One weekend I decided to take an afternoon ride across the Rhein river into France. Equipped with my boss’s mountain bike and my camera I set off without a map or any idea of what lay ahead other than that there was a bridge near my apartment and a ferry further up the river.
Crossing the Rhein. It was a few more kilometers to the border with France. Karlsruhe is right in the crux of the piece of France that juts into Germany. Had the world wars not happened, the whole Rhein river valley would still belong to Germany.
Looking out across the Rhein from the center of the bridge.
At the border crossing between France and Germany. This is looking back toward the German side.
The sign marking the border. No border or customs stations exist anywhere near this crossing. The old German customs house is an American 50s style diner now. A soccer field even crosses the border. And the town that is bisected by the border seems to not care a bit that half are French citizens and the other are German. Everyone spoke a heavy dialect of German. They also didn’t particularly like to speak to me in German and in fact I had to generally communicate in French or English. They all could understand me just fine. They just didn’t want to since I was speaking high German like that taught in the public schools and spoken at home in the northern parts of Germany.
A little concrete marker showing the border. 1991 was when this particular border crossing was opened. Now the marker serves as a good place to park a bicycle.
This cute little ferry took me back across the Rhein into Germany. Shortly before the ferry a carload of Germans pulled up alongside me and asked for directions in very bad French. I answered them in equally poor French that I wasn’t from there and had no idea where the town was that they were looking for. This ferry was built on top of old pontoon boat things left over from World War II. In fact the whole contraption appeared to be straight out of the American Army Corps of Engineers playbook. A few more kilometers of riding after I crossed the ferry and I was back at my apartment, tired but none the worse for wear.