Day 32, 28 6 2014, Dresden to Bayreuth

We rode from Dresden to Freiberg today, and that was it.  We needed a more detailed map to figure out the next stage of the trip. This part was really a transfer stage to get to Bayreuth, close to the start of the Main River cycle route.

The ride out was hard, mostly uphill, sometimes steep, and undulating.

We have 6 days left of this trip, and it became clear that we would need to catch a train for at least part of the trip.  The ride from Bayreuth to Frankfurt is likely to take at least 5 days, and to ride from Freiberg to Bayreuth would take at least another 2.  So it didn’t add up.

After looking at the map we decided to catch a train to Bayreuth.  We went to the station at Freiberg and found that a train left in half an hour and we would get to Bayreuth with one quick change.

Freiberg was having a street festival, and this apparently happens often enough that they have installed these cute popup electrical connections in the street

On the second train I went to the ticket machine, selected English, and selected 2 einzelfahrkarte tickets from the menu.

The conductor told me that I had to also get tickets for the bikes, and would also need to purchase 2 more tickets, the einzelfahrkarte fur kinder tickets.  I didn’t feel that this was completely intuitive.

We checked into a hotel near the station as it was raining quite heavily at this stage.

While we always knew that we would have to catch trains on this trip, somehow I can’t get over the feeling that it is something of a copout, even though the whole trip is predicated on catching trains, and we couldn’t do it without.

40 pretty hard km for the day.  I forgot to turn off the GPS when we got on the train, so the map shows the whole day’s trip, bike and train.

 

Roz says: It is very hard to see and smell so many people still smoking.  All ages.  Freiberg is a very attractively renovated town and we arrived for the big festival, three stages of oompah music, tonnes of barbequed smoked sausages and of course the local Freiburger beer was flowing.

 


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