Germany, km 118350 to 122200

- 118350 km on the bike

I wake up at 7.30 in the morning. It is Sunday, and Kitty's tank is fairly empty. And my last bite to eat (except a packet of crisps) was the breakfast at the Salisbury youth hostel two days ago. So a petrol station and a bite for breakfast plus a cup of coffee would be appreciated.
I return to St. Omer and ask Sally for the nearest petrol station. It is closed today (as usual on Sundays in France), but luckily there is another station opposite which is already open this early. The lady behind the counter points me to a cafe around the corner which is also open, and in no time at all is my need for a coffee satisfied.
Next door is a bakery, where I get myself a baguette, still warm from the oven and some salami to go with it.
Before 9 am I am under way. But after about an hour I realize that gulping down copious amounts of coffee and wolfing down a baguette with half a pound of salami after two days without food is not really what the human digestive system was designed for; I need to stop at another coffee bar and rush off to the loo.
Afterwards I feel good again and even have another coffee in there. Well, and now for some real biking. The course for Luxembourg is east-south-east and the distance should be just under 500 km from here. With the flat countryside I am eating up the miles rapidly. Arras and Valenciennes are rushing past me and soon I reach Belgium near Maubeuge.
Immediately the number of motorbikes on the road increases massively. This is not because there are more bikers in Belgium. No, this is because I am approaching the one part in Belgium that has what no other has; moderate hills and even on occasion a curve. This is the western region of the Ardennes in the province Namur. Then comes the province of Luxembourg (in Belgium) and by 4pm I reach the Belgium - Luxembourg border.
It is still nice and sunny, but here on the continent the still brisk easterly wind has lost its cool element. It is burning hot and I am perspiring heavily under my body armour. Many other bikers just wear jeans and a T-shirt, but I have seen human limbs after they had to act as brakes on the tarmac to decelerate the attached body - and that is not a pretty sight, and the damage caused by such abuse can rarely be fixed without retaining marks on the body for the rest of its existence. If it survived the crash without armour in the first place, that is.
The petrol from St. Omer is all but gone, but I haven't yet refueled because the juice is 30 percent cheaper in Luxembourg, about the same price than in Switzerland. Near Ettelbruck I fill Kitty up to the brim and then check what youth hostels are around; the one at Bollendorf is just a few miles away, just over the German border.
I arrive there at 5.30 pm, and yes, they have a room available for two nights. Two Japanese bikes with plates from northern Germany are already parked in front of the hostel, so I put Kitty next to them.
After an urgently needed shower I find the hostel warden busy lighting a barbecue. Diner tonight will be salad from a buffet and whatever meat the guests would like - freshly grilled. Add to that the fact that I have a two-bed room all for myself it is clear that the German hostel network is much more advanced than the UK network.
I meet the two bikers, a couple, during diner. On of the bikes has starting problems, and the chap riding it presumes it must be the regulator or the alternator. I think I am having a "déjà vu". I tell him that I have an electric multimeter testing unit on board, and he is very pleased.
He's already had the battery checked, and that item was fine. We do the voltage check; 14.3 volts charging, that is perfect. We do the amps; with the lights on it is minus 2 amps with the engine idling (meaning that the idling engine does not rotate the alternator fast enough to compensate for all the consumers it has to feed), but with just a few revs more the alternator is happily feeding 3 or 4 amps into the battery. Conclusion; whoever told him that the battery is fine was just as competent a mechanic as those morons from Motormania in Oviedo that screwed me up.
That is good news, as he will just have to get himself a new battery tomorrow and can then continue with his vacation. We have a wheat beer or two to celebrate and turn in at 10 pm.

- 118900 km on the bike

I will have another quiet day today, especially so as the weather forecast is predicting 35 degrees centigrade for today. The breakfast in the hostel is excellent and typical German; cereals, bread rolls and different types of brown bread, yogurt, jams, cheese and salami - all in all a much healthier selection than a fully cooked English breakfast.
Afterwards I retire to one of the multiple common rooms and generate a route for Sally to Ravensburg in the far south of Germany, where my tyre supplier has various outlets. You can download that route here. Afterwards I update my recently very neglected journey diary, which takes most of the day.
Quite surprisingly the hostel has no internet access whatsoever. But the warden tells me that there is a cafe in the village that offers free internet access to its patrons. I decide to give it a go.
Even the downhill walk is a very hot thing in these temperatures, but at least the warden was right; for the price of a salad I can surf for free as long as I like. I send a mail to Hans, advising him that I will be at his workshop in three days for Kitty's 120000 km service and also use the online reservation facility on the website of Feneberg tyres to book me in for the day after tomorrow to have the worn tyres on the bike replaced. I am not convinced that this online reservation system works, but I try it anyway.
Sitting in front of the hostel this evening is a bad idea; a teenage orchestra has arrived, and some of them are practicing outside. They play their instruments so badly that even the neighbouring cats are meowing their complaints.
The hostel also features a bar downstairs. This evening there are just the concierge, the barmaid and her husband in there (who also sought refuge here from the "music", which they classify as "GBH"), so I get some interesting input on the inner works of the hostel. One thing is certain; it is no easy job to keep a big place like this functioning as well as it does.
Just before closing time at 11 pm the two rather distressed looking music teachers arrive and order six large beers right away - they must have suffered terribly from the playing of their ab-initio pupils.
The warden phones the Ravensburg hostel for me in the evening - they are full. I decide to try my luck tomorrow at the nearby hostel in Friedrichshafen.

