The paths were lined with the now familiar plum and apple trees, and fields of a sweetish smelling crop that had just been harvested.
Jacob thought they were poppy fields but Paul wondered whether it was rapeseed - they had a particularly rich aroma that we've only noticed in Europe but it's hard to describe a smell to people so as of now we haven't diagnosed the source!
then exploring the cobbled streets while playing a little soccer,
We never seem to have enough time to fully explore the towns we pass, spotting castles on hills from afar,
but seldom going in. We did stop to wander through the Terezin memorial site. It had a long history dating back to the late 1700s, used as a military barracks. Before WWI, it was put to use as a political prison camp (one of whose inmates was the assassin of Franz Ferdinand of Austria, an event that served to fuel the conflagration). During WWII, it was commandeered by the Nazis for use as a huge concentration camp, and post-war it was used to confine and torture ethnic German prisoners. After a long history of brutality towards its inmates of every period, the centre was finally converted into a museum and memorial to the thousands of Jews and others who died of starvation and illness brought about by lack of nourishment, inhumanely crowded conditions and merciless hard labour.
Terezin is on the outskirts of Litomerice, with three campsites in the vicinity, the furthest of which we decided to camp in despite the kids exhortations to stop at the first one we passed. Wanting to press on to lessen our distance for the next day Paul and I kept going, only to discover, 10 km later, that our intended site was not where it was supposed to be. This by now familiar scenario usually ends with some combination of us losing it and throwing a tantrum, but we were interrupted before tempers reached a crisis point by the arrival on our path of Patrick, a long distance touring cyclist who had already cycled 120 km that day so was ready to stop but similarly flummoxed as to where. He was happy to stumble along with us for the company, and was such a easygoing and nice guy that it lifted the rest of our spirits to cycle with him, turning misadventure into an fun detective hunt, which ultimately did result in a lovely and very cheap campground on a quiet lake.
The next morning we loaded up our bikes
and headed off in our separate directions - he was going on to Prague - and we tried to learn from the experience that it's not the (minor) adversity that we face on this trip that's the problem, it's how we react that really affects how we experience life (still working on absorbing that lesson though...).
Further along the Elbe we travelled alongside rail tracks over which trains boomed as they passed by,
as well as quieter river banks. Travelling near water so much of the time means we are getting to see bridges of all sorts of interesting shapes and sizes.
Our last night in Czech we camped in a tiny town called Nebocady, with an ice cold pool that felt great after a hot day of cycling.
The transition from Czech Republic to Germany was so smooth it was hard to tell which country we were in - both had bilingual signs for a few km on either side - so we had to bid adieu to after we were already in Germany. In Bad Schandau the scenery began to change from relatively flat topography to steep cliffs
that soon towered above us.
Out of great ignorance I had pictured East German towns to consist of grey blocks of bleak Soviet style postwar construction, but the reality couldn't be farther from the truth. The city that surprised me the most was Dresden. We camped just outside it, in the beautiful leafy green suburb of Zschieren, taking the tram into the city centre. From the moment we stepped off the tram I was in love.
I found the centre so beautiful,
the buildings so magnificent,
and everything of such a grand scale.
The imposing statues
(here's looking at you kid)
and elaborately painted walls looked ancient
but most of the centre has only been reconstructed in the past 20 years. Some criticize it as a Las Vegas style reconstruction but I still found it spectactular!
We weren't the only ones to visit Dresden, and there was a restaurant strip full of tourist traps - an "authentic Canadian steakhouse" with "Ontario Restaurant" emblazoned in neon on the front, as well as the "Ayers Rock" restaurant for Australian cuisine.
We skipped the main strip, stopping instead for crackers and cheese on a bench in a tree filled courtyard,
and later getting a bite at a small Turkish shop in the more modern part of the city - with Germany now having the largest population of Turkish people outside of Turkey it didn't feel too bizarre to eat doners and pide in such a setting.
