Monat: September 2016

Once again, I really enjoyed this bike tour. The weather held up most of the time, and most importantly, my bike held up to all the abuse I threw at it throughout the tour. This really fills me with confidence and it was clearly the right idea to switch bikes for this tour.

Regarding the distance: I did 465 kilometres in four-and-a-half days, which seems pretty good to me.

(A click on the route enlarges the picture!-Green Trail!)

The route was easy to follow and was a nice mix of driving along rivers, going through pretty cities and seeing interesting places such as Theresienstadt, which left me deeply impressed and shocked.

All in all, I can highly recommend this trip! If you do go, have fun!

(A click on the route enlarges the picture!)

The day started off really luxurious. The campsite had a bakery-truck that came and catered to the happy campers. That meant my breakfast consisted of lots of yummy sweet treats, way to start the day!

Today the weather quickly improved and surpassed the grey muckiness of the past two days. All in all, riding was really relaxing, as I was travelling along the infrastructure of the Spreewald bike trail and kept on going for quite some time.

Lovely forest roads in the sunshine.

I had a nice lunch in Königs Wusterhausen, after having already managed 65km, before heading into Berlin. The last kilometres into town took quite some time, as my energy level had really dropped and I was longing for a nice shower at home.

The last kilometres before arriving in the centre of Berlin.

After 106km of cycling I arrived home and got the well-deserved shower at last. The last two days had been rather long, but had been a lot of fun and showed me what I was capable of.

Finally arrived!

(A click on the route enlarges the picture!)

I set off early and drove on a very long stretch of perfect asphalt through a forest:

The most interesting views of the day were the lakes along the path which were used as a mining area and now have been left to re-transform into wild nature.

I also found some remnants of the socialist upbringing in Eastern Germany:

And even the endless riding along fields turns out to be pretty special, if you manage to arrive at the same time the pumpkins turn into huge fields full of colourful blobs:

I stopped at the biggest campsite yet, full with all the infrastructure you could need. Having achieved a whopping 116km (the second longest day ever on a bike), I was mightily pleased with todays achievement.

(A click on the route enlarges the picture!)

In the night it started to rain heavily and I awoke to a soaking wet campsite. I lounged around for quite some time, waiting for the rain to stop. Nevertheless today would bring a sharp decrease in temperature and a lot of grey clouds and low hanging fog. Not pretty, especially as I was heading past the lovely Sächsische Schweiz, an Area of beautiful sandstone-cliffs.

As guessed when getting up my crossing over into Germany was accompanied by the bad weather and the view of the cliffs wasn’t half as impressive as it would have been in sunny conditions.

Grey behind

And grey ahead

Thanks to the Czech Republic for giving me such a memorable time!

Grey views of the Sächsische Schweiz

A quick ferry crossing brought me to the other side of the Elbe River and I continued on in direction of Dresden.

In Dresden I had a quick and cold lunch sitting on a bench along the river.

View of Dresden

After that I turned off the Elbe River path and made my way northwards, now heading straight for Berlin. Besides a steep climb out of a forest path in the north of Dresden driving was pretty well going.

After 92km I reached a campsite in Radeburg and decided to call it a day. It was a rather small campsite with lots of nice neighbours and a really nice kid even tried to help me build up my tent, before boasting he had driven much faster on his bike, then I would ever be able too. He was probably right, I guess 😉

(A click on the route enlarges the picture!)

I started early and first went to the Ghetto museum to learn the facts about Theresienstadt. The small fortress and later the so called “main fortress” (= the city of Theresienstadt) were transformed into a Concentration Camp. Although thousands died in captivity there it wasn’t built with extermination in mind, but rather was maintained to concentrate Jewish people from different areas, before sending them to their deaths in Auschwitz, Treblinka and other camps. The Nazis upheld Theresienstadt as a “model Jewish settlement”, showing it off to the international Red Cross and using it for propaganda. How false this information was, is displayed by the 33.000+  inmates that died in Theresienstadt from health issues, malnutrition or the brutal treatment by the german SS-captors. During its highest occupation more than 58.000 prisoners lived in area, that had been designed to support 7.000 combat troops.

The museum was well set up and very informative. With new and refreshed knowledge I afterwards visited the small fortress, which has in many parts been kept in original appearance and displays life in the Concentration Camp. A harrowing experience, where the feeling to be walking those forsaken grounds left me truly and utterly shocked.

