Departure day has at last arrived in Zürich, Switzerland. It’s 8:30 am, the temperature is 7C with high of 12C predicted.
Kathy takes a few pics as we load the bikes and roll them out onto the street.
It’s goodbye time. Kathy is headed west to visit a friend in England, and my friend Ingo and I are headed east.
Ingo’s Traffic app gives us a good picture of Europe’s road closures and traffic jams, and he plots us a course through Switzerland, Austria and up into Germany.
The clear morning soon deteriorates into mist and drizzle and we are soon into our wet weather riding gear. My heated handgrips are doing a sterling job, but the temperature never exceeds 10C today.
It’s a day spent on the Autobahn, cruising at 120kmh, in and out of the slow lane, trucks on our right and Mercedes, Audi and BMW whistling past us on our left.
I need to concentrate, with my eyes in the mirrors. The unlimited speed on the Autobahn means following cars can be upon us in seconds, they don’t appreciate being held up and will tailgate us at speed, until we retreat into the truck lane again.
Ingo knows how to play this game, so I follow his lead, but the Autobahn is not my happy place.
Our day ends in a small town in Germany, near the Czech Republic border. We stop for the night at a family-run hotel, and enjoy great beer and typical German foods including platters of meats and cheeses. Ingo is vegetarian, so I never got to taste the cheeses.