Getting my gear on the bike next morning at 8.30 is already tough work due to the temperature. The forecast expects near 100 degrees Fahrenheit again. It is impossible to wear my armoured motorbike pants in these temperatures. I would sweat terribly in them, resulting in rashes and severe skin irritation on my legs and other rather sensitive body parts. I do however put on my armoured jacket, but leave the zip half open to allow some air to keep me at least a little bit cool.
At 10 am I am on the road. The general direction is south-east. After just five miles I am back in Luxembourg.
I continue parallel to the Sauer river through Luxembourg for about five miles, until I reach the spot where that river flows into the Moselle river (German name: Mosel). There is no bridge here at the tiny hamlet of Wasserbillig (meaning in fact "cheap water"). The link to Oberbillig (which means "Upper-Cheap", but may be translated colloquially from German as "Extremely cheap") on the other side of the river is done by a small ferry, just big enough to carry maybe four cars. For 1.60 Euros I get over to the other side, into Germany's Saarland province. Not really extremely cheap, but acceptable.

This county is heavily industrialized and also well populated, but I have chosen my route around the major towns, so the ride is quite enjoyable.
After another 30 miles I once more reach the French border near Saarlouis. This is the Alsace, an area (like the Saarland) that changed hands between Germany and France several times during the last century.
I am overtaken by two French cops on motorbikes. You will never see these guys on their bikes, unless the weather is nice and sunny. Considering the Gendarmerie-issue "safety gear" they are wearing to protect themselves (see picture) I would suggest they should stop using motorbikes altogether - these softies.

Another 100 miles on I reach Strasbourg and the river Rhine. I cross the river back into Germany again. While the Alsace region with the exception of the Vosges mountain range is fairly flat, I can now see the Black Forest ahead. That range of mountains climbs to well over 3000 feet, so I am hoping for some cooler air up there - down here in Alsace it is already scorchingly hot.
After a brief five-mile dash south on the A5 motorway I reach Offenburg and take the B33 south-eastwards. Initially this proves to be a bad idea due to the very dense traffic. But after 80 miles I reach the industrial hotspot of Villingen-Schwenningen, and beyond that city traffic is reduced to a mere trickle and the B523 road I take from there is a bikers bliss.
Near Pfullendorf, about 30 miles before reaching the (unavailable because completely booked) hostel at Ravensburg I ask Sally to get me a diversion to Friedrichshafen, directly on the shores of Lake Constance.
I arrive there at 5 pm. A Zeppelin is gliding gracefully through the air above the lake close to the town, but that is no compensation for the horrible rush hour that is going on. It takes near 30 minutes to reach the hostel on the far side of the town. They have received my booking request and have replied yesterday evening at 11 pm - to let me know that they are also completely full.
Well, I am not displeased. Aside from the Zeppelin I have not seen anything that would make me wanting to stay in this town. I tell Sally to set a course for Wangen im Allgäu, the city where I normally stay overnight when Kitty needs new tyres. The distance is just 20 miles, and because Wangen is several hundred feet higher up than Friedrichshafen it should be several degrees cooler up there.
The hotel "Rössle" in Wangen is a very posh address to stay. Being a homeless, unemployed gipsy I wouldn't have normally considered a place like that.
In the past, while being a decent, hard-working citizen, my calculation was quite different; the saving on buying a pair of tyres here in Germany far exceeded the price for the luxury suite, a fine diner and the petrol to get here.
But I think that after all this basic travelling using hostels, and especially that night in the open in France three days ago, I should treat myself to some more comfortable digs.
Mr Schmid, the owner, makes me a very reasonable offer of 120 Euros for two nights including breakfast - considering that I am saving about 250 Euros on the price of the two tyres compared with buying them in Switzerland I readily accept.
My bike is parked in the garage of the hotel, I move my stuff into the luxury 70 square meter suite and take a cold shower.
In the evening I stroll into the very pleasant medieval town centre and enjoy the familiar sights, a slow pipe and a Bavarian wheat beer.

