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Week 1 | Week 2 | Week
3 | Week 4
| Week 5
| Week 6
| Week 7
| Week 8
| Week 9
Week 10
| Week 11
| Week 12
| Week 13
| Week 14
| Week 15
Before Ostroda
Day 77 - August 20
Cycling along the back roads of what was East Prussia, trees line the roads of the fertile rolling countryside and it is one of the most beautiful rides we have had. The roads are good, the trees protect us some from the wind, and every few kilometers we go through a charming historic village.
No longer does one see signs of Orthodoxy. Here, the pope is a hero and Catholicism, at least in its cultural tradition, is part of Polish heritage. Statuaries of Mary and stations of the cross line the roads like kilometer markers.
Unlike other countries we've ridden through, Poland is well-developed for tourism (we had a brief excursion in Riszan, for example, where we visited the castle and the old town) and the preservation of 17th century churches or 19th century statuaries give the traveler, as well as the Pole, a tangible connection with the past.
Torun
Day 78 - August 2
Torun is the place that made the world round. Copernicus was born here, is buried here, and is celebrated here. The old city center sits along the river and is one of the most impressive old cities we have visited.
It is a university town -- not surprisingly the university is Copernicus University -- and the liveliness of youth is an interesting juxtaposition to the old buildings and cobblestone streets.
It seems that the young represent an influential section of Torun society. An historic building, resembling a city hall, was converted to a dance club and cafes fill the central square where young people hang out.
Poznan
Day 79 - August 22
Seven of us opted to visit Torun again in the morning We watched the city come to life, the elderly women making their way to church or setting up to sell flowers in the market; store keepers cleaning and preparing their shops for the day, morning bread was already being actively traded; and the streets were being cleaned and construction workers were slowly starting their day.
It was windy, but cycling in a line and taking turns in drafting, we were able to catch the group by the 50 km coffee break. It was a good day cycling and despite the heavy head wind, we were excited because our arrival in Poznan not only meant a rest day but also because one of the sponsors had arranged for us to stay in a hotel with the most comfortable bed since starting the trip.
I walked around the center of old Poznan and saw many crowded restaurants with outdoor seating lining the old city square. Like Torun, Poznan has a lot of students taking advantage of the bars in the city center, but seemingly more tourists.
Poznan
Day 80 - August 23
Settled in the 9th century, Poznan is the site of the first cathedral in Poland (erected in the 10th century) and a center of protest for better living conditions. Since being elected Pope in 1978, John Paul II has visited Poznan twice.
The Poznan June of 1956 set the stage for movements protesting poor working conditions. During the Poznan June, over 120,000 people gathered to demand "bread, truth and freedom."
Seventy-six were killed in street clashes with the army, leading to the popular response of loosened political strictures and a slight (and temporary) improvement of working conditions.
As I have mentioned earlier, communism in Poland was never as strong as it was further east. Farms were not as completely collectivized as in other communist countries and the Catholic Church was not silenced to the same extent as elsewhere. And while the outskirts of town have the communist block apartment, aesthetic visionaries have ingenuously applied different colors of paint to make the drab concrete seem more welcoming. But the true pride of Poznan is the old market square with its restored facades and historic charm, in its keeping of Catholicism, and in its revolutionary past.
Frankfurt (Oder), Germany
Day 81 - August 24
Our last week and our last border crossing brought a morning head wind and overcast weather. As we approached the Polish-German border, we encountered an eight km back up of trucks waiting to cross. While bicycles are in general one of the slower modes of transportation on the road, it is times such as that that one relishes being on a bicycle. With everyone standing still, we asserted priority and went to the front of the line while others simply watched us cycle past. I later found out that the back up of trucks were going nowhere until at least 10:00 pm, because transport trucks are not allowed to drive in Germany on Sundays unless they are carrying perishable products like fruits or vegetables.
The Polish crossing was easy with the guards only looking from a distance that we had passports. There was some error in the planning of the route however, as the German border crossing took us directly onto the autobahn. Our destination for the night was just across the border and someone thought we could just take the autobahn a few km to Frankfurt (Oder). Appropriately, the border guards would not let us cross and forced us to backtrack a few km to take the crossing for local traffic. Psychologically it is difficult to backtrack, even if it is only a few km, but it was the crossing we should have taken in the beginning. At the second border crossing, there was not a Polish check point and as the Germans had been alerted to our pending arrival, we were quickly waved through.
