Bike trip: Metz to Konstanz

We're catching up mentally to the point where we can write about the bike trip, now ten days in the past. On June 11, we met up in a hotel in Cologne (LATE at night for B!). On June 12, we went off to the Radstation at the Hauptbahnhof and picked up two bicycles for a week. These were pretty decent trekking bicycles - 24 gears, front suspension, etc. 52EUR for a week - not too bad! We put my large backpack (with the books I need for syllabus prep for the fall inside) in storage, paid for a week, and headed off to Metz in France. We'd deliberately chosen the slow, local trains, partly to save a few euros and partly because it's very easy to load the bicycles on and off those sorts of trains.

In Metz, we were very nervous about whether we would actually manage to connect with our friends J&J, who had been visiting friends in Paris for a few days before joining us for the weekend. Last year, my sister's train from Strasbourg was canceled, the train my friend and I took from Tuebingen was canceled, he left his brand-new weekend pack on the train, we missed connecting with our other friend who came from Heidelberg and became unwell in the course of the day, and in the end it was only by chance that the whole group connected first in Cologne and then in Holland - let's just say that our experience with meeting friends for a bike trip was not great.

However, this time, all was well. We ran into J&J first thing in the station and headed off for lunch. Naturally, by this time it was about 14:30, so there was no fresh, hot food to be had. It is always difficult when first arriving back in France/Italy to remember that outside of very touristy restaurants, you can only eat lunch and dinner at socially acceptable times, and 14:30 is too late most places. So baguette it was.

The Esterhazer Mosel Radweg book had warned us that the first section out of Metz would not be pretty. Thankfully, the book also mentioned the stupendous Chagall windows in the cathedral. But it was both frightening and funny to see that the first road the book directed us to was something that felt much like a highway rather than a calm country road. We all expected that the police would show up any minute to ask us what we thought we were doing. This feeling was only intensified once we got off that road only to find ourselves in the middle of the port (is that the right word when it's on a river? seems unlikely) of Metz next to the trucks. We rode at a leisurely pace toward Thionville. On the way, we had the sort of encounter that belongs in books: with an elderly Frenchman who wanted to tell us that he was all of 80 years old, and he remembered the war - of course, he thought we were German, as did everyone else.

Our way from Thionville was dominated by the four huge cooling towers for the local nuclear reactor. At first, they seemed very distant, but we soon realized that they were quite close, just so huge that the whole landscape had to shift to accommodate their size. We tried for a bed in Cattenom (thankfully, one of the J's was comfortable asking in French) but with no luck, so we crossed the river to Koenigsmacker where the book claimed that the Hotel Lorraine was a rather expensive retreat.

According to the prices posted on the window, however, the hotel was right in our price range. No one was around. There was a sign on the restaurant saying that it was closed on Fridays, but the hotel did not have an equivalent notice. After about half an hour of standing around, trying doors, and ringing doorbells, a kind but rather slow elderly woman appeared and rooms were secured. It was now around 20, and we knew that did we not sit down to dinner shortly, there would be no dinner. We headed back across the river to an outdoor place where all our dreams came true - at any rate, the dreams that involved a piece of roasted meat the size of a head topped with Roquefort cream sauce. (Just B, but still.)

When we returned to the hotel, we could not help noticing that the entire village had turned out for a cover band consisting of four-five old hippies playing American and English classic rock covers. At maximum volume. For hours. And hours.

Have you ever had the experience of walking in somewhere and have LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE PERSON turn to stare at you, despite being clad in ordinary clothing, fully dressed, and in no way unusual otherwise? This was our experience in Koenigsmacker. It was quite terrifying. We had to sit down in the bar for an hour just to kill some time, assuming that at 23 the concert would have to wind down, but no.... not until 2am did those old hippies stop rocking!

More to follow.