Six Wheels In Germany – August 2017 (Month 41)

Cycling this month

Here are the statistics for my rides this month. Not included is my work commute on 30 August but I had to write this blog before then – that gives me another 8.2km.

Notice I have not ridden Penelope once this month!

Klaus is now way ahead of me for his riding for the year as he has commuted to work 11 times. That’s a minimum of 90km for the route, often longer if he does a diversion on the way home. He was well over 1100km for August.

And here is my ‘wheel’ to show the roads I have ridden in August.

The mega hills in the first few days are our tour to Aachen, Liege and Maastricht which you can read about here.

I won a prize!

…and so did Klaus.

We took part in the Stadtradeln action which was a 3 week cycling challenge. It happened to be partly when we were on our summer tour to Usedom and Berlin so we both had quite a high mileage, but that wasn’t actually the reason we won the prizes – I think it was actually just luck. Anyway, we received our prizes (along with 10 others) in the Kempen Town Hall, with the Bürgermeister (mayor) handing them over.

Klaus got a Buff and I got a voucher for a sauna at the local fitness club.

A Sunday ride with Podbiker

Klaus and I received a message from Stefan (Podbiker) who asked if we fancied a ride the next day (a Sunday) as he was free, so we arranged for him to come to us for 9am and we would ride somewhere nice. We ended up in Xanten, riding home via Bislicher Insel. This is a lovely route and three velomobiles certainly cause a stir!

Unfortunately there were rather a lot of people who insisted on touching the velomobiles and one guy even lifted up Celeste at the back. When Klaus shouted at him he said “I only wanted to know how heavy it is!!” Klaus commented that he could have asked, and that we didn’t really like people touching our private property, at which point the man said that if we didn’t want people touching the bikes then we shouldn’t park them here. Not a good attitude.

Klaus took a couple of action shots underway…

I ended up with 99km for the day. Klaus did the extra 1km but my calves were really tight after our longish stop for food most of the way home, partly as a result of my hill walking the day before (see below), so I was lazy and ended up with only 2 100km rides this month.

Uli’s birthday party

Cycling chum Uli turned 70 and invited loads of friends and relations for breakfast at the restaurant near De Witt See (a breakfast which finished at about 16:00). He asked Klaus, Jochen and I to come in our Velomobiles so of course we did!

And here am I explaining tyres to Hartmut and Ralf.

We had a lovely day celebrating with Uli and eating and drinking way too much!

Life in Germany

<3>A new kitchen! Well, preparations for it anyway

August has been another busy month, but this time busy due to rather mega works in my flat on the kitchen.

I decided after Klaus moved in that living without a dishwasher when having to do the washing up for two people is really a step too far, and so we decided to upgrade the kitchen. When I moved into the flat it had a small kitchen without any wall cupboards as it was just for a holiday let – people don’t have a lot of food or utensils for a week’s holiday. However, I had very quickly filled up the cupboards and wanted something a bit more spacious, also a larger fridge as for two of us the one I had was a bit small.

I ordered the kitchen last month from the local kitchen shop (and ordered a new couch at the same time! an expensive day!) but it wouldn’t be delivered till mid-September. This almost 2 month wait hasn’t been a bad thing as it turned out we had to do quite a lot of preparation of the room, including wiring.

First of all we had to take out the removable furniture – the fridge/freezer, a narrow floor cupboard, an Ikea storage unit, a wheelable set of shelves, a cutlery and crockery wall unit.

Once these items were out, all that remained was the single stretch of worktop with sink and hob and the cupboards underneath, with one small area of worktop.

The flat has a number of mirrors as decoration and there was a large area of wall mirrors that had to be removed. Klaus and I wandered round Self, the local DIY store, and bought some special gloves that are resistant to glass as he had to pull this lot off by hand with the help of a chisel, as well as safety glasses.

After this we had to remove the wallpaper which took us two evenings to do successfully.

Then it was time for the electrical work, which was done by an electrician who is a friend of Frank’s but with significant help from Frank and Klaus. The three of them worked really hard for two evenings and laid in the new cable for the hob and dishwasher and increased my number of wall sockets from 3 to 14.

What was tricky was that the special cable for the cooker and hob had to end up on the other side of the room but couldn’t go via the floor (tiles) or over the ceiling (tiles) so they routed the cable along the wall, through the Rollladenkasten (boxes for the shutters) and then out the other side. They did a great job!

And here are the finished walls. They had to work around a previous cable which was in a nice swooping bow shape rather than vertical or horizontal. We had to fit our horizontal/vertical cables around and behind this. Building norms were different 50 years ago when the house was built!

There were also some tiles that had to come away and friend Ralf (who has just ordered a velomobile so finds Klaus and I very useful to chat to!) happens to have a tiling company so he came along one evening after work and removed the tiles for us.

Once the tiles were gone he put in some plasterboard in the gap.

Now we had some big gaps to fill in where the cables were, and this was a job for Frank and Klaus.

Frank mixed up some plaster and with Klaus’s help with the mixing and preparation he filled all the gaps.

