Day 80: Worms to Mainz

May 8, 2025

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We hoped to find an open post office today, to send that garage key back to the Seltz hotel. But this is May 8, a national holiday in most European countries to celebrate the end of WW II. We asked ourselves, would they celebrate this in Germany? The answer seems to be yes, although supporting legislation is quite recent, some even just last year. They celebrate it as a day of liberation from the fascist regime. It is still possible that this is only in Berlin - we'll check the post office here in Worms soon. Scanning the internet, we see this statement from the Berlin mayor:

"It is our responsibility that we never forget. It is our responsibility to ensure that history does not repeat itself," emphasized Wegner. "It is our responsibility to stand up for democracy and defend it against enemies from within and without." After all, peace and democracy cannot be taken for granted and democracy is also coming under pressure in Germany."

We find it great that the mayor is thinking this way, but so worrisome that these comments are taking on more relevance both here and in North America.

Anyway, we will see it all boil down soon as to whether we send our letter today or not!

Well OK, Worms turned out to be open for business after all. Just look at the bakery guy on the phone, probably buying and selling truckloads of bread today.

There was even a small market in the square. Though small, it had most of the essentials. I managed to find a sheep cheese with whole black peppers, and Dodie found a poppyseed cheesecake!

Quite something to have a portable wood fired bread oven.

This looks like a gate to the city, that we passed through on the town's east side, but a date on the building says 1900. We also learned that the building houses a secondary school today.

A bit south from where we left the city is the Nibelungen bridge, and the Nibelungen tower. The Nibelungens refers to a German folk legend from about 1000 years ago. It has dragons being slayed and the Nibelungian Hoard being contended for. Worms is somehow at the centre of the tale.

Oh look, Hans and Petra that we met the other day are ahead of us, and took a much better picture of the tower:

As our route took us parallel to the Rhine, we noted that there as a lot of heavy industry in this area. I remarked to Dodie that "you can't be an industrial power without industry", and she agreed. But it's best if they put it somewhere we aren't. "Mordor" seemed to come up a lot in the conversation.

Mordor, making Orcs? Nope Proctor and Gamble, probably making Tide. Do you want your clothes clean, or not??

Barges ply the Rhine. They move faster than we pedal!

We had been too early for the post office in Worms, so we decided to detour a little, to the town of Eich.

The post office was near this church. At 11:00 a.m. the church bell started to ring, and went on, seemingly without stop. On receiving our video of the event, Laurie suggested that it could have been 80 strikes, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII. Possible!

This church, like many others, was for some reason topped by a chicken.

Back on track, it looked like this. Dike riding, or beside the dike riding, is never all that thrilling.

It was exciting to see the town of Oppenheim appear in the distance. It looks very nice, with its multiple churches and surrounding vineyards. From Worms north there is a famous wine region.

Inside Oppenheim, there turned out to be hills. But the streets were also handsome, on the way up to the churches.

We had a peek into the smaller St. Bartholomew church, from the 14th century.

The church had some porcelain and gold coloured statues as its main feature, but also quite a lot of fresco.

The room with the frescoes was quite dark, so only this one shot came out.

We headed over toward the bigger and fancier Katharine church. Nearby there was an explanation of Luther's trip to the Diet in Worms. Earlier I had written that he called it, but in fact he was summoned to it. (It was 1521, and the Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, called the Diet for Luther to answer a Papal Bull from Leo X, which denounced 41 of Luther's propositions. Luther defended himself at the Diet, and got condemned as a heretic.)

Near the church this gaggle of bikes was parked. They were all ebikes, which caught my attention. Later, their owners showed up, and we learned they were from Frankfurt, on a quick trip down here.

The St Catherine's Church. It was started in 1225 and completed in 1438.

The main feature of the church was scads of terrific stained glass. A pamphlet about the church had three pages about the windows. They certainly were colourful and detailed:

Some of the images were a little strange, like this "dove"? with the funny head.

We see some modernistic elements and also oriental themes in this unusual window.

A whole other aspect of this church was tombs, again getting a lot of play in the pamphlet. I assume these are some of them, below. The dead people are from the 1500's.

We left Oppenheim and headed for the Rhine again, near Nierstein. By the river there is a memorial marking the fact that a 366-meter pontoon bridge was built by the 249th Engineer Combat Battalion on March 22-23, 1945, in just 18 hours. This bridge, part of the Rhine River crossing by the U.S. Third Army, was the first successful assault crossing since Napoleon. The story of the crossing was set out on two rather detailed panels, one in English and one in German. As we puzzled over the English one, which proved way too detailed for us, another cyclist was reading the German one.

As we all prepared to carry on downriver, the other cyclist struck up a conversation. Of course this included the Usual Questions, but the cyclist, Hans, went on to cover a lot more topics. He had spent time at Ivy League universities in the U.S., was familiar with Montreal, and spoke good French - having lived for two years in Paris. He had also travelled the world, including time in Africa. We found it remarkable that Hans was able to speak on Canadian and American politics, and on music too - for example analyzing the music and career of Joni Mitchell. Hans was now the third person in Germany in the last two days that had shown a strong grasp of North American and world topics.

I think this might not happen in the reverse direction for a German visiting Canada. In fact I said to Dodie that probably I could not name one German singer or group. But I backtracked on that, because I do know Trio, and their old hit "Da, da, da"!

Of all the things Hans talked about, probably the weightiest was the assertion that its no use being proud of a German, Canadian, or other nationality, since this is just a pure accident of birth. Better for people to focus on their individual traits and achievements, while being citizens of the World.

The very knowledgeable Hans from Heidelberg.

As we carried on toward Mainz, we found ourselves in the vines, and that we were in now a substantial wine area.

The old city of Mainz was 80% destroyed in the War, so what we have now is a fairly plain place. We wove our way from the river side in to our hotel, by the train station. We did this attracting only one further set of Usual Questions. It was someone who loves cycle touring and was planning to leave shortly for Vienna by bike.

We did pass by one piece of old Mainz - the Wood Tower. This was constructed in the first half of the 15th century. It is named for the wood market once held outside its gate.

Our first and so far only bit of old Mainz.

We rather liked our hotel, the Konigshof, for its easy going approach to bikes in the lobby.

With the bikes right there, and with this hotel doing breakfast early, we will be free to get up and leave town as early as we like. That could be pretty early, because we seem to have a longish distance mapped out for the tomorrow, and in fact some longer distances for the coming days.

Early in our ride today, we were photographing distant Kestrels, and in fact we saw lots of them during the day. They hover enticingly, until you get out the camera, and then they move off. Here is one, anyway:

Another raptor that was around a lot was the Western Marsh Harrier. Unfortunately this does not add to 2025, since we already saw it in the Camargue!

Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 2,787 km (1,731 miles)

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