After leaving the Rhine Gorge we came quickly to what looked on the map like a pretty ugly section of the tour, one big city after another — Bonn, Köln, Düsseldorf, Essen. Then we’d be in Holland. However, I was quite surprised. This section was much better than I expected. Germany does an excellent job of having green areas right up to and even inside the big cities, and their recommended bicycle routes of course take advantage of these forests and parks. Coming into Düsselforf, for example, looks like continuous built-up city on my map, but we were on pleasant paths through parks and the university campus right into the center of the city. In Essen we coasted straight down to the central train station, and the route into Köln followed the parks along the Rhine for many kms into the city center.
In Köln we stayed with our second and last Warm Showers host of the trip, Agathe, and her boyfriend, Kamal, both from France. Agathe came to Germany with the goal of learning German, but she speaks French at home and English at work so progress is slower than she expected. She’s travelled some by bicycle in South America (Peru and Brazil?), but what I found fascinating about her travels was her way of finding accommodation. She travelled solo and before dark would simply find someone and ask if she could spend the night at their house. She met lots of people and often travelled in places where she didn’t know the language. Seems like that would be incredibly tiring. I’ve never heard of anyone else travelling the way Agathe did.
In our rest day in Köln (where we had the first rain of the trip) we visited the city’s huge cathedral, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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