We were met on the German side by members of the Frankfurt (Oder) community and he wives of a few of the German cyclists. It had been arranged for us to stay at the local theater and opera house so, as one with little if any musical talent, it was my one opportunity to spend the night in the "Lead Solo" dressing room. Needless to say, I sang in the shower.
The Oder River has seen many battles, and at one point it was the river border for the Eastern Block. Frankfurt (Oder) was part of East Germany and still held some characteristics of association with the eastern block. One of the German cyclists had visited Frankfurt (Oder) five years earlier and remarked at how much the city had changed (or, in his eyes, progressed.) But a foreigner who lived there stereotyped the community as having close family relations and being closed to outsiders. As the younger generation was going west to find work and returning, the closed nature of the city was becoming more open, with the distinction of east-west Germany holding less significance.
Near Nauen
Day 82 - August 25
It was a beautiful sunny morning that began with a breakfast at the theatre where we stayed, followed by a coffee break at an estate house 60 km from Berlin. We received so much hospitality from the community, that when they told us there would be a police escort to the center of town, we warmly welcomed the police sitting by our truck at lunch time. It was not until after they began looking closely at our Russian Ural truck and interrupting our meal that I realized things were not going as planned.
Apparently, when the truck stopped to set up lunch, some residents called the police to say that some "Russian hippies" were setting up camp. The police we met when we arrived searched the truck and felt that the steering wheel and brakes were too lose (meeting Russian "standards", but not German) and subsequently impounded the truck, which had all of our food and bike repair tools. The police that were to escort us into town were a couple km further down the road, and due to the hold up with the truck had already left by the time we arrived .
We were to be escorted to the office of the mayor of Berlin and then onwards to Brandenburg Gate. I could not imagine why the mayor would want to meet a group of bicyclists who were passing through his city and apparently he could not either because he sent someone else in his place. My level of competency in the German language is marginal at best (by that I mean I can order a beer and buy a train ticket), but the "welcome to our city" speech (as summarized by someone near me) was about the great things the city has accomplished in the last few years and that half of the population is under 35. The underside of that political optimism was a telling statement that 18 percent of the population is unemployed.
Fulfilling our obligation to the political courtesy call, we cycled through the eastern part of Berlin to the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of the unified Germany. Once belonging to East Berlin, it was in the "no man's land" of the wall between the divided Berlin and it became a symbol that could be seen but not visited. Now, the wall has been gone for 13 years and crossing through the Brandenburg Gate is common for many Berliners though still special to our group of cyclists.
Without the police escort, we were less efficient in stopping traffic, but no doubt a number of commuters viewed us as a significant nuisance. We managed to catch almost every red light from the Brandenburg Gate out of town, all without the help of our truck, still impounded somewhere in the city.
Wolfsburg
Day 83 - August 26
After hours of negotiation, the Ural situation was resolved. A replacement truck with much less character was sent from the Netherlands and the Ural was released and placed on a trailer to meet up with us again in Holland. The German police levied a heavy fine for having the truck in Germany and sent the license plates and papers to the Russian Embassy in Berlin. Special papers were arranged in the Netherlands for the truck to be driven the last few kilometers in Scheveningen.
I did not notice when we crossed the former East-West German border though a few in the group who had been here before remarked that a section of the barbed-wire border and watch towers were still present. I did, however, notice that at one point the villages we were cycling through took on a more affluent appearance, which I assumed to be an indication that we were now in the western part of the country.
One striking thing about Germany is how clean and ordered everything is. While it lacks the historical center of many of the villages we've seen, Wolfsburg is a good example of a city of order. Founded in 1938 to make affordable trucks and cars (and other devices related to the military efforts), it is the home of Volkswagen. The city revolves around the car manufacturer, by far the largest employer in the area, and to commemorate yesterday's release of the new "Golf", the city temporarily changed its name to "Golfsburg." I counted cars that I passed on the road and found that roughly 7 out of 10 were made by Volkswagen.
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