Wine and Rhine

The journey today can be divided into 3 sections.

The first 40 km we ride along canals. First along the Canal de Colmar and then along the Rhône-Rhine Canal. It's a beautiful route for cycling and letting your thoughts wander. The other cyclists are noticeable, all of them happily and clearly saying "Bonjour". That alone somehow puts you in a good mood. Suddenly we spot something moving in the canal and get very excited about finally seeing a beaver in nature! We stop and indeed, the adult beaver is followed by 3 young ones. Completely enchanted, we take photos until another animal comes out of the water and walks across the bike path. At that moment, we realize that it's actually a family of muskrats and not beavers! Nonetheless, we decide to find them cute and continue riding.

We leave Mr. Macron behind and come back to Mrs. Merkel. Thank you for the wonderful time in Alsace - the people were very nice and the food was excellent!

What makes the Swabian heart beat faster? Not much and it runs every quarter of an hour?

The second part of the day.... crossing the Rhine by ferry from France to Germany 🇩🇪

Third part: So, we're back in Germany - and as much as we praise the "others" and enjoyed our time in Switzerland and France, we're happy to be back here. Of course, everything is the same as before: nobody greets and the bike paths are only occasionally signposted, but it doesn't matter.

Since the next heatwave was announced, we decided yesterday to leave the Rhine plain today and ride through the Black Forest back home. At the foot of the Kaiserstuhl, the routes alternate between vineyards and forests. We have our lunch break in Lahr, the city where many of the crazy advertising technicians in our circle of friends did their training. It's a nice city with a beautiful city center.

We spend our night in Gengenbach and enjoy a wonderfully warm summer evening with good wine in the middle of the vineyard. today to leave the Rhine plain and ride through the Black Forest back home. At the foot of the Kaiserstuhl, the routes alternate between vineyards and forests. We have our lunch break in Lahr, the city where many of the crazy advertising technicians in our circle of friends did their training. It's a nice city with a beautiful city center.

We spend our night in Gengenbach and enjoy a wonderfully warm summer evening with good wine.

Discoveries on the wayside

On our tour so far, we keep coming across references to Goethe. Yes, the German poet and thinker. Now we've looked into the matter. Surprisingly, we find that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe traveled to some of our stops about 250 years ago. The start of our route from Göschenen to Andermatt via the Teufelsbrücke in the Schöllenen Gorge. The Gotthard region had fascinated him. In Andermatt, Goethe was a welcome guest, and then he traveled down the Rhine Valley via the Oberalp Pass, including stops in Chur, Konstanz, and Schaffhausen. The Alsace, specifically Strasbourg and Sessenheim, were also visited by the poet. For his Faust, he was inspired by the dark granite rocks of the Gotthard Massif. The inspiration for the character actually lived in the southern Black Forest: Johann Georg Faust, the miracle healer, fortune teller, astrologer, and alchemist brought to Staufen, who was supposed to create gold for the indebted Burgherren in 1569, but died in an explosion during an experiment.

Now we have the great fortune that we didn't have to pay the Lindau messenger like Goethe did, so that we could pass the paths undisturbed. That's all about Goethe.