One month ago exactly, I was still home in Boulder, Colorado. And now, a month later I’ve ridden 2000 km (about 1245 miles) across four countries on my way from Florence towards Copenhagen. Today I reached Berlin.
It seems like forever ago that I started this trip. Travel expands my perception of time in an amazing way.
I still have about 640 km (400 miles) to go to get to Copenhagen but I have until 31 July when I fly home. A few people have volunteered that the ride between Berlin and Copenhagen is fantastic, and so I am very much looking forward to experiencing that. But the time is becoming short enough that I have to begin to count and plan.
Three days ago, I left my campground at Torgau and my first stop was a grocery store. The campground was fantastically run, but had no food available, only beer. At the end of the day that was certainly enough. I had a bit of food to munch on. And so, I went to the supermarket as I left the next morning and loaded up on food.
The terrain between Torgau and Lutherstadt Wittenberg, my next stop, was pretty flat and it was only 43 miles.
But the steady headwind made it challenging enough, and so when I pulled in to the campground at Lutherstadt, I was happy to know that there was a restaurant and bar as part of the campground. Only, there wasn’t. The hotel, restaurant and bar were closed. The fatalistic reception clerk just held up her hands and said “no workers” a few times. The campground was lovely and right on the river but somewhat uncared for.
The big surprise was that there were raccoons running rampant at night. Yep, raccoons were introduced to Germany in 1934 and again in 1945, through escaped animals from the fur trade and also deliberately by the Nazis.
The literal translation of raccoon in German means “washing bear”, while the French word for raccoon literally means “washing rat”. I agree with the French.
Anyway, the little masked bandits knocked over my bike and rummaged through my empty bags, but I had put all my food hanging from a tree branch in my pack as I had learned from camping in North America. My food was safe in the morning and nothing was damaged. But they did wake me up a few times.
The next morning, I searched for grocery stores in the area to go buy some food, but then noted with horror that I had forgotten that it was Sunday! There was nothing open! But restaurants and cafés are open, and so I stopped as soon as I could to a café to have a lovely omelette and a mug of cappuccino. They got me on my way.
I left the Elbe’s meandering course, and headed north through mostly forest.
I’ve written previously about the fact that route markers sometimes use different numbering systems for the route, and that was certainly the case here. However, the GPX track followed the actual route quite closely with a few very minor exceptions.
From Lutherstadt it was 63 miles (about 100 km) to Potsdam where I was hoping to stay in a campsite called Sans Souci which means “no worry” in French. It looked to be a large campsite, which I hoped would have room since the Euro Cup was in Berlin that night (Spain won btw) and I wondered if campgrounds would be overwhelmed even 25 miles from Berlin.
It was one of the largest campsites I’ve ever seen in my life, but they did have a few spots still available! And so I settled into there for the night. Amazingly, it really wasn’t noisy, and there were no raccoons either!
It may be worth mentioning that one month in, I haven’t run into a single American nor heard a single American speak. I guess that means I am off the beaten track at least a little bit.
And the next day, I rode the 25-ish miles into Berlin. I had a few shocks crossing over highways clogged with traffic, and had to navigate across crowded streets on the way in, but the bike paths are very well done and I arrived without incident. Once I settle, I’ll go out and find myself a beer and some more to eat! I think I’m running a bit of a calorie deficit and I need to catch up!
With over 180 kilometers of waterways within city limits, Berlin has more canals than any other city in the world, connected by a staggering 1,700 bridges, in comparison to 409 in Venice.
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