- 119350 km on the bike

My tyre dealer, Feneberg tyres, has nearly two dozen locations in this part of the world. Being so big, they can buy tyres in bulk from the manufacturers and offer competitive prices. The location which I use is the quiet hamlet of Hergatz, which is just 6 miles from Wangen, but really on a different planet; while Wangen is in the province of Baden-Württemberg, Hergatz on the other side is already inside the "free state" of Bavaria.
Bavarians throughout Germany are known for their stubbornness, conservatism, catholiticism and for being hard workers. Bavarians regard themselves as being to some extent separate from the rest of Germany and certainly aloof of their fellow countrymen.
This has led to certain tensions, practically and politically, between the Bavarians and the rest of Germany. A funny tale that comes to my mind is the story told in the rest of Germany on how Bavaria was founded; when the Carthaginian general Hannibal was about to cross the Alps with his vast army several centuries B.C. to attack the Roman Empire, he is supposed to have said when reaching the foot of the Alps: "Everyone suffering from sore feet or Gonorrhea, fall out left." - and that is how the Bavarian tribe was founded.

Never mind, I like these Bavarians for their other virtue; meticulous, hard work. By 10 am I set out from Wangen into that strange country, and arrive at the Hergatz tyre shop at about 10.30. As expected they have not received my reservation made over the Internet two days ago. They blame those cretins at head office (which, you may have guessed it, is located on the other side of the "border"). They take exact notes of when, where and how I reserved my time-slot.
Needless to say that they put me straight at the top of their job list for today - and offer apologies for that online mishap.
20 minutes after my arrival the work is under way. By 11.30 Kitty is resting on an expertly fitted pair of new tyres, costing me exactly 205 Euros, including inner tubes, rim bands, labour and balancing. In Switzerland the same job would cost me in excess of 750 Swiss Francs.
I am highly pleased, and decide that I could waste the rest of the day on some more cultivated task. To that effect I ask Sally for any interesting places in the vicinity. She comes up with the automotive museum of Fritz. B. Busch at Wolfegg, north of Ravensburg. I have heard about that place; one of the largest private collections of antique motorcars and motorcycles in Europe.
Half an hours biking gets me there. The entry fee of six Euros appears to be steep, but once inside I realize that it is more than reasonable, considering the enormous number of exhibits.
I spend four fantastic hours of mechanical bliss in the main museum (I never even bother with the new annex, housing even more stuff). If you are ever in this part of the world, then this museum is certainly a very recommendable place to visit if you like your motors.

This is the more so, as the museum is housed in a huge stone building. The temperature inside is easily 15 degrees lower than on the outside. The bottom one of the two floors is even a bit chilly!
On return to Wangen I check out the local Internet access. It is nonexistent. Luckily I find another use for my "secondary access method", having for the first time to employ my directional antenna system, allowing me to access "public hotspots" from a far greater distance than the owner of such a system may have anticipated.
I have received an e-mail from my old mate Axel in Germany, inviting me to come and stay with him for the coming weekend, as later on he will be on vacation. That suits me well, so I decide to go North again, once the bike is ready.
All in all it was a pleasant and quite successful day. My puss has new boots and that fine museum was a prime bonus on an otherwise scorchingly hot day.

- 119450 km on the bike

My route for today is rather short; go around lake Constance on its eastern shore via Austria into Switzerland, a mere 80 miles, and then reach Hans place in Eschenbach and have the 120000 km service done on Kitty.
It all begins well, in spite of me taking off quite late at 10 am. But near Lindau, the last exit of the A96 motorway, I run into trouble.
To explain this you have to know that in Germany motorways are still free of charge for cars or motorbikes. In Switzerland and Austria they are not.
While in Switzerland a benign federal government is imposing a flat fee of 40 Swiss Francs per year per vehicle (same for cars or bikes) which is seldom checked upon by Swiss police, the Austrians however have opted for another method.
Austria imposes a much more expensive toll rate, which tourists can lessen by buying the toll sticker (called a vignette or "pickerl" in the vernacular) for a limited period of time only. The shortest time period available for a motorbike is 10 days, which costs 4.30 Euros. Doesn't sound much, does it? But upped to a year that makes something like 150 Euros per year. And those alpine highwaymen don't just stop there; they also deliberately design their road system to lure unsuspecting foreigners who are trying to keep on toll-free roads onto the toll roads. The classic example goes like this:
you ride along a (toll-free) country lane, well aware that further on it will merge with a toll road, e. g. a motorway. Your map tells you, that a toll free country road continues parallel with that motorway, so your intention is to leave the highway for that toll-free road to ensure you stay legal.
But there is no exit from that road to that toll-free country road, and suddenly you find yourself illegally riding on a toll road without having the necessary "pickerl".
You can be certain that the devious Austrian highway patrol are waiting within the first quarter mile of the toll highway to pull over anyone falling into this deliberate and government-supported and designed trap.
Millions in revenue are generated in this way every year by Austrian law enforcement officers.
"But, hey, what was that with that toll-free country road that my map shows and that I wanted to take in the fist place?" you may ask.
Well, the answer is simple - the road is there. Drive back to the spot where your map showed you that it would fork off. You will notice a jogging path for hikers or bicyclists forking off, with some slight traces of tarmac on it, but certainly nothing you can recognize as a proper road. Follow that "road" for about 100 feet and it will turn into a magnificent A-road, with immaculate tarmac and maybe even four lanes - they just deliberately made the access to that road impossible to find, unless you are a local.