After Dresden we continued along the Elbe until Wittenberg, stopping en route at more terrific campsites, one with a public pool complex that officially closed for the night at 7 pm but that campers were free to use at any time. Before we left in the morning the kids enjoyed their private pool with the kids of another cycling family we had bonded with the evening before.
We enjoyed trailside amenities like wild blackberries
and had a refreshing rest stop at the office of the water company, where a permanent outdoor stand promised "not a day without water", dispensing both still and bubbly versions from bar taps.
Leaving the populous paths of the Elbe we headed north along quiet roads
where we felt as if we saw more hay people than real people,
and our campsite in Raben was deserted.
That changed once we hit Potsdam, where people came from Berlin to escape the heat of the city and swim in the lakes. We didn't love the busy campground but the paths and the summer palace of Frederick the Great in Potsdam more than made up for it (below is just the garden house).
It was a mere 30 km from Potsdam to Berlin, and we cycled along the Mauerweg - the Wall Way, a great forested path that followed the route of the Berlin Wall.
It was a good way to illustrate to the kids (and ourselves) the placement of a slice of West Germany in the middle of the East.
We were happy to stop in Berlin, with its many great parks, this one miles long and filled with ping tables, skateboard parks, beach volleyball and more.
The weather was hot and sunny
and we were glad to stay for five nights, a time for us to rest after the 500 km since Prague and to prepare for our final push to Copenhagen. Katarina, a couchsurfer, opened her home to us for three nights and took us to a delicious ice cream place in her trendy neighbourhood of Mitte. Her apartment sat where East Berlin met West, and we went to the exhibits around the corner about Bernauer Strasse, the street whose front door opened onto East Berlin, but whose back windows opened onto the West, facilitating many escapes before the windows were bricked up and the buildings eventually demolished. The kids were fascinated by the photos, like the one of a man smoking a cigarette on the way down from his jump, and the stories of the residents like the woman who jumped when she heavily pregnant, giving birth shortly after in the safety of West Berlin.
Less educational but as fun for the kids was the trip to Legoland, located in the futuristic open air mall, Potsdamer Platz.
Katarina suggested we go as an outing with her daughter and the kids were happy to oblige and spent a couple of hours running amok.
I enjoyed chatting with Katarina and seeing the lego model of Berlin complete with a mini music concert and replica of the permanent hot air balloon taking tourists to the skies above Berlin.
After three nights at Katharina's place we rented an apartment in the Schoenberg district of Berlin.
We spent most of our time in the city just walking and cycling around Berlin, past the Victory Statue,
and the Berliner Dom
through the Bundestag (German Parliament), including the fully renovated Reichstag building,
and the Gendarmenmarkt square, great for soccer,
pausing outside the Berlin Collegium Hungaricum - I liked Robert Gragger's yellow man sculpture in the background.
The most fun for Kyra was the sleepover she had with one of her best friends, Nicole, whose dad Asmus has family in Germany that they regularly visit. Her mom Sandra and I had coordinated electronically to make sure we'd be in Berlin at the same time. Kyra had the time of her life reuniting with Nicole, and we all met up at Nicole's aunt Silke's marble floored apartment to eat Speculoos cookies and sip on exquisite Earl Grey, provided by her tea sommelier neighbour. We shared stories of our travels and got some tips from Silke's son's recent bike trip to Copenhagen, then heard of Silke's amazing job promoting a crowdsourced online map for wheelchair accessible places around the world - look for it soon on Google.
We spent our last day in Berlin cycling in the Tiergarten,
to a little cafe for beer and panini and a walk in the flower garden,
and our last evening watching a short light and sound show including a film, projected across the Spree river onto the architectural splendor of the German Chancellory building (locally nicknamed the federal washing machine because of its controversial design).
Listening to the brief history of the Bundestag building, then cycling home through the lit up streets was a great way to end our time in this dynamic city.
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