September 4, 2017
Madam , You Are Too Fat For Those ...: day 28 - Ulm to Donauworth
For this first time on this trip we had omelettes for breakfast at a great (pretty high class) café just down the street from our hotel. What a difference that seems to make. We had lots of energy and felt great cycling out of Ulm.
Our goal was to hit Regensberg in three days time, giving us about 80 km a day to do that. The riding today was pretty flat and there was fog and mist all morning, not much to see as a result but good for cycling.
It started to clear off around 1 pm and we could see we were in basic farming and light industrial areas. Nothing too exciting but pleasant enough to bike through.
By about 3 pm we were pulling into Donauworth. The landscape started to change, a few more hills and the river was narrowing and winding more, and Donauworth itself was a really pretty town. It was turning into a really lovely evening and we wanted to camp. There was a campsite shown in Donauworth but it looked like it was at a boat club, and we had been skunked by these before (no actual camping). We had convinced ourselves to push on to Nueberg about 40 km further along when Kirsten saw the tourist info office. To our very pleasant surprise, it turned out there was camping at the boat club, and it was pretty cheap. We really liked the feel of Donauworth so we decided to pitch up here for the night.
The Boat club offered camping to kayakers (we’ve seen quite a few on the Danube so far), cyclists and walkers at 7 Euros a head. When we got there we were the only folks there. We set up camp, put our money in the registration box and then set off back into town for a cleansing ale and dinner.
Donauworth has a really nice pedestrian area just outside the old city walls with several cafes and restaurants. We had a beer and bruschetta at an Italian café and then headed down the street to a very nice looking Indian Restaurant. It was now about 7 pm and there were a couple of other tables filled, but it was still pretty empty. We sat down at a table for two on the patio outside, ordered a beer and our dinner.
As we were giving our order, the waiter, who spoke some English, was quite concerned with the amount of food we were ordering. We assured him that we knew what we were doing and that everything would be ok. Looking a bit skeptical, he went away with our order in hand.
K and I were half joking when we said that we’d have to move to a bigger table to fit all the food on it when waiter number 2, who spoke slightly better English came to us and sternly said “ You have ordered too much food, you have to move to this bigger table.”
Stifling our laughter, we obediently moved to the table for 4 beside us. Food started arriving (with lots of room to put it down), and we started eating.
While we were munching through our (very very good) dinner, we both thought the situation was basically the same as the one K experienced in Saigon several years back. She and a friend wandered into a woman’s clothing store to check it out. It was a Vietnamese woman’s clothing store, not one that catered to the expat community. A diminutive (even by VN standards) women came over to K and her friend and sweetly said “ I am sorry Madam, but you are too fat for these”. K and Anne Marie had a good laugh, and this was long before Google Translate was around to completely mangle cross cultural communication. The lovely lady (probably) didn’t mean to insult them, she was just trying to tell them that they were way too big to fit into anything in the store, as 99% of western women would be. We’re pretty sure that our waiter was basically saying the same thing to us … too much food to fit on the table, not into us.
When all the food was gone, and the dishes cleared away, we got a thumbs up, and a shot of schnapps from the waiter. Back on our bikes, we pedaled off to the boat club under a nearly full moon and had a great night's sleep beside the water.
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Song of the day:
I had just read in the morning that Walter Becker of Steely Dan had just passed away (too young at 67), so in memoriam ….
My Old School by Steely Dan …. A ‘feel good’ song, if such a thing exists by them. I didn’t realise that this song was from 1973 and when I checked out the live performance version from American Bandstand, well, this just had to be the one ….. I hope to god the 70’s fashion does not come back … music good, clothes … not so good.
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Today's ride: 94 km (58 miles)
Total: 2,004 km (1,244 miles)
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https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/radwegs/altenstadt-to-sonderheim/#21677_p036k3knge9k223v0slyu22ti66
3 years ago