"Der Weg ist das Ziel"

Whoever thought cycling hundreds of kilometer along a canal would be boring couldn’t be more wrong. But if this excitement is a positive feature lies in the eye of the beholder.

A few clichés about cycling rehashed: you see a lot you don’t see when you take train or car. And this is true. But many of the things you pass would be better left unseen. On a train you close your eyes near the Dutch-Belgian border and wake up in France. But if you hit the first bits of urban sprawl of Hannover, you know you’ll have to claw your way through a fair bit of ugliness.

There is more prettiness in the rural bits of Germany that feel like one big propaganda film for German production capacity ranging from farms to energy and from steel to recycling. But all is encapsulated in vast stretches of woods and fields that are in full bloom. If at the end of the day you have stains on your clothes from three different types of wild fruit, you’ve done well for yourself and the enjoyment of what the countryside has to offer.

Being used to the fail free system of bike paths and directions in the Netherlands, the East has some tricks up its sleave. When another indicated cycling path ends on a large industrial pavement, a few guys handling heavy machinery look up only for a second, and you have to start guessing whether or not at the end of the wharf a fence closes off further thoroughfare and a detour around another bit of industrial area needs to be undertaken. So another cliché is apt: many roads lead to Rome, or in this case Berlin. But similarly truee: there is not one single road that will get you there.

Five nights in we've gotten past Hannover on the Mittellandkanal, and weve stayed at all possible places. Fist night we were treated to a guest room in a self sustaining commune off the grid, the second night we stayed at an official campsite, third night we camped near the canal in a clearing in the bush, the fourth night we were allowed to pitch the tents on a little terrace overlooking fields with five or six different types of wheat and a massive orange sun descending and last night we were offerd a spot in the garden of a machine builder and his wife but were upgraded to a room when the beers and Lithuanian berry wodka had made the light vannish unnoticed.

Today will be slow, our heads a little heavy and legs nice and sore. Today I prefer working a bit more on my sandal tan lines.