and booking is advised through www.hihostels.com.
In Switzerland there is an independent backpacker hostel in Chur. In Germany, France and the Netherlands major cities have backpacker hostels.
Camping
If you are prepared to carry camping equipment, this is the cheapest way of cycling the Rhine. However, good-quality campsites with all facilities are often only a little cheaper than hostels. The stage descriptions identify many official campsites but the list is by no means exhaustive. Camping may be possible in other locations with the permission of local landowners.
Food and drink
Where to eat
There are thousands of places where cyclists can eat and drink, ranging from snack bars, hotdog stands and local inns to Michelin-starred restaurants. Locations of many places to eat are listed in stage descriptions, but these are by no means exhaustive. Days and times of opening vary. When planning your day, try to be flexible as a number of inns and small restaurants, particularly in German villages, do not open at lunchtime and may have one day a week as a rest day (ruhetag) when they remain closed. A local inn offering food and drink is typically known as a gaststätte in German-speaking countries and an auberge in France. A wienstube in Germany is a winebar, often attached to a vineyard. English-language menus are widely available in Switzerland and the Netherlands, but are less common in Germany and France except in larger towns and cities.
When to eat
Breakfast usually consists of breads, jam and a hot drink with, in Germanic areas, the addition of cold meats and cheese and often a boiled egg. In Switzerland, the breakfast dish birchermuesli, made from rolled oats, nuts and dried fruit, is the forerunner of commercially produced muesli.
In Germany lunch was traditionally the main meal of the day, but this is slowly changing, and is unlikely to prove suitable if you plan an afternoon in the saddle. The most common lunchtime snacks everywhere are soups, and ham or cheese sandwiches. In Germany würst mit senf und brot (sausages with mustard and bread) and würstsalat (thin strips of slicing sausage served with sauerkraut (pickled cabbage)) are popular; while croque monsieur (toasted ham/cheese sandwich) and quiche Lorraine are widely available in France.
For dinner, a wide variety of cuisine is available, including Italian, Greek, Turkish and Chinese. Much of what is available is pan-European and will be easily recognisable. There are, however, some national and regional dishes you may wish try.
What to eat
In Switzerland rösti is finely grated potato, fried and often served with bacon and cheese, while geschnetzeltes are thin slices of veal in a cream and mushroom sauce usually served with noodles or rösti. Zander (fresh water pike-perch) is the most commonly found fish in Switzerland. Cheese is popular and is used in fondue (melted cheese used as dipping sauce) and raclette (grilled slices of cheese drizzled over potatoes and gherkins). Switzerland is rightly famous for chocolate.
Germany is the land of the schwein (pig) and dishes of pork, gammon, bacon and ham dominate German menus. Traditionally pork was pot-roasted or grilled rather than fried. There are over 1500 types of German würst (sausage), the most common being bratwürst (made from minced pork and served grilled or fried), Wienerwürst (smoked sausages served boiled, known as frankfurters in English) and blutwürst (blood sausage). Sauerbraten is marinated roast beef, while fleischkaese and leberkaese are kinds of meat loaf. Forelle (trout) and lachs (salmon) are the most popular fish. The most common vegetable accompaniments are sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. Reibekuchen are potato pancakes, served with apple sauce. Spargel (white asparagus) is consumed in huge quantities during Spargelzeit between mid-April and 24 June. Germans tend to eat cakes mid-morning or mid-afternoon. The most famous German cake is Schwarzwalder kirschtorte (Black Forest gateau), a chocolate and cherry cake.
In France, the route is entirely in Alsace, which has a cuisine markedly different to France as a whole, showing strong Germanic influence. Pork is the dominant meat and the most famous Alsatian dish is choucroute garnie, a dish of various cuts of pork meat and sausages served with sauerkraut heated in white wine. A typical snack is tarte flambée or flammekueche, a thin pizza-style base covered with white cheese, onions and bacon and cooked in a wood oven.
Tarte flambée, a speciality of Alsace, served with Gewurztraminer white wine (Stage 10)
Although the variety of dishes offered in Dutch restaurants is generally wider than in Germany, cooking is usually pan-European and traditional Dutch cooking is fairly hard to find. The Dutch eat a lot of fish, including maatjes (raw marinated herring), kibbeling (deep-fried cod nuggets) and mosselen (mussels), the latter two often served with patats (chips/French fries) and mayonnaise. The Netherlands is a country of dairy farming and produces a large amount of cheese, the best known varieties being Edam (red, round like a ball) and Gouda (yellow, round like a wheel). Dutch apple cake is a popular dessert.
Drinks
Switzerland, Austria and Germany are predominantly beer-drinking nations, but also produce considerable quantities of wine, while France is a wine-drinking nation where consumption of beer is increasing. The Netherlands produces beer, but no wine.
Switzerland’s largest brewery is Feldschlossen, which is passed at Rheinfelden (Stage 8). In Germany, purity laws controlling the production and content of beer have limited the mass consolidation of brewing compared to other European countries, and beer is still brewed in a large number of local breweries. Pilsener, a pale lager, is the most widely drunk form, although weizenbier (wheat beer), found in both helles (pale) and dunkles (dark) varieties, is growing in popularity. Very refreshing and slightly sweet tasting, wheat beer is unfiltered and thus naturally cloudy. Distinct local beers are produced in Köln (kölsch) and Düsseldorf (alt). Glass sizes vary, but common sizes are kleines (small, 300ml) and grosses (large, half litre). Weizenbier is traditionally served in half litre vase-shaped glasses. Radler in Germany is shandy, a 50/50 mix of beer and carbonated lemonade. With a long history of German influence, Alsace is the main beer-producing region of France, with Kronenbourg the largest brewery. The Netherlands has a number or breweries, but is dominated by the Heineken and Amstel lager brands.
Swiss wine is one of the wine-drinking world’s great secrets. Substantial quantities of good-quality wine are produced but 98 per cent of this is consumed within the country. Most production is in the Vaud and Valais cantons in the west of the country, although on our route there are vineyards in the Maienfeld hills (Stage 3) and between Schaffhausen and Waldshut (Stage 7). Principal grape varieties are chasselas (white) used for Fendant wine, and pinot noir or blauburgunder (red) used for Dôle wine. German wine production is usually characterised by white wine from the Rhine Valley between Worms and Koblenz, including the side valleys of Nahe and Mosel. The finest German wine comes from the Rheingau, a south-facing ridge between Eltville and Rüdesheim (Stage 16). Reisling grapes are used for the best wines with müller-thurgau for the less distinguished ones. Trochen (dry) and halb-trochen (medium) varieties are available. Other wine-growing regions passed include the north side of Bodensee around Meersburg (Stage 5), which produces white and rosé wines, and the Ahr Valley (Stage 18), producing some of the world’s most northerly red wines. In France, the east-facing Vosges slopes looking across the Rhine Valley from above Colmar produce strong full-bodied Alsatian white wine from gewürztraminer grapes.
All the usual soft drinks (colas, lemonade, fruit juices) are widely available. Local specialities include Rivella, a Swiss drink sweetened with lactose (milk sugars), available in a number of varieties. Apple juice mixed 50/50 with carbonated water and known as apfelschorle is widely consumed. Apfelwein and most are cider-like alcoholic drinks produced from apples, particularly
