Danube Bike Tour Day 1: Donaueschingen to Tuttlingen
Posted by Cassie, November 12th, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Distance: 37km
We began our bike tour along the Danube River at its source in Donaueschingen. There is a spring that is considered the Danube Source. The water in the spring was really clear, and you could see bubbles coming up from the bottom. We arrived at the spring just as a big busload of tourists mobbed the place. On the bright side, we had plenty of people we could ask to take a photo of the two of us at the Danube Source. 🙂
Danube Source
Starting our bike tour along the Danube at the source of the river
The bike route along the Danube River is awesome! Most of the bike route is along dedicated bike paths, and the bike route is well marked. We began by riding through the river valley alongside the river. The Danube River starts out as a very small river that you could walk across and barely get your ankles wet. As we rode downstream, the river kept getting bigger and bigger. Just when it started looking more like a real river, it suddenly disappears at the Danube Sink and flows underground instead.
Danube River
We rode through several small towns, and we had some fun when we stopped at the Rathaus (townhall) in Morlingen. They had a small jail cage outside the Rathaus. We both went inside the jail cage to see what it was like to be inside. As Jonathan was taking a photo of me in the jail cage, another couple that was biking stopped, and they were amused at the sight of me in the jail cage. We started a trend because the couple locked each other up in the jail cage, and after they left, a couple girls played around in the jail cage, too. 🙂
Morlingen Rathaus
Cassie locked up in jail cage in front of Morlingen Rathaus
When we arrived in Tuttlingen, we had a lot of trouble finding the campground marked on the map. We rode by where it should have been, but instead, there was a big city park. We tried asking at the tourist office, but it was already closed for the day. The hours for places in Germany were horrible. They took a two hour lunch break in the middle of the day, and many places closed early, too. We tried to go to the library in Donaueschingen to access the Internet, but it closed at 1pm on Fridays. We went back to the big city park, and we stopped at a stand to ask the woman if she knew where the campground was. She didn’t speak any English, but we managed to communicate in broken German. She said the campground was behind her stand, and she was the person that we needed to pay to camp there. Of all the people in the park, we actually asked the person that was in charge of the campground. We found the campground, and it was just a small grassy field enclosed by a low wall of bushes. We have camped in some strange places on the trip, but this was crazy. The campground was in the middle of a public park right next to the main path through the park, and the park was full of people on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The campground was not what we were expecting, but the next campground was a long way. Despite our reservations about camping in a public park in the middle of a city, we decided to go ahead and camp there. In addition, this campground was the most expensive of the trip! We paid 20 euros to camp there. We didn’t feel comfortable setting up our tent with all the people walking and riding by the campground. We locked up our bikes and hid our stuff in the bushes and headed into town. We hiked up a hill above the city where some castle ruins were, and there were neat views of the city. When we returned to the campground, the park was pretty quiet. There were some policemen talking with some young teenagers in the park, and we weren’t sure that was good or bad. Fortunately, we didn’t encounter any crazy people wandering into our campsite in the middle of the night.
Tuttlingen Castle Ruins
Tuttlingen castle ruins
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