Colmar to Wissembourg

Our third day starts foggy. This is by now a recurring theme of our tour and no longer bothers us. We are positive that it will clear up soon enough.

Our satnav is now supposed to point us to the Alsatian wine route, but fails spectacularly.

I suspect that every time one diverts from the planned route, the satnav recalculates the route and in doing so ignores whatever one told it before, like avoiding motorways, using prettier instead of faster routes, etc. But I am not a hundred percent certain that is the case.

We do leave the fog behind but discover that we are merrily on our way into the Vosges, and this is when Elli puts her foot down and insists on rather following the brown guide markers, one of which she spotted just a little way back.

Thus we return into the fog, but at least we are now on the sought-after wine route.

The smell of fermenting grape juice is ubiquitous and the exclamation “Well, isn’t this nice! becomes the no. 1 in the intercom and resounds ever more frequently the more the sun breaks through in the valley as well.

Briefly, we’re in danger of disappearing in the Bermuda triangle of Rosheim-Mutzig-Molsheim, but manage to free ourselves the second time around. Our original plan was to go to Saarlouis today, but that is still far away, so we decide to go to Wissembourg instead.

On our way there we pass through Brumath, a funfair is in town, so we stop for a coffee.

The Café is nice, the coffee tasty and surprisingly cheap. An elderly gentleman approaches and inspects our bikes. I ask him if they are in the way and should I move them. But no, in a mixture of German, French and Alsatian he tells us what is probably the tale of his life. We are not sure because we understand only every 4th word at best. Never mind, he talks about motorcycles, the police, pace makers, and lifts his shirt to show us a huge scar. It really is a bit surreal but quite harmless.

This time around, we cross Haguenau during rush hour, which doesn’t make things prettier. In Wissembourg we first get an overview of the layout by following the one-way streets once around the old town center. Elli suggests that we could try the tourist information to help us find a place for the night. This works out very well, “German is spoken”, and soon we have a place to stay that is both central and reasonably priced, where bikers are welcome. This has been by far the least problematic approach to get a room, and we’re going to try this more often now.

So we have a lot of time on our hands to enjoy the evening ambiance in Wissembourg.

Our room turns out to be OK, we sleep moderately well and the breakfast next morning is ample.