50.15km in 2hr40
Grey drizzle
Breakfast in Oraninenburg Gast haus is portion controlled. Which is quite a nice change. No stress of what to eat. No ratio dilemas of fruit to cereal to salad to bread to meat to cheese to yoghurt.
Instead two bread rolls one sweet one savoury and a large pot of coffee. Since arriving in Germany Fiona* and Alice routinely critique the coffee pots at breakfast. Too long and slim, to unbalanced, not ergonomic, why that spout? Today's stout plastic blue plastic pot they both approve of...
Cash is King in Germany. The ladies with multiple credit and debit cards are penniless. Mastercard nor Visa are accepted. None of us have american express or Dinners' club to complete the trial. And so this morning we are twenty euros short. Alice nips back into town on her steed while Phil and I pack up. Unfortunately we lock ourselves out, and feeling quite sheepish about the lack of cash feel disinclined to trouble the Haus to let us back in. Instead we decide to clean the chains after the sand bath yesterday. However the oil is inside. But as rowers faffing comes quite easily, so the discovery of our lock out, lack of oil or any useful item occupies us until Ali's red face return.
So through the town, passing the cinema, under the Berlin ring and into the suburbs. Our route meanders around the motorway and the river. 15km in and hunger hits early, bus stop break, we wave past a quadruple of middleaged cycle tourists adorned in red anoraks.
We pass them soon after, only for them to recapture us at a costume change. Irritated by their speed- which I later deduce is a direct relation to their reckless road crossing technique we again pass them (I believe them to be giggling). Heads down as we pedal away from them, breaking peloton procession to adopt an agressive defensive cross path stance. However oncoming cycling/pedestrian traffic doesn't permit, so back in Peloton with Colby leading. We whizz past a couple walking their dog. The man shouts something to us. We wonder what he could have meant. On to a wooden bridge over the canal. Phillipa muses "Did he say achtung? There's a sign on the bridge saying that... Maybe it's Slippery?" Offering physical answer to her wonderings I promplty skid and hit the deck. It is very slippy. "Documentation!" I squeal, clearly not very badly injured. "Document!" whilst Phillipa fumbles for her camera and Alice looks on bemused. Unlike Colby my skin is more akin to an Alligator than a Peach so no battle wounds to show for the drama. Back on the bike and cycle.
Berlin and it's rivers lacks the embrace which London holds the Thames. The cycle along the canal/river winds around the edges of suburbs and the backs of houses. But after some while we see some flags fluttering and head towards them. So this is Berlin.... Past the Reichstag, where a group of tourists on segways are being led aroundc...slowly. Then straight to tourist information by Brandenburg gate where hostel booked and Berlin stickers acquired.
Starbucks in the shadow of Checkpoint Charlie.
We delve through the information. Gallery's circled ready for tomorrow, plans of the evening's activities arranged, we decide to use the afternoon for historical culture. So to Topography of Terror. Which isn't the sensalistionalistic exhibition one would expect from the title, but a detailed and graphic account of the Nazi regime. Overwhelmed, tired and hungry with a night on the tiles not as appealing we start our new obsesseion. Asian cusine: Fresh vegetables, flavour and not a sandwich insight.
Coffee and Strudel** in a German coffee house then to bed. En route Alice stands in what she belives is either chocolate ice cream or Dog diarrhoea. We decide it's the latter. She shrieks. I We shriek with laughter. I shriek as I realise she is wearing my new shoes. She wipes her foot on the floor as if it's got worms, I search her out a puddle. The shoes are discarded.
Bed in the hostel sat over Germany's busiest street with the noisest of guests.
* Fiona or Phillipa as she is more regularly known. In a tired moment yesterday, for an unknown reason, I accidentally referred to Phillipa as such. She responds (appropriately), and occasionally the name is expanded to Princess Fiona. Which I had intended as reference to her pristine presentation on the bike, however herself and Alice inferred a Shrek reference. They have now made me the donkey character, which makes Alice by default Shrek... Or altenitivelly that Gingerbread man?
**I am known to become fixated on food items and crave for weeks on end before either achieving, moving on or replacing. Sometime ago when Alice still Elle Presidente and myself still a student I salivated over an imaginary apple strudel which never materialised.
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