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August 27 Sunday Bicycle touring Germany We bicycled into Rostock, Germany, to buy groceries. There are lots of cars driving around, but the only places open are gas stations and ice cream shops. Lots of tourists are walking around in the downtown pedestrian area looking at the old buildings with their neat architectural designs and sculptures, while licking ice cream cones. We phone home to Edmonton, Alberta. Sharon's brother, Murray Bokenfohr, is coming to Germany September 18. He plays on a German hockey team. We give him a list of goodies to bring for us. A fellow tells us nothing is open on Sundays. Then he says the train station is open. We bicycle there. The train station has a little food store, but all the food items are very expensive. I buy a road atlas of Germany to use as our cycle touring guide. The maps are a 1:250,000 scale. The entire map book costs the equivalent of 1 1/2 sheet maps (and one sheet map covers just a small portion of Germany), so this road atlas is going to be a great purchase. It also has maps of Austria and Switzerland. Bonus. In the train station we meet Cathy, a fellow Canadian formerly from Vancouver, with her husband, Torstan. They were married in June. His parents went to Canada to attend their wedding. Cathy drove them along the Banff ice fields parkway. Cathy said it was her first time. We couldn't believe that Cathy said she's cycled all over the place, but she had never even driven Jasper-Banff before. Cathy said she really liked Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump, too. It was a surprise when she mentioned the place because we had been trying to tell Arran about the buffalo jump before, and he thought we were pulling his Kiwi leg about the name. I'd like to work there so I could answer the phone, "Hello, Head Smashed In. Can I help you?" Torstan and Cathy had just finished cycling in Sweden. They chose to bicycle tour in Sweden because free camping is legal there. They are on their way home by train to Hamburg. They leave to board the train. Fifty feet from us, Cathy calls out, "We'll be having hot showers tonight!" We bicycled a little ways out of town. It started to rain. We spied a large bus shelter and decided to use it to eat supper in. The weather hadn't improved after supper. Guess of first day of bicycle touring in Germany has come to an end. We set our camprests bicycle touring mats out on the floor of the bus shelter. It was my first time sleeping in a bus shelter. Before I went to sleep, I checked the posted bus schedule. The first bus is at 9:03 tomorrow morning, so we shouldn't have any problems being up before the first bus patrons arrive. The roof leaks a little. |
