Over the Borderline (Selfkant, DE)

The borders of Central Europe have shifted many times over the last couple centuries, effected by war and revolution, rises to power and compromises between nations. Germany has had its share of reformations as well, most notably the 1990 reunification of East Germany and West Germany. But the western border of Germany has an interesting history too, and as the most western point of Germany is not too far away from where we live, I decided to check it out.

According to this map, the Westlichster Punkt or “westernmost point” of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland resides in Selfkant, only a dozen or so kilometers from the town in which I reside. It should only take an hour or so for me to get there, pending I make all the correct turns. This, of course, never actually happens. But I’ll get there nonetheless, I assure myself.

From Waldfeucht, it is only a matter of minutes before crossing over into the Netherlands. Although I am trying to reach a waypoint in Germany, the best way to get there is by following the Dutch Cycling Network waypoints, which typically coincide with bike-friendly paths and farm roads. Many of these roads look like the one above: low-traffic, lined with trees, and a pleasure to ride on. If you enjoy “tree tunnels”, this is the place for you.

With that in mind, I quickly realized that I was no longer on the right track when I came to this infrastructure anomaly, some 40 minutes into my journey:

What you’re seeing is the entrance to a train underpass that is not only two-way for cyclists, but motor vehicle traffic as well. Notice that the car lane is really only wide enough for one car at a time. Worse yet, once you enter the underpass, it is essentially a cave:

Sure enough, just after I took that picture a car came screaming through. I hope the lady on her bicycle made it out okay. It just goes to show that even in the cycling paradise that is the Netherlands, there is still plenty of room for improvement.

After a few 50/50 guesses at which way to go, I was back on track again. Even if you’re off of the route you intend to follow, there are signs and posts that point you in the direction of the nearest waypoint. Soon, I saw the sign indicating I was leaving the Netherlands, and then sign for visitor parking at the Westlichster Punkt. Being a weekday afternoon, there was nobody there except an older couple that were content to remain in their RV in the parking lot.

The actual rest area had a bathroom and a nice summation of the area’s history. I read what I could in German, but had to supplement that with the English Wikipedia article describing the history of Selfkant. Basically, this whole region has been passed back and forth between the Germans and the Dutch several times, and it was until 1963 that it was given back to Germany. By then, the Dutch had left an indelible mark on the area, and by that I mean windmills.

Since the physical border between the two countries is actually a creek, the pole that designates the westernmost point is suspended over the middle of the water. There is a walkway from the parking lot to this point, at which you are encouraged bilingually to “sit in the Netherlands with your feet in Germany”.

So I did just that.

I will say that in spite of having crossed the border countless times before, there was something very entertaining about this scenario, and I amused myself crossing back and forth between the two countries so effortlessly.

On the way back home, I looked again at the map and realized that it was a much simpler route than I had tried to follow on the way here. There were two waypoints, 20 and 22, between me and where I wanted to go. So, I followed the signs leading that way, and was pleasantly presented with a solitary bike path through the woods, leading me exactly where I needed to be.

Now that I know the route, this will be my go-to bike trip for anyone that wants to visit someplace of significance while staying in the area. It’s so close by and I can annotate along the way my recently-acquired knowledge of the region’s history-- really a win-win scenario in my opinion. As far as the other geographical extremes of Germany, I can’t say when I’ll get to those, but hopefully they don’t change on me before I do.

 

- Bicyclist Abroad

 

 

Mediterranean Scene

Having now returned from a couple weeks worth of globetrotting, I can reflect on the experience enough to whip up an overdue blog post. Sadly, this trip was exclusively as a pedestrian, and the places we visited were probably the least bike-friendly I’ve ever seen. No kidding, I should title this post Top 3 Places To Die On A Bicycle. Nevertheless, there were still cyclists in each city, proving that… well, proving that even the worst odds can play in your favor every so often.


