Part I. Getting Started

The Impetus

Having biked in Germany many years ago, my wife, Linny, and I decided to use some Frequent Flier miles and do it again. I prepared for the trip by first of all getting some ADFC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club) Biking Maps of the two German states: Baden-Wuerttemberg (B-W) and Bayern (Bavaria). The maps I used were of the scale 1:150,000 which were quite adequate for finding our way through the country. (There are finer scale maps--1:75,000--but they are not necessary.) A list can be found at http://www.fahrradtouren.de/shop2-bva-Radtourenkarten-Deutschland.htm. I was lucky in that I had a friend in Germany who bought them and brought them to me. The shipping charges from, say, Amazon.de, are quite high.

The Language

I studied German fifty years ago in college so I can get by with a phrase book (I highly recommend Rick Steves' book) in Germany. Most younger Germans speak fluent English and are quite willing and able to help you out. For work on the Web I found Google's translation service useful (translate.google.com), even though the translations at times were almost unintelligible.

The Route

We decided that we would fly into Frankfurt, assemble our bikes at the airport, load up our panniers, and ride some distance that day just for the exercise and to help us adjust to the time zone change (+7 hours from Dallas). Then we would train down to Heidelberg for a two-day visit. And from there we would begin our journey. The guiding principle of this trip was to bike the Donau (Danube River) Radweg (Bikeway) which follows the entire length of the Donau River from Donaueschingen in B-W to the German-Austrian border at Passau--a distance of 773 km. (We had stumbled upon this bike path many years ago on our first biking adventure in Germany. I was fascinated by the idea of riding it.) In fact, this bikeway is only a part of a Pan-European bike path (Euro Velo 6) that crosses France, Switzerland, and follows the Donau all the way to the Black Sea!

I discovered the Heidelberg-Schwarzwald-Bodensee (HSB) Radweg that we could follow all the way from Heidelberg to Donaueschingen to pick up the Donau Radweg. Linny really loved the last walled city we visited so planned to leave the Donau Radweg at Donauwoerth and head up to Noerdlingen on the Romantische Strasse Radweg. From there we would strike out northeastward on regional bike paths toward Treuchtlingen to intersect the Altmuehl Radweg. We would take that bikeway eastward to Kelheim where we would once again be on the Donau Radweg. We would take this bikeway on to Wien (Vienna).

Hotel Accommodations

An invaluable tool in the planning and execution of this trip was the site http://www.bettundbike.de/. The Bett & Bike program is a wonderful resource for bikers in Germany. All types of hotels (Hotel, Gasthaus, monasteries, youth hostels, etc.) are invited to become members of this organization. To do so, they must agree to offer bikers certain services--booking a room for just one night, providing secure storage for bikes, providing box lunches (if there is a kitchen), calling ahead to reserve a room for the next night, doing small amounts of laundry, if possible, and other services. Go to the site listed above, enter the name of the Radweg you will be traveling, and up will pop a list of all the facilities along that route. You will be overwhelmed by the number of hotels so you might want to restrict your search. (Near the top of the page you will see "suche aendern," which will give you the opportunity to limit the listing to hotels that are only a limited distance from the Radweg.) We printed a list for each of the bikeways that we traveled and sought out those on the list first. Actually though, most all of the various types of hotels welcome bikers and will help them out as necessary. You need to understand that biking is a national pastime and the country is well-suited to this type of travel.

Financing

We financed the trip with an ATM card from our U.S. bank. Although we had heard that our ATM cards are more primitive than European ones, we had no trouble getting cash or finding ATMs. One caution though: many smaller hotels will not accept American credit cards and require payment in cash. But with the density of ATMs we never found that to be a problem. And the exchange rate using the ATM was within one-tenth of one percent of the official exchange rate, a fact I determined after we returned and I could compare the rates.

Luggage

Since our trip was self-supporting we each carried all of our possessions in two rear panniers. Everything went in those two rather small suitcases--clothes, shoes, toiletries, maps, lists, books. Linny made sure that we packed clothes that we could use in layers for warmth. We planned the trip for early fall--September and October--so we had to be prepared for all kinds of weather--wet, dry, hot, and cold. We each carried an outer plastic rain suit, a water-resistant jacket, a sweater, T-shirts, biking shorts, and an extra pair of shoes. I made up a tourist outfit that consisted of a long-sleeve shirt, pants with zip-out legs, underwear, socks, and shoes and stored it in a separate bag for exclusive use when we were not on our bikes. Actually, I carried three such tourist outfits which was a real waste. Two were more than sufficient. The maps turned out to be a minor problem. I carried at least eight of them for the entire trip which was completely unnecessary since they were readily available at bookstores and sporting goods stores in modest-sized cities. So I could have just purchased them as we went and saved myself quite a few pounds of excess weight. As it was my two panniers weighed forty pounds and Linny's weighed in at thirty pounds.

Traveling by Train

On several occasions we took the train with our bikes. With no advance notice you can almost always find a local train (or a sequence of such) that will get you to your destination. These are not the fastest trains, but they are considerably faster than pedaling. One can go online to http://www.dbahn.de to get information on trains. Sometimes there is a separate charge for your bike, sometimes not. You must ask to find out when you need a ticket for your bike. For the local trains, when you are waiting for the train's arrival at a specified track, you can position yourself and your bike near the front of the train (or where it will be when it arrives) and as the train pulls into the station look for the car that has the silhouette of a bike painted on it. That's the one you want to board. You should find that there is a section of seats folded up. You can lean your bike against these and secure it with a seatbelt-like strap. If those seats are all occupied, you must just stand and hold your bike up. (I've seen natives come in and tell those sitting in the seats to move to another seat, but my German was not good enough for me to attempt this.)

If you want to cover a large distance on an express train, you generally need to make reservations a day in advance. This can be done on the phone or at the train station. In this case you will be assigned a space for your bike and a seat to sit in. Again the bike car is usually at the front of the train so be near there as express trains often only stop for a short period of time before continuing on. Get your bike on, then you can find your assigned seat. Often you can just sit in the bike car.