We´ll be here for three days and then on to Amsterdam, via Hamburg.
So...about the Autobahn field story I left off with.
There were no signs from the ferry station to the center of Rostock. Having slept on the benches in the cafeteria of the ferry, we were sore and irritable and just wanted coffee and a pastry in order to regroup and figure out the best way to bike to Berlin. We took a wrong turn and ended up on the side of the German Autobahn, which really doesn´t have a speed limit and thus, is an incredibly stupid place for any cyclist to find themselves. We stopped for a minute and two old German men pulled up to fuss at us about getting off the highway. It´s been almost 6 years since I studied here, without any previous German language. While I´m surprised how much I do remember, I certainly didn´t understand exactly they were saying, except the general gist of `Get the Hell off the highway!´
After that several other people honked at us, and feeling the impending doom of being on the Autobahn, we decided to not retrace our path up the entrance ramp, but to abandon ship to the previously mentioned construction field.
We soon orchestrated a sort of call-and-response song. One of us would fall in the wet muck and squeal.
´Oh my god! Are you ok?!´
´Yeah, I´m ok. Stupid field.´
´Ok, cool.´
Then soon after that the next person would fall and squeal and it would all start up again. It got tiring after a while.
So we shortened it to.
Squeal...
´I´m ok. I´m ok.´
Squeal....
´I´m ok. I´m ok.´
Squeal....
You get the gist.
Now, I´d like to take a pause to compare Swedish and German mentalities. I´d like to compare our Swedish audience on the train (us being inept with fastening our bikes} with the Germans fussing at us to get off the highway. One party just watched as we fumbled around while the other were all too happy with telling us exactly what we were doing wrong.
Hahaha, cultural differences.
The following story only appears because Kat mentioned it, and I only write it because I have been thinking it for some time now. As much as I adore Kat, I absolutely detest her bike. She researched and purchased one of the best long distance touring bikes available, the Surly Cross Check. It has great ´frame geometry´ and is made out of steel, which is supposed to absorb more vibrations and leave one´s bones feeling less rattled. But the blasted thing keeps breaking! In Copenhagen the chain broke. On this trip the back wheel keeps going freaking flat! We had to ride 30km and blow the tire up every 15min until we could get to the next ´big´ town and get a new tube. However, once we got to the big town we learned that the one and only bike store closed at noon on a Saturday. Dude, European store hours are very different.
So, instead of a new tube we´ve had to patch her tube up three times already. Unbelievable.
Oh! The first time we had to patch the bloody thing....
It was late in the evening on the first day of biking, the same day as the Autobahn field. It´s not legal to camp anywhere in Germany like it is in Sweden. We didn´t want to pay for a campsite and we just kept riding in hopes of finding a really great free, hidden yet safe place to sleep. We went over a railroad track and a few minutes later her tire was flat. I´m total shit about dealing with anything when I am tired. It´s one of my lesser known bad, bad traits. I was totally frustrated and didn´t want to deal us trying to fix her tire. There was a large field by the side of the road and we decided to just stay there the night. We trudged through the field, our shoes getting wet all the way through, and picked a spot slightly hidden by the trees. While we´re trudging, I noticed a smell. We set up camp and finally laying down I notice a smell. We freaking slept in an old crop field covered with manure.
The next morning it was raining and we had to battle to get her tire off the rim. For the longest time we tried the handle of our hairbrush. Didn´t work. After 30min we rigged up a system of using a key and a credit card. Now, after three times of this, we´re pretty fast at it, although her poor rim is not a scratch-free as it once was.
My boyfriend and his brother, Conner and Dan, built this kick-ass bike and taught me how to fix it. It hasn´t fallen apart once. So in a ninja fight between a fancy bike and a handmade bike, I´d place my money on the handmade one any day.
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