The first destination was Istanbul, (not Constantinople… thanks, Amelia). Spending a few days here we visted many of the historical places they’re known for like the Turkish Bazaar and a couple of the Mosques. Istanbul is really an amazing place, but it’s also gigantic, spanning two continents and several districts. Also, the traffic is frequently approaching absolute gridlock at any given time, which means if you’re on a bike you’ll have to hop some sidewalks. Granted, there are probably areas of the city better suited to cycling, but where we stayed in the historic section, you’re better off taking the metro.

We boarded our cruise in Istanbul and set off for a number of stops on our way to Rome. Malta was one place I could see being suited for bike travel, being an island and all. According to their official tourist website, they’ve got "over 1,000 kilometers of new cycling routes“, though from what I saw, "cycling route“ means, "normal, narrow Maltese roads that cars have trouble navigating through, so why not ride a bike instead?"

Finally, after a couple visits to Italian coastal towns, we reached Rome. Now, while there have been some improvements and initiatives to the cycling scene in Rome, it is still, altogether, an awful place to ride your bicycle. The traffic is egregious, the congestion is outrageous, and the entire transit situation is most oftentimes dangerous. Clearly, the mopeds have rule of the road here in Rome, but even riding in a car is stressful. The infrastructure is lacking, even for pedestrains, as we witnessed first hand by walking along raised shoulders in place of sidewalks just to get to where we were eating dinner. Sure, when you’re in the cobblestoned city center just across the river from Vatican City, it’s easy to get around on foot, but that’s where the entitlement ends. Italian traffic is insane. The cyclists there are also, probably, insane too, because I saw not one but several riding on what we tend to refer to as “highways“ where the speed limit is 100KPH. Not to mention some of the routes that are glamourized by the Giro d’Italia that any other day of the year are populated with tour giant tour busses passing other tour busses.

So you can imagine the serentity we felt flying into Eindhoven in the Netherlands and seeing the peaceful roundabouts and the segregated bike lanes, all flowing beautifully in stark contrast to the abysmal chaos of Italian traffic. It was like having a nightmare and waking up to the reality of everyday life, except that the Italians are forever stuck with these narrow, crowded streets, and they’ve given up hope of anything better several hundred years ago. So to anyone that complains that cycling infrastructure in the U.S. is bad, I invite you to visit southern Europe and I’m certain you’ll find you’ve probably got it much better where you live.

The vacation was a good time, and it was great to see some of the most ancient places on Earth, but at the end of it, I think we were all ready to get back to Germany. And I was as eager as ever to get back to riding my bike.

- Bicyclist Abroad

Reluctant Pedestrians (Münster, DE)

Münster is a city in North Rhein-Westphalia, and is known as Germany’s bicycle capitol. The Mrs. and I had planned to spend the weekend there, checking out the city and touring on our bikes to a couple of the castles in the surrounding region. In fact, around the city is one of the ADFC’s cycling routes known as the “100 Castles Route”, which is divided into four quadrants with Münster in the middle. What an excellent cycling destination.

Except, it didn’t work out that way. Sometime ago my knee began to give me trouble that I’m not sure was due to riding, but was certainly exacerbated by it. Neshanne had her own affliction as well, having played volleyball a little too vigorously a few days prior and injuring herself in the process. So neither of us were able to commit to a weekend of riding, but our reservations were still in place, so we went to Münster anyway. 

Being in the bike capital of anywhere and not being on a bicycle is much like being the designated driver at the pub: you can’t help but feel like everyone else is having a much better time than you are. I’m familiar with this feeling however, as the first time I visited Portland, Oregon and Amsterdam, I was also without a bike. So I relegated myself to just looking at them as we walked by.

 

Münster, like many bicycle-heavy cities in Europe, seems to be reaching what I call the “bicycle saturation point”. This is when every possible object you can lock a bicycle to, whether designed for such or not (most cases not) is occupied by a bicycle. As a reference, Amsterdam has exceeded this point, and that’s why they dredge bikes up out of their canals every year.

We walked around checking out the shops, cafes and cathedrals, stopping for a flammkuchen. We visited the Pablo Picasso museum. We ate at a Mexican restaurant.

