Germany – Almost!

Katja, and Dave met on the road

We were cycling through Strasbourg, ready to cross the Rhine into Germany, when we spotted two other cyclo-travelers on a bridge. We stopped to say hi, and our little hello turned into an hour or more before we decided that we might as well finish the day together. So instead of heading east towards Germany, we headed south, back through Strasbourg, towards the canal which we had taken into the city upon our arrival.

Over the bottle of wine which we had picked up along the way, David (from England) and Katja (from Germany) shared many funny stories. Two especially are worth relating. The first was their “cow story.” Having been in eastern Germany a few weeks previous, they had stopped in a field for dinner, and afterwards, being too lazy to move on to find a better spot to sleep for the night, they decided to set up camp in the same field. In the middle of the night, through a hazy half-sleep, David thought he heard the sounds of cows mooing. He ignored it, and as they got closer, he thought (or hoped!) that they would just go away. Not so. One cow, a little too curious, got too close and fell on top of the tent and on David underneath! He was now laying with a frightened cow on top of him, both he and the cow unable to get up. The cow finally managed to get up, but had been so frightened that she had crapped all over their tent (which still smelled when we met them, one month later!). Aching, David had to get out of the tent and chase all of the other cows away. Upon returning, he inspected the damage and repaired the hole that the cow had left as a souvenir.

Deciding it was unsafe to stay for the night, they moved on and found another place to put up their tent. Just as he was starting to doze off, David again found something falling through the tent and landing on top of him. This time, it was a drunken German running down the hill in the dark who ran right through the tent. You can still see where he put both feet through the tent. The man got up, and a little bit dazed, asked if they didn’t think it was dangerous to put their tent in that field. Then he continued running at full speed down the hill. David was wondering what third thing would fall from the sky and land upon him that night, and was lucky to find himself alive in the morning. He had us in stitches telling the story.

David’s “oppossum story” is another good one. One would think that oppossums are relatively harmless creatures, right? Not so in New Zealand. In fact, they are native to Australia and were introduced to New Zealand about 50 years ago. They’ve invaded the country and are now menacing the local foliage by stripping the trees bare and killing them. So, David was in New Zealand with a buddy and had stopped by the side of the road to see if the oppossum lying there was still alive. A man drove up just afterwards and, after talking to them for a few minutes, said that they could spend the night at his house if they wanted to. He lived a couple of kilometers up the road and would leave the light on for them. Driving up, they saw a house with a light on and stopped. They were sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer when they heard the dogs barking outside. The farmer jumped up, grabbed his rifle, and ran outside. David and his friend presently hear a shot and the farmer returns, exclaiming against the oppossums. He did it so naturally that his guests were a little shocked.

That was nothing compared to the next morning, when their host took them to the barn, picked up an axe, and chopped the oppossum in half. He threw the remains to the dogs. Now they were really shocked. Apparently the oppossum they had seen by the side of the road the night before hadn’t been hit by accident. They found out that people took it upon themselves to keep the population down and would aim for them. Afterwards they saw plenty of skid marks of cars and dead oppossums at the end of them. Jarrad and Jon, two New Zealanders that we met later on in Munich, added that the government even pays some people to go oppossum hunting. And yet, in their homeland of Australia, they are a protected species. How ironic.

The next morning, David and Katja made us a breakfast of chappatis, a sort of fried bread made of flour and water, fruit and nuts. We topped it with honey, jam, or cheese. David showed us how to play “conkers,” a game he grew up playing in England. It consists of attaching a conker nut to the end of a string and trying to break open your opponent’s shell before he broke open yours. I had good aim but lousy technique because there wasn’t enough force behind my hits. I bet them that by the time they meet up with us in Thailand, I would be a champion conkers player.

Sheri, Stephane, Katja, and Dave

After our picnic lunch, we decided we would spend another day together. We figured it was a good thing that I hadn’t taken up an offer of lodging the night before in Strasbourg or we wouldn’t have met (As I was waiting with our bikes and Stephane did some errands, a man from Strasbourg, Jean-Marc, started talking to me and eventually proposed to have dinner at his place and let us stay the night at his apartment. I told him we were leaving Strasbourg that night to head for Germany.) As it was, we decided Germany could wait.

I turned 27 the next day and Katja and David made me a special birthday breakfast. They woke us up singing “Happy Birthday” and presented me with a platter on which they had arranged a pastry with candles, surrounded by purple and white flowers.

We parted in the afternoon. They headed west as we headed east. Only a few minutes later, as we were biking down a small country road, we saw a car pull off the side of the road ahead of us. As we approached, we saw Jean-Gilles get out of the car and wave to us. It was someone we had run into half a dozen times while we were in Strasbourg. We kept bumping into each other at different spots all over the city – at an art fair, at the grocery store, outside of his workplace, on the street, and now twenty kilometers south of Strasbourg. He said that since we kept running into eac other like this, it really was a shame that we hadn’t come for dinner at his place. But as he had invited us the night before we had planned on leaving, we had said, “No, no, we really must leave for Germany.” As it was, we were to see each other once again.

As we waved good-bye to Jean-Gilles once again, we continued down a windy bike path that took us to the Rhine, the river that separates France from Germany. Half-way across the river, a sign announced that we had reached Deutschland.

Germany! Finally! Here we come!