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Tuesday, August 13th - Dresden to Regensburg, 8518 km
I am up early as I need to be at the train station by 8:30. I have been doing much more traveling by train than by bicycle. My calculations show that this will be my twelfth train trip since my cycling trip began, my seventh in Germany/Denmark. Add to this one bus ride, one longer car ride and seven ferry rides to date and it will be hard to say I cycled from Lisbon to wherever at the end of it all.
I leave at the time as Ralph does this morning, though Heiko is still at home. We say our goodbyes and I am off to the station. The train is waiting with German punctuality. The wait is the station is short and I find the baggage car and my seat without a problem. Now I can relax.
This is the longest train ride I have had to date, necessitated by my inability to enter Czechoslovakia as planned. Today's route takes me south-west around the western tip of Czechoslovakia and then south to the Danube at Regensburg. On the way we pass through Chemitz, Zwickau, Plauen and Hof, then south to Weiden before arriving in Regensburg.
I try to read but the passing scenery it distracting. I have never been good at sleeping or focusing on anything in a moving vehicle, other than the scenery. The scenery is more interesting than most of East Germany I cycled through before Berlin. It is hilly and forested much of the way with towns and farms sprinkled intermittently. Chemitz is a drab, industrial town. It was known as Karl-Marx Stadt from some time after Communist occupation to until last year. We sit in the station here for half an hour.
The train rolls on to Zwickau and Plauen with shorter stops in each town. Each hill and valley is different but it begins to look the same. I grow tired of watching and doze off for an hour or so during the longer break between Hof and Weiden. The Bavarian landscape flattens out as we approach the Danube, and near the end of the
afternoon it arrives in Regensburg.
Regensburg is a scenic town, very neat and colourfully painted. I find the tourist information office on the main square, which provides me a list of local hotels. I contact a two-star one near the centre (it's not a huge town) and check in. The proprietor doesn't speak much English but she is able to help me get settled.
I eat dinner in a small restaurant on a side street