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| Our route around the Bodensee |
We just returned from our first successful overnight bike trip. We've been threatening to do this for awhile, and I've been dreaming about bike trips since I gave up owning a car 6 years ago. So, we chose Easter weekend to head down to the Bodensee, or Lake Constance to English speakers, in southern Germany. Most of March was Gorgeous (yes, capital "G") weather around here, but when I finally had days off it was back to winter/early spring. Nevertheless, I was overjoyed to be out of the lab for a weekend.
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| My rainboots frame Joe on a swingset. |
We headed down to the Bodensee early Saturday morning and started our ride from Radolfzeil (I can't pronounce it either) toward the town of Konstanz. The kilometers ticked by easily and we toured around the island Reichenau as a detour. Turns out most of the fruit and veggies labeled "from our region" ("aus unser Region") in the grocery store come from here. We made it into Constance/Konstanz, situated so it straddles one of the fingers of the Bodensee, for lunch. During lunch it began to rain, so we crossed into Switzerland and booked it for the last 30 kilometers to the little town where we'd booked a room. We arrived at the Haus St. Michal in Dozwil and quickly realized we were in an isolated Catholic stronghold on Easter weekend. We were staying in a guesthouse run by nuns, where the rest of the guests were practicing Catholics, and it was across the street from the church in a mostly Catholic town. We had to walk to the second hotel in town to get our meals, but the dining room's opening hours were scheduled around Mass. Then we decided to watch the only potentially interesting movie in the guest house's common room: "Luther", in German, about the life of Martin Luther and the birth of Protestantism. Talk about awkward.
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| 2012-2013 "Set" in Bregenz |
Well, things couldn't get much worse, so when we woke up to snow we took it in stride. We also took it as a sign to get out of town as soon as possible. We biked through the next few towns until we were quite cold, and finally found a little harbor cafe with a fireplace to drink hot chocolate and wait out the storm. It was worth the wait, because then the day turned quite beautiful. Still cool, but sunny. We had a few unplanned detours but eventually crossed the border again, this time into Austria. We stayed in the lovely town of Bregenz, with a backdrop of mountains and the foreground being a lot of tourist dollars pumped into making it quite an artsy and appealing town. The town hosts theater productions with a 2-year run, where the set is actually built out into the water. There is also a "3 Countries" marathon. Sounds cool, but not cool enough to convince me that I need to run a marathon.
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| Common view on Bodensee: vineyards |
Finally, today we hopped on our bikes and crossed back into Germany, which I have to say was my favorite part. We detoured into the picturesque island town of Lindau. The beautiful old town was unpretentiously rimmed by an old lighthouse tower and a lion statue protecting the harbor. We biked on through a string of quaint towns punctuated by vineyards, finally ending up in Friedrichshafen in our "home" state of Baden-Wuerttemburg. We hopped aboard a train with our bikes, and with just one transfer, 35 euros and 2.5 hours of riding we made it home again.
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| Betsy & Joe @ Bodensee |
Well, I'm sure you're thinking we had a terrible time with the weather and all, but in fact all 160 km were rather enjoyable. Because we only had three days we didn't circumnavigate the whole lake, so we'll have to come back and finish up at some point. And, now we now how much we as a couple can and want to bike in a day. There are plenty of great bike routes left to explore, so let us know if you're up for it (we mean you, Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob, Chris and Rachel, Megan and Kevin, Liz and Pete...).
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