July 8, 2022
Day 87: Oschatz to Markranstadt
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Lookit, we made it! But we want to begin by stressing "It's not over 'till it's over!". We still have to attend some great festivities here in Markranstadt over the weekend, make it to Frankfurt, report on any chaos in Frankfurt airport, and ultimately see if our farm is still there, in Canada. An finally, we need to tally what it all cost, and summarize all the benefits we found along the way. So don't give up on this blog yet! But yes, 4,816 km pedaled!
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2 years ago
2 years ago
The day began way back in Oschatz, with some of the usual peering out of our window. The first amazing sight was the elevated and covered walkway that joins the two halves of the guest house. It looks like it was very costly to construct, but sometimes you just have to swallow a cost in order to create some sort of future. A farmer does that with a new tractor, and Gasthaus zum Schwan did it with a walkway.
Down in the old markt square, the bakery was not open yet, and surprisingly the water was off in the amusing fountain. But no matter, we were confident that our hotel staff was revving up the jams for their extravagant breakfast.
By the time we had done with breakfast, a market was actually starting up in the new market square. We took a shot there, not of the market but of the fountain, which marks the spot of the original town well. We then turned the camera to the Gasthaus, which is the oldest in Saxony!
We started out on beautiful quiet roads, which had been found for us by a routing site, like bikemap.net. But also in most cases there were those lovely German bicycle direction signs to the next town. These gave us confidence that the way we were heading was not going to end in some impassable autobahn.
We felt we had been climbing a bit, but were surprised to reach a spot where we could look down on a landscape below. This shot is zoomed a lot, to emphasize the stripy pattern, but we were rather high up when it was taken.
I was trying to keep mental track of the types of roads we were traversing - be it quiet on road, immaculate bike path, short stretches of cobble, or of gravel, etc. But although I was clear at first, it soon all merged into a blur.
We would mention one forest path, which was particularly pleasant:
At one point we had been cruising along a smooth and dedicated cycleway for quite some time. It was long enough that we began to say "Wow, this ride is going to be swell, on these super cycle paths". Literally within ten seconds of that, this happened:
Fortunately, as we pushed through the fields, the roofs of a village appeared among the trees. "Look, a Hobbit village in the forest", fantasized the less serious of our team. It turned out to be not a Hobbit village, but Wagelwitz. Wagelwitz was typical of many of the small villages we passed through - ok, but rather drab.
Overall on the day we would say that there was usually a good cycle way to follow, and never really an unsafe road or situation. The photo below illustrates a very common occurrence in Germany - not that there is an official cycleway, but just as a matter of course a place for bikes is provided beside a road.
When Booking our way through this area, two weeks ago, Dodie was looking for stops that would be reasonable distances from each other. The best place, out of Meissen, would have been Wermsdorf, fifteen km beyond Oschatz. But Booking could not offer a single place in Wermsdorf. Annoyingly, even if they had a property there, if the rooms allocated to Booking are taken, Booking will not even admit the property exists. When we dragged our tails into Wermsdorf we were interested to see if actually there would have been any places to stay there. Indeed, there were five likely candidates! The problem is, even if you can find this out from two weeks away (which likely on the Internet you can), the language barrier makes it difficult to be making a bunch of phone calls. That does leave us with Booking, for better or worse, which often is for worse.
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2 years ago
One thing Wermsdorf had that we could take advantage of was the bakery in a Penny market. And here I have to recant on yesterday calling an egg-qwark schnitte rare. They had all kinds of them, some of which we bought!
A familiar river, the Mulde, made its appearance. We had used the Mulde and its radweg way back in April, when we took advantage of the fact that the Mulde joins the Elbe, at Dessau.
Shortly after reaching the Mulde and half way through the day, we came to Grimma, and stopped to eat our sandwiches and check the Wiki about the town. Apparently it had a castle, where big wigs from Dresden and Meissen would often hang out. And yes, there it was, looking a little ragged, but still noble.
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Grimma is famous for us not because of any emperors, but because it is on the Mulde radweg. You can see below, the radweg poster, and the position of Grimma in relation to Bad Duben. We just love radwegs.
We had some nice encounters with plant and animal life along the way. for example a field of sunflowers, who for a change were not ignoring me.
There were also many cherry trees, including one with orange-red fruit that was particularly sweet and delicious. There was a huge number of roadside apple trees, and also pear, not ripe of course. But plums were, like this nice yellow plum:
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Even as we drew near to Leipzig, we did not encounter any big and dangerous roads, and could always find our way on a bike lane or at worst, a wide sidewalk. Leipzig itself has made a lot of progress in accommodating bikes, and we soon encountered a lot of riders. The bike lanes, of course, were not perfect - especially when disrupted by construction:
We didn't seek out the altstadt in Leipzig, and were rather kicking ourselves for not thinking to book into the city for the night, before covering the final 15 km to Markranstadt. However we did spot a few noteworthy buildings. We'll wait for Juergen to have a look and identify them for us. One of the buildings is quite a skyscraper, which is unusual for a German city, other than Frankfurt.
In the streets just beyond the altstadt there is a disturbing amount of graffiti blight, on the lower floors of buildings that otherwise seem to be fine and nice. We can't understand what is going on here - why the buildings are being tagged and why it is not removed. Does anyone know? It's quite noticeable compared to other cities.
Markranstadt, the home of our friends Jurgen and Birgit, and Joachim and Karla, and their families, is a Leipzig suburb. Despite being a suburb it has remained its own town, with church and square and a somewhat separate existence from the bigger city. To get to Markranstadt from Leipzig we passed through an extensive park, then along the Karl-Heine Canal, with its kayakers, and finally out onto a broad thoroughfare. I'm calling it a thoroughfare because it had place for trolley tracks, for cars, for bikes, and for pedestrians, and none of these modes were interfering with the others. We found this 15 km commute through what could have been a difficult urban environment to be a piece of cake.
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At Markranstadt we were set to stay at the only hotel, the Rosenkranz, which is just by the central church. Rosenkranz had had no vacancies on Booking, and when we called we found the staff spoke no English. So we rolled out our secret weapon, Jurgen, who arranged a place for us. When we arrived, with some difficulty we got them to look for and find the reservation that Jurgen had made. But other things, like the bike storage, and when and where we would unload our bags seemed to be a problem. One reason was that the staff was harried by the fact that a wedding reception was taking place in their restaurant. The wedding was of a couple that had been together 27 years and had now decided on a formal ceremony. Their fifteen year old daughter, Sarah, was around, and the Rosencranz staff enlisted her to try talking to the two yellow Canadians. Sarah did a good job, and our bags and bikes were soon secure. We also got to meet her uncle, Mario, and her grandfather -who apologized that he had only studied Russian, as a second language.
Mario was intrigued by our trip, and incredulous that we had pedaled as far as we had. He was interested in coming to Canada, maybe for skiing, and we gave him our contact info, in case we can see him again, over there. Here is Dodie with Sarah and Mario, for the record.
Jurgen came out to welcome us back, and to plan some activities for the next two days. We understand there is a children's festival in town, and some family members will be part of it. There may also be music, maybe fireworks? We were a bit too beat to follow the descriptions well. But we'll see. First step will be to reorg our gear, some to be mailed home, some taken on the plane as carry on, and some left with the bikes with Jurgen and Birgit. Dodie hatched the mail home plan to keep luggage away from Frankfurt airport, which we understand is more of a zoo than usual right now.
What gave Meaning to Life today? Following Tricia Graham's suggestion, we'll go with Making it back with no (major) disasters.
Today's ride: 92 km (57 miles)
Total: 4,816 km (2,991 miles)
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2 years ago