Missing Switzerland

Going back in time about 3 weeks now, we were in Basel. There are some things that we miss about the Swiss bike route system (although the German system has shown us some fantastic things, too), but there are other less concrete things that we miss about being in Switzerland in general. Instead of trying to explain, if that is even possible, here are a few moments from the last day or two we had in Basel.

In a park. A life-sized dinosaur.



Bike parking at the football (soccer) stadium



Mmmm. Designed by hand in the 80s. But the beer, it is good.



There's this kind of freeway off-ramp/bridge over the Rhine where bikes get on and then merge over if they want to go left.



And the signs are... rad.



And water... everywhere we biked in Switzerland, fresh drinking water was flowing from beautiful old water stops like this one (although this photo is from after we crossed into Germany, where we have seen so very few public drinking fountains):



We drank the water from this fountain, but it is possible that it was not meant for that. Although, it does look like the statues are gathering by a water source...



Below, a typical example of what we saw in Switzerland, but from our first day in Germany. We have seen a few more of these in Germany, but most of them have signs that say 'Kein trinkwasser' (not drinking water).



Since our first day or two in Germany, we've seen almost no public drinking water and that is very sad. In France, we were lucky enough to happen upon some cyclists from Epfig who stopped at a cemetery to get some water, so we filled our bottles. But water is not to be found most places. People are friendly, though, and when we have stopped to ask people if we can fill our bottles from their taps, everyone has said yes. Nothing compares to the water we found all over Switzerland.