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September 1 Friday occasional rain Bicycle touring Germany Happy anniversary, Sharon! The plastic we covered our loaded touring bikes with had collected a pool of water we discovered upon arising. That wasn't so much surprising as the colour. The collected rain water had the hue of orange Kool-aid. Quite disgusting to think that's rainwater from the sky. They say there's less pollution in Germany then previously, so I would have hated to have seen it before. At the train station in Potsdam there was a bike rental place. We asked the guy if we could leave our bicycles there and he very kindly said sure. We took a train into Berlin. It only cost DM12.50 each (we're quite a ways out) and took about 45 minutes. The train past through lots of forest areas and some little shacks by the tracks. Apartment buildings are doused with graffiti. We got off the train in downtown Berlin and the place was like a ghost town. Hardly anyone around. Lots of construction going on. Walked through the Brandenburg Gates that used to separate east and west Germany. Walked along Checkpoint Charlie. Bought ice cream and junk food and ate in a squalid park that was very quiet. A woman at the checkout stand in the grocery store yelled at me. My crime? I had put a nectarine and a peach into one bag after putting separate bar code labels on each piece of fruit as required. When I got to the till, she could only see one tag and thought I was trying to steal a nectarine. Bloody hell. She must still think she's in the army the way she bellered. Saw lots of graffiti on apartment buildings. That will be my forever lasting impression of Berlin. Graffiti everywhere we looked. Walked to the Zoological Gardens. Took the train back to Potsdam. Saw three neo-Nazis in the train station. Don't particularly look like guys one would want to mess with. We got back into Potsdam about 7 PM. Picking up our loaded touring bicycles from the bicycle rental shop, I jokingly asked the bike rental guy if anyone wanted to rent our bikes today. "Just one Japanese guy," he said. Figures. We strapped on our helmets, threw our legs over our touring bikes and rode south out of Potsdam. Before long, we found a place to free camp in the woods. There was even a large empty wooden cable spool that we handily converted into a very usable table. |
