Tuesday 31st July
Stein am Rhein to Konstanz: 1 hour 35 minutes, 30km

“Today was a lazy day. It was my last day in Switzerland and I decide to take it easy. In the morning, I waited outside the reception area for the campsite manager. While waiting I discovered that there was also wifi! Didn’t I say this was the greatest campsite of my whole trip. The manager (when he eventually arrived) was so friendly as well.

I headed back into the town of Stein am Rhein and had an assortment of breads and pastries at one of the cafés. The outside walls of many of the buildings in the town centre are painted with frescos, which makes for something nice to look at while enjoying your morning coffee outside.

After stocking up on budget chocolate from Migros (a swiss grocery store chain), I headed back to the comfort of the campsite, where I used the free wifi to sort out admin issues. I only had 30 odd kilometres to cycle and so waited for the cooler afternoon before setting off.

The ride to Konstanz was very busy with other cyclists. It was obviously a popular route. The lake or rather Bodensee as the Germans call it, is large. One can just see the land on the other side. It is full with the white sails, of well, sailing boats (they all seem to have white sails though).

I arrived in a busy Konstanz and found an open Vodaphone outlet. I went in and bought a SIM card that I will use for the German leg of my trip. With my new SIM installed, I used Google to search for a camping spot nearby. There were two right next to each other, just further north along the lake coast. The one was completely full and the other just had space for me to squeeze in my tent. I sat at the campsite restaurant ordered a beer and chatted to some German pensioners who lived a good portion of their lives in South Africa, but were now living in Germany and on the road to Basel (by bicycle of course).”

Matt Krog

Read all of Matt’s posts on his website. All of the posts about Matt on CyclingEurope.org can be found here.