Couchcycling

Jetzt geht´s los, I´m on my way!

After a couple of stressy hours preparing everything, I managed to get a train ticket out of the Netherlands (for which you actually have to go to another city, because most Central Stations don´t have a booth for international tickets and on the internet you cannot buy tickets for cycles), get my cycle in order and say goodbye to friends and family. Funny episode at the local cycle store: the owner knows about my plan and apparently he spread the word. Like this I was standing at the counter and one of his apprentices asked me where exactly I was going to. I told him that my final destination is Beijing, but that I would start by taking a train out to Leipzig. "All the way to Leipzig!?", he cried out. "Than you will have to sit in a train for a looong time!" "What about all the hours sitting on my sadle", I mumbled, but he had already moved on.

On Friday I made the first kilometers fully packed from home to the Central Station in Tilburg (or ´Chillburg´ as a local grafitti piece suggests), and lateron that day from Leipzig Haubtbahnhof to Schleußig, a leafy suburb. I really had to get used to the weight. Ofcourse it is more difficult to speed up, but it also alters the balancing point of the cycle, which is tricky. In Schleußig I met with David and Qing-Li who were kind enough to host me. This was my first experience with ´couchsurfing´ (vielen Dank Karolin/Markun, das ist wirklich super!), and it proved to be a great one. We cycled around town, had a look at the Auerbachs Keller where a scene sets in Goethe´s Faust (took a picture for you Paul), played a great game of ´um dem Tisch herumgehen´-pingpong (´rond-de-tafellen´ in Dutch) convincingly won by Qing-Li, and had a great evening in the local Kneipe ´No 32´.

On Sunday I made the first etappe, from Leipzig to Chemnitz (as I wrote before, birthplace of the black Diamond). It was a beautiful route, thanks to an old detailed map that David copied for me. Especially the last part, along the Chemnitztalstraße (the street that runs along the valley of the river Chemnitz) was memorable. The total route was more or less like this:

Größere Kartenansicht

Some statistics:
Sadle pain (from 1, none, to 5, agonising pain): 1
Wind (from 1, from behind, to 5, head on): 1
Rain (from 1, none, to 5, flooding the streets): 1
Top speed: 46,7 km/h
Other cyclebeasts (defined by carrying at least 30 kilo´s of luggage): 3

In Chemnitz I found another couch host, Christoph, who´s living in Bernsdorf, which is sort of the university quarter although most students stay at the campus (or in the surrounding villages where many have people moved to after ´die Wende´). Chemnitz is a bit strange. It´s quite a pleasant city, but there are hardly any people. Empty streets! Zum beispiel:



18.000 empty flats (which causes considerable downward pressure on the rents: a two-bed appartment will cost you €250 a month), an aging population (46 is the average age, the highest average in Germany), which won´t likely change. Probably the populace will drop from around 250.000 to 180.000 in 20 or so years. "A nice, but empty city", Christoph summarised it.

During the time of the Deutsche Democratischer Republik this city was called ´Karl Marxstadt´, due to one of its only landmarks, a huge bust of Marx (the biggest bust in the world apparently). Quite impressive, and makes it difficult to suppress a loudly sung ´Internationale´.

Another landmark would be the chimney that rises high above the residential buildings and factories. It used to be the tallest building in Eastern Germany, taller than the Fernsehturm in Berlin. They built it this tall, in order to get the pollution high enough so that it would fly over the hilly countryside between Germany and the Czech Republic.

On Monday I said goodbye to Chemnitz and set off to Dresden. I knew it was going to be tough, with the Erdgebirge, a range of hills with steep roads of up to 14 procent, and the sunny weather. Well, everything better than a 5 on my scale of rain, but even my sunblock 55 couldn´t save me from sunburns.

The route:

Größere Kartenansicht

Stats:
Sadle pain: 1
Wind: 3
Rain: 1 (but strong sun that beat my ´factor 55´)
Top speed: 50.3 km/h (downhill from one of the Erdgebirge)
Cyclebeasts: 0 (couple of wannabee´s around Dresden, but their packs couldn´t have weighed more than 10 kilo´s)

The country side was astonishing though. On this picture a relic from the past: the good old Trabant:



During my ride a disturbing trend in today´s (East) German´s politics became visible. With elections coming up in September, only the NPD (´Die Nationalen´, a.k.a. fascists) took the effort to put out their message. Whole villages are covered with their posters, put high up into the traffic lights so that they are difficult to remove, with slogans like: ´Wir sind das Volk´ with a backdrop of a crowd waving German flags, and ´Touristen willkommen, kriminelle Ausländer raus!´ Horrible. But not many signs of other parties and their ideas. Nothing from die Linke, nothing from the social democrats, a few from the christian democrats and some from the ´Tierschutzpartei´, the equivalent of the Dutch ´Party for Animals´. Probably this is just the start of the campaign, but it gives an eerie feeling.

My couch host in Dresden, Matthias, nuanciated the presence of the NPD a bit. "It´s mainly protest votes that will disappear after everyone has seen that this party creates more problems than it solves." Dresden, or Elbflorenz, by the way is lovely!

Will leave it at this for now. Over the next few days I hope to make my way via Görlitz (or ´Europe-town´ because of its location right at the border between Germany and Poland) into Poland.

Tschüss!