yodelling bavarian-style

A beer called "Radler" (cyclist) (actually, it's a shandy) and some mini golf (I lost rather appallingly)

On Friday, it started to rain and more or less continued to rain over the whole weekend. On Sunday, while cycling along in the now easing rain, we paused to look at the map and were approached by a friendly stranger asking if we were lost. We got chatting and he (Zafer was his name) said he was in the nearby boat with a group of friends, on their annual boat trip which they have been doing for thirty years. Currently the boat was stuck waiting for the water in the Danube to lower, as it was too high to allow the boat to get past one of the barrier-crossings. He invited us over to see the boat and we were quickly ushered in by the boozy and enthusiastic group of about ten men, given a big ceramic flip-top decorated traditional-looking mug of beer each and spent the next hour or two in what felt like a mini beer festival with lots of singing, laughing and clashing of beer mugs. One of the group, who was wearing a baseball cap with a solar light heavily duct-taped onto the peak to form a make-shift head torch (in the middle of the day), sang us some traditional Bavarian songs, then taught us how to yodel Bavarian-style. He had a nice voice and it sounded lovely, something like "hola-roo-aye, hola-rad-ee-oohhhh". He explained that yodelling was an old folk tradition here which originated with people calling to each other across neighbouring hills/mountains using echoey yodels. We had a fun afternoon with all the amusing characters on the boat and eventually departed more than a little tipsy, practicing our Bavarian yodelling as we wobbled down the Danube. Below is a picture Matthew took of me with Zafer as we were leaving - unfortunately we didn't get any of the boat and it's rowdy occupants!

Matthew hoeing into a big German currywurst & pomme frites, me eating a spaghetti icecream (!? icecream squeezed to look like spaghetti strands, with berry sauce for bolognese sauce.. a strangely popular style of icecream around here)

Cheating by getting the ferry for 6km down a beautiful stretch of the Danube between Kelheim and Weltenburg

Giant Lederhosen - at least two cows worth.

the (muddy green) danube

There are lots of crosses like this one positioned on the tips of dramatic limestone peaks

Giant wall, giant orange slug (in France I had one nestled sleepily into the fork of my bike one morning)

Marching bird, Matthew doodling

Picnic next to Interesting Man on Raft who was working hard but we were not sure exactly what he was doing.
Below are some shots from a day spent in Ulm (the birthplace of Albert Einstein!). Ulm Minster has the highest church steeple in Europe. The views up the tower were amazing, and we were able to look down onto the church bells and stare gargoyles in the face. It was quite nervewracking climbling up the slender highest part of the tower, where narrow stairs wind tightly on and on until you get to the top, dizzy and feeling like the solid ground below looks quite nice and safe.

The friendly, floppy bunny at our campsite who Matthew keeps wanting to feed ("do you think he would like a banana skin?")

the rhine

The Route along the Rhine from Basel to Konstanz and Bodensee was wonderful. It was lucky that the hot weather coincided with this stretch as the Rhine flows lovely, cool and fresh here so is perfect to cool off in. We were stopping on these mid 30 degree days every few hours to jump in often in our clothes to keep us cool as we rode. On one of these short dips we had an eagle circling just above us as we swam. It swooped down and caught a large fish and flew off with it.

mozzies

Ive been reminded how bloody annoying mosquitos are since camping again. We were only just talking about how I used to ponder as a kid if it was ok to want to have mosquito eradicated but was torn between loathing them and feeling that everything must serve some purpose. Anyway this article finally answered those thoughts =
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html

the french

There's a lot of strong opinion expressed about the French from travellers. It seems that people will have a lot to say both positive and negative. It's puzzling that they are subject to such frequent and strongly-expressed opinions compared to other nations . Why is this?
I think it made us interested in seeing how we found people there.
We were a bit apprehensive about stories of people insisting on being spoken to in french (Jenny knows basic french but I know very little) and also tales of French rudeness and arrogance. Here are a few doodles of French stereotypes......

Firstly I would say it is true that the French are definitely keen for you to try to speak their langauge. It's worth starting off in very simple French at the start even if it only to apologetically ask if they speak English - I think most would not be impressed by someone presumptuously launching into English from the outset, especially given that many French did not seem to speak much English at all. Regardless of their English skills, they seem to really love their mother tongue and want you try to use it even if they speak better English than your broken French. It's like they are sure you will grow to love speaking their pretty, soft language as much as they do and perhaps do away with you ugly clunky one altogether. Without exception the french were very patient even with very patchy French so there is no need to stress about being fluent. Just giving it a try made most people we met warm to us quickly.
As for the other stereotypes of rudeness and arrogance, we cant say we found them there at all. Even in Paris people seemed very relaxed and casual, almost serene compared to other sizeable cities. They also seemed very patient as a whole. We often found ourselves farting about trying to find change for metro tickets, using automated machines incorrectly or bumbling onto the wrong places on roads and never once did we receive exasperated sighs or angry toots.
Their relaxed attitude to life definitely had an appeal to us. It was aslo reflected in the French landscape of unmanicured fuzzy fields of wildflowers and towns of softly crumbling stone covered in ivy.

a cup o' tea and a slice o' cake

Whenever we roll into a new town and realise how grubby and dishevelled we are compared to people with houses we pretend we are Worzel Gummidge. He is the star of a great show i watched as a kid and we both loved watching on videos we found in the UK. Its such an apt way to describe us as in every episode Worzel the scarecrow sneaks into town from the fields looking for a "Cup of tea and a Slice of Cake". This catch phrase is turned into song on the christmas episode (with Billy Connoly as a Scottish scarecrow) and we have found ourselves humming this a little too often recently.

last few of france and basel, switzerland

After four days of good music, stifling heat, portaloos and stinky & overexcited adolescents, we pedalled sleepily away from the festival and dragged ourselves to the nearest campsite to become rested and clean again. Then, functioning human beings once more, our final stop in France was Mulhouse, near the French border.

Sweet statue and Matthew in Mulhouse

The next day was au revoir to France, who chose to farewell us by closing all shops for lunch (12:00 til 2:30pm) and leaving us to starve. Everywhere closes for lunch every day in France but we never learnt and it kept catching us out. Matthew has had many a lengthy diatribe against France for this inconvenience - but actually I really love the way they stop everything and enjoy lunch together every day, and wish we had a similar perspective back home. When I try to express this to Matthew, he replies "Oh hogswash! I don't give a hoot about community wellbeing when it gets in the way of 24 hour megastores which can feed this badboy at any given hour" (pointing to stomach).

Basel is an impressive city with the Rhine rushing past its stately buildings. The Rhine moves quickly and we noticed people jumping in clutching a floaty and drifting downstream with the current before popping out somewhere else, often quite far downstream. People were doing this and just chatting away like they were going for a stroll. Usually the floaty was a clever little bag which carried their things (purse, shoes, towel etc) so they could just carry on from where they drifted to. We thought this would be a great way to commute to work (but it would only work one way).


Basel from above, me swimming in the Rhine.

At our Basel campsite, we were approached by a big, curious hedgehog one evening who sprung up under Matthew's pannier and peered through poor-seeing eyes at us for a while before running off into the bushes where we could hear him crashing about long afterwards.

Curious hedgehog, Matthew wishing he was one of the gang outside Basel's hippest nightclub "Friends bar"