The last exit within Germany is located within some large roadworks. I am riding on the fast lane, finding to my dismay that it suddenly leads into a contraflow on the opposite lane. The exit to Lindau is just accessible from the slow lane. That was a very stupid thing to do. Now I must buy a vignette. Apparently the German road building contractor has been bribed by the Austrians to join them in their dirty game of extortion.
South of lake Constance I join the Swiss A1 motorway towards St. Gallen. Just a few miles on I leave the motorway and continue south-west through Appenzell. By 11.30 am I am at the dealership.
Hans, my mechanic and his wife Natalie have invited me for a meal to a nearby restaurant. In the meantime Roman, the apprentice, will start working on Kitty.
The restaurant is 2500 ft. AMSL, so the temperature is quite bearable, considering that the day is another scorcher.
We are back at the workshop at 2 pm. This time Roman is also repairing all the remaining ripped off nuts and bolts, incorrect types of bolts fitted in the wrong location, and all the other blunders done by the Spanish greasemonkeys, which we left for a later time when the alternator was replaced by Hans last month.
In the late afternoon all is done and the total fee is 630 Swiss francs. My bike is ready for another 20000 km of biking.
I stay overnight at the Jona youth hostel again. The boring Swiss guy from last month (working on the local ice rink construction site) is still there, and the hostel warden greets me like I have been away for just a day instead of several weeks.

- 119580 km on the bike

I am up early, and after a quick breakfast I am under way at 9.15 am. The destination is Neuenrade in Westphalia in Germany, where Axel lives. The distance from Jona is about 630 kilometers, so I won't be able to do the entire distance on country roads. I will have to use some of the German Autobahns, famous for their complete absence of any speed limit whatsoever. In reality about 50 percent of them do have a speed limit, but on the remaining 50 percent you can go as fast as you like - if your vehicle can do 300 mph, then there is no law in place preventing you from doing that speed.
But first I have to get there, i. e. get out of Switzerland. My way north leads me through the canton of Zürich. That canton is fabulous for its traffic jams, and especially around the town of Wetzikon, nicknamed the "federal eye of the needle". But to my surprise I get through all those well known jam spots like a hot knife through the butter. Indeed I am so fast, that near the Swiss-German border at Schaffhausen I decide to take a break and see the famous Rhinefall.
The fall is not the most impressive I have ever seen, but I suppose it wouldn't be cricket to just pass it by, as it is just a one-mile diversion.

I take my picture of it and then continue my ride towards the border. At a crossroads I have to turn right (so Sally tells me). But Kitty refuses to slow down. I mean that the throttle remains open and I just shoot past the turnoff. Even worse, when I disengage the clutch, the engine just revs up like mad. I switch off the ignition and come to a standstill at the kerb. What the heck is this?
I fire up the engine again and immediately it revs up like mad again. Has the throttle cable jammed? I roll downhill into the shade beneath a tree and have a close look. There is nothing obvious I can see that could result in this weird behaviour. What is to do?
I decide that the best thing to do will be to return to Hans and let him have a look. The distance is about 70 miles, and 50 of those miles I can cover on the motorway.
The throttle appears to have jammed at about one-third open. This will make the return trip to Hans an interesting journey; starting the engine requires to have the bike in first gear already. Once the engine fires I have to let go of the clutch immediately, to prevent it from over-reving.
Changing gears is also a very interesting exercise; I have to pull the clutch and at the same time kill the ignition. Then I change the gear, let the clutch go, while at the same time I have to switch the ignition back on.
The bike settles at about 110 km per hour in fifth gear (without me touching the throttle at all). This is quite OK on the motorway, but once I reach those country roads beyond Uster I have to come up with a method to adjust the speed to the slower pace with which the traffic flows here.
For that I also use the ignition kill switch; when traffic slows down I leave the bike in gear and kill the ignition. The bike slows down, and once I have reached the desired speed I switch the ignition back on. The bike now accelerates, but once it gets too fast I cut the ignition again. This works quite well.
I suppose I do not have to say that now on my way back through Wetzikon that town is the usual nightmare of stop-and-go traffic. Whenever I have to stop, I have to cut off the engine entirely.
But I manage all right and at 11.30 I am back at Hans workshop in Eschenbach. Hans and Roman immediately drop the jobs they are doing and take my bike apart. There are just 30 minutes left before their lunchbreak at 12 noon is due, but in those 30 minutes they manage to take off the tank and the other ancillaries in the way of accessing the throttle mechanism, find the problem (a loose wiring connector has jammed the throttle mechanism), fix it and refit everything back into place.
I am back on the road by 12.15 pm. I have already driven 150 miles today without yet getting anywhere, so reaching my target for today will be a hard ride, especially in this burning heat.
Nearly all the ride is on the motorway, so there is not much I can really narrate about it. Of course I do not dash along like a madman (in spite of the non-existing speed limit), I stay at a moderate 80 mph and arrive safely at Axel's place at 7.30 pm.
I have an urgently needed shower and then we sit on the veranda of his house and smoke and drink and talk about life, the universe and all the rest until the wee hours of the next morning.

