Date: 13/4 Saturday

Km ridden: 280

Location: Lübeck

It’s an unfortunate truth that even a great time must eventually to come to an end. On Saturday we packed up and prepared to leave the island, but this time using a different route. But first, breakfast! Unfortunately our breakfast plans at the nearby bakery were foiled because all the seats were taken, so we went for breakfast at Nielson which is a great coffee shop with a view over the Wattenmeer (ocean).

Then we took a ferry to the Danish island of Romo.

A long bridge joins Romo island to the mainland.

We followed Matthias, our faithful guide, over that bridge and then from Denmark back to Germany – without a notable border.

Our destination was the Nolde museum.

This famous expressionist has very colourful art and benefited from his reputation that he refused to work under the Nazi regime. Even though that’s correct it turns out that he was actually supportive of the Nazies, only withdrawing his support after they rejected and banned his art!

Seeing this garden…

…one can imagine where he got his inspiration for his colourfulness from

Shortly after that our path separated. Matthias and Gaby had to return to Berlin, while we were heading in the direction of Rügen (another German island) to visit Reni.

As it turned out, the trip would have been too long for today unless we were willing to ride in the dark, which is something we really try and avoid… aaaand it was quite cold (6 degrees!!! 🥶) bearable with our heated jackets but not much fun.

So we stopped in Lubeck for the night. We had found this hotel on the internet:

On the picture you can see the main hotel, however the offer was for a building to the side, a few hundred meters away. Our room there was cheap, warm and comfortable enough, but no hot water cooker or coffee making facilities. That seems to be normal in German hotels – darn 😩 . We had no camping equipment to help us out here, but a supermarket nearby helped us out with all we needed. Another bug bear was that internet was only available in ‘common spaces’ – meaning the common places in the main hotel which shut shop after 8:00 pm – meaning no internet for us….

 

Date: 14 April 2019

Km ridden: 263

Location: Ruegen

The next morning was still cold, but after a good breakfast at the hotel, which did well to negate our negative feelings from the night before, we were off.

We had a short look at the gate of Lubeck

For fun we did some of our exercises in front of the gate to send to our fitness club friends

 

It started to drizzle, but luckily not too badly, so we reached Renie’s Esperanca Feriendomizil a bit after lunch.

We were excitedly greeted by her and her dog JK

We unpacked, and for dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant. Back at Renie’s place we had some wine

and talked till the wee hours of the morning.

The first day we went sightseeing the colossus of Prora , a building complex started by the Nazies, then used during GDR times for the police, now being rebuild for modern times and sold as investment flats.

Later we found a Gosh fish shop in Binz, yummy! And we noticed the 700 year sign on the Binz peer.

Turns out this little village really exists for at least 700 years… coming to prominence only after sea side holidays came into vogue.

The next few days we spent with Reni. We caught up with her parents as well; they were visiting from Berlin and had the new dog in tow, a very lively golden retriever mix.

For the next day she promised that we’d take him along the beach for a long walk. Said and done we set off with him the next day – or should I say he took off with us?

He was so energetic that he pulled us along the whole way – the whole 8 km way along the beach! We didn’t dare to let him off the lead for fear that we wouldn’t get him back. Still it was great fun, albeit exhausting.

That did not hinder us from having a great lunch by the beach

Finally we could help with some lawn mowing and carrying some of Renie’s collected artwork to the appropriate places in the garden of the holiday complex.

Now the place was ready for the Easter rush.. to see the art you’ll need to visit her J

http://www.feriendomizil-speranza.de/

Date: 15 April 2019

Location: Mahlow

In the morning we packed up and said our farewells, promising to see each other again in October.

Then it was off again direction Berlin. Our target for the day was Mahlow and we arrived there in the early afternoon.

The next days were spent washing, planning and preparing for the big trip!