Day of Departure!

---

---

Friday the 13th - the ideal day to start off a two-week long bike tour! After a quick breakfast, we jump on the train to Frankfurt/Oder, on the border to Poland. After the border, we cross over the Oder, Poland waiting on the other side. Immediately, confusion: only the main route is signposted, we need to find a smaller road. The first "conversation" in Polish follows: using hands, feet, and the map, we get directions and find our way out into the countryside.

The weather is slightly wet, but ideal for cycling, the road good, a good start to our tour. In Osno Lubiske, we buy some provisions (not so easy if you don't speak a word of Polish and are faced with 10 different types of sausage). I end up with some blood sausage and kielbasa (I think), tasty anyway.

Following the R1 cycle path, we take a wrong turn (confusing the R1-signs with signs for local paths) and end up on a Polish bike path - someone drove a tractor through the woods once, someone else painted signs on the trees, that's it! Almost impossible to cycle, especially with 20kg of weight on your bike. At a junction, we decide to take the quickest way out of the woods, ending up on a sandy path first (better than mud), later on huge cobblestones. Funnily, cycling on cobblestones almost feels like a relief after the mudpath in the woods. In the next village, we find someone to ask for directions and find our way back onto the R1.

Shortly before Mi?dzyrzecz, we head off into the woods to find a place to pitch our tent. Once the tent is pitched, a car drives by on the path, only to return an hour later, but doesn't see us. There isn't much to do, so we head off to bed, where I fall asleep to the first night out in the forest after our first day spent in the saddle.

---

Photos

Before Take-Off
Hans and I with our bikes in front of his garden house in Berlin.

Dirt Path
How do you spell "Cycle Path" in Polish?

Camp 1
Our very own lodging in the woods.