- 120430 km on the bike

The weather forecast is predicting another record scorcher for today, followed by heavy thunderstorms in the evening. The best thing to do in these conditions is to sit in the shade and drink plenty of water. In the afternoon Axel borrows a Kawasaki Z750 from his brother in the hope that maybe we can go for a ride tomorrow. By the time he returns at 3 pm the temperature outside is a staggering 102 degrees and it starts to rain. Huge thunderstorms rise all around us and later the news on TV inform us about some areas nearby that had flash floods. They also tell us that the thunderstorms will not break the weather. They will just add some more humidity to the heat. We are due for more hot days to come, with some additional sauna conditions.
Next morning it looks fine and it is less warm than yesterday. Axel and I decide to get the wheels in motion and ride from Neuenrade to the Henne reservoir near Meschede. The ride is great and we stop at the reservoir to have a coffee and an ice cream.
We return in the early afternoon, while the temperature is still bearable. I do some shopping in the village and get me a pair of comfy sandals. Though the Docs are pretty much broken in by now, I prefer those airy sandals in temperatures like this.

- 120600 km on the bike

My next destination is the former East Germany (an area which Axel has nicknamed "Dunkeldeutschland", i. e. The Gloomy Dark Germany). I want to have a first-hand impression on how much has changed there after 17 years of capitalism. You can download the route here.
I say goodbye to Axel and ride northeast towards the North-German lowlands. Near Soest I stop at a bakery with a sandwich bar and have a breakfast. A biker from Hagen on a big BMW sits there. He is on his way back home after having been in Chemnitz for a few days. We share our experiences with our two big touring motorbikes. Like most BMW riders I have ever met he is quite happy with his steed, but of course he is far away from the mileage Kitty has covered.

A few miles on I stop at a village park. Just out of curiosity I get my network scanner out - and immediately find a wide open WLAN. I take that opportunity to check my e-mail. There is a mail from Guntram, the pushbiker I met in May in France. He suggests I should come and visit him. This is a nice coincidence, as I am just heading his way.

Progress is rapid on this flat country of the North. I reach the Weser river just 20 miles from the port city of Bremen. A few miles on I stop and ask Sally where "Bassel" is, Guntrams hometown. She finds it; Guntram's place is just a few miles south of here.
When I pass through Soltau I get a bit suspicious; I can remember from looking it up a few weeks ago, that the place was somewhere about 25 miles off the North_Sea coast, but this place is certainly much further inland. 3 miles on I am in a tinpot little village, consisting of half a dozen buildings. I have once more been duped by Sally, which is another way of saying that I either mistyped the name of the town of did not include the correct maps in the upload yesterday evening. Well, I won't try to sort this out now. I'll pass by here again one day, I am sure. So I just continue my course parallel with the German coastline, but as usual remaining 20 miles inland. For a time I am biking the south shore of the Elbe river from Winsen to Lauenburg, where I then cross over to the North shore.

It is getting late, so I need to find some digs. I am now entering Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which means I have already reached the former East Germany. There are absolutely no traces at all left of the old Iron_Curtain. The Germans have so thoroughly erased that infamous border that for all one can see nowadays it may never have existed at all.
Sally finds a place to stay in Boizenburg. 24 Euros for bed and breakfast is very reasonable and the place is newly renovated and has a garage for my motorbike.

- 121000 km on the bike

At 10 am next morning I am under way. My route passes halfway between Schwerin and Ludwigslust on straight roads lined by trees. This is a trademark of the former East Germany; in the west all those trees lining the roads were cut down long ago for road safety reasons. In the East however, they remained and after the fall of the Iron Curtain the Germans were far too "green-minded" to sacrifice these lovely trees on the altar of high speed motoring. So a speed limit of 50 mph is in place on most of these roads, but biking them is sheer bliss.

The trees are still green, but the surrounding fields have been scorched by weeks of burning sunshine to a brown mass, more befitting the Australian outback than North-Eastern Germany.
I am approaching the "Mecklenburg Lake District", a section of this flat land which is full of lakes. However, like in Scotland the ample supply of water generates an even ampler supply of mosquitoes. And these buggers here do not share the dislike of my blood, that the Scottish midgets had. They bite, and one does not even realize that one has been bitten until several minutes later when the bite starts to feel itchy.
Normally wearing my full biker outfit would give these bloodsuckers no chance, but with temperatures of 100 degrees I have to let the air get to my skin, otherwise I am going to melt. There is just one solution; I have to go so fast, that the mosquitoes are squashed to death when they hit me - which is quite easy on these flat, straight roads.

