But the time came to put an end to all this revelry and so I loaded up my steed and biked off.. only for my phone to ring and deliver a plea for my return. Well what is 20 km and another night in Dresden? Well worth turning around, and I suppose this is always an option. But after playing through the night, welcoming the sun with irish and americana fusion, my fourth wind came with a push to get on my bike again, without a wink of sleep, and continue my course.. which is when the real adventure began!
Since Berlin people have been warning me about the Elbe flood, but even in Dresden I hadn't seen much of its wrath, besides that my plan to go swing dancing was foiled because the venue was now in disrepair. But biking through the small towns, it was almost apocalyptic. Everything was destroyed- cafes, houses, churches alike, none were spared. The river does not choose favorites. Every building was empty, often lacking doors and windows; piles of trash lined the bike path and river grass clotted every lamp post. Lamp posts maybe 10 feet tall, and quite a bit above the current riverbed, spitting reeds; benches still drowning in the grass. There in the towns, where nothing was open, wagons took care of the necessities. The bakery had a wagon, a clothing store had a wagon and tents set up, even the butcher and the bank had their own wagons- they were making it work. And you know, I haven't seen people in such a general good mood my whole time in Germany. Maybe it is because of the region, they are happier here, or maybe it is because it is finally summer.. or because communal survival just makes a body of people more jubilant, more supportive, more generous despite such desperate need. I was so proud of them for this resilience, and later had to rely so much on them for inspiration. As I continued along my jolly way, following my now well acquainted scheming friend, the bike arrow, I came to a gravel road. This being a common occurrence in my couple thousand kilometers already, I thought nothing of it, but slowly the road diminished into a mere ghost of a path. My first challenger was a huge fallen tree completely across my cliff hugging trail. I had to hoist my bike through a gap in its branches, and let me tell you, my rocinante is no petite prince. Then came a wall of bushes that had piled up at the base of a hill, and like sleeping beauty's beloved, I had to slash through the thorny forest with all my might. At last, coming out of the woods, the path descended into what was now an oozing, stinking swamp. So with chin up I took off my shoes, squeezed this delicious muck through my toes, and pushed my loving steed through perhaps 8 kilometers worth of shin deep mud.. sometimes water, singing and ringing my bell all the way. Never have I been so glad to see a hill as that day, one with a glorious paved path up and away from this omnipotent river. How I wished I could teleport all that excess water over my colorado friends, perhaps that would help all those fires! Oh what a time we are entering.
And after all this adventure it was a very unceremonious entrance into a new country. The only indicator at first was the change in style of street sign, then came the change in architecture, and then as people started getting involved, both language and already very obvious cultural norms changed as well. Language not is so much like terrain, it doesn't just blend into the other, as soon as one is across the boarder, there is the new language, all my years of German, now useless. But culturally so far the Czech seem a much more open and friendly bunch with less of an affinity for rules and exactness as their western neighbors. (have you ever seen any sign so cute?)
