Uberberge — “over mountains”: German brothers bicycle through Colfax on their way to New York

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By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX  —  You just never know who you might run into on the streets of Colfax.

Colfax resident Michelle Van Vulpen was in downtown Colfax on Tuesday, September 3, when she saw two young men riding bicycles.

As it turned out, the two young men — Tim and Paul van den Berg — were from Germany and were spending the summer traveling from Seattle to New York.

Michelle brought the two brothers to the Colfax Messenger office.

Tim and Paul came to the United States in May with the intention of hiking their way to New York.

Tim is 21 years old, and Paul is 19.

After hiking through the mountains out west, they decided to buy bicycles and bike the rest of the way.

“We went from Seattle through the Cascades and then we took a train,” Paul said.

“It was easy to get the bikes on the Amtrak (train),” Tim said.

The brothers came through Colfax on their way across the state to catch the ferry in Manitowoc to Michigan.

“We’re going east until we can get to the ferry,” Paul said.

Part of their journey will take them through Canada and then on to Niagara Falls and the east coast.

“Our flight back is on October 4,” Paul said.

“I think we’re okay,” Tim said.

“We’re pretty good on time,” Paul said.

Camping

The previous evening, the two young men had stayed at a campground in Amery.

Thunderstorms had rolled through West Central Wisconsin after the brothers had settled into their tent.

“We had rain last night,” Paul said.

“It was a lot of rain,” Tim said.

“Now we know our tent is weatherproof,” Paul said.

“Our tent stayed dry,” Tim said.

The storms, in addition to some torrential rain, also had a fair amount of wind.

“Our bikes were locked together, and they fell over,” Tim said.

When asked where they would be staying that night, Tim replied, “We don’t know yet.”

“When we are done for the day, we look it up on the map and search for the next campground,” Paul said.

“It’s very practical to have the Internet connection. It makes it much easier,” Tim said.

Internet access is not always the best in rural parts of the United States, but Paul said they had downloaded maps to their cell phones so they would have them when they were somewhere without an Internet connection.

“We always try to get to a place like this at night,” Tim said.

While Internet access is not the best in rural parts of the country, cities and villages will have the Internet access they need to chart the next part of their route.

Sometimes, when Tim and Paul have been biking across the countryside, they have stopped at houses or farms, too, to ask if they could connect by Internet so they could get their bearings.

When asked about the best part of the trip, the brothers both replied, the High Sierra Mountains.

“I would say the High Sierra and the snow. It was very beautiful,” Paul said.

“It was tough. It was Type 2 fun. In the situation, it sucks, but after that, you see the pictures. It was breathtaking,” Tim said.

“Compared to the Alps in Europe, it was just so much bigger and more monumental,” Paul said.

“The valleys are wider, and the mountains are higher,” Tim said.

Germany

The brothers come from a place in Germany near Frankfurt.

Their hometown is about a 30 kilometers — or 18.5 miles — from Frankfurt.

“Everyone works in Frankfurt and takes the train,” Paul said.

The town, Tim and Paul noted, is much older than anything here in the United States — many centuries older.

When asked how they arrived at the idea of traveling across the United States, the two brothers laughed.

“After my high school, I wanted to hike. I thought I would …(hike) the East Coast here, but I didn’t find anybody stupid enough to do it with me. I was 18 years old and didn’t want to do it alone. So I decided to do something in Europe. I went hiking for a month in France. And then, I finished my bachelor and wrote my thesis, and somehow Paul’s life freed up, and it fit,” Tim said.

“Now I am the stupid-enough guy to go with him,” Paul said, grinning.

Tim’s bachelor’s degree is in bio-chemistry.

Paul finished high school last year and will be studying electronics and information technology.

Paul said he believed it was worth it to take one semester off from school to go on their journey.

“Now we have the time. We don’t have to get back to work. When we have family, then it’s not possible anymore,” Paul said.

Ueberberge

Tim and Paul have designed a website to document their journey across the United States —  www.ueberberge.de.

The website, which means “over mountains” in German, is written in German, but https://translate.google.com can help translate the German into English for those who want to read more about Tim and Paul’s travels.

The subtitle for their website is “Brüder auf Wanderschaft,” which means “brothers on the move.”

The website contains pictures and blog entries about their trip.

“We’re still hiking there yet. We don’t have pictures up of (the bicycle part of the journey),” Tim said.

On May 6, Tim and Paul flew from Seattle to San Diego.

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of their journey:

“At the airport in San Diego we took a taxi. The Erithrean taxi driver had a nice chat with us. He said we should definitely see downtown, San Diego is a beautiful city. We’ve also learned that all San Diego taxis are Toyota Prius for environmental reasons.

“We drove to the ‘Trail Angels’ Scout and Frodo. Trail Angels are people who help PCT hikers. Scout and Frodo are an older couple, who let about 1,000 hikers spend the night in their house and garden. They are two real legends in the American Thruhiker scene. From next year they will not host Thruhiker more, so we were lucky 🙂 We arrived at 23:00 o’clock and were allowed to sleep in a double room in the guest room. The friendliness and generosity of these people impressed us a lot.”

One of their more interesting encounters with Americans occurred when they were hiking out west. Tim and Paul had met other American college students who were hiking and were astounded to find out how expensive it is to go to college in the United States. Some of the students had graduated with $100,000 in student debt and said they would most likely not be able to get their student loans paid off until they were in the 50s.

Tuition for a semester of college in Germany is the equivalent of about $300, Tim and Paul said.

The two young men wondered how anyone who goes to college in the United States is able to afford to buy a house or start a family with that much student debt.

The Colfax Messenger, Tim and Paul noted, would be the first newspaper in the United States to publish a story about their adventure.