Rain comes and rain goes,
Tea fills the cup and empties.
Giant chairs rule all.
This morning saw us gathering our stuff to leave Hamburg. Wolfgang was a delightful host. I'll miss his palatial apartment on the 5th floor. And his super awesome shower. And the delicious Brötchen we had for breakfast and late-night snacks. :(
At any rate, we got our requisite cyclists-and-host photo and rolled out of town as the bells chimed twelve. We hopped on a boat bus that took us across the river Elbe.
Everything was closed, since this was Pfingstensmontag (Pentecost Monday). Germans take their holidays very seriously, which was a problem for us as we had no map of the area south or west of Hamburg. No shops were open to supply us with one. The best idea we had was from a few maps we had glanced over at Wolfgang's apartment, so we basically worked off our collectively poor memory and the compass. A reasonable plan... it eventually brought us to a gas station where we found a map that suited our needs but was far too bulky to fit in any of our bags. Solution? Digital camera! We took photos of the route we expected to take and headed out again.
By this time it was getting cold and dark, and not too far down the road of our anticipated path we ran into trouble. Evan got his first flat tyre, too. We looked helplessly at the sky as we realised that we only had about 3 minutes before we would be drenched. Note: patching a tyre tube is nigh impossible in pouring rain.
So Evan crouched under me as I held my raincoat out for a shield, and he successfully patched the tube. We shivered for the next 10 km or so until we rolled into the next town and sat down to eat at the only place that was open: China Palace! We drank a couple pots of wonderful, hot jasmine tea between us (honestly, I think I did most of the tea-drinking, but.....) and shared a dish which was called the DYNASTY FIRE PLATE. It was pretty epic, and the piles of rice and veggies did us some good, I think. Also, the woman who seemed to own the place has a niece from Toronto, and she seemed excited to practise her English. :D
The day got colder and windier and darker as we headed south towards Zeven, where we had decided we would make camp. We followed some series of increasingly impossible German bicycle paths in that direction, which led us through forests and along wooden bridges and through dirt and mud and past a circus. Several times we had to stop and walk our bikes along because the wind was too vicious to cut through at a riding speed. Eventually, Zeven!
The campsite that we stayed at was decorated by a pair of comically oversized deck chairs, which we of course had to sit in. It was headed by a super-kind hippieish fellow who gave us a ride into town (about 2km) so we could get dinner after we cleaned ourselves up a bit. We had house-made beer and liquor and ice cream at a restaurant caled Klosterschänke (pronounced similar to "Cluster Shank," haha), then wandered through the town's parks and back to camp.
Zeven is basically adorable. If we hadn't wound up in such a terrific town at the end of the day, we would have to write it off as awful overall. But with the addition of Camping Sonnenkamp Zeven, we had a nice day.