French Revolutions

place
in the breakfast room, where a waitress was barking ‘Jacques! Deux oeufs!’ into
an intercom, although I couldn’t see who they might be for as my only fellow
guest was a giant ceramic rabbit. I’m not quite sure what it is with the Swiss,
but seeing this conspicuous item in the corner of the room I was reminded that
both the hotels we had previously patronised featured similar menageries: a
porcelain St Bernard by the reception desk in Chateau d’Oex; a glazed Alsatian
guarding a stairwell in Murten. The rabbit, however, was in a different league.
As well as being surreally oversized, easily as large as a well-fed circus
seal, it was arrestingly decorated with a huge floral garland hung in a
flamboyant Hawaiian ruff about its glossy beige neck. A frozen glower of
frustration demonstrated that it was aware not only of this humiliating
accessory, but also of its own inability to remove it.
    The rabbit was, in essence, the kind
of object that demanded an act of fatuousness from all passers-by, and before
Paul arrived I had attempted to negotiate its purchase.
    ‘I must have him,’ I muttered to the
waitress, staring at her with the pallid intensity of the hungover and aiming a
rigid but unsteady finger at the beast. ‘If I were to tell you,’ I continued as
she began to smile with difficulty, wheeling out my favourite Antiques
Roadshow catchphrase, ‘that an inferior example was recently sold at
auction to a rival collector for 68,000...’ but then I stopped, understanding
from the waitress’s expression that although this was by no means the first
time that the rabbit’s transfixing presence had obliged her to deal with an
unfunny guest, never before had she been required to do so in English, and in a
louder, clearer voice I said, ‘Deux oeufs, s’il vous plait.’
    Paul arrived and with patchy
enthusiasm we dispatched Jacques’ oeufs. Our bikes had spent the night in a
skittle alley in the hotel basement, and as I carried ZR back upstairs Paul
called out, ‘We could swap bikes here — the airport’s just down the road.’
    ‘Sorry?’ I shouted, much too loudly,
and hastily pedalled off without even clearing myself in.
    The airport was in France, which meant ninety minutes of roadside filth and fond farewells before I rolled over the
Rhine and into Germany, alone for the first time since the Pyrenees. As we’d
crudely mummified Paul’s bike with airport baggage tape and cardboard, I had
suddenly become mired in the deep melancholy that is the wine drinker’s
morning-after lot.
    ‘You’ve only got 500k left,’ said
Paul encouragingly, seeing my head drop as we reached the head of the check-in
queue.
    I nodded but could manage only an
upside-down smile. We shook hands and I thanked him again; then as he heaved
his entombed Saracen across to the oversized luggage gate I called out in a
small voice, ‘Hey — swap bikes with you now.’

Fifteen

     
     
    Germany did its best to comfort me, with blue skies and
cherry trees and unbelievably cheap groceries, though I’d have traded them all
for a tailwind. Along the westernmost edge of the Black Forest — the road went
straight through the ‘S’ of Schwarzwald — it wasn’t too bad, with the trees and
hills shielding me, but the last 35k to Freiburg-im-Breisgau were attritional.
Freiburg is the home town of Jan Ullrich, Germany’s premier cyclist and
effectively the world number two after Lance Armstrong, and after the ignorance
and apathy of Switzerland it was good to be back among the converted. A
home-made billboard bellowed ‘Hier kommt sie durch! tour de France am 20 Juli 2000 ab 11 Uhr!’
across a field of maize, and all afternoon a succession of serious cyclists
sped towards me with the wind in their wheels.
    If the French want to know why they
have not produced a Tour winner in the last fifteen years, I would advise them
to visit Freiburg. It occurred to me on the way in that the oncoming cyclists
were generally ten years younger than I am rather than thirty years older, and
freewheeling up to the town centre I beheld that the main station was ringed
with the largest collection of parked bicycles I have ever witnessed outside
documentaries about China. Three to a parking meter, five to a tree, endless
stacks in endless racks — there were tens of thousands of them, as sure a sign
as any of a vibrant and youthful cycling culture.
    The sprawling bikefields were the
best thing about Freiburg — honestly, I took photos of