Adventures of Wes and Laura

Biketouring

Guten morgen on Monday morning. To take advantage of the dry and beautiful weather this weekend we woke up Sat morning, took a quick shopping trip, packed some essentials in our backpacks and headed off by bike to the Ostbahnhof (the train station serving most locations east of Berlin). In Germany you can pay just a little more and take your bikes on regional trains. We had found a long-distance bike trail, called the Gurkenradweg (cucumber bike trail) that went through farm land, forest and small towns following at times the Spree river from its source near the Czech border to Berlin. We took a train to the “other” Frankfurt (Frankfurt an der Oder), almost on the Polish border (had we known we would have taken a more direct route) and from there went SW to Cottbus. We had made notes about the trail from the Internet site where we had read about it, but we didn’t have a detailed route map, though in Cottbus I was able to find a guide, but it had very poor maps. In any case we headed off in the right direction and with a little local help got on the trail. We biked about 50 km that day, often wandering off the poorly marked route, and not being able to enjoy it as much as we would have if we knew we were going in the right direction, but ultimately we made it to Luebbenau, our destination. At one point I got a flat tire - the Kevlar tire I brag about was punctured on the rough cobblestone road - and I thought we might be stuck. But we replaced the tube and used medical tape to cover the hole in the tire, and it held up. Though we had thought about staying the night we instead ordered big meal at a nice restaurant and took advantage of our ‘Happy Weekend” train ticket which gave us free passage back to Berlin(see picture of us on train at night). It was fun to receive calls first from Robert in the restaurant and then from Lance and Lauren on the train. We were back in the apartment by 11:30pm.

Sunday we decided on a shorter tour closer to Berlin in the lake region bordering Potsdam. We took the Berlin metro train to the end of the line in Wannsee and from there biked across the bridge over Lake Wannsee (see picture with Laura), with its pristine waters and the castles flanking its shores. In Potsdam we picknicked in Neuer Park and toured Schloss Cecelienhof, which was the setting of the Potsdam accords, where Truman (US), Stalin (RUS) and Atcliff (England) met to decide how to carve up Germany and administer Eastern Europe at the end of WWI(see Wes outside). We were the last two into the English manor-style castle that day and stood alone next to the big round conference table where this tremendously important meeting took place. Afterwards we enjoyed sitting by the lake before riding back to the Wannsee station.

It was appropriate that we toured by bike this weekend, since it was a year ago that Laura and I did the MS-150 ride outside of Atlanta. My father’s office team (Team GH&I) was doing the race again this weekend on a longer course and we hope it went well for them. It was also coincidentally after this race that I asked Laura to marry me!

posted by Wes and Laura @ 9/11/2006 03:18:00 AM