South African Couple Riding in Germany

On the platform waiting for the first of the eight trains that would take me from Berlin to Darmstadt was a young couple with bicycles. We boarded the train in the car with the big bicycle painted on the side, hooked our bikes in the rack and asked where were going to ride and had been riding.

Craig and Sarah were from South Africa. Sarah was in Annecy, France, the week before for what she said was the biggest animation conference in the world. Then from Annecy they came to Berlin for a meeting. Now they were taking a train to Wittenberg then riding to Heidelberg. Craig was just following Sarah, riding and sightseeing while she worked.

Sarah works compiling video shows. She and a team of 100 mostly animators in Capetown are working on a Christmas special for Great Britain, the third year they created a half-hour program for the Brits for Christmas. She said, "The weather is always bad so they watch a lot of Telly." Craig said, "We barbecue. Christmas is the beginning of summer for us."

Craig and Sarah were riding mountain bikes on the road so they would be going even slower than I had been. Craig's bike was had three big bags, one on each side and one on top of the rear rack. He was talking about getting a front rack to spread out the weight. They will be riding for a week before flying back to South Africa.

We all agreed Berlin was a lovely city and we wanted to comeback. When I told them where I had visited--particularly the Soviet War Memorial and the Holocaust Memorial--we started talking about the history of Berlin and of Europe.

Since they are in their 30s, they were born under Apartheid, but it ended around the time they went to school.  Both of their fathers served in the military and hated it. I had read news reports about South Africa returning to conscription, which ended with the end of Apartheid in 1994. Craig knew very well about that news and was glad he is too old for the draft.

We went from the draft to politics. Craig thought it was very strange that we elected a draft dodger who calls himself a patriot. "If there's a draft, you go," he said. Up to this point he had been the bearded picture of fit, unflappable "chill" guy, but the draft made him animated. "My Dad thinks of his service as a total waste of time. Just smoking, drinking and boredom. But he went." Sarah said, "Trump admires dictators. That is strange to hear from a U.S. President."

Then we went back to talking about bikes and riding and wondered aloud if there is any place better to tour on a bike than in Germany.

Germany Gave Me Back Bike Mojo

For the first two weeks of the trip, riding with bags hanging off both sides of the rear rack on my bicycle made me feel I was riding a Mack truck rather than a bike.

Travel is about discovery and I discovered I don't like riding a 60-pound bike.  In the process of discovering what I don't like gave me clarity about what I do like about riding.

The toughest day on the trip was riding from Bratislava, Slovakia, to the border of the Czech Republic. I started at 3 p.m. thinking I could easily ride 60 miles to Brno in the Czech Republic. Sundown was 9:30 p.m. The weather was clear. The wind, sadly, was 15-20 mph in my face, but I only had to average 10 mph to make by dark.

Four hours later, I had covered 34 miles. I stopped a mile up the road, got dinner and started riding the next day.

Yesterday, I rode to Wiesbaden from where I am staying in Darmstadt, Germany. When I got back from the 65-mile ride, I rode up to Frankenstein's Castle. The steep 1.5 mile climb made me happy. Without the bags, it was tough, but I was not crawling. And on the way down, I was flying through three switchbacks and a dozen sweeping turns.

Today I spent the day on a trip to a museum in a car, but when I got back, I went up and down both roads to Frankenstein, then did the steep road again.  For the rest of the trip, I will be riding without the bags.  I like that much better.

A Delightfully Odd Guy from Alabama Flying to Serbia

On the plane from Paris to Belgrade, I sat next to an American couple from Alabama. Glenn Snyder introduced himself when he heard me speak English to the Flight Attendant.  Glenn is three years older than I am. He and his wife were on the way to visit friends from home who had been living in Belgrade for almost two years.  They went just to see the country and decided to stay. Glenn had never been to Europe and decided to visit his old friend.

A guy from Alabama with friends outside the country or who even travels outside the country is unusual. Alabama is third lowest in the nation of citizens with passports--just 22% of Alabamans have a passport.  Only Mississippi and West Virginia are lower.  Also, Glenn never served in the military. He said he had a high draft number and just never wanted to be in the military. Most of his family and the majority of the boys he grew up with served in the military.  He knew many people who had been to Viet Nam, Thailand, West Germany, or South Korea with the military, but never had passports, because soldiers on orders or on leave don't need them.

