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For the last few weeks before I returned to the US, I worked in Copenhagen (København). I flew there every Monday morning, and home to München every Friday afternoon.

A bicycle tour from København to München

Dave Hood
2004-02-19 20:21:47

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attractive Schloß.

On the way into Ahrensburg, three kids were cluttering up the bike path. When I’m loaded for touring, the damn bike is a battleship, and the sailboats had better stay out of the way. They may sprint to stay ahead for a little ways, but there’s no doubt where the power lies, and who’s going to get there first.

And then there was the old fellow on a bike. Although I clicked my brakes before passing, when I came alongside, he exclaimed, “Gar Nichts hörte ich!” Interesting sentence structure, and clearly the way his thinking worked; it was completely spontaneous. Will I ever learn German?

Hamburg was next. The entrance to the city was a long, long, urban stretch, the road so narrow and busy that I had to use the bike path. And the bike path was abominable: every property had a driveway that interrupted the smooth flow of the path. Down, bump over a little curb, across, bump over another little curb, up, over and over again. Commercial, busy, goes on forever, reminds me of Bloor or Queen streets in Toronto. Nice enough, but not a good place to ride. No idea where I was: highway 75, following the Centrum signs.

The bumpf says a canal was built between the north and east seas (Hamburg and Lübeck) as early as 1398! Pretty impressive.

And the sun came out. Just like that! Raised my opinion of Hamburg a notch. The Centrum is a surprisingly small Fußgängerzone. Walked the bike: a busy, active, nice enough city – but where are the picturesque parts? The prettiest church was, of course, covered with scaffolding.

The kiosk map indicated the old city wall, but there was nothing to see at the part I walked to, across from the Hauptbahnhof. Tried the harbour. Here at last is the pretty part, the different part – canals and inlets, overlooked by houses. The same idea carries into the goods harbour, warehouses directly over the ships; ...