It's Been A WhileIt's been around three weeks since I last typed up a blog post. In that time I've taken more photos than the whole time before that, been in six countries and for only the second time, crossed paths with border patrol. This post will probably be a tl;dr situation, but maybe looking at the photos will be bearable. Where We Left OffMy last real update was in Halle, around 200km south of Berlin, which seems like a lifetime ago. I had my first WarmShowers teed up for a place just out of Potsdam, so I had to smash around 150km on the first day. I foolishly decided at some point to take the Google cycling directions which is not recommendable for a 150km day. After that though, there was a nice cycling path along the 2 which I could follow most of the way. Getting to the actual place was a little tricky through some woods, but that was unavoidable. I stayed with a family who were really friendly and eco friendly. I had a little caravan to stay in which was amazing after a long day riding. Realistically, I could have easily found somewhere to camp in the area, but it was nice to not have the stress, and having a place confirmed meant that the target distance was something I NEEDED to do, not just WANTED to do, which makes a difference mentally. After a great night's sleep, I had only around 40km to get to Berlin, so I relaxed and read in the morning by a lake, then chatted with my host for a few hours. There isn't too much to say about Berlin. I had a great CS host. I spent the morning riding and wandering around, taking the photos of the touristy things. I went on a walking tour which meant that I understood a bit more about what I was seeing, making it infinitely more interesting. On the tour I met an American guy called Daniel Zube who was cycling around too. He should be over the hills by now. After the walking tour we met up with my host and went for a drink down by the river near a dancing place while the sun set which was great. I didn't dance. The next planned stop was Dresden. I didn't take many photos on the way which isn't to say that it was boring, but just that all the cool things I saw, I'd already seen. I stopped the night in Ostramondra, and I'm sure there were photo-worthy things there but apparently I didn't think so at the time. While in Dresden I stayed with Moritz who is friends with Marie, my Halle host. He was really cool. Not vegetarian, but would only eat meat which he knew was killed humanely and thought about where his food was coming from (sustainability-wise). These things made me happy. I think when I finish travelling, I'll hopefully be a bit more like this. I decided to stay a three nights in Dresden and on the final day we went to Leipzig by blablacar and saw a load of goths. The city was pretty cool and it was good to just walk around and see Marie again. I was to follow the Elbe river for two days from Dresden to Prague and seeing as Moritz was heading to his family's cabin, we rode together for the first 30km which was kinda nice, except that the cycle path there was filled with an immense mass of tourist. After I crossed the border though, the state of the cycle path didn't deteriorate too much and the number of people dropped off so I was happy. I spent the night at the house of a Czech WarmShowers fellow. While I really just wanted to sleep, he had decided that we were going to the pub. There was a fellow from Madrid also staying there and he was pretty well insane. He was travelling via hitchhiking and had an incredibly low budget. His intention was to make it up to Scandinavia and he'd been through just about everywhere. One of the many stories he told was about camping in Albania with a bunch of random guys and getting super drunk with them around a fire. As everyone went to sleep in their tents, he went to get some water from the river to put out the fire. When the other fellows heard the fire going out they jumped up and started yelling at him. It turns out that the fire is left going all night to keep away the bears. There are apparently a lot of bears in Romania. Anyway, I got to Prague safely. I decided that pictures of most of the nice things in Prague (of which there are many), can be found on the internet at a much better quality than I can provide. I stayed with two different hosts, both of whom were amazing. I know this sounds fairly generic of CS hosts, but it is absolutely true. Notable things I did with each host respectively were planning a wedding and discovering an Australian film (The Little Death, very funny). After Prague I headed on towards Vienna. My first night was in a town called Tabor. I stayed with a Czech couple. It was really a little gem of a place considering that I was only really staying there because it was on the way. After Tabor I was heading in to Austria. This would be the first new country I would visit on my trip. Also, it would be a return to wild camping. Such fun! Husk. My host here in Timisoara has just returned from work, so I think I'll caption these pictures and finish this post. The rest can wait for later.
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Chris JonesJust a guy going for a bit of a documented ride. Archives
May 2018
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