Day 4: The Unexpected 105 degree Day July 4,2015
Gartow to Bergen 49 miles
Happy July 4th to all our American fans! We got a parade too! But I will get to that later...
Started off today bright and early! 5:30 wake up with the birdies... We don't like birdies... The have swarms of swallows here, tiny birds that zoom by your head and screech and swarm. So after a breakfast of coffee and a cliff bar off we went. It started out good but warm. We waited outside of the Penny market until it opened at 8 am to get more breakfast and lunch for the day. We found a bike shop in Kappern that had CO2 cartridges and a pump to pump up our tires.... Later we found that the cartridges actually don't fit our inflator ... But 1 out of 2 isn't bad! Then we went to the destroyed village of Stresow on the Eastern side. They had a memorial of the actual border fences and markers with clay faces made by local school kids behind barbed wire. The day's minutes were filled with old barracks of the border guards, cobble stones, and swimming in the Arend See (big lake). The weirdest thing is that there are these tiny little beetles that are incredibly attracted to Bruce's bright shirts. We are talking swarms of these things cloud his head and shoulders at times and stick to his back. He looks kind of like Pig Pen from Charlie Brown. (We have later found out that this happens to anyone wearing a neon shirt but it is really gross and tough on Bruce...) The day kept getting hotter as we paralleled the border on old patrol roads. Our water bottles were getting warmer and warmer but we couldn't quite find a little shop to get anything cold to drink. When the temperature reached over 100 we finally found a grocery store and scoffed down a couple of ice creams (Magnum bars of course) and cold water and powerades. After resting in the shade, restocking, and eating lunch, we were ready to move on. This was at 3 o'clock and every shop just closed up with us right out front. We were pretty confused so we pedaled on to the center of town where we were met by an oompah band! There was a gathering of people in black and white with red flowers and a 10 piece brass oompah band. So we had to stop. It turns out that all the shops closed early for this town's harvest festival! We had happened upon the beginning of a parade! We watched until the parade of practically everyone in the village passed by in their finest ( and sweating their patooties off). While photographing the commotion we met a very nice man, Ulrich, who filled us in on the history of this parade (turns out that the town of Wustrow used to have a shooting contest where the winner got to be mayor of the town for a year... until one guy in about 1500's shot another guy and the king of this part of Germany forbade shooting contests ... So now they have oompah band led parades.) cool huh? I like when we meet locals with the inside scoop! We got directions from Ulrich and headed off for the last 10 miles of the day... Always the hardest.
We went down back into East Germany and were met by the worst road of epic proportions. It was made of these uneven concrete slabs that had not been cared for since they were laid in about 1950. It shook us like a Polaroid picture and that isn't even the half of it because did I mention that today was the unexpected 105 degree day? Yeah... It was HOT! We finally made it off of that 3km road from..... East Germany... A few miles later we made it to the campsite for the night... And you would think that that was the end... But no! We were greeted by a very nice Bavarian man who owned the camp ground who sent us off to the campingplatz in back with an invitation to come back and have cold beer. We were totally fried... Andrea couldn't figure out how to uncoil the lock to lock the bikes and both of us could barely talk we were so hot and tired. So we slowly set up and unpacked, napped, drank even more water, went for. Swim in a "natural" pool.... (With biting things and salamanders... That didn't last!) and then we went for beers and dinner. We ordered off of the big plate menu. Curry wurst with fries and schnitzel with bratkartoffelen (sliced and friend potatoes with bacon) and a BIG beer.... Okay so the nice Bavarian owner man took our order and went off to cook it.... This is when the rain started so we ran back to the tent to put it under some shelter and then ran back to get our dinner. On our table was an enormous sausage slathered in curry sauce encircling a pound of fries. Next came a dinner plate sized schnitzel, another three potatoes worth of home fries and THE BIGGEST glass of Pilsner so heavy it took two hands to drink. Wow! We ate. We laughed with the manager and other customers. We watched the thunder storm roll in. We couldn't quite finish this meal of epic proportions but we tried. Then off to bed with full bellies and a storm a brewing. We got into the tent just as the wind picked up. We saw the lightning flashes through the fly and enjoyed the cool wind blowing around the tent. What a day...
The World is Ours.
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