It was all very pleasant, but in a place where a bike-lane promenade encircles the city, I still couldn’t help but feel like it would be best experienced on a bike. So, we decided we would have to come back when we were not in such states of disrepair.

For more information on Münster (in English), you can visit the city’s official website here: http://www.muenster.de/en/cycling_capital.php

- Bicyclist Abroad

 

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood (Coffeeneuring Waypoint No. 5)

For my fifth coffeeneuring destination, I decided to head into the city of Heinsberg, which is the center of Kreis Heinsberg, or in American terms, Heinsberg County. There are plenty of restaurants and stores there, so I figured I would wander around and find a good place to get some coffee. The weather was especially nice in the afternoon with plenty of sunshine and very little wind.

It isn’t very difficult to get to Heinsberg from anywhere within the vicinity, because its tallest structure is the Gothic church of St. Gangolf (not to be confused with Gandalf who is a fictional wizard) whose green-patina copper steeple looms over the city. Since it is roughly the same color as the Statue of Liberty, the Mrs. and I often refer to it as such.

Coming from the northwest, you enter a roundabout which takes you either around the perimeter or into the heart of the city where many historical structures, including the Torbogenhaus  from the 16th century, reside. The archway in the picture below is two-way for bicycles and surprisingly, a one-way for automobiles, though I would not want to try and squeeze anything bigger than a Smart car through that.

Just before the archway, Cafe Samocca sits on the right. There is indoor seating and a cafe terrace with a nice view of St. Gangolf’s and the fortifications surrounding it. Opting to take in the sunshine (and because this is Europe, cigarette smoke) I sat outside next to a stone wall that served as parking for my bike.

The coffee menu was extensive, offering beans from all over the world and accompanying tasting notes. I went with the Yellow Bourbon which promised to be something along the lines of “bright” and “nutty”. And just in case you forgot what you ordered, atop the saucer is a little card reminding you of what you were drinking.

After enjoying my coffee, I rode around the city for a while getting to know where the different avenues lead and what infrastructure was in place for bicyclists. Like many old cities, there aren’t bike lanes so much as automobile-restricted areas which provide plenty of pedestrian and bicycle zones to get where you’re going without finding yourself in the middle of traffic. On one of the main avenues, lined with small shops and cafes, there was an e-bike charging station which is becoming a pretty common sight around here and in the Netherlands.

Since I started out on my ride in the afternoon, it wasn’t long before the sun began to set, so I decided to head back home before it got too dark. I chose a different route than the way I came, but again, if you know the general direction you need to go, it isn’t very difficult to find your way there… eventually.

It turns out the route I had chosen was a bit lengthier than I anticipated and it actually got pretty dark out before I got very far. Between villages, there are sometimes no streetlights and especially dark are the paths that lead through the woods. Add the seasonal fog to that and your vision is pretty well restricted. Luckily, the lights I had on the bike were bright enough to get me home.

I enjoyed Cafe Samocca (as I have most of the destinations I’ve coffeeneured to this year) and will probably return there with the Mrs. when she gets back. Though with the days getting shorter and the nights getting colder, I will be sure to leave a little bit earlier next time.

- Bicyclist Abroad

 

Coffeeneur Quick Stats:

Location:	Cafe Samocca High Street 19, 52525 Heinsberg, Germany [website]
Drink:	Coffee (Brazilian Yellow Bourbon)
Date:	Saturday, 01 November
Distance:	16.2 km/10 mi.

In Search of Singletrack

Okay, so I’ll admit that even as a bicycle enthusiast, mountain biking wasn’t something I particularly cared for. It was always portrayed as an extreme sport in the vein of skateboarding or I don’t know, pogo sticking, and I’m about as far from extreme as can be. Before I even started riding bikes for transportation, I associated mountain biking with adrenaline junkies who bombed down dangerous tracks in motocross outfits and would suffer from the occasional broken body part. Looking back, I now understand the differences between downhill and dirt jumping and the other competitive sub-divisions, and, let’s say, just riding a mountain bike. It is the latter that lately I’ve grown to enjoy quite a bit.

