We didn't sail, but...: Pandemic Pause

Wow. It's been more a year since my last post and I have absolutely no excuse, except that I have had so little to do that I've gotten very little done. I did start a post last spring, so I'll start with that and then pick up below where I left off.

One pretty sunrise from our window

April 2021

Guten Tag. Still here in the middle of Coronazeit (new German for "Corona time", or the era of Corona), experiencing Impfneid (new German for "vaccine envy") and still under a fairly strict lockdown (new German for "lockdown"). So why a blog post, I ask myself? Is it because there's not much else to do (i.e., other ways to procrastinate tax preparation)? Or maybe because I keep asking myself this question? So to make the noise stop, I might as well do a blog post. Maybe I'll enjoy reading this one later, like I enjoy perusing the past adventures through past blog posts and photos collections. Must....resist....temptation now to go back and read some past, fun, picture-rich blog posts!

So what is there to cover other than life during Coronazeit? First, since the last post, I was able to steal away to Florida in November 2020 and be with mom for her 80th birthday and then stay for two months. We had a nice time being together, watching Netflix, doing puzzles and playing games. and being relatively careful as we took advantage of outdoor dining opportunities. I also got tested four times for COVID and made it back and forth without infection (or at least detectable infection.)

Birthday dinner

family zoom!

Chanukah Latkes

It's now April 6th (2021) and somehow it's lightly snowing. That's not too good given that things already started blooming a couple of weeks ago so now all the gardeners (my family) are worried about the fruit trees. Spoiler: The trees were fine.

Snow in Gommern (not the snowfall in April; this was in February)

November 2021

Since I started writing this back in April, we both got vaccinated, restrictions eased (somewhat) and we were able to take some fun trips this summer. Because we were worried about campsites being overbooked (limited spaces due to covid and higher demand also due to covid because families were less likely/able to travel to southern European beach resorts) traveling was a bit more complicated. With some foresight, I planned a trip to Austria for Matthias' birthday, which is right in the middle of high summer season. Based on this website, I reserved a holiday apartment in Grossarl and, more importantly, bike spaces on the train months in advance. Then, since we had a bit of time between when we became fully vaccinated and when our trip was planned, and the weather turned nice, we made a short jaunt by bike to Dresden.

Dresden trip - June 2021

So, I forgot to mention that Matthias bought a NEW BIKE (capital letters needed - it is SOME BIKE!) However, despite the fancy-schmancy-ness of the new super-bike, Matthias suddenly decided that he couldn't pull as much gear on the bike trailer as he had with the old bike, and also didn't want to travel with less, so I got short notice that I'd be pulling our old bike trailer with my (slightly older) bike. I was quite upset by this (which is clear by the snarky writing even months later) but it turned out to be okay because we didn't need to take a train and the route was relatively easy and flat, though due to time constraints we pedaled a lot further each day. We left home on a Sunday and rode about 65 km past Dessau to a nice local campsite by a lake, which had space for us once the weekenders left. I took a quick swim and we spent a bit of the early evening at the campsite's beer garden, all nice and uneventful except the next morning we both awoke with mosquito bites all over our bodies! Unfortunately, that made the remaining nights in the tent a lot less comfortable! But onward the next day to Torgau and nearly 100km on the third day to reach Radebeul on the outskirts of Dresden, an area we knew well from the months spent living nearby about five years ago. We had reserved three nights at the local canoe club, our favorite type of campsite because most campers are boaters or bikers (no caravans) and there are usually good facilities (covered picnic tables, chairs, etc.) for those traveling light. We then enjoyed two days in Dresden, visiting old haunts and bike trails before riding back to Torgau and spending the last night at a canoe club in Lutherstadt Wittenberg (where Martin Luther posted his famous declarations) and riding back home. A quick - but fun - one-week tour from our doorstep. Photo album is here.

Zoomable map of route!

Both bikes outfitted with trailers.

Lunch at the Schillergarten, one of our faves in Dresden!

Slugging through the rain on our return.

