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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