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Saturday, May 25, started with a delicious breakfast at our hotel in Meersburg, JUFA. Just like every hotel in this part of the world, that included Müsli. And since I was going to be riding my bike all day, I was more than happy to have a rather large heaping portion of it.

Our large tour group had a plan that day, in which we had a choice between two different distances. Our end point would be Lindau, an island town near the east end of the Bodensee which lay just on the other side of the state line in Bavaria (most of the German shore is in Baden-Württemberg). Halfway between them was Friedrichshafen. Anyone could either ride all the way to Lindau (43km), or if you were a slower rider, just ride 20km to Friedrichshafen and take the tour bus the rest of the way; it would be leaving at 2pm. I bravely announced my own plan: ride all the way to Lindau, and THEN turn around and go back to Friedrichshafen in time to catch the bus! If I could pull that off, I would rack up a total of 66km or about 41.25 miles.

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Along the border between Germany and Switzerland, there lies a long lake through which flows the mighty river Rhine, not too far from its source to the east. This massive lake is called the Bodensee, or sometimes Lake Konstanz, it touches three countries (Germany, Switzerland, and Austria), and is ringed by several biking and walking paths. From what I can tell during the short time I've lived here, it is a favorite vacation spot for Germans. This was the setting for this bike-centered trip on which I spent this Memorial Day weekend.

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I went through Sunday, August 4 following more or less the same blueprint as the day before. I started out with breakfast somewhere down the street from the hostel, and then spent the morning and early afternoon doing a makeshift pub crawl while dipping into the city's medieval Hungarian past.

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Looking back, I realized I'd made a mistake the day before by entering the festival right as it opened. I was likely accustomed to Tomorrowland where there was no other choice. Saturday morning, August 3, it finally occurred to me that I didn't have to go in until I really felt like it, and that I could spend the morning and afternoon seeing what I could in Cluj.

A little history: Cluj (pronounced "kloozh") is the biggest city in Transylvania, which used to be a part of Hungary. The city's Hungarian name is Kolozsvár. Though even when it was part of Hungary most of the people living there were Romanian. Cluj, no matter what country it was a part of, has always been mostly Romanian with a Hungarian minority. This minority must be pretty small because I didn't see a whole lot of bilingual signs and I didn't overhear anyone speaking Hungarian.

  1. Untold day 2
  2. Untold day 1 - First Impressions
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