At Neubrandenburg I begin to divert south from my easterly course - I am approaching the Oder river (polish "Odra") which forms the border between Poland and Germany here.
I am quite surprised to see that virtually every single building in East Germany has been completely refurbished since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I have been to East Germany during the communist regime and I know how desolate the condition of roads, buildings and the entire infrastructure was.
Now, 17 years on, the changes are so extensive that I find most eastern towns and villages visually more appealing than their pendants in the West.
But having rebuild the entire country at the expense of the rich West does not mean that jobs grow on trees. Especially here in the far east of the country, with stiff competition from cheap polish labour, unemployment is ripe. The lavish social security network that any German politician in the past 30 year was too yellow to touch, ensures that for many people on the dole actually taking up a job is highly unattractive; why work 8 hours every day if at the end of the month there is hardly any difference between the salary and the money one receives on the dole?
My impression is that a lot of people out here are slowly turning into a society of welfare recipients with several consecutive generations which have never worked at all in their lives. It will be interesting to watch the future; how long can Germany afford to let millions of its citizens hang out on welfare before the entire system crashes? A sticker I once saw in the United States on the truck of a local plumber comes to my mind:

If I would be working in this country I would probably put something like that on my car. Germany is definitely a country to be on the dole and live off welfare. But working here (and supporting that stupid system with my tax Euros) would drive me nuts.

I am now 100 km east of Berlin, and the area is known as the Spreewald. Villages are over 10 miles apart and the only activities here appear to be lumber industry and training soldiers; large barracks and army training areas are abundant here and a significant percentage of traffic are army vehicles.
At Bad Muskau I reach the area called the Lausitz. The S127 road runs so close to Poland, that I could throw a stone over the border. Poland is now an EU country. There are no visible border markers and the former custom buildings at the border crossing points are deserted. People can just drive over the border without any controls. But earlier today, when crossing the A15 motorway near Cottbus on the L48 road, there was a large customs check ongoing on the offramp of the motorway. Smuggling, especially cheap cigarettes, is big business here.
Down here it is the Neisse river which forms the border. At Zittau I have reached the south-eastern corner of Germany and turn westwards again. The countryside is no longer flat as a pancake, because I have reached the Ore mountains range. This is one of the most underrated tourist areas in Germany. The mountains are shared equally between Germany and the Czech Republic and they are fantastic for motorbiking. Near Rumburk I actually ride onto Czech territory, and to my surprise they still do border controls here.
Being in this country allows me to fill my tank with the cheap (33 Czech Crowns per liter, currently 30 Crowns are one Euro) but bad quality petrol. Opposite the petrol station is a restaurant, offering a decent menu for 55 Crowns.
I wonder why I hardly see any bikers and only few tourists in this fine area? The country is lovely, the prices are moderate and the roads are great.
The Czech call this area "Ceske Swycansko" (I believe that means Czech Switzerland), while on the German side of the border it is called "Saxonian Switzerland".
Finally I reach the valley of the Elbe river, where it crosses the border near the spa town of Bad Schandau. Then I drive along the river banks until I reach Pirna.
I could now continue along the river to the nearby city of Dresden. Many people go there these days, particularly to see the newly rebuild Frauenkirche. And further on is the picturesque town of Meissen, famous for its porcelain. But onehundred degrees is just too much for me to rummage through scorching cities deep down in the river valley. Instead I turn due west and pass Dresden to the south - and several hundred feet above the Elbe river.
Near Freiberg I find a suitable place to stay in the village of Hilbersdorf. The place is so typical German - orderly, well organized and the parking lots and flower beds in the garden look like they have been laid out using a tape measure (it wouldn't surprise me if they really used one for the job).
I am given a large and cool room for 25 Euros including breakfast, and the owners and their motley group of guests invite me to join them for a barbecue.
I am introduced to the German way of firing up the barbecue charcoal; instead of using lighter fuel or other primitive tools employed in less perfectionist countries they have an ingenious gas-powered self-propelled torch that does a perfect job in under two minutes. I am told that any other method of firing up the barbecue results in unevenly lit charcoal.
Cakes and coffee pass the time while the goodies on the barbie are cooking. By the way, German coffee. Have you ever been offered a German coffee? If not, then you should read my manual on how Germans prepare their coffee:

What I am trying to say is that German coffee is extremely strong. Many Germans like their coffee with milk. But any quantity of ordinary milk would stand no chance of whitening German coffee. So the Germans are using condensed milk, which is thick as syrup, to whiten their coffee. And even that stuff needs ample adding to turn the colour of the coffee from pitch black to something at least a little bit lighter.
How my hosts can sip this kind of coffee next to the hot barbecue in these temperatures is beyond me, so I rather opt for an ice-cold German beer.
More and more people arrive in the garden and is seems that this place is some sort of communal centre for the neighbourhood.
Good German Pilsner beer is flowing in gallons and loads of meat and grilled cheeses from the barbie - no wonder that people in East Germany are on average significantly fatter than their counterparts in the West.
After two beers I feel like I am bursting, so I call it a day at 8 pm.

