Home of the bratwurst (oh Luther, Goethe and Schiller too)
When I said earlier that German rye bread formed a large portion of our diet, I failed to mention the other important components. Around breakfast we almost always stopped in the nearest small or medium-sized town, and Tonie followed her nose to the nearest bakery, where she bought two or three fresh rolls to go with our cheese. During the day we stopped at almost every ice cream shop, with Tonie always in search of the largest scoop for the least amount of money (for the curious, the winner in scoop size and quality was a cafe in Erfurt at 60 cents per scoop).
I would also occasionally fall for the ubiquitous sausage stands, and learned the difference between a bratwurst (the Thuringian contribution to German cuisine) and a bockwurst. The remainder of our diet consisted of the occasional sardine can and various fruit.
It was the middle of plum season, and once we coasted our way out of the forest on the morning of the second day we started coming across a lot of plum trees. We made regular stops to pick them, and I would also have my fill of pears and apples that grew almost everywhere, despite Tonie's warnings that they needed two more weeks to ripen. Unfortunately I could not allow them this luxury and kept chewing the sour (but tasty) fruit until my teeth began to hurt.
We descended to Erfurt in the early afternoon on the second day, after stopping in a beautiful cemetery for lunch (don't laugh, it was a really great spot with benches, running water, and even some plum trees). Erfurt was a very pretty town, but very frustrating for taking photos because almost every street had electric lines overhead to power the streetcars. The downtown belonged to trams and pedestrians.
From Erfurt we headed east to Weimar, passing many rolling hills, scenic villages, and an old Soviet army base with German signs warning of deadly danger to anyone straying from the main thoroughfare. We decided that camping in that area would not be healthy, so we kept biking towards Weimar, where we expected to find a youth hostel to sleep in, and, almost equally important, to shower, since the last two days had been sunny and hot, while the lakes and streams we passed were unfit to swim in, even to a Russian.
I would also occasionally fall for the ubiquitous sausage stands, and learned the difference between a bratwurst (the Thuringian contribution to German cuisine) and a bockwurst. The remainder of our diet consisted of the occasional sardine can and various fruit.
It was the middle of plum season, and once we coasted our way out of the forest on the morning of the second day we started coming across a lot of plum trees. We made regular stops to pick them, and I would also have my fill of pears and apples that grew almost everywhere, despite Tonie's warnings that they needed two more weeks to ripen. Unfortunately I could not allow them this luxury and kept chewing the sour (but tasty) fruit until my teeth began to hurt.
We descended to Erfurt in the early afternoon on the second day, after stopping in a beautiful cemetery for lunch (don't laugh, it was a really great spot with benches, running water, and even some plum trees). Erfurt was a very pretty town, but very frustrating for taking photos because almost every street had electric lines overhead to power the streetcars. The downtown belonged to trams and pedestrians.
From Erfurt we headed east to Weimar, passing many rolling hills, scenic villages, and an old Soviet army base with German signs warning of deadly danger to anyone straying from the main thoroughfare. We decided that camping in that area would not be healthy, so we kept biking towards Weimar, where we expected to find a youth hostel to sleep in, and, almost equally important, to shower, since the last two days had been sunny and hot, while the lakes and streams we passed were unfit to swim in, even to a Russian.
posted by Dmitri Evseev at 4:57 PM
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