(A click on the route enlarges the picture!)
After having packed up my tent, I headed into Fürstenberg. Now normally that would have been a quick drive through, but I had had the first bike-related hiccup on this tour the following day. With my bike having behaved flawlessly all the way to Usedom and on the Hamburg trip it had only needed 8 hours on this trip when I stopped after a continuous *pling* *pling*-sound coming from the rear tire. On closer inspection I found the reason: I had actually snapped a spoke, and of course it was on the drive-train side (pain to remove and replace!) and of course I didn’t have a spare spoke with me!
So Fürstenberg meant a visit to a much needed bike-shop. The mechanic working was in quite some stress so I headed to the nearest café to let him work in peace. He managed the repair and with a bill over 20€ I was on my way again after a two hour wait.
I would have liked a much longer stay-over, as Fürstenberg is adjacent to Ravensbrück, the former women’s concentration camp. Before entering the city I had also driven past signs showing the way to the Uckermark concentration camp which was erected near Ravensbrück and was built to imprison girls and young women. Both camps together had over 130.000 inmates and looking at the run down barracks and the tremendous size of the location whilst cycling past the area put the idea of my bike tour into quite some proportion. As said I really wanted to spend time at the Ravensbrück Memorial and view the museum, but decided against it on that tour, as I’d have had too little time to fully immerse myself in the museum and dedicate the time a place like that commands. Also Fürstenberg is only a short train journey from Berlin so a later visit to focus on the concentration camps seemed like the better idea.
“Former Youth concentration camp for girls and young women and later extermination camp Uckermark.”
The afternoon went by with me covering quite some kilometres, even with the delay from the bike shop. Bored of listening to music I managed to use a perfect Terry Pratchett Audio Book (Good Omens on BBC Radio!) as a way to take my mind off cycling completely. When the last words were spoken I noticed I had been pedalling for nearly 3 hours non-stop and was nearly at my evening destination.
How far north had I gone?
That was missing in Troja in ancient times, a slide out back!
Before entering the city of Waren I found a perfect campsite looking out onto Lake Müritz. This was for sure the biggest campsite I had visited on any of my tours with a 700m cycle ride just to get from the entrance to my designated camp spot.
I spent the evening between partying groups and their campervans, trying to get some sleep.
