Prague to Berlin

Wow, Prague feels like ages ago, even though it was just last week! It was a pretty easy ride from Prague to Berlin, but I really pushed myself to get here as soon as I could so I have longer to enjoy Berlin. I rode 456km in 4 days to get to Berlin a day earlier than I was planning.

I was feeling better when I started out from Prague than I had been for a lot of my stay. I wasn’t back to 100%, and have been blocked up all week- poor roommates in the hostels!

Leaving Prague it took a little while to find pick up the cycle path down the river that connects to the Elbe. This was because I was looking for a bikeshop that was open (none of the were before 10am) to pick up some spare inner-tubes. (I found a small shop later in the day).
It meant I was riding on the wrong side of the river, and I wanted to be riding on what I thought was a nice path all the way to Dresden. So my GPS told me there was a ferry I could take. I rocked up and found a tiny boat with some eager Czech guys who man-handled poor Indie onboard (with me really worried they’d drop it in the river with my expensive electronics strapped on).. Anyway, we made it across safely, and here’s a photo to prove it!

This part of the path was very rough- often I had to get off the bike to push it over big tree roots or logs. It was pretty much singletrack which would’ve been a lot more fun on a mountainbike than a fully loaded touring bike!

There were also a lot of cobblestones. Like the cycle path was made out of them. Big ones. That are pretty much boulders. I wasn’t impressed! To the extent that I didn’t take any photos of it…
That forced me away from the river and I took a bit of a shortcut through some nice countryside (but on busy roads). In the distance, to the north, were a range of hills which were clearly old volcanoes. They reminded me of the line of old volcanoes on the Chatham Islands, off the east coast of New Zealand. Unfortunately the photos didn’t the volcanoes justice so I haven’t included any.
Once I got onto the actual Elbe you could tell the Czechs had put a bit of time and money into the path (because it joins the German Elbe route which goes all the way to the North Sea). There were some nice views too:

Unfortunately some of the path was maybe more designed for day riders, not tourers!

It was a really nice ride, past some old industrial bits along the river. It’s something we’re not used to in New Zealand anymore- using rivers for trade, but it’s obviously pretty big here. Just like the rail system- something else NZ could learn a lot about from Europe.. hmm.

I spent my last night in the Czech Republic in a campground with about 5 other cycle tourists- I was definitely on the cycle tourists trail now. I made the most of the cheap beer at their restaurant to get rid of my Czech currency.
I also found out it was a long weekend for some people in Germany, so I might expect to see a lot of cyclists over the next few days. I had no idea!
It was a short ride down the Elbe on a beautifully smooth, traffic free path to the border with Germany.

The riding continued to be grand- nice cycle paths (although they were occasionally made out of cobblestones). The strange thing I found was the number of people.. I don’t really have any photos that show it but there was a constant stream of people out riding along the path. I must’ve passed over a thousand people on bikes that day, and that doesn’t include the people on the other side of the river!

Riding towards Dresden I was surprised to see big stately houses just outside town. I knew that Dresden was famous for the huge amount of bombing that took place in WWII, and thought that there would be nothing old around it. Anyway, I soon realised that the bombing was really focused on the central part of the city, not the suburbs.. It was interesting also to note that they were growing grapes here.

Dresden is a nice city beside a river. I stayed on the NE side- in the “new” part of town which is actually older than the old part because the old part got destroyed so badly in the war that most of it has been rebuilt.

A building of note in Dresden (one of many) is the Frauenkirche – a church which was destroyed in WWII and was left by the East German government as a pile of rubble as a monument to the war. Since the reunification of Germany it has been rebuilt, and is pretty impressive.

The next day ended up being a pretty big day.. I had a big breakfast at the hostel in Dresden and knew it’d be a good cycle path all day so decided to push on as far as I could.

The path was great, following the river the whole way. I had a slight tailwind and didn’t really stop for most of the day, except for occasional photos.

A point of interest that I passed was the point where the American and Soviet Red Army forces met on the Elbe towards the end of WWII.

At the end of the day I had to cross the river again, and they don’t do a lot of bridges in this part of the world. Luckily here they use bigger ferries! They don’t have engines though- they’re attached to a cable upstream and just change an angle to move across. I suddenly understand the kayaking term “ferry-glide”.

In the end I rode 147km that day. It took me a while- my average speed was about 20km/h. I stayed at a great little hotel/campground place. There was a wedding nearby and all the other guests were at the reception so I had the place to myself (and I was the only camper). So I just drank the good cheap beer and made the most of a really beautiful early-summer evening in rural northern Germany.

As I was oiling my chain the next morning before breakfast I discovered something quite concerning.. One of my drive-side rear spokes had broken. I quickly consulted my TravellingTwo Bike Touring Survival eBook which consoled me that it’s actually possible to ride with a broken spoke, albeit not for too long. So I taped it to another spoke, and decided to try and push on to Berlin that day. This would also mean that I’d have more time in Berlin to look around.
I partly blame the cobblestones for the spoke.

It was more flat, hot riding through flat north German countryside. I was glad to get into some forest for some shade. The forest increased as I got closer to the city, and a lot of the riding later in the day was on busy tree-lined cycle paths.

It was surprisingly emotional for me riding into Berlin. It’s somewhere I’ve read a lot about- such a massive city in Western and 21st Century history, and it’s been a big goal of the trip. The realisation that I’d ridden from Barcelona to Berlin was pretty crazy. When I was planning the trip I never doubted that I wouldn’t succeed, but at the same time I never really thought deeply about what it would feel like getting to these places.

I rode past the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on my way to find a hostel:

Riding through places I’d seen in books, or past places that were somewhat familiar from video games was hard to comprehend. In some ways I think when you read so much about these places it’s hard to believe they actually really exist. Or more precisely that they still exist- especially when so much of my reading of Berlin was about devastation or division.
I rode through the Brandenburg Gate, which the Berlin Wall went right in front of:

So now I’m in Berlin- a city that’s been reunited for less than the time I’ve been alive. And you can tell- at the same time it feels like a youthful city (there’s a lot of construction and renovation underway or just finished) and yet it exudes history with impressive buildings. But more about that in my next post which will be all about Berlin!
I also rode past the Berlin Cathedral:

So to sum up- I rode hard for 4 days to cover the 456km from Prague to Berlin (including one day of 147km). But this has meant that I’ll have a full 3 or 4 days to enjoy the city- quite a time in my schedule at the moment..