Finsterwalde-Elsterwerda-Meissen-Dresden.

Trip dist: 92 kms. Trip time: 6 hrs, 15 min. Tot dist: 5,086 kms.

Celebrations V.

Note to self: If at all possible, try to avoid planning routes through towns with names starting with "Ober-" (i.e. Oberelda) or "Hohen-" (i.e. Hoherleipisch). The name prefix is no mere caprice, indeed, as the name suggests, arriving into these places will, invariably, no exceptions, guaranteed, by necessity involve some sort of steep hill climbing.

Anyway, hmm. The 5000th kilometer anniversary was...well, it happened, you see, very shortly after I left Finsterwalde (only 6 kms, as you know), just as I was getting the hang of pedalling, so to speak, and to top it off, it had just started raining right after I left the main town square, so I didn't really stop for the traditional, required celebratory ice-cream, which was a bit anti-climactic.

Still, the rest of the ride (apart from the initial rain, that is), wasn't too bad. Took a small "indirectour" about 15 kms north of Dresden to catch the Elbe Radweg, which follows, as the name suggests, the Elbe River and which one can catch from as far up North as Cuxhaven, all the way up in the North Sea right close to Denmark, all the way down southeast to Dresden, thus traversing the full length of Germany, and finally straight into Prague.

People seem a lot friendlier here on this radweg. Some of them even said "hi" to me before I did. So in response to this of course I invented a little game to amuse myself during the boring part of the bike ride: when you sense people are about to say "hi", quickly say "hello" first. It tends to throw them off (and I still win every time). :)

So, Dresden is my last German city before I head off for the Czech Republic, but I find that I am not so nervous about switching countries as I used to be before this time. The real reason, I think, is because I know that Czech Republic can't possibly be worse than here in terms of the scolding I keep getting, but another good part of the reason is that, whereas before I would get nervous about the language, and how my rudimentary skills would barely be sufficient to make myself understood, and the worry always persisted, of whether I would understand them, and would they understand me, etc, now that question no longer exists, because the questions: "Will I understand the language? Or will they understand me?" I can already easily answer with a categorical, 100% certain, undeniable:

No.

So that's one less thing to worry about. :)