We begin again

 The idea of chronicling another of our junkets seems terribly self serving, "oh, look at us, as we live out our champagne dreams"... again. But, a few people have suggested that our continued failures and language shortcomings are occasionally interesting, so we shall try again. 

After a month of madly trying to finish teaching, finish learning, graduate and get 4 bicycles ready to tour, we sprinted out the door on Sunday. The Drs Harcomb and their loyal white minivan hauled us off to the airport with several stops, but still arrived with time to spare. When you have as much luggage as we do, and you are flying a budget carrier, you don't want to cut it close at all, and our 3 hour early arrival was perfect. There was no line and the counter was already open and staffed, and we had the smoothest check in experience ever. 

Handing the bikes over to the bulk luggage folks, knowing that the TSA would not repack anything properly after inspection, is always worrying. They no longer inspect in front of you so that you can shame them into additional tape, so it is a real leap of faith to give them these expensive, vastly time consuming, historic relics of our touring fleet. The three straps of tape they "sealed" the boxes back up with were luckily adequate, but if everything inside hadn't been tied down, hard to guess.

We would certainly recommend Condor for budget flights. While they do have much of the modern silliness (paying to reserve seats, auctions for upgrades) they also included a pillow and blankie, and 2 meals! We didn't expect that. We also didn't have to pay extra for the two children that cried through the night, reminiscent of the old days of Pan Am from LAX to Frankfurt continuing on to Delhi. 

Exhausted, with our luggage in tow, we stumbled through customs and found the taxi stand where the air of "not going to happen" pervades. We were spoiled by the "can do",  "challenge accepted" attitude of our Parisian van driver, and ended up just accepting the two cab solution that was required this time. Expensive but comfortable and it allowed Liv and the kids to receive a lengthy religious treatise from their driver. The stony silence of a surly van driver was fine with me.

We arrived into the welcoming arms of our friends Anke, Mai and Jurg at their lovely home. Somewhere in the bloggosphere is the story of our meeting and eventual staying with them six years ago. I guess it is the shared history and morals and life view that allows our two families to bridge language barriers and our annual at best correspondence, yet yielding wonderful intimacy. 

Their language abilities vastly exceed any of ours, and allow us to beat our way through more complicated concepts and try to make sense of it all. Much laughter around the table, and they were very generous with their time and space. We have stored our boxes and luggage with them, and used their space to reassemble everything. 

Jurg took us around the city to shake down all of our bikes, and many rattles were found and resolved.

 We made our requisite farmers market stop and sampled all the local delicacies. Breads, meats, cheeses and the truck of olives, cheese spreads and prepared salads put us in good stead. 

Aside from the challenges of jet lag, our stop in Wiesbaden was everything we could have hoped for. Before we left for the train station, the local insights of which trains travel on which levels and how to avoid stairs was invaluable. Then Anke and Jurg rode with us all the way to the station, out onto the platform, and safely onto the crowded train.

 

Their level of care for us was incredible, and we can only hope that Mai will visit the US at some point so that we can show her some of what the PNW has to offer.

This 6-8 hour journey by train across the country has been smooth and enjoyable, and having proof that rail travel can be successfully incorporated into bike touring should allow me to stop worrying and start sleeping again. 

I am looking forward to the beginning of our self supported trip, where we only need to ride our bikes, find food and a place to sleep. We have done a lot of traveling so far, but not yet started. Tonight we camp in Salzburg, and the adventure begins!