I've been riding a lot in Germany recently. On one ride, I'm riding along about 1m from the kerb, doing about 18kph into a headwind. Some motorist pulls along side, winds down the window, and shouts something unintelligible at me across the front of his much annoyed passenger.
I think he was suggesting I should have been riding on the pavement next to the road...
Fast forward a bit, and I'm in Southern Germany, riding along on a nice big road that in the UK would be an A road. On my right there is a 2-3m wide strip of tarmac that is a cycle way. Unfortunately where I joined this road, there was no break in the Armco barrier, meaning that for the last 3km I've been unable to get from the main road, over to the safer cycle lane. Eventually I find a gap in the Armco and can move across, but not before I've had a lot of beaping and a couple of people shouting at me. No idea what they were saying, Doppler effect, wind noise, and them speaking German, no idea...
Another day near by in Southern Germany, I'm riding along heading for my hotel for the night. As I ride it starts to rain, then the rain gets harder, and harder, and just as I'm starting to question if I should have bought a kayak, rather than a bike, it gets harder again. As I'm cycling along the road has started to tilt up, and up, and I go round a corner and pass the 15% incline sign. I'm on a fully loaded touring bike, I've already got quite a bit of distance under my belt, so eventually I stop and get off to walk. I'm pushing the bike up the hill. I get a few beeps from cars over taking. Then a white van pulls alongside me. The window winds down and he says something to me in German. I smile and point up the hill and say "der berg". The van pulls off, and then pulls across in front of me.
Oh crap. Did I say the wrong thing?
The engine shuts off.
Ut oh.
I hear the door open. Footsteps.
This can't be good...
He says hello, fumbles for his keys, and opens the back of the van. It's completely empty. He gestures forward to pick up the front of my bike. Oh. He's going to give me a lift up the hill! Win. I point at the mud on the bike and the carpet in the back of the van. He shakes his head, Kein Problem. Together we load the bike into the van.
I walk round to the passenger door. It's locked. The driver has got in and is fumbling with the keys. Utoh, is this infact the most audatious and blazen attempt to steal a bike? A few seconds later he spots that the door is locked, leans over and unlocks it. I climb in.
In silence we drive up the hill (which would have taken me hours to push the bike up), and he drops me next to the road I was about to turn onto that follows the railway track to Tuttlingen. I thank him profusely, wish him a safe journey, and wave him off, before getting on my bike and riding off*.
This is the second time in just over 3 months that a kind German stranger has given me and my bike a lift up a hill, the other a farmer drove off to find a trailer for his tractor, to come back and pick me up, before trafficing me up the hill, across the border, into France...
J
*Slightly pissing on the "yay, humans can be kind!" feeling I had as I rode down the valley, I did come across a house with a big confederate flag flying, as well as a selection of signs suggesting anyone approaching the property did so at substantial risk to their person...