Tuesday, September 29

From	To	Distance (km)	Average Speed (km/hr)	Max Speed (km/hr)	Odometer (km)	Riding Time (hr:min:sec)	Push-Ups
Nördlingen, Germany	Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany	84.51	17.6	49.7	1393	4:46:32	220

(1083 words)

This morning the alarm went off at 6:30, but Matt and I slept in until 7:00. I felt quite tired, but -- I realized gratefully -- I didn't feel like I had a cold. We went downstairs for breakfast, where we had the boldness to ask for eggs. We received the reply, "Selbstverständlich": German for something like, "but of course!" To prepare myself for another day of riding, I ate one brötchen, half with jam and half with my egg, gobbled a couple of slices of cheese and cold cuts, and drank hot tea.

We didn't get out onto the road until 9:20. Perhaps because of the hills and wind, perhaps because I was fighting a cold, or perhaps simply because I was worn out by eight consecutive days of bicycling, the riding felt hard today. I was, nevertheless, determined to get to Rothenburg, so I summoned enough energy to keep up with Matt.

We followed the Romantic Road through hilly terrain until we reached Dinkelsbuhl, where, even though it was only 11:30, we decided to stop for lunch. On one side of the street we saw a grocery store, and on the other, a McDonalds. Although we normally eat a lunch of groceries, we also had a pseudo-tradition of eating once per bike trip at a McDonalds. We decided to get a quick lunch at McDonalds, where I ordered my traditional "Royal with Cheese." As I first learned from the movie Pulp Fiction, a Royal with Cheese is a Quarter Pounder with Cheese renamed because of the metric system. The lunch was quick, but afterwards we wished we'd had groceries. We decided this lunch would mark the end of our once-at-McDonalds tradition.

After lunch we continued up the Romantic Road. Although it became somewhat cold in the afternoon and even started sprinkling at one point, I never took the time to change from my blue windbreaker into my warmer rain jacket. I just wanted to keep making progress.

As we crested one hill, I saw a small sign on the side of the road that read "Europaische Wasserscheide Donau/Rhein." I hadn't encountered the word "Wasserscheide" before, but I had a suspicion as to its meaning. I imagined that a drop of rain falling on one side of this sign would roll down into the Danube, whereas a drop of rain on the other side would end up in the Rhine. I memorized the contents of the sign and the value of my odometer (67.77 km) and continued riding. Later in the evening I looked up Wasserscheide in my dictionary and discovered my suspicions were correct. A Wasserscheide is a watershed. At the top of that hill, we had crossed from the domain of the Danube into the domain of the Rhine.

In late-afternoon, we rolled through the south gate of Rothenburg, the walled city where Matt and I had studied German at the Goethe Institut for a month one year earlier. It was fun to ride through the streets again. I was immediately reminded of how many tourists come to visit this town. The center of town often feels a bit like Disneyland.

Matt and I first went to a grocery store to buy dinner groceries. We then secured a room at the Pension Becker, the place where we had stayed our first few nights in Rothenburg the previous year. Once we were settled into our room, we packed our groceries into a sack and walked to the Goethe Institut.

We discovered upon arriving at the Goethe Institut that today was "arrival day" for the students starting a new 4-week intensive German course. Tomorrow would be their first day of class. I went to the front desk and asked about Kathrin, my teacher from the previous year, but she wasn't around. Kathrin was still teaching at that Goethe Institut, I was told; she just didn't happen to be in the building at the moment. The ladies in the office suggested I stop by after class the next day, so I left a note to that effect for Kathrin.

Matt and I went down to the Goethe Institut's Treffpunkt, a "meeting place" where students study and activities such as parties take place. It looked about the same and brought back a lot of good memories. We went outside behind the Treffpunkt and did some push-ups, then left the Goethe Institut and walked down the street to a park to finish our push-ups and eat our dinner. Quite a few tourists were milling about in the park, so it was difficult for us to find a discrete spot for push-ups. We selected an out-of-the-way corner, but as we were pumping out our push-ups an American tourist strolled past and told us we were being "good Marines." Our push-ups completed, we sat down on a bench to eat our dinner of yogurt and granola.

As we organized our groceries, Matt and I saw Werner, one of the teachers at the Goethe Institut, enter the park surrounded by 25 or so new students. We remembered that Werner had lead an introductory tour of Rothenburg for new students in the evening of the arrival day one year ago. Matt and I had taken that tour one year ago, and we figured Werner was giving it again for this new batch of students. As we sat on the bench munching away at our dinner, we watched Werner lead the students over to the side of the park that sits on the edge of the Tauber river valley. As they peered down into the valley, Werner told them stories about Rothenburg. After about ten or fifteen minutes, the tour came to an end and everyone dispersed.

Matt and I walked back to the Pension Becker to take showers, then returned to the cobblestone streets of Rothenburg to look for something to drink. Along the way we bumped into an old friend, Pepe, who was standing outside the Pizzaria Roma, where he works as a waiter. The previous year, Matt and I had visited the Pizzaria Roma so often with our friends from the Goethe Institut that we got to know Pepe on a first name basis. We crossed the street and said hello and he remembered us. After chatting with Pepe, we walked on to the main square of the town and went into a café-restaurant. Here I finished off the day writing notes in my journal while eating a bowl of potato soup and sipping a peppermint tea.