August 19th Second Rest Day in Lörrach

In the morning we made arrangements to store our bikes and baggage at the Youth Hostel for the day. We also decided to have dinner at the Youth Hostel and after dinner begin our trip to Amerongen.

We spent a second day in Lörrach shopping for most of the day. In the morning, we went shopping in Lörrach and purchased a few items. In the afternoon we planned to go to a castle in Lörrach but by noon, the temperature was already ready 37 C. Simply walking through the city was draining and the kids were getting cranky. Walking through a castle in the mid-day heat would have been unbearable.

We searched for places to take refuge from the heat. We were hoping for a film that had English subtitles but they were all dubbed into German. We spent some time in air conditioned stores but eventually headed back to the Youth Hostel. Most of the Youth Hostel was quite warm except for the table tennis room in the basement. We spent the afternoon, playing table tennis waiting for dinner and our 8:00 PM departure time. At 7:30 PM we retrieved our baggage, packed our bikes and left the youth hostel for the train station in Lörrach. The downhill trip to the train station in Lörrach combined with the quick arrival of the train meant that we were at the Basel train station at 8:00 PM. This train station proved to have the best facilities for our tandems with long ramps on each of the platforms. As luck would have it, we arrived on and were leaving from the same platform. Our schedule didn't require us to change platforms in the train station with the best facilities for our tandems. As I look back on our past train schedules, the train station with the worst facilities was the one with the 7 minute transfer time. Clearly the German rail system was working against us.

I enjoyed a bit of ribbing since I was the one pushing us to make sure we arrived on time. We arrived two hours early, a bit more than 'on-time'. Both the people and the bikes had reserved locations on the train. We were in one car, the bikes were in the next. The bikes needed to be properly outfitted with their tickets but I could not exactly which parts of our tickets to attach. A quick trip to the information stall allow us to clarify which out of the 6 tickets needed to be attached to the bikes. We purchased some food for the trip at a grocery store located in the train station and soon the train was about to arrive.

We loaded our bikes onto the train and found our cabin. The accommodations for both bikes and people were quite comfortable. Sleeping was interrupted when the train stopped at stations and I had some difficulties sleeping due to the heat. Overall it was a reasonable night sleep but was not great.