tipsy in the danger zone

This post is about an 18km walk from Munchhausen to Neuburg. It’s the second border crossing into Germany. The last one, I think.

We woke up on yet another campground. Again it was camper vans and mobile homes all around. Just almost no people at all. We brushed our teeth, packed up our stuff, fetched some weirdly hot water from a faucet in the laundry room, and got going.

the sign

After about an hour of walking on the bike path we arrived at a sign that said (in French and German): ATTENTION! YOU ARE IN A DANGER ZONE. This seemed pretty alarming. According to the sign there was a major chemical plant nearby, and in case of an emergency a siren would ring three times for one minute each.

We continued walking until we arrived at a restaurant. It sat under some trees right on the riverbank, and it seemed to be a little bit on the expensive side. A lot of the dishes were upwards of 20€ or 30€.

Last meal in France? I asked the weirdo.

“Let’s drink wine,” said the weirdo.

pasta and wine

It turned out that ordering a whole bottle of wine was way more economical than getting several individual glasses. It also turned out that the expensive dishes were all meat and fish, and that pasta was cheap. So we ordered two plates of pasta for 9€ each, a bottle of a rosé for 15€, and one serving of crème brûlée for 10€. And while we were stuffing ourselves and slowly getting tipsy, it felt as if we had somehow beat the system.

back to Germany

The siren never rang, and we – tipsily – made it to the border. There was a EU sign at the border. It was azure, and it had a circle of twelve golden stars along with the (German) words FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY on it. This was the second time that The Longest Way was entering Germany, and this time it felt proper.

When we noticed a former customs station that had been converted to a bar/museum, we went in and took a look around. There wasn’t much to see, so we ordered two shots of liquor. The liquor was called Ficken. The word ficken means “to fuck” in German, and apparently the only reason anyone ever chose to drink this liquor was so that they could say “einmal ficken bitte!” (one fuck please!) at the bar.

It tasted sweet and a bit cheap.

Welcome to Germany, I said to the weirdo.

pictures

the walk from Munchhausen to Neuburg:

brushing my teeth at the campground in Munchhausen

the campground

I think this is what they call a milestone

ATTENTION! YOU ARE IN A DANGER ZONE

chemical plant near the border

last restaurant before the border

we got a bottle of wine and felt like adults

markers of previous Rhine floodings

Gate of Landau

I sit in the Gate of Landau on the border of France and Germany.

road sign pointing to Germany

French-German border at Lauterbourg

old border checkpoint (now a bar and a museum)

first drink in Germany

Germany has better drug stores than France

evening fog near Neuburg