I’ve talked about The Colonel before, my 90’s Dean Titanium hardtail that I built out of leftovers and other cannibalized bikes. I built it as a rugged, do-anything, weatherproof bike that I wouldn’t mind getting beaten up or tossed around. I think I had intended to ride it in the winter in northern Japan before I realized that you need really big tires to ride through the snow. It’s a single-speed because I like the simplicity and I dislike adjusting derailleurs. It’s titanium because I think titanium is just dandy. It’s a Dean partly because that is my name, too. Anyway, I built it up in Japan and rode it 4 or 5 times before coming to Germany where it has been seeing a lot more use than I had thought it would.

Actually, let me rewind and clarify that last statement—it isn’t Germany where I’ve been riding, it’s the Netherlands. You see, the Dutch aren’t just preoccupied with these beautiful and elaborate paved cycling paths, they also are pretty good about maintaining their off-road cycling network.  The first time I rode an ATB here in Europe, it was with a friend who lives north of Eindhoven, and he took me on some pretty incredible routes through the forests by his house. Impressed, I thought he was a lucky guy to live so close to these trails, but what I didn’t know at the time was that almost every forest in the Netherlands has these trails. In fact, there are some less than 5 minutes from where I live that start just across the Dutch border. Up until last week, I never knew they were there.

So aside from errands and coffeeneuring, these trails have been where I’ve spent most of my saddle time. Lately I’ve even been bringing Ardie along, too, and he runs ahead of me like a dog sled team of one (he’s not strapped into a harness or anything, that’s the just image I wanted to portray). Some of the trails double back on each other, some go to different villages, some are more technical than others, although the flatness of the terrain here dictates nothing too challenging. It’s just a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t have expected to be doing it as often as I have.

Of course, one thing always leads to another, and I’ve got my eye on some of the more famous trans-european bikepacking routes for this summer, but in the meantime I am having a good time clunking around the woods on a mountain bike.

- Bicyclist Abroad

Nightride to Oktoberfest (Coffeeneuring Waypoint No. 3)

Something that I learned since moving to Germany is that Oktoberfest is not a one-time event, nor is it necessarily in the month of October. There are hundreds of them, and this past weekend was one of the larger ones outside of Germany in the city of Sittard, Netherlands. Since the festivities were less than 10 miles away, I decided to check it out and roll a coffeeneuring trip into the process.

With the sun setting low in the sky, I doubled up the normal amount of lights I have on my bike, with a backup SureFire flashlight just in case things got really dark [spoiler alert: they did]. Now, while most of the bike paths in the Netherlands are illuminated, they all aren’t and certainly not on the German side of the border. According to Google, the trip should have been around 30 minutes, so I set the timer on my watch and like always, forgot about it the entire rest of the night.

On the way, I was looking for someplace to have my cup of coffee that was close to Sittard, but not so close that the patronage would be inflated. So, I picked the Cafeteria t’ Trepke, a small 24 hour friterie on the main road into town. Though they didn’t have coffee on the menu, I asked and they were happy to make a cup. It’s fairly bike-friendly as it is alongside a bike lane, but then again this is the Netherlands where almost every business is alongside a bike lane. So, I took a seat outside and enjoyed my coffee and a croquette.

Just as I sat down, a large group of Lederhosen-clad men came rolling by on their bicycles, and stopped at the traffic light next to me. I knew I was headed in the right direction.

So I finished my coffee, got on my bike, and followed suit, where the sounds of festivities grew louder and the lights illuminated the nighttime sky.

I wasn’t sure where I was going to park my bike, but of course, the Dutch had already taken care of that. The bike parking lot had plenty of spots and even an e-bike charging station, which surprisingly, went un-utilized. Some people opted to leave their bikes unlocked, but erring on the side of caution I went ahead and locked mine to the rack. The Soma isn’t quite as utilitarian as your standard Dutch bike, so it would be likely to stand out.

