Harmony in Saxony

At first I had a hard time finding harmony in Saxony. It was around 7 am and within a few minutes I met more cars on the road then the entire afternoon in the Czech Switzerland. I though, we are not going to be good friends over here - until I reached the city of Bautzen.

My plan was to spend a quarter of an hour there - and it was over two hours later that I finally left the city, after having some great pastries which cost pretty much the half of what they'd cost in Vienna or Munich. But it's not really the pastries - this city has more medieval towers, churches, waterworks, buildings, castles then many other cities together. It is also famous for its mustard and the capital of the Sorbs, a Slavic portion of the population. Similar to Theresienstadt, it also has some dirty history: it used to be home to a Stasi prison.

It was hard to leave, but again, I was/am a somewhat driven. Following some road under construction, I struck up a conversation with a local lady on her bike, who persuaded me to do a little detour to the 'home of the 1000 ponds'. Well, that surely sounded interesting. So I followed her advice and after a few detours, found what she was referring to. You see, this area used to be an industrial center and they decided to rehabilitate it and bring back as much of nature that is possible. The place really has a lot of ponds, but it took me quite some time I wasn't really on a bird-watching trip. So there is this modern visitor building and behind it a large pond. In I go, to see ducks flying away and geese hissing at me. If you have a lot of time to spare, it is surely a nice place, but then it was hard to ride the track between the ponds, I got stuck, almost bitten by a goose, got lost. By the time I turned around and found my way out, the shorter arm of the clock had turned twice - and I was about 5 kilometers further than where I started. Not a good performance in you are on a long-range bike tour.

Anyhow, what else to do, I followed the Spree river loosely, the one that eventually flows through Berlin, I even bought a map of the Spree river bike-trail. Soon Saxony was history, along came the state of Brandenburg, with cities such as Spremberg and Cottbus. I still have a hard time deciding whether or not I liked Cottbus - the center of the town is pretty and I've had some pretty OK Indian food that night - a bit too heavy for my liking, but then I finished it all. It is not prohibited to stop eating when you're full, is it?

Around 9 pm, north of Cottbus, I started looking for a place to stay. I asked a young couple on the street and they recommended to ask in the local (reformist) church, if I could spend the night there. The young priest and his wife let me stay for some Eur 15, I had the upper floor of the church to myself, with bathroom, fridge and my bike parked in the praying hall itself. After settling down, I had a nice chat with the priest, who himself was an avid biker; in fact, the next day he was going to leave for a bike trip to the Czech Republic. I felt a bit jealous...