Taking a look into the visitor registry proved even more frightful. It was filled with German school classes making Nazi jokes in their texts, other comments contained references to German right-wing Nazi parties and there were more “fuck Israel”-texts in there then I could count. How all these opinions can be voiced so shortly after standing in the buildings of such great human sacrifice, sorrow and pain amazes me and lets me despair if humanity has only the slightest bit of empathy left.

After this memorable visit I returned to my bike tour with mixed feelings and tried to bring some distance between me and this location of human suffering. I re-joined the Elbe River path again in the early afternoon and kept on cycling along it until I reached the city of Tetschen-Bodenbach. From there it was only a short trip until reaching the German boarder the next day, and Czech campsites are way cheaper than their equivalents on the German side.

After 57km of cycling I arrived at the campsite located right under a bridge that leads the main traffic over the Elbe, which made for quite a loud surrounding. This campsite even had bike boxes, so I securely locked my bike away for the night.

(A click on the route enlarges the picture!)

I manage to get an early start at the campsite and soon I am driving on a newly surfaced bike path along the Vltava. But after only 9km, in the village of Klecá¡ny, I head off the bike path. I had read in my initial research, that from Klecány to Kralupy the road along the river sometimes turns into a steep and narrow dirt path that has a 2-3m direct drop into the river and wasn’t up to trying that way.

Unfortunately that meant going up a steep incline in Klecány. Nothing like 20min pedalling uphill in your lowest gear at around 4km/h to get your day started properly. At Kralupy I rejoined the river-bike path again after 15km of detour and made some good progress. Most of the parts the asphalt was beautiful, on one occasion I did end up on a pretty rough part.

Good road 

Bad road

View of Melnik in the distance.

In Melnik the Vltava flows into the Elbe River, so from now on I will be on the Elbe River Path until Dresden. I had done a part on the Elbe River trail from Hamburg to Berlin earlier that year so it was nice to rejoin this River further upstream.

After 80km of cycling I parted with the bike path near Libotenice, as I was going to have a look at Theresienstadt (Terezí­n) the next day.

Of course Theresienstadt is known for being a Concentration Camp for Jews during Nazi Occupation. All Jewish people whose names I had seen the day before in the synagogue in Prague had been deported to Theresienstadt. So when I entered the city my first stop took me to the memorial field.

Although it seemed very macabre, I afterwards rode the last kilometre to the campsite in Theresienstadt. This would help me get to the museums early the next morning. The campsite was massively weird. No one at the location actually spoke a word of English or German, and no one really seemed interested in me staying there. That was only after I had actually found the location, it wasn’t signposted and incredibly hidden.

I was surprised by all the Czech youth on the campsite. Suprisingly they built up a DJ soundsystem as soon as dawn fell, and were having an outdoor-night-rave on the campsite, all night. What a weird sight in Theresienstadt and great respect to my earplugs that actually helped me have a good night sleep.

Today had been a nice start into the bike-tour. I managed 93km and sunny, warm conditions accompanied me all day. Eager to see Theresienstadt in detail the next day I went to bed early.

Unfortunately the bus I had booked didn’t have a bike rack, although it had said so during booking. The bus driver agreed to transport my bike in the hull of the bus, but seeing as he was piling up cases next to it, I was quite worried I’d receive a bent and broken bike when disembarking in Prague. Luckily after a short bus ride I was handed my bike in an A+ condition, so no need to worry.

I had located a campsite slightly outside of Prague, which was quite a bargain and as it was located nearly directly at the Vltava (german: Moldau) river, which I’d be following before reaching the Elbe River, it seemed like an ideal starting point.

So now all I had to do, was to get from the city centre to the campsite. Easier said than done, it needed quite a few stops to look at my GPS and many, many annoying roads stuck behind tourist walking groups on cobble stones, before I finally had left the centre and could speed up.

In Prague, riding to the campsite

First crossing of the Vltava

Once my tent was erected on the site and my bike was securely locked to the fence I headed back into town by public transport to look at Prague.

I spent a wonderful afternoon in the hot sun discovering Prague. Most of the time I was in the Jewish quarter, looking into a synagogue which has been transformed into a Holocaust memorial, parts of the Jewish cemetery and the big and beautiful Spanish synagogue.

Pinkas synagogue. The writing on the walls depicts names of the 80.000 Jews deported and killed from the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. The names fill every wall space in this synagogue.

Spanish synagogue and the Jewish cemetery 

Sights of Prague

After that I walked aimlessly around town and spent the sunset with a good drink near the Metronome, overlooking the city. Didn’t stay out too late, as I wanted to get an early start the following day.