- 121500 km on the bike

I leave that friendly place at 10 am this morning. I ride north towards the A4 motorway. My first target for today is the town of Halle, a few miles north-west of Leipzig.
You may wonder why on earth I want to go to the rather insignificant town of Halle, while leaving the famous towns of Dresden, Meissen or Leipzig all alone?
Well, Halle is unique in that the town has lost a vast percentage of its population since the fall of the Iron Curtain. It is the worst affected city in all of Germany. City planners in Halle face problems unheard of elsewhere; how to bulldoze whole sections of a town, i. e. destroy perfectly sound and habitable buildings, for which no tenants can be found. Afterwards the wasteland must be returned into farmland. The problem of turning a suburb into farmland must be unique in all of Europe.
By noon I am in the city centre and visit the tourist information office. The girl inside is not at all offended, when I tell her that I want to see the wastelands of the town and enquire for the worst affected areas. I am calmly told, that the south of the town as well as the "Neustadt" area west of the city are virtually empty and many buildings are scheduled for demolition.

I decide to see the Neustadt. And the sight really is weird; the B80 road runs on a raised embankment through it. I can see into the windows of the buildings to the left and right of the street. Rows and rows of empty flats, in some buildings the windows have been painted over with white paint to prevent peeping Tom's like myself from looking inside.
Further on I pass whole quarters of high-rise "Platten"-towers, built during the old regime and now fully renovated. They are ghost towers, no one is living here any more. Playgrounds for kids in immaculate condition - only there are no kids around. A city without citizens - I can imagine this must be a prime film set for a science fiction movie or a documentary on why not to detonate a neutron bomb.
At the far end of this field of ghost towers there are piles of rubble; obviously towers that have been blown up using explosives. Trucks are busy carrying the rubble elsewhere. I suppose if I come back in a year, cows will be grazing here and farmers on tractors plough this land - incredible.

From Halle I continue my journey westwards via Sangerhausen and Sondershausen. But the infernal heat has finally broken through the inversion and massive thunderstorms are building up already at 2 pm.
I stop at a fast food parlour and have some of the famous Thuringian sausage with soup and bread for a late lunch. It does not look good towards Mühlhausen and my route into the West. A black wall rises from ground level skywards. Flashes of lightning are illuminating that black wall and I can hear the rumbling thunder.
I do not mind biking through the rain, but these monster storms with hail, lightning and strong, gusty wind are outright too dangerous. I turn south towards Gotha, where it still looks clear.
At Dachwig I find a room in the "Anker" hotel. The locals are a bit amused when I try to place my bike below a sturdy-looking roof near the hotel entrance. "It won't rain here." they assure me. I want to know why. So an old geezer sitting at a table and sipping a pint of Schwarzbier explains this to me; apparently this part of Thuringia is surrounded on three sides by hills. Any convective weather situation like today will cause heavy downpours all around. They will have rain in Erfurt, in Gotha and in Weimar and Sondershausen, but here in the valley, here in Dachwig the farmers will not get a single drop. We are in the lee of the hills, and the old chap curses the hills in that funny-sounding vernacular they speak here.
And he is absolutely right; not a single drop of rain falls all day or night.

- 121800 km on the bike

The haze next morning is a clear indicator that a lot of rain has fallen last night - but elsewhere. I am on the road at 9.30 and continue my route westwards. The added humidity makes the oppressive heat even more unbearable, though after those weeks and weeks of sweltering temperatures I have forgotten how it feels to ride without the sweat pouring out of every pore of my body.

The thunderstorms are gone, and when I reach Mühlhausen something incredible happens; the sky starts clouding over and the temperature drops by 15 degrees. I have passed through a weak cold front, and for the first time in weeks I feel a bit cold on the bike. I get the armoured pants and the gloves out and suddenly biking is bliss again.
Up to know it was a well rehearsed routine executed as often as the refueling of my bike: to stop at a Lidl or Aldi supermarket, get the two empty three-pint bottles from my luggage carrier and exchange them for full ones. Those six pints would then last me through the same number of hours of biking.
I stop at a parking lot and put on full battlegear. Wearing full armour now, I can for the first time really enjoy those smooth, east-German roads and roar through the bends at a proper angle - without armour I am normally chickening out far before reaching what I consider a safe degree of bank.
I suppose it is needless to say that 20 miles on I pass the now invisible Iron Curtain near the town of Witzenhausen and return into the former West Germany - with its rotten, potholed and cracked roads. For 17 years Germany is now pumping billions of Euros eastwards - with the predictable result that the infrastructure in the West has now massively deteriorated. There is just no money left to keep the roads in good nick, as every available cent goes east.
I should say that it isn't really that bad. The roads are still quite good, but they are nowhere near the condition they were in before (to quote a certain mate of mine) "we bought Dunkeldeutschland and tore down the Iron Curtain instead of putting a few more bricks on top of it".