After a few days it had dried and shrunk a bit so Frank did another go over whilst Klaus and I were away for a couple of days. He did a perfect job of smoothing the walls, filling all the little holes for screws and rawlplugs and a few areas where the surface had crumbled. Everything was ready for us to wallpaper and then paint.

The rest of the work won’t happen until September, however, so you will have to wait for the next instalment of Auntie Helen’s Kitchen Transformation!

Andreas Scholl Concert and a trip to the Bergstraße

I have long been a fan of Andreas Scholl and regularly used to travel to Germany to attend his concerts. Since I have lived here I haven’t actually been to many concerts, but I found out about one in Kloster Eberbach (near Wiesbaden) in August so got a couple of tickets.

As it is a three hour drive home Klaus and I decided it would be better to stay overnight after the concert somewhere near Wiesbaden and then the next day visit Klaus’s old stomping ground near Mannheim.

So we booked into the hotel Zum Neuen Schwann in Walluf where I had stayed previously on one of my bike tours. It was just a short walk across the road to the Rhine.

There was a huge electric storm whilst we were eating our evening meal but fortunately the worst of the rain had stopped as we arrived at Kloster Eberbach. We had arrived an hour before the concert was due to start and this was a very good thing as there were what seemed like thousands of cars trying to park… we got a reasonable spot and then went into the shelter of the cloister buildings to wait the hour until the concert started.

We had the cheapest seats in the side aisle without a view of the stage but it just so happened I could see Andreas Scholl between two pillars as he was singing – but nothing else really. It was, of course, wonderful!

During the interval Klaus took this great photo of the period instruments on the stage – they did not appreciate the high humidity after the thunderstorm and had to be tuned every ten minutes or so!

The next day after a leisurely breakfast we set off towards Mannheim. We took a more scenic route rather than the Autobahn the whole way and Klaus showed me lots of the areas he used to cycle – and we passed Frankenstein and Reichenbach!

He suggested we go for a short walk on a hill he used to ride up which sounded nice, but it was a hot day so I said I would need to buy a hairband or something to keep my hair off my neck so we stopped in Bensheim for tea and cake (of course) and I bought a hairband in a local shop. All the various German political parties were out canvassing – but of course I am not able to vote in these elections.

We left Bensheim and headed towards this hill for our walk… which turned out to be a former volcano, Melibokus, and it is 517 metres high (ground level at the bottom is 100 metres). Fortunately the car park was half way up.

First we walked to a very impressive castle Auerbach which is a ruin but was being used for a wedding reception – they were just doing the initial preparations so we were allowed to look around. The views from the top were excellent despite the haze. There had been clouds a couple of hours earlier so we were very happy to be able to see this much.

We were looking across at the Melibokus which was clearly higher. Interesting.

Klaus asked if I fancied the walk and I said “why not”? So we set off.

It was 4km to the top of Melibokus with a steady gradient all the way. We were passed by lots of mountain bikers and a few roadies – this is a regular route for cyclists as the road is tarmacked the whole way (the US Army had a radio station on the top).

We had a lovely walk despite the heat which meant we were sweating loads and had just one bottle of water between us. But the view at the top – and the sense of achievement – was well worth it!!

We walked down again (it was this that gave us both aching muscles two days later!) and enjoyed the air conditioning in the car as we drove to visit Klaus’s parents who lived nearby. We had tea and cake with them (Klaus’s father reads my blog so knows about my cake-eating ways) and it was good to meet them. Then it was time to head off home, this time taking the scenic route along the Rhine with some diversions due to closed roads that took us up into the hills. Fun!!!

Cakes this month

Here are a selection of the cakes that I, or my friends, have enjoyed this month!

In England

As this blog post is published I am in England for my annual hospital visit to check my arm prosthesis. As the appointment is on a Thursday and I have another medical appointment the next day we are also staying for the weekend and will catch up with some of my friends as well as empty the supermarkets of teabags, Quaker Porage Oats (for my boss), Rich Tea biscuits (for friend Christine), paracetamol and antihistamines (stupidly expensive in Germany), Walkers Crisps for Babs and more… We are driving over via Eurotunnel so that will be a bit tiring but it is the easiest way for the two of us, our luggage and all the things we need to bring back to Germany!

I hope you have enjoyed reading this month’s report. There’s not so much new stuff to say now, but I can confirm life in Germany is still great!

2 comments

  1. Good to hear about how your months go by.
    How is Alfie? I am building my own Q with Bafang and Alfine 11 and have found your blog and writings on YACF very helpful. Thank you.l

  2. Hey Helen,
    it’s nice to hear that somebody else lives in desperate times, i.e. without working kitchen. After moving into my own appartment with a view on lake Constance I still need to install my kitchen – installing a cable duct for electrical sockets, bonding a nice back wall and installing the whole kitchen. The rest of the appartment doesn’t look much better either, but a kitchen without running water simply isn’t up to the task…
    I hope everything works out great and you can enjoy your new fancy ktichen in next to no time!

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