Man with the hammer

While some wonder where we have been since our last post, others sneekpeaked through the app polarsteps what we have been up to. Either way it felt relieved to leave the city behind us and go trough villages, towns, forests and just plain nature. Luckily the good memories stay better rooted than the least ones. It wasn’t easy as we confronted the man with the hammer and had some serious contemplations about our trip while being in the saddle.

So there we were, heading south to the famous Donau river that stretches over 2888km in length. Just on the outskirts of the Frankfurts rolling hills which we’ve been strolling through for a few days often with cold rain showers we rode into a well dense forest one night, perfect to pitch our tent. We surely weren’t the first ones to camp here after finding a “perfect”spot for our tent with some burnt wood and ash in the ground. Here we set camp and lit a fire to dry our clothes and to keep ourselves warm.

As most arubans we were raised by catholic standards, but totally forgot about good friday and almost easter. Here in Germany people are more religious than we thought. Imagine no open supermarket to be found. Realizing T.G.I.F. isn’t working this time, gas stations were our only salvation. This learning moment taught us to stock up on food inmediately for easter also the next day.
Up in the hills with food for 3 days, each of us carrying like 50 kilos (including bike and gear) underneath our saddles.

The weather chased us eventually to the point we had no more dry clothing after 3 days of wet, wild and snow. We knew from the beginning this trip wasn’t going to be an easy one and we know we have to be creative and ready for any spontanious changes during our trip.

Who knew wild camping on a camping was a thing? It happened to us! After knocking on the owners door, a young half stoned guy came out the blue door and send us to a what happened to be a closed down bar. No owners in sight and with frozen fingers we opened our sleeping bags under a covered up roof.
At the first sunlight and still no owner around we packed up and time trialed towards Ingolstadt while being chased by dark clouds with pouring snow. From there we took a train for a short ride to Munich.

Lukas house in Munich was a safe haven! The day after we were profoundly thinking about the progress of our trip as the weather didn’t seem to get better. While drinking a great coffee with jazz music in the background at Mahlefitz we came to the idea to cross the Alps by train and continue our trip from there. To finish the day we went bouldering with Lena to get some frustrations off.

Still excited for our decision we went to get another coffee at Mahlefitz (Thanx Ilan for the great talk) and Lena surprised us with some lunchsnacks at the train station. What an amazing trip going from rainy hills to snowy mountains to sunny valleys into Ljubljana (Slovenia)