Today was going to be a short day: a quick jaunt to a museum, followed a slightly longer ride to the closest train station.

I immediately got side tracked. I cycled into a large square closed off, at the other end, by a beautiful palace: the Schloss Schwetzingen. I stopped to take pictures and wandered around. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed into the gardens with my bicycle. I saw people lining up to take their picture next to a statue and moved closer.

Germans and asparagus is a surprising combination, but during the few weeks of asparagus season, it is omnipresent. Country roads are dotted with directions to farm shops selling “spargen”, and restaurants have special asparagus-themed menus. Of all the things I would have expected to see commemorated on the main square of a German town though, I would not have expected to see a statue of a market vendor selling asparagus to a young girl (and her Dachsund, Nico).

Cycling around the castle gardens, I saw what looked like the Taj Mahal peaking through the trees. I would have to come back to learn more.

After an 90 minutes of cycling, I reached Speyer, host of the “Speyer Technique Museum”. Knowing that I would spend the entire afternoon here, I found some sustenance in the form of the largest Doner Kebab I have ever held. I puzzled for a minute about how to even begin eating it, but eventually managed to send most of it to myc stomach, and not on my clothes. They were already stained by days of riding, os the couple of extra grease stains would fit right in.

The museum itself is beyond words. From afar, people notice the 747, propped up on pillars high above the ground, but from the parking lot, also saw a Antonov 22 (a massive cargo plane), and a boat!

I climbed into the 747 and marvelled at the engineering. The decorative covers had been peeled away in parts of the airplane, revealing the bones of the plane itself; the pressure bulkhead in the back (usually hidden behind the shelves of the galley), the wiring snaking up and down the plane, and the control cables pulled along the ceiling. A door took me onto the wing, where I could look down at all the other airplanes that were on display (and could be visited).

In a hangar behind it was “Buran”, the russian space shuttle. Technically, the museum has the “Buran Analog Test Vehicle”, a version of the space craft used for aerodynamic testing with jet engines. I stood and marvelled, peered into the cargo bay, and wished that I was allowed to climb into the cockpit and explore the crew compartiments.

Next to Buran was a mockup of “Zvezda”, one of the first modules of the International space Station, still used today as the common room for russian and western astronauts, and the place where they re-hydrate and heat their meals. This was followed by exhibits on the Appollo program, the SpaceLab program, the development of the Russian space program, and the Chinese space program, …

After leaving the hangar, I climbed down into a cramped German coastal defense submarine, banged my head a few times, then found my way onto the Antonov, where I was taken aback by the sheer size of the cargo bay, then into another airplane, and another …

By the time I had gone through the museum, It was 18:00 and needed to head to the train station to catch a train.

Night was falling, and I still had quite a bit of road ahead of me.

Cycling in the dark, through a forest, far from scaring me, reminded me of the trip I would take in the evenings, during COVID times, into the “Foret de Soignes” in Brussels, charging through the forest, seeing the reflections from the eyes of the animals that were observing me pass.

Arriving in Stuttgart with the train, I still had a 150 m of climbing to do. But a warm shower was waiting for me.

Tomorrow, I rest.