Grossarltal (tal = valley, so the Grossarl Valley), Austria - July 2021

There is now a new place on my list of all-time favorite places on the planet! Grossarltal was amazingly beautiful and perfectly suited for ebike touring and heavenly snacking. Despite all my planning (I even made an extra bike reservation in case we missed a connection), we had quite a hard time getting to our destination, about 90 kms south of Salzburg. As we were leaving we heard about flooding on our route just past Salzburg. (This was not devastating flooding that destroyed so much and killed so many in another part of Germany, but it was just a few days later and pretty serious.) We started off anyway, and I was glued to my phone reading about one train cancellation after another. But our train was still scheduled to go through, even the staff in Munich - where we changed trains - said so. I was skeptical, so I made a cancellable reservation at a hotel near the Salzburg train station just in case. But there were no signs of trouble on our train, so about an hour past Munich, we decided to relax and grab a beer in the dining car. Of course, five minutes later they announced that the train would not be traveling past Salzburg. They were providing bus service to get people past the flooded area, but that didn't work for us and our bikes. Fortunately, the hotel in Salzburg was nice and we had a fun night there, visiting a Brauhaus we had seen on TV a few months earlier. The next day, trains still weren't running all the way through to our destination, but we figured we could ride a local train to the last possible stop, and then ride our bikes along the shuttle bus route to the next operating train station (about 20 kms). Unfortunately, the bike route was also closed (the shuttle buses were taking the autobahn) but we were lucky to find a shuttle bus that catered to bikers along the route (since there was NO WAY Matthias was going to load his bike in the cargo hold of a regular bus!) So, with a little adventure, we reached our destination on Matthias' birthday, enjoyed a fabulous lunch of Matthias' favorites along the way and even got to ride up to our first ALM (mountain hut) for an afternoon snack. Even with the delay, we got to spend three days in Grossarl and made the most of it with beautiful bike rides. The way back was less eventful, but still stressful for Matthias because he had to pack his shiny new bike in with many others due to full summer trains. Photo album is here.

Along one of the bike trails in Grossarl

One of the Alms where we grabbed a scenic snack!

More valley biking

Bike Trip - August-September 2021

About a month and a half later, we set off for our "major" bike tour, up to the North Sea and across northern Germany to the Baltic and back. It was another "tour from our door" that didn't require a train ride, so I couldn't protest too much that I had to pull a trailer again. And it was a wonderful tour. We rode along the Elbe River to Tangermünde, a beautiful Hanseatic town, and on to Ahrendsee, a lake resort area that probably had its heyday in the old DDR times. Then we rode along the former East-West border, stopping at a few more idyllic campsites on the way to Hamburg. I enjoyed riding through the city, but we were both disappointed by the less-than-idyllic campsite (basically a parking lot) in Hamburg, where I realized I left my toiletry bag (and its contents, including daily meds) at the last campsite. Fortunately, the pharmacy down the street was able to sell me my pills and we were on our way again, through pouring rain to our next stop on the Nord-Ost Kanal. We learned that this is the most traveled man-made waterway in the world, which I found hard to believe but it's apparently true. The next day we made it to the North Sea and camped for two nights in Tönning, a lovely riverside town near the sea. The next day we explored the wetlands and the coast, and enjoyed dinner in the harbor. Next, we made our way across the mainland to Schleswig and camped in an area frequented by Vikings - right next to a big Viking museum in fact. Simply medieval! And then we followed the coast of Germany's biggest Fjord - the Schlei - toward the Baltic coast and the beautiful town of Kappeln. We stayed here for two nights, which allowed a visit to a quaint fishing village and the opportunity to nosh on abundant smoked fish -- eel is the specialty.

Zoomable map of route:

First stop on the North Sea

Yummy fishbrötchen in Tönning

Greetings from Kappeln! Happy happy even in the rain!

Speaking of fish, starting in Hamburg we had fish everyday. If not from a fish smoker (Raucherei) then at the very least a herring brötchen! The trend continued all the way back home. From Kappeln we rode to a campsite near Kiel, where we got to see the end of the Nord-Ost Kanal. Then we continued to a quiet beach area (Hohenfelde) on the Baltic where wet also spent two nights (a good place for laundry.) The weather was windy and cool, not optimal for beach-lovers/sun worshippers, but we loved it. Leaving there we rode through the "Holsteinische Schweiz" (the "Switzerland" of the area, so-called because there were a few hills and it's really pretty). We camped that night in a town called Neumarkt, which had a lovely harbor and a restaurant with good food and a great view. The next day we rode through a the really touristy beach area (Timmerndorfer Strand and environs) and took the ferry north of Lubeck back across to the East German side. One more night of camping on the coast and then it was onward through Wismar (one of our favorite stops for fish!) and southward to a campsite on a lake across from the town of Schwerin. On the way home, we stopped at three more beautiful lakeside campsites, and made it home at the end of September, just as the weather was starting to get a bit too cold for camping. Photo album is here.