I drippingly went inside the hall, and climbed the stairs to the reception. There was nobody there; I (rather hesitatingly) rung the bell. Everything seemed to be open, but the place was deserted. I nosed about a bit, and rung the bell again - I really didn't want to have to move on again, or indeed camp outside in the monsoon-like conditions. It was only six - surely I wasn't too late?

After 10 minutes of pensive waiting, I heard some activity below, and went to greet the lady coming in. It turned out that she was a guest though - and let me know that they in fact were always gone by 5. She let me know that the place was all open, but that I probably couldn't get in a room to sleep.

Cursing these weird hours, I wondered back outside and spotted something interesting - an intercom. I tried this, and - to my surprise - raised someone. It soon became clear that they spoke English (and my minimal German was insufficient) - and they let me know that they might be full, but - and here I started to wonder if I was dreaming - I should look for a red car parked nearby. "There's one of the staff ... well, living ... in there. Knock on the window". The lady appeared again, and I told her what I'd heard. We both looked around. There was no red car, or anything like it.

The lady kindly offered some food, and pointed out that there were some motorbikers - I could see their bikes parked up - that might have a bed free in their room. Motorbikers are, in my experience, about the nicest people you could hope to meet (second only to cycle tourists), and as the rain pelted down again, I wasn't going to say no.

I wondered up to the kitchen and was given pizza by the bikers and lots of food by the lady, her husband and young daughter. I fell on the food rather ravenously - with the warmth inside after such a long cold day, 120km+, I seriously felt like I was going to faint again - and made conversation. They were on holiday from south-west Germany, and agreed that it was a bit of a strange hostel. The father was an English teacher by occupation, so I felt a bit less of a language-dunce speaking English (and we discussed British English idioms such as: do we say "vending machine"?). The young daughter didn't speak much English yet so got amusingly frustrated by the secret language we were talking. She asked my name, which the parents translated to "Johan", so I then became "Hans". I can live with that.

As I went to put my bike it a small cubbyhole I had noticed just inside the door - I didn't really want the panniers to be rained on all night - I came back upstairs to hear the news that there actually were a couple of staff on site, and that they were in the "tower behind the kitchen". Wondering if this was more surreal directions, I wondered around there, to find that there in fact was a kind of turret with a couple of beds in. The very friendly couple of chaps in there came with me, offered to cook some food (I was ok now) - and gave me a key to my own, warm, dry room. Since the last two nights I'd slept rough in a bandstand and in a tent that ended up with my sleeping matt floating in an inch deep in water, I was very happy about this.

Even better, they then opened the mysterious door behind the cubbyhole and revealed the beers, which we could freely take and then pay for the next day. I went off to have a shower, which was truly wonderful, and then got a beer and joined two of the young chaps who were actually "push" bikers.

We had a good laugh about cycling related things, and they looked satisfyingly a bit freaked out when I told them I'd come from Karlsbad ... well, not actually Karlsbad, but 30km south of it. They were headed down the river towards Cheb, which is known as Eger in German. I then explained my plans: that I had three full days now to get to Kassel to meet my train, and that this should be only 100km days and so be quite doable. I was a bit disconcerted by their incredulous reaction! No way was the general reaction. It was very hilly, the Thuringerwald was impenetrable and the Saale valley would add a huge amount to the distance with its meanders.

I was inclined to take them seriously - they had rode the area and seemed to know it well. One of them referred to an attempt to shortcut across a meander of the Saale as "the great embarrassment". We were pretty sanguine about the plans though - I could always catch a train.

After this I went to bed and luxuriated in the dry. I fell asleep to the sound of the rain absolutely hammering down outside.