135. Basel, Switzerland to Murg, Germany

24 August 2024

Miles: 30.95, Total: 5,943

After only a hot minute in Switzerland, we crossed into Germany today and then rode along the bottle-green Rhine.

I've crossed some borders and barely noticed. Passing from Spain into France in the Basque Country, for example, I didn't even realize I was in France until I noticed the street signs were in French and the ambulances sounded like geese on the make.

But the transition from Switzerland to Germany was abrupt. In Switzerland, cyclists said "Bonjour" and "Hallo" to each other, as was also the case in France, Spain, and Portugal. In Germany, though, I started laughing after the fifth cyclist I said "Hallo" to did not respond.

I don't want to play into the stereotype that Germans are unfriendly, as some of my best friends are very friendly Germans. (Hi, Iris!) I'm just saying that the friendliness does not manifest itself in a free-flowing exchange of pleasantries between strangers. At least not here at the border among cyclists.

Of course, cultural observations reveal at least as much about the observer as the observed. As a U.S. Southerner, I was raised to greet strangers on the street, and I experience this cultural practice as an expression of friendliness. (Some others find this habit superficial or insincere, though.) When I studied in Russia, however, I quickly learned that greeting strangers seemed intrusive, even a bit insane. And in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live now, East Bay cyclists reciprocate my howdies more often than do Marin County or Peninsula cyclists.

Biking across the U.S., I simply didn't meet many other cyclists until Virginia, where it was a veritable howdy fest out there on the bike trail.

Traveling alone through Southern Europe, I was grateful for the shared cultural practice of greeting each other, as it made me feel welcome and less alone. Southerners southerning.

I will have to find other ways to show and feel friendliness as I move northward.