Previously: Part I | Part II | Part III
Day 7: Berliner con caduta
Not a big day, not one of the hard ones – just the last.
Quick pack and breakfast, sneaking away from a dodgy old geezer. The night before he'd insisted on using my stove to vent his gas canister – because his own cooker didn't work.
One more magic forest. A faint trail dissolving under the wheels. Then suddenly – an impossibly straight firebreak lined with wind turbines. Those giants don't look real when you stand beneath them.
Cosy river embankments. A road sign: Berlin. A small hooray – then the realisation: 30 km still to go.
Decent cycling paths – not Dutch-level, but certainly kinder than the sugar-sand hell of Spreewald.
Going too fast, I missed a turn and cut across a lane. Five meters of grass – and the hole waiting there. A few scratches, a few bruises – a reasonable price for a week without accidents.
Construction chaos. Tourists swarming. Right turn – Unter den Linden. Not the Champs-Élysées, but I'm no Cancellara either – fair enough. The bike lane vanished, so I took the road and pressed toward the Brandenburg Gate.
Warm greetings from friends. Lunch, without the itch of miles behind or ahead.
Deutsche Bahn delivered its signature encore: a three-hour delay on the way home, with the crew giving an impromptu Konjunktiv II lesson – freshly demonstrated in their own apology announcement.
75 km added to the log. 500 km total.
Notes on the Napkin
Seven days. Five hundred kilometres. Two countries. Nothing epic, nothing tragic – at least not according to Strava.
The past five years here have been anything but calm. And yet, somehow, I finally managed the thing I kept postponing: a trip long enough to know where the sunrise is just from the smell of the air.
That familiar comfort of having almost nothing. The same silence. The same quiet fellowship with the elements I once loved in childhood. Not peace – just a truce. Not arguing. Just moving together for a while.
Checking why "Hameln" on the station board felt oddly familiar, I stumbled upon a comedian joking about Fernweh – that specific itch to be elsewhere. Somewhere between Paderborn and the Harz Mountains I noticed one more small piece of engineering beauty. Nothing remarkable – but exactly right.
The orange tent finally fulfilled its purpose.
And that's enough, for now.
by mithraelle