First, a rant

I hate the wind. My cycling buddies will tell you that I‘m generally game mentally and can endure a lot of suffering physically, but none of that applies to the wind. I hate it. I just f%$&ing hate it. No tailwind is worth a headwind. A tailwind is a +3, whereas a headwind is a -30. You do the math, and you quickly realize that I don‘t like wind.

If you‘ve been checking my rides, you‘ll potentially have realized that the last 350km or so have been predominantly from east to west. While the wind has been blowing predominantly west to east. Right in the face. So when I headed out west this morning and once again got slapped in the face with a stiff breeze, you can imagine that I wasn‘t happy. I was like a kid who has taken a tumble and can‘t tell if it‘s funny or if it hurts. I started laughing because it was so ridiculously annoying, but it was one of those laughs which is only a millimeter away from a cry.

But then…

I turned the corner. Figuratively and literally. Right about the time when west turned to north, I rode upon the Völklinger Hütte, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Slap UNESCO on it, and you have my attention. Anyway, it‘s a really old steel manufacturing plant that has been preserved as a museum. Quite cool.

(not the best photo, I admit, but you get the picture)

And after that, it was more north than west, meaning I could stop fighting the wind and start enjoying the ride. Which I did. I spent the vast majority of the day riding along the Saar river, and as the title suggests, I‘m a fan.

I knew only that I would be following the path of the river, but not that it would be carving through lushly forested hillsides, so it was pleasantly surprising.

I did have a target destination on the way, but that turned out to be more of an adventure than I thought. Despite Komoot (my route planning app) being awesome about 99% of the time, sometimes it just gets things completely wrong. Like today, when it tried to send me up switchbacks that didn‘t exist. Then when I tried another path visible on the app, that also didn‘t work. Eventually I found a third path which seemed promising. And mostly it was, except for…

…two sets of long stairs. I had to take my bags off, carry them up a flight of stairs, then come back down for the bike. Then rinse & repeat. On the second flight of stairs, a young guy took pity on me and offered to carry something, which was super nice, and also allowed me to avoid the need to shuttle gear.

It was, however, worth it. The destination was an outlook over the Saarschleife, a horseshoe bend in the river. Spectacular:

On to Trier

Trier, founded a few centuries BC and conquered by the Romans just a few hundred years later, is considered Germany‘s oldest city. During Roman times, it was essentially the capital of the western Roman empire, meaning it was quite an important city. There are still remarkable structures left over from those days (100-400 AD), which is also why they are also included on the UNESCO World Heritage list:

(admittedly much of the church was built from the 11th to 13th centuries, but the original core is still there and dates from the 4th century).

It‘s funny. It‘s like they airlifted some of Rome‘s landscape and plopped them randomly down in a very German town. The rest of the city center looks like this:

Cool city, all in all, and a very worthy destination. And capped off my double-UNESCO day, woot!

The ride