It is an interesting fact that even after all these years of re-unification more than two-thirds of the West-Germans have never ever ventured into former East-Germany, while in the opposite direction virtually every East-German had his peek of the "Golden West".
In the beginning for the Easterners everything appeared to be better in the West; the air, the cars, the bananas, even the eggs from the west were preferable to socialist eggs. Those times are long gone and many products from the former commie era are making a glorious comeback; from "Fee" washing powder and "Vita"-Coke to Spreewald Ghurkins plenty of old socialist products which disappeared soon after the fall of communism are returning to the supermarket shelves. Some of those products can even impress an old "bon-vivant" like myself - in particular those fine wines from the rather unknown area of Saxony where the river Unstrut flows into the river Saale.
The global warming appears to favour vineyards above 50 degrees north, I suppose. Should you ever have a chance to lay your hands on a few bottles from this very small and very elusive wine-area, then give it a go. Chances are that you will be delighted.

I bypass Kassel using the A44 motorway. The cloudbase is lowering with every mile I proceed westwards. I am convinced that rain is on its way. But I want to know for sure what the weather has in store for me, so I activate my network scanner while riding through a village better left unnamed. Within a minute I have found three open access points, one within easy reach of a comfortable bench in the village centre. I get the laptop out and check out what's going on in the skies.
And my hunch was right; the cold front that I am under at present is about to be run over by the warm front of the next depression. By late afternoon it will be raining heavily and persistently.
I say a quiet "thank you" to those people in that village who buy expensive hardware without any knowledge on how to use it properly; may the people using and abusing it always be so benign as myself.
I know a fine guest house about 70 miles ahead. If my weather sources are reliable, then I should make it there without getting wet.
Two hours later I arrive there, and they even have a room for me for three nights. I need to catch up with my journey diary and sit out the two days of rain which are on their way.
I arrive at 2.30 pm and by 4 pm it is pissing down in buckets. By then Kitty is long parked in the guesthouse garage and I am enjoying a wheat beer and a pipe.
Now, if you ever are in this part of Germany and you are on the lookout for decent lodgings, then there is a simple trick by which you can distinguish the good one's from the tourist traps; just count the number of cars with Dutch number plates that are parked outside. The more Dutch cars, the better the place. In summer the Dutch are abundant in this area. And as they are even more boring, predictable and dependent on fixed routines in their lives than their German hosts, they of course return every year to the same places for their vacations. So once you have found a place whose parking lot is fully in Dutch hands, you may expect very reasonable prices and excellent local food.

- 122200 km on the bike

The guest house has Internet access. An e-mail from Guntram confirms my previous suspicion; I should have asked Sally to get me to Barssel instead of Bassel. And it was of course rotten luck that the village of Bassel exists and was located just a few miles off my course.
I mail Guntram my digital mishap and tell him that I'll see him at a later date. Another mail from Nick tells me that he will visit the in-laws in Algeria during August. I am invited to make use of the facilities at his barn during his vacation.
Having just been fried for a month by the burning sun in Europe means that I have grave doubts that I would want to go to North Africa in August - but very often the people in countries where it frequently gets extremely hot are much better prepared to cope with those conditions than we are in this part of the world.

I have booked myself in for three days, to enjoy the treats of the hotel and explore the surrounding countryside. One entire afternoon is dedicated to update my online diary and upload it, the other day I take a leisurely ride through the countryside and create a route for Sally to Lauressergues in France. I find the total distance to be around 1300 km, which means that the journey will take me three days of great biking.
In the evening I enjoy the good food and have a look at German television; while the two publicly funded stations have kept a reasonable artistic level, the large number of commercial stations that have sprung up in the past years have descended downward into an abyss of broadcasting quality that can only be appealing to football hooligans or Neo-Nazis after each has drunken 12 pints of lager. I have watched television in many countries in my life, but German private television must be the worst on this planet. A possible reason for that may be, that in Germany the script for a TV show or series can not be copyrighted. Sounds bizarre in a country where everything else is strictly regulated, but its true. Any TV show you may ever have seen in your home country and that had any success there with the viewers, will very soon appear as a tastelessly and shamelessly plagiated copy on German TV. German TV-makers prefer to steal the ideas of clever people in other countries, rather than to come up with something good and unique themselves. Add to that the fact that any foreign TV series or movie is mercilessly dubbed (i. e. John Wayne suddenly speaks German with a Berlin accent), I can only recommend to the Germans to point their satellite dishes towards some foreign satellites or get rid of their TV sets entirely.
Aside from that my stay is very nice, and it even has cooled down to acceptable 80 degrees in the afternoon.
After three days I get on the road back towards France.

Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog and some trip markers.