I'd planned to depart Prague a day earlier, but the WiFi at the hostel was being disagreeable so I walked down the street to a cafe to finish catching up on some emails... ordered a beer, then another beer... "It's getting pretty late, why not just stay another night in Prague?"
Beer = laziness.
On my way out of Prague I stopped off to check out the gigantic 75ft tall metronome that overlooks the city. I'm not sure of its exact purpose, but read that it was built upon a spot once occupied by a Stalin monument. A nice quirky public art piece, it lumbers away ticking back and forth endlessly.
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| Prague Metronome |
There is a designated cycling route from Prague to Dresden that I followed for the first couple of days. Lacking a detailed map, I was sort of stuck winding around on the route which is frustratingly rarely a direct or efficient path; low vehicle traffic and very flat, however. I've been looking forward to getting back to mountain biking when I get back to Colorado next week. Little did I know this official route would give me a little taste:
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| Vlatava River north of Prague |
And there aren't many bridges in these parts, but there are numerous small john boats that will take passengers and bikes across the rivers & canals. Unfortunately it was late in the evening when I got to a crossing point and the Privoy was shut down for the night. My alternative route took me over a pipeline bridge. Lugging a touring bike up and down 3 flights of stairs was not the least bit fun.
Eventually I reached the small city of Usti, where I procured better map from the Tourist Info Office and that was the end of following this ridiculous cycling route. Now being on a more direct path of my own chosing, albeit one with a few steep climbs, was significantly less frustrating.
Nearing the Czech / Germany border and still holding 103 Czech korunas (~$5) in my pocket... figured it'd be more fun to spend it than covert it back to Euros. I passed through the border town of Petrovice looking for a suitable place to blow 5bux... and immediately knew I'd found my spot!
This was a restaurant in a decommissioned airliner, super cool. The waitress spoke Czech and German (no English) but I was able to explain my cash situation to her: I had enough for a beer, a traditional Czech noodle soup and a coffee. Perfect for a cool, drizzly evening. Then she said she'd give me the coffee for free so I could order a dessert and suggested the Czech honey cake... oh was it tasty!
After my airline dinner, I continued on and slipped into east Germany under the cover of darkness and fog. Finding a great secluded campsite off in some woods, it proceeded to rain all night long... and most of the next day into Dresden. I have to say that I've been incredibly fortunate regarding weather on this trip- but a soggy cold day is never much fun regardless.
Dresden was a pretty interesting city, and I was surprised to find some historic buildings still standing after the massive Allied bombing campaigns of WWII. However I'd picked up a couple small nails in my rear tire (my mantra from my messenger days: "it's never
really a rainy day until you get a flat tire") so I didn't take a whole lot of time to poke around and instead focused on repairing the punctures and finding myself a map to get the rest of the way to Berlin.
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| Dresden |
The weather improved by the late afternoon, and I was treated to a couple of perfect autumn days en route to Berlin: brisk, sunny and breezy. This is not terribly exciting terrain to ride through, but the seasonal shift made it pretty comforting.
I've been nearing 4000 cumulative miles and was excited to clear that hurdle, arbitrary as it may be. Literally 2 blocks after I crossed into the Berlin city limits, my odometer finally clicked over the 4K mark... nice!
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