This bike route wasn't even part of the original plan. The plan was the EV-6. But David, who loves bikes as much as legally possible, simply needed to see Copenhagen, which has consistently (and accurately) been voted the most bike-friendly city in the world for years. When we mentioned this to Uli, my stepbrother-in-law, he assumed that we were doing the Copenhagen to Berlin trail. And even though we hadn't heard of it before then, that's exactly what we did.
Because we bought our tickets the day before traveling (obviously not recommendable under the best of circumstances, but especially when you're schlepping bicycles), we had a terrible train ride with three transfers that dumped us at the central station at 4:30am. So our two-day visit to Copenhagen started before sunrise, and we covered 60 miles of incredible interwoven city bike lanes before even checking into our hostel.
Allow me to rave about Copenhagen for a moment. We thought Berlin was a bike mecca until we got to Copenhagen. The city has everything a biker could want, from elevated bike lanes with turning lanes, to all the bike parking you could want, to bikes of all shapes and sizes (this is, after all, the birthplace of the bakfiets), to bike ramps that allow you to wheel into downstairs apartments. On a related note, a cursory internet search revealed that mechanical engineers are more urgently required in Germany, but it is easier to get a job while only speaking English in Denmark, so David has decided to hedge his bets and apply for jobs in both countries. Wish him luck!
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
After a long a delicious breakfast, we headed down the coast. If today had a title, it would be "So Pretty, So Stinky", which would encompass the bike path going out of Copenhagen (which we postulated went by a dump, which would explain the smell and the trucks), every inch of the coast (which smelled like every low tide you’ve ever smelled plus a couple more rotten eggs than usual), and Highland Cows. It was flat as a pancake for the first half of the day, and then morphed into very gently rolling hills through tree-lined streets.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
 |
| Mileage: 74.50 Climbing: 1,375 ft Travel Time: 6:21:49 |
After a long a delicious breakfast, we headed down the coast. If today had a title, it would be "So Pretty, So Stinky", which would encompass the bike path going out of Copenhagen (which we postulated went by a dump, which would explain the smell and the trucks), every inch of the coast (which smelled like every low tide you’ve ever smelled plus a couple more rotten eggs than usual), and Highland Cows. It was flat as a pancake for the first half of the day, and then morphed into very gently rolling hills through tree-lined streets.
 |
| Pro tip: You should never sneak up on a windmill. |
There is an incredible
network of free basic campsites in Denmark, which we took full advantage of. Our first attempt was to stay in someone's backyard, but she was not at home and we pressed onward, although later
she texted to say that we would have been free to simply let ourselves into her
backyard and make ourselves at home. Instead we ended up in Feddet Strand, on
the beach, where there were small wooden shelters especially for wild-camping. I personally wanted to camp outside
because of the spiders, but the weather channel predicted a 30% chance of rain, and the sky
was predicting 100%. Sure enough, there was an enormous thunderstorm in the night, and despite two leaks in the roof, we were very happy to have been in the shelter.
Wednesday, August 28th,
2019
 |
| Mileage: 77.23 Climbing: 2,484 ft Travel Time: 6:55:52 |
Denmark is similar to
Holland when it comes to wind and windmills, and every house has a small
windsock, usually painted with a Danish flag, so it’s easy to know at any given
time which way the wind is blowing. It tends to start off slow in the morning,
reach a frenzy just after lunch, then die down again somewhat by evening time.
Our largely flat, windy day was divided by two large
bridges, one to Mør and one to Bogø. Mør had two off-road portions, one of which led to the
“Geocenter”, a large wilderness adventure area, the other of which crept through grassy fields and then right along the beach. Lunch was a delicious
sandwich/pastry combo, accompanied by a chat with a Swiss gentleman who was
biking from the north end of Scandinavia back down to Switzerland.
After racing like the
wind, we made it to the ferry terminal just in time to catch the last ferry, but we liked
the shelters on the bay so much that we decided to stay in Bogø anyways. It
turned out that the only Italian restaurant in Bogø (it’s a very small island) was
at the ferry terminal, and over (Italian) beer, we got to chatting to four residents, a gentleman who commutes daily to Copenhagen and formerly worked in Connecticut as a nanny and then a
carpenter, a young gentleman who had a summer home in Mør, an older hippie
gentleman who used to live in Christiania Freetown, and the waiter himself, who
was from a small town near Venice, but had moved to Denmark 11 years ago and was now well
settled, with a wife and two children. The first gentleman treated us to a pizza,
and the third gentleman bought us beers and ice cream, so now we’re definitely moving to Denmark.
 |
| These shelters are everywhere! |
Thursday, August 29th 2019
 |
| Mileage: 40.80 Climbing: 669 ft Travel Time: 3:52:31 |
 |
| Mileage: 21.23 Climbing: 420 ft Travel Time: 1:54:56 |
The ferry arrived to
shore, our captain nobly raised two Danish flags, and just like that, we were off. Aboard, we met a
German biker who was taking two weeks to bike the Copenhagen-Berlin trail, doing 50-60 kilometers a day, stopping whenever she felt
like it, and staying in B&Bs. Inspired by her laissez
faire attitude, we stopped at a bakery in the harbor for second breakfast,
namely, delicious pastries, and then we began in earnest. There was a lot more backroading today, which I enjoy thanks to my large
tires, but is not for everyone, and, in fact, it is where we passed our erstwhile
ferry companion.
