July 12, 2023
Karlsruhe -> Basel
Chasing Trains and crossing borders
I woke up in my parent's hotel room in Karlsruhe. I threw on my half-washed clothes and sandals and walked down to breakfast with my dad. We piled our plates high and loaded up on broetchen, cheese, and cold cuts. I ate so much that I got profiled and questioned by the kitchen staff. They asked me what my room number was, but no one else eating breakfast got asked.
After breakfast, it was time to pack up and say goodbye to my parents. I am so grateful I got to spend a week touring the Rhine Valley with them, seeing relatives along the way. This will truly be a trip I will remember for the rest of my life. Hopefully this blog preserves the small, dumb details that photos can't capture and your memory doesn't hang onto in detail.
Anyway, Once I said my goodbyes, I had to come up with a plan. I decided that from Karlsruhe, I wanted to traverse the alps east to west, roughly from Geneva to Vienna. I was assessing my options to get to the Alps. I saw that it was possible to take a direct, high speed train from Karlsruhe to Basel. This souded appealing to me as I was eager to leave the flatlands behind (seruiously, the cycling route along the Rhine is about as flat as it gets), and get into some hills.
*Begin Rant about Deutsche Bahn*
I spent a half hour looking on the deutsche bahn app on my phone. The ICE and RC trains showed bike spots availiable, but when I tried to reserve it on my phone as I had done with the IC trains, the app said I had to book bike reservations in person at the train station. Fair enough. I headed into the Karlsruhe train station, and tried to book it at an automatic kiosk. However, it had the same interface as my phone app. I was thankfully able to flag down a security guard who spoke good English. He told me that to take a bike on an ICE train, I would need to go to the Deutsche Bahn customer service booth in the station, talk to a human being, and have them book the reservation for me. Ok, fair enough. I headed to the customer service center, and was I saw was totally unbelievable. It was a huge waiting room, with 7 registers, but only 2 open. There were about 30 people waiting in the room. It worked similar to the DMV. You go up to a machine, push a button to get a ticket with a number, and then wait to get called to the front register. When I got my number, it said 10-20 minute wait time. However, after sitting there for about 5 minutes, I realized that it would be at least 30-45 minutes in reality. Fed up, I decided to say screw it and just jump on my bike.
*End Rant about Deutsche Bahn*
After doing some google maps research, I discovered I could cut 2/3 of the distance to Basel by augmenting my route with a train from Strasbourg to Basel. There was a French train that was 1/3 the cost as the German ICE, and didn't require bike reservations. Great.
The ride from Karlsruhe to Strasbourg was largley unremarkable. It was mostly on a bike path that paralled a highway. About half-way, I stopped at a gas station and bought a pretzel, ice cream sandwich, and a pomegranate flavored Caprisun. The nicest part of the route was the few kilometers before Basel. The path was on top of a levee, on one side the Rhine, and the other, a drainage ditch. It was an interesting section of river, because the river level had been artifically hightened by lochs to where the river was flowing higher than the land below. I had a headwind the entire day, but on the levee top it was particularly strong. I decided to stop for a break and figure out where I was going to stay in Basel. I found a campground on the Swiss side of the Rhine, and called them. They were very nice and said to pay in the morning before I left.
Shortly after, I crossed a bridge over the Rhine into France. The cultural border was quite sharp. Suddenly all signs were in French, and everyone on the street was speaking French. On the way to the train station, a man on a bike pulled up next to me and asked me where I was coming from and going. He seemed interested in my trip and told me he was planning a similar bike tour in August.
When I got the the train station and checked my French train app, I ran into my first problem:
*Begin Rant about French Trains*
The train I wanted to take was cancelled, and the train after was during rush hour peirod and did not allow bikes. I would have to wait until 6:30 to catch my train. It wouldnt get me to Basel until 7:40. I killed some time by getting a delicious dinner at a French Bakery near the train station. By the time 6:20 rolled around, I was standing on the train platform waiting. The train station was absolutly disgusting. Raw sewage and toilet paper littered the tracks. As I later found out, the toilets on French trains empty straight onto the railroad tracks. You can see the ground when you flush the toilet.
*End Rand about French Trains*
*
I then got a notification on my phone that my train was 20 minutes delayed. I waited. When the train finally came, a large crowd of people was standing on the platform, eager to get to Basel. Boarding the train was complete chaos. People crowded the train entrance and made it hard for people to get off. People with bikes scurried from train car to train car looking for open bike spots. I got lucky and found one.
Once I got on the train, I got another phone notification saying that the train I was on would no longer be going all the way to Basel, and would instead stop halfway in Mulhouse. I looked around and tried to find someone who could speak English. Thankfully, a man across the aisle was able to give me some transltions of the PA announcements in broken english. The gist was that we would have to get off in Mulhouse and take a different train to Basel. The offboarding and loading process in Mulhouse was just as chaotic as it had been in Strasbourg. Once I got on the train, however, I sat next to a couple who had spent 6 days bike touring in France. They were taking the train home to Basel. They seemed impressed with my setup. I managed to have a basic conversation with them in German, but they spoke with a swiss accent that was difficult for me to understand.
I finally got off the train in Basel around 8:40. I made my way to the campground, and set up my tent. The campground was full of bike tourers, and appeared to be a popular spot along the Eurovelo 15 route. Two men from Ireland on a bike tour took interest in my setup and route. They were impressed at how ultralight I had managed to go, and they were questioning their decision to bring cooking gear. I learned some Irish expressions I had never heard before: "Fair Play" (a phrase of agreement).
I did my laundry in the sink, took a shower, and went to bed.
Today's ride: 60 miles (97 km)
Total: 882 miles (1,419 km)
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10 months ago
10 months ago