Do not ride along the Swiss side of the Rhine after Basel. It might as well be the Alps. Hill after hill, dirt roads, winding freeways with fast cars and trucks. Not ideal. Today was the second hardest ride after that 100-mile’r in France. Take the German side all the way instead, it runs along the the EuroVelo15 and meets the EuroVelo6 in Schaffhausen.
At only 66 miles, the route took me about 11 hours to complete. Along the way, there were strikingly green-blue vistas on the Rhine. I met a young French guy about 15km outside Schaffhausen. Once he realized I was about to walk my bike up what felt like hill number 6,356 he kicked it into high gear and hightailed it out of there on his way to Lake Konstanz.
Today’s ride gave me slope-induced amnesia so I was pleasantly surprised when I rode up to Europe’s largest waterfall, the Rheinfall. I hate to say this but my honest first thought was, ‘I used to walk to class every day over a gorge this big in Ithaca and they never charged $5 for admission.’ Then I remembered that I’d paid a lot more than $5 for that privilege and I happily took some free pictures.
I stayed at the Youth Hostel by Hostelling International in Schaffhausen. I was famished at check-in with no sign of a restaurant in crawling distance so I acquiesced to a $17.50 hostel dinner. Spaetzle, ratatouille, lot’s of bread, and chocolate pudding were the veg options. The lunch-lady thought I was nuts.
“More spaetzle please.”
“Da?”
“Yes, please,” as I mimed a scooping gesture with my free hand.
“Guten?”
“More please,” as I took another scoop out of the air.
And so on and so forth until she finally laughed and moved onto the ratatouille. We did the same dance across the veggies and finally, my plate was more mound than round. This hostel dinner was worth every franc.
