Nonstop to Germany

...and out of it, too--but more about out, later

It's not every day you wake up and say, "I think I'll bicycle to a foreign country."

No two ways about it, my legs had needed Saturday off. I shop, I dodge rain showers, I wonder through down the tile streets and cafes of Hilversum and Bussum. And Sunday morning, the legs were renewed, and the wind was right--out of the northwest. The forecast still called for rain, but the sky had that incredibly flat look, like a room's ceiling painted gray--the kind the US Midwest suffers all winter. But at least it's a sign of stable weather, and I could ride fast enough to keep up with any likely weather movement anyway. Pack the bag, out the door, check the tires,...head southeast for Germany.

The trick to riding in the south half of the Netherlands is simple: know at every moment where your next bridge is...and DON'T MISS IT. This is Bridge Too Far country.

The first couple of hours were lightning fast, and I was past Amersfoort and along the canals, southeast toward the Rijn river. Very pleasant.
 

 
 

Just before I got to the one bridge I didn't want to miss, the Rijnbrug at Rhenen over the (you guessed it) Rijn, I enter woods and immediately hit a hill--a hill!--with a "steep slope" warning. Five percent grade. What's all this, then?--did I accidentally leave the Netherlands?
 

No, this is still the Netherlands. And what's more, in a straight line (OK, OK--in an arc along the earth's surface) it's only 41 km / 25 miles from my apartment. In the US, I'd driven farther than that for lunch. Who knew the land could change so abruptly?
 

I ride through hilly Rhenen, a very nice town by the looks of it, I do cross the Rijnbrug, and cruise east through the narrow sliver of featureless land caught between the Rijn on the north and the Waal on the south. In every little town there is a small memorial park, perhpas the size of your living room, with a statue and a plaque listing the town's dead 1940-1945. The one in Dodewaard, a wistful name in its own right, I found particularly touching.

And down the Waal, this nuclear power plant, conveniently in the Netherlands' east, so that if there is any "accidental release", the prevailing westerly winds...
 

Near Oosterhout (probably not named after Clint Eastwood, or vice versa), overlooking the Waal and its enormous smoking power plant, stands this memorial to the crossing of the Waal in September 1944. Around the base are a few dozen childrens' drawings held together by a colored string. I look for an entire drawing, but they've all been folded or blown over by the wind. For some reason I can't touch them--I have a sense that this is not my suffering, or my history to interfere with. I can read part of one, in colored crayon: "...odat men niet meer oorloch mak..."
 

In the interest of conserving today's time--this ride to another nation is getting awfully long--I skirt Nijmegen and in favor of heading for the barest corner of Germany. These houses are still in the Netherlands, but only by a few hundred meters.
 

And the bike path branches, I take the right, and immediately it crosses a modest canal modestly named "Het Meer" (the sea), and I'm in Germany. My fleeting reaction is, "Today's task completed--even if I'm hit by lightning, I did get to Germany." And then as I follow the bike path along the still-modest canal now equally modestly "Hauptwasserung", and as I look over to the Netherlands on the opposite canal bank, the feeling is very different, stronger. It's...homesickness. Oh, my. Yes, I long for the familiar signs and street markings and legible (OK, just barely to me) language...but here I am, 30 meters into Germany, and I do not like it. This is a bit silly and very, very strange.
 

And the feeling gets stronger and stronger. Perhaps justifiably so, or perhaps everything is just filtered through fatigue and by my first reaction. Here is a lovely field. So, here's the problem: can I bicycle through it or not? The sign can be read two ways. What does a bicycle + "frei" mean? Does it mean you are "free to bicycle"? Or is it warning me that this area is "bicycle-free"? And why does the German language insist on making the most beautiful things so UGLY--"Landwirtschaftlicher"?
 

I know I can't trust myself now. I decide to look at everything else around me, pay attention to the land, the two towns (Zyfflich, whose name suggests a skin medication for aliens; and Wyler, which sounds like it could be in Texas). I smile to the few people I see and utter "Dag" (oops, that should be "Tag"--oh, to hell with it: "hullo"). I resolve to ignore the language and signs. Maybe it's just me today, maybe there's nothing really different here.
 

And then this. Oh my God, just what the German image needs. Psst--there's a hell of a nice universe (Dutch soil) next door. Let's go.
 

No one got in my way. I cycled up and down vertical Groesbeek NL, the only time I could not pedal my bike but absolutely had to dismount and push it up a hill. I thought it was just fatigue from 100 kilometeres behind me today. Then I noted the locals pushing their own bikes.

Nijmegen hid their train station extremely well. Note to Nijmegen--the War is OVER, it's OK to put the signs back up. I punched the Mark button on the GPS in case that happened again, and I loaded the bike just as the whistle blew, opened a Mars bar and the first of two fresh, cold Spa blauws, watched the towns and fields flash by. Ah. Mission accomplished.