Items tagged with Germany

2008-06-02 00:00:00
Written By: Claudine du Plessis

Cycling Day: 2
Distance: 168km

This was the longest day of our trip, I am a little too tired to type in all the details now.  But let me see what I can do: We started at 7AM.  Weather was nice and sunny, it started getting really hot later on.  We stopped for snack shopping, lunch, and lots of snacks.  Scenery was once again beautiful, dense forests, green fields, fairy tale houses..

We only noticed when we were in Germany when all the signs’ language changed, there are no border posts, and unfortunately our route had no “Welcome to Germany” signs, would have made a great pic.Anyway, 168kms is further than it sounds.  We were exhausted when we arrived at Stephan’s house at half past 9 that evening.  They had a wonderful dinner of spaghetti bolognaise and salad ready for us, and we tried some German beers.  That is all I can write now, really need to shower and sleep… Tomorrow we are going to Hanover.

2008-06-09 00:00:00
Written By: Claudine du Plessis

Cycling Day: 6
Distance: 110km  

It was a little bit of a mission to get out of the big city, but after that we had nice cycling routes through forests.  Billy and I both fell off our bikes, but nothing too serious.

Frankfurt Oder is a charming town and our campsite was a steep cycle about 7kms outside of town.  We camped at the Helenesee, which was the first campsite that people actually used as a holiday resort, not a living place.

The Helenesee is a beautiful lake and we cooked dinner (guess what) on its beach.  There were even some nude swimmers for our entertainment.

2008-06-10 00:00:00
Written By: Claudine du Plessis

Cycling Day: 7
Distance: 100km  

We did our first 1000kms today!

Still in the morning we crossed the Oder river border to Poland with no fuss.  Immediately we noticed we were in a different country.  The styles of the houses changed from super neat to more run-down, farm type houses.  Even  the landscape changed to rolling hills with grass and patches of forest.

At the first Polish town we changed some Euros for Zoltes, which are about 4 times stronger the Rand.

At 8 o'clock we arrived at the Glebokie campsite, Lance and I went for a swim in their big lake.  Dinner consisted of pasta with egg and tomato and meat salad sandwiches.

2008-06-04 00:00:00
Written By: Claudine du Plessis

Cycling Day: 3
Distance: 110km of which 14 was around Hannover

The next morning Christian first went to a class and Lance and Billy caught up on some lost sleep.  He returned, we had oats and chocolate sprinkles breakfast and he took us sightseeing on bikes around the center of Hannover. 

Half past twelve, we were on our way to Wolfsburg.  Christian told us that Wolfsburg is the town that manufactures Volkswagens and that almost everyone living there works for VW.  The cycle to Wolfsburg went smoothly with warm, sunny weather.  We cycled through lots of tiny little towns, some towns where there is only one street and you don’t see a single person. 

We arrived in Wolfsburg at about 8 o’clock.  9 out of 10 cars in Wolfsburg are VW’s, we also cycled past the massive factory.  Our campsite was next to a lake, the Allersee.  One thing we noticed about European campsites, are that they aren’t your usual holiday places where people go camping for the weekend - they are all trailer parks where people live permanently.  You can see the trailers have all been standing there for a very long time, they have potplants, little gardens and wooden fences around them, some tents have built-in cupboards and all have curtains, and there’s those garden statues everywhere.  The “campers” there also seemed very surprised that we are only staying one night.

The rest of the evening we were just resting.  Our legs are still stiff and sore.  We cooked a monster spaghetti bolognaise over the gas stove and went to bed just after twelve.

 

2008-06-03 00:00:00
Written By: Claudine du Plessis

Cycling Day: 3
Distance: 165km 

We said goodbye to Stephan and his flatmates and left Osnabruck at about half past 8. Stephan and Christian (the guy we are staying with in Hannover) have both told us about a really nice cycling route between these two cities and we tried to keep to that as much as possible.

We were still a stiff and sore from the previous day, but after an hour it got a little less painful. The start of the route was very hilly, and soon it began to rain quite hard. It was actually fun speeding down the hills in the rain, with our socks getting completely soaked and dark forests around us. When we reached a small town, Melle, the rain stopped.

In Melle, a policewoman called us and told us we are not allowed to cycle on the pavement. It was a really quiet town, with the policewoman being almost the only pedestrian there, and all the other towns cycling on the pavement seemed like the rule. So we told her we didn't know this, but she didn't want to know anything. We got fined 5 Euros each.

Now we started cycling on the roads again, and while crossing a bridge over the Mittle Canal, a friendly German guy told us we should use the cycling route running next to the canal. That was the route the other guys told us about and as soon as we hit that, things became so much easier. Cycling next to the canal was completely flat and we could move along quickly. Scenery was also beautiful, the forests, people canoeing in the canal and mountains in the distance. We followed the canal for almost 100km until it ended in Hannover.

We arrived at Christian's flat at half past nine, and once again we got such a warm welcome, German beer and everything. Apparently I mixed the dates up and he thought we would arrive yesterday, but he wasn't bothered at all. This couch surfing has already made our trip so much more memorable, it´s amazing how friendly the people are. Hannover is a beautiful city, with old buildings and apartments and also lots of trendy cafes. Christian joined us for dinner at a kebab restaurant, and we all talked until past midnight.

Tomorrow to Wolfsburg is a shorter day and we will be camping again, so we don´t have to worry about keeping a host awake. We decided we need a good night´s sleep and Christian will show us a little of Hannover, then we will start cycling at about 11 o´clock. Lance is especially happy about this, anyone who knows him, would be able to imagine the effort it took for him to get up at 5 or 6 every morning.

Total distance today: 165kms. It was supposed to be less, but we got a little lost at a stage.