Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Day 1 - Lost in Germany


Alrighty. I am now in Köthen in the Saxony Anhalt region of Germany and am taking this chance to update what I've been up to.

I'm going to refer to the last couple of days since leaving Potsdam as days 1 and 2 of my trip. Even though I "officially" started in Berlin, due to the short distance I went and the fact that I spent around a week there, I don't really consider it the first day of my journey, but rather, more of a test run.

Day 1
My first day, and I ended up leaving around 10am in the morning completely mapless, but working with the knowledge that each city/town that I cycle to *should* contain road signs pointing to the next major city or town. Long story short, this proved not to be the most effective way to get to my destination. I seemed to be doing OK for a while, but spent a large part of my day somewhat lost, and when I wasn't lost I was taking large detours in order to enter cities on a road that would allow bike traffic (e.g. Not the Autobahn). Though I did get to where I needed to eventually I spent a great deal of time somewhat lost, or taking inefficent routes to my destinations. Quite annoying to say the least. After spending the majority of my day doing this I bit the bullet and ended up buying a map of Germany which made my life a whole lot easier.

Germany seems to be fairly densely populated. At least, compared to what I'm used to. You can't go more than 5km without hitting at least some small farming town or something similar. Something which I found extremely handy. Each town points to the next town and occasionally also shows the major city that you can also reach by travelling down this road. As I had planned my trip on the more major cities, and most of the smaller towns didn't feature on my map at all, this turned into something of a guess/memory game as I had to recall which towns were also on the way to the major city I was headed for (It only occasionally listed the major cities on any signs).

My day ended at around 9.00pm with me stoping to camp inside a wooded area beside the motorway after cycling for around 11 hours that day with only 3 quick 15 minute stops during that period (once to eat lunch once to buy a map, once to lay down in the shade for a bit). I set up my tent, had some dinner and lay down to sleep for the night.

Note:
No pictures where taken during this period, though I have upload an updated picture of the bike as it is currently outfitted.

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