Then we talked about C.S. Lewis.  He had read Narnia and Mere Christianity. We talked about faith and books. He did not know about most of Lewis' other books. I told him about Screwtape. He thought portraying demons as bureaucrats in Hell would be fun to read.

And if Glenn wasn't already odd enough, he still cannot understand how people in the Baptist Church he grew up in could vote for Trump.  "They told us sex, drugs, rock and roll, smoking, dancing, were all of the devil....They vote for a guy who brags about doing everything they said was bad, and more those old Baptists didn't even think of!"

Wild Dogs and Angry Truckers, My Options in Macedonia

Now that I am done riding in Eastern Europe, I can say the scariest ride so far this trip was on a state highway that had no parallel superhighway. It was a twisty twelve-mile climb from Skopje, Macedonia, to the pass that marks the border with Kosovo. On the way up the mountain, two Semis got so close I was off the road and onto the foot-wide sand strip that constitutes a shoulder in Europe.  The second time the air from the truck pushed me far enough off the road that I had to stop.  I got right back on the road. Adrenaline. I really wanted to get to Kosovo.

When I got within sight of the border, I looked across the road and saw warning signs that drivers should watch for bicycles on the roadway on the way down. There were no signs on the way up. Maybe the truckers thought it meant open season on the climb.

The border was jammed with cars and trucks which could mean the bike/pedestrian crossing would be jammed also. Usually the bike crossing was better, but in Ukraine it was worse. I did not have enough time to cross and re-cross the border, so I turned around and rode as fast as I could down the mountain. After eight miles descending, I saw a sign pointing for bikes to take that road. The empty parallel road had weeds growing out of it.  At 27 mph (40 feet per second) I thought about taking the lumpy route the last four miles until I saw three dogs walking along the edge of the empty road.

Dog dinner or ride with Semis?

The lead dog had his head down and his tail seemed to be dragging. He looked hungry enough to eat an old bicyclist. Two days before on the ride toward Romania a dog shot out from under a bridge and sprinted at me. I sprinted and growled back. He gave up. These dogs looked more determined.

Given the choice between wild dogs and Semis, I stayed on the main road until I got back into the city. Then I pulled into a gas station and sat on the curb drinking a bottle of juice and calmed myself down.  I rolled back into Skopje on sidewalks and bike lanes.  The next day I could try to find a different route into Kosovo or go south toward Greece.  I went to Greece. Since that day, I only rode on state highways that have a parallel motorway. Otherwise I am on a narrow road with Semi after Semi.

Documentary Filmmaker at an Asian Restaurant in Berlin

In Berlin, I ate dinner at an Asian restaurant near the laundromat I used earlier in the day. I was going to ride back to my room and eat where I had a good internet signal. But it was a nice night so I sat at one of the two tables in front of the restaurant. A woman in her 50s was eating at the other table. She heard me speaking English and asked where I was riding.  We talked about traveling on a bike and about how bicycles were everywhere in Berlin and in Germany.  She is a documentary filmmaker. She asked about my job. I told her I am retired, but my last job was at a museum of the history of chemistry.
 
She really brightened up at that! It turns out she made a documentary about the history of plastic chairs--polyethylene chairs that are very common in Germany, especially the former East Germany. Sybelle said, "The chairs themselves were boring. Just blocks of plastic. So I researched the history. That was fascinating!" She was able to interview one of the two chemists who discovered the process for making polyethylene and polypropylene. She learned a lot about chemisty and polymer chemistry.  She knew of the existence of polyvinylidene fluoride, but did not know how it differed from Teflon. I could explain the difference in the two molecules.
Outside of a professional chemistry setting, I never met anyone on the street in the U.S. who knew or cared about polymer chemistry, of for that matter who had ever heard of polyvinylidene fluoride.

We also talked about politics. When she grew up, she was told people like me, the American Army in Germany, were occupying West Germany, but since she lived in Berlin, she knew very well that the wall was to keep East Germans in, more than to keep the rest of the world out.