Our second ferry of the day, which was like a small cruise ship, left Denmark definitively behind, so we spent the rest of our kroner on duty-free chocolate. After Denmark, we were definitely spoiled, and
therefore were not particularly impressed with the cobblestone pavement that
often ran out and frequently crisscrossed busy traffic, but we made it to the
campsite with no accidents.
Friday, August 30th, 2019
 |
| Mileage: 75.46 Climbing: 1,818 ft Travel Time: 7:11:27 |
The morning ride started off fitfully, with cobblestoned
sidewalks that crisscrossed the road, but soon we were on smooth backroads, and
less smooth, but even more delicious forest pasts, that were double wide dirt
tracks lined on either side by obviously manmade (possibly sustainable) forests.
We stopped for lunch at Krakow am See, a tiny town that boasted two bakeries despite its size. As we were enjoying our sandwiches and pastry, we lost count of the number of bikers that passed us. We camped just outside the town of Warren, an enormous lakeside community. The campsite was just as large as the
town would entail, and as packed as you would expect for the last weekend of the summer, but we tucked ourselves between a picnic table and the communal bathrooms. We were bizarrely interrupted by a triathlete, who ignored my explanation that I spoke little German and David spoke none, and monologued rapidly at us about what I think may have been his training regimen. I smiled, nodded, said "genau" every once in a while, and eventually he left.
Saturday, August 31st, 2019
 |
| Mileage: 73.77 Climbing: 2,119 ft Travel Time: 7:05:33 |
Our ride started on Warren's bike lake, and all day we took enchanting single tracks that bordered much smaller lakes. Finally we were seduced and actually took a dip, which is impressive for two people who are not particularly fond of water. It was cold, but delicious. David was brave enough to skinny dip, emboldened, perhaps, by the gentleman who was skinny-paddle-boarding, and I suffered from my cowardice by having to wear a wet chamois for the rest of the day. Our campsite was unsurprisingly on the beach of yet another small lake.
Sunday, September 1st, 2019
 |
| Mileage: 71.11 Climbing: 686 ft Travel Time: 6:27:51 |
As the day progressed, we were ever-more-clearly in the suburbs of Berlin. First we passed the S-bahn in Oranienberg, then the garden houses on the border of the Schnee, and finally, we were on the streets of Berlin and back at Fiona's place. We are now enjoying a well deserved rest day, having covered between 100-120 kilometers every day for a week, and planning our next stage.
A completely unrelated-to-biking rave:
I have discovered my new favorite thing: Kafee und Kuchen. This is an ancient custom that involves taking a break with friends and family for coffee and cake, as the name suggests, traditionally around 3 o'clock. The first time we encountered this was in Denmark, but we were hungry for a proper lunch, and a couple of other times we saw it advertised on blackboards outside eating establishments, but it was never a good time to stop. However, I was so intrigued, that I emphatically declared that the next place we saw, we would frequent, whether it was a good time or not. Well, the first place we came to was in fact, 15 minutes
farther down the road than our first break, but I made us stop anyways. It was
on the edge of a lake (everything was that day), and when I asked for Kafee und
Kuchen, the lady behind the counter looked at me a bit strangely (as it was only 10am) but then gamely pulled out a small tray of slices containing two
types of cake : one that was easily recognizable as pflaume, a plum cake
that our German friend on the ferry described to us as being typical of Germany, and a cheesecake that was more Italian than New York-style. We obviously
took one of each. As we were eating, we chatted with a couple from Wales who
were doing the trail South to North so they could leave some spare bicycles at
their daughter’s house in Copenhagen. They remembered a few years ago when you
could check your bicycle on the plane wrapped in a large plastic bag, which
sounds likes a dream. Our second Kafee und Kuchen was in the afternoon on yet another of the many lakes we passed, near a lock. This time we had a blueberry Marzipan cake and a
chocolate cake that was basically a stack of Petit Ecoliers mortared together
with frosting. Our third Kafee und Kuchen only happened because we were way too early getting to Berlin and we had to stall for time to give Fiona a chance to finish her day's work. This establishment was the fanciest of the three, and we had a rose-water Wilhemmen cake and a chocolate-covered crepe cake. Based on this tradition alone, I will probably have to move to Germany. We clearly have something deeply in common.
No comments:
Post a Comment