Left Germany this morning, starting with a 20km or so ride from our Protestant hostel to Uberlingen, then down the shores of the Bodensee to Meersburg, where we caught a small car ferry to Constance, which is still in Germany but right against the Swiss frontier.
The ride from Constance along the Rhine to Schafhausen was really nice, through the usual mix of small villages, the occasional small town, farmland, and a couple of pieces of woods.
The Swiss have a well marked series of cycle routes which are generally simple to follow, and so far Swiss drivers seem as generally well housebroken as their German and Austrian counterparts, with the usual slight question mark for delivery drivers and any Audi you see…
We’re staying in a very interesting hostel inside Schloss Laufen, which is directly beside and above the famous Rheinfall, where the entire Rhine crashes over a really dramatic waterfall. The hostel is… old-fashioned. Really genuinely antique, there are ten people in our room in a sort of massive bunk with five on the top deck and five below. Apparently one of the rooms on the ground floor has eighteen in it. It really is like they set this place up in the 1920s (or possibly earlier…) and haven’t changed a thing since.
Also, Switzerland makes the rest of Europe look cheap. More on that later…
Off deeper into Switzerland tomorrow, to some sort of farm hostel further along the Rhine. No idea if WiFi will be available, so this place might get quite for a day or three.