The Oktoberfest itself was a good time. I met up with some friends and had a few beers, went on a couple rides, and generally enjoyed myself. There were several different beer tents set up, each having different themes and bands, and plenty of things to do and foods to try on the outside.

I got a herring sandwich which sounded good when I ordered it, but was really not that great. It was literally a pickled herring filet between two pieces of white bread and nothing more.

Leaving that evening, I took a look up at the cathedral spire that stood over all of the festivities, a reminder that gatherings like this one have been going on in this very place for a long, long time.

On the way home, I ended up taking a similar-yet-very-different road and completely lost my way. When this happens during the day, it’s usually no problem as I’ll see a familiar landmark or sign and re-orient myself. At night, nothing looks familiar, and I was just kind of hoping I was headed in the right direction. As it turned out, I was not. I had a head-scratching moment as, after riding for 15 minutes, I approached a sign telling me I was entering Sittard, the city I had just left.

Eventually, I got to a place where I knew the direction home, and sure enough needed to use the SureFire because it was a road through the forest that  had absolutely no ambient light. I couldn’t even see the stars, which made it especially frightening. Of course, coming across this statue didn’t exactly help either:

- Bicyclist Abroad

Coffeeneur Quick Stats:

Location:	Cafetaria t’Trepke Tudderendweg 72 Sittard, The Netherlands [website]
Drink:	Coffee
Date:	Saturday, October 18th
Distance:	30 km/ 19 miles

Artificial Obstacles

In my personal life, I feel I’m fairly moderate in most things. While some people are level 5 vegans (a Simpsons reference to eating nothing that casts a shadow) and others eat almost exclusively carnivorous, the Mrs. and I fall somewhere in the middle, having a pescetarian diet. I find that it’s enough of a compromise that leaves me neither stricken with guilt nor feeling like I’m missing out on what the world has to offer.

The same goes with my choice of transportation: I certainly prefer a bicycle to anything else, but I do not shun the almighty automobile and its giant carbon footprint. While I admire those who have completely divorced themselves from car culture, I am not among those numbers; even though I do think that cars are over-utilized, it’s nice to have one when you need one.

So, being both a bicyclist and motorist, I feel like I’ve got a pretty good understanding of where both are coming from. When you’re on a bike, you just want to be given enough clearance to feel safe on the road, and when you’re in a car, you just want the bicyclists to stay far enough over to pass them easily. Simple, right?

Yes, unless you’re in Germany. Why? Odds are that that cyclist is using the bike path alongside the road, making both him or her and yourself happy all at the same time. But while the happiness of the bicyclist continues on, your happiness wanes as you slow to a stop alongside the curb and wait for a car coming from the opposite direction to pass you. This is due to something unique to these parts: artificial obstacles. They are structures, placed right in the middle of the road, to reduce the speed of automotive traffic. They range from zig-zags to outcroppings to hourglasses, but they are in almost every town and they all make the task of driving a car here that much more difficult.

Here is a pretty common example. It’s essentially a two-way bottleneck, where only one car can pass through safely at any given time.

Here is the same concept, but instead of an hourglass, a zig-zag is involved. It can be quite a frustrating ordeal if two cars enter at the same time. Notice however, the bike lanes on either side: sometimes it pays to be on a bicycle.

Then there is the solitary outcropping, which in addition to slowing down traffic makes you take extremely wide turns. Again, it is designed so only one car can pass through safely at one time.

So, what’s the point of all of these? Wouldn’t a speed bump or two suffice? (There are plenty of those here as well.) I joke that the Germans find driving on regular roads too boring, so they’ve added obstacles to spice things up a bit. But the main idea, I think, is to force drivers to slow down and pay attention. Which on one hand, is a good idea, but on the other, is pretty frustrating when traffic gets heavy and you have to be somewhere. But in the end, at least for me, it’s just another reason to ride a bicycle instead.

 

- Bicyclist Abroad