Finding new roads

The number of weekends I have left here is dwindling. What should you do when you realize there’s not much time?

I thought maybe I should go somewhere I haven’t been. There’s that feeling I should be “making the most” of the time I have here. But with the trip I had last weekend, and work travel coming up, I wasn’t up for driving or finding a place to stay.

I was also thinking, some of the best times I’ve had here were not going and seeing tourist sites, but just getting out and finding some new roads to ride on. So I threw the bike in the care and drove for just 20 minutes – just enough to get outside the area where I normally ride (yes, Autobahn speeds help here).

This is one of the things I’ll miss about being here.

I don’t get tired of riding on new roads, through the many small towns along the way to nowhere in particular. I don’t get tired of:

… riding through the open-air market on Saturday morning

… seeing people walking to shop, and riding bikes loaded with groceries.

… narrow roads with brick houses just a few feet off the street

… a field of wind turbines


… every village with its own little church

… church bells ringing on the hour

... the crazy names of some of the towns (how'd you like to give your address on the phone for one of these?)



… stopping for coffee at a café

There is a different feel to the countryside here. There is something quite charming about the little villages that you see so often, each with its own center, always with a bakery or café – and probably a bar too. There's something about this that seems to make sense. Without the sprawl of concrete things seem to be on more of a human scale.