River beginning at Saarbrücken, up to where it empties into the Mosel at Konz, then down the Mosel River, through the Roman city of Trier, through Cochem, and up to Koblenz where the Mosel empties into the Rhine. Instantly tiring of the big city, we pedaled north along the Rhine, up to Neuwied, then realized we needed to get within striking distance of Frankfurt’s airport, so we trained to Würzburg, and spent one last day following the Main River until we found our last perfect village, Mühlbach, across from Karlstadt.

What was the best part? Well, it could have been the pretty, pretty scenery, or maybe watching the springtime trees get greener every day. Was it the pink, white or yellow blossoms or the spring flowers everywhere or saying hello to the river swans at every turn? Maybe it was the German Gemütlichkeit in a Weinstube with new friends, improving our German in leaps and bounds because few people away from the cities speak English. (Isn’t it funny, how we as adults and teachers, who with professional discretion dispense praise and affirmation every day, can still bristle with juvenile pride when an astonished German adult wants to know where we learned to speak German so well? And it was more than once that we were able to explain the whole Menno Simons thing.) Maybe it was the really little things, like the pact between Millie and me that when one of us went ‘ding ding ding’ three times on the bike bell for no reason at all, the other’s bell would answer. Or was it the great feeling of independence and freedom from possessions, when it takes only about 45 seconds to pack in the morning, because that’s all you brought along. Poetically speaking, even Schubert the composer asserted himself daily. Every little brook we encountered would elicit the tune “In einem Bächlein helle”; and incidentally, the Ziffern for a fragment of that tune, need to be sung just to remember the combination of our bike lock! And it’s virtually impossible to wander through this idyllic perfection and not sing his “Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust, das Wandern!” To say nothing of the wonderful home-grown white wines produced in every village, or the church bells tolling up and down the valleys, or the smell of the spring blossoms, or the lusty singing of the birds all along the way!

This was no great trek of discovery. Rather, it was a sentimental journey down a path that we knew existed here. It was a journey of affirmation—that we still had the wherewithal to muscle the 300+ kilometers of fresh air and peace, that this gentle world of tradition could coexist with the other known world of German engineering and efficiency, and perhaps most importantly, that when traveling, the journey is still much more important than the destination (which was, by design, quite lacking in this holiday).

Somewhere along the Mosel River


Ah, relax a bit longer!






Elz Castle




Spring finery









Afternoon "Weinprobe": from left, 'Lieb', 'Trocken', 'Halbtrocken', and 'Lieb'













Laundry day!

What?! No escalator??



Mistletoe in tree




Roman Gate, Trier




















Ed attempting to read Latin on Roman era signpost




Karlstadt: Last stop before Frankfurt airport