Basel – Aurau – Luzern: 125 km

My Achilles heels are beginning to form a serious problem. They’ve been hurting constantly while riding, but now they’re also painful when I’m not on the bike. It feels like there’s sand in my heels, even though I’ve been taking it slower in both distance and speed the last days. In Basel I go to a pharmacy to see if there’s anything I can do about it, or get against it. I get given a tube of anti-inflammatory cream. It works wonders. I stretch too. The days are a little uneventful, but pleasant. I follow the very well indicated North-South Route, that takes me trough forest, minor climbs, and cute, yet desolated villages.

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I’ve been going hard on the Warm Showers app. In Aurau I stay in Markus’ garden, and in Luzern in Eugen’s apartment. I pick up his keys while he’s still working in his bike shop, head to the supermarket and make him and his wife shakshuka. After dinner, Eugen takes me to the Luzern Street Music Festival, on his laying-down-tandem (which is great fun!). As we watch the Romanian folk band, the Italian string Quartet, and some more acts, I feel more European than ever. The night sets over a quintessential medieval European city, the church bells ring every 15 minutes, in the distance I can hear the Reuss river, which later turns into the Rhine, the Gothic architecture surrounds us, and the sounds of a variety of regional folk sounds in a multiplicity of languages from across Europe can be heard on every street corner. The old world, as I’ve learned to call if from Leonard Ilja Pfeiffer, is almost a caricature of itself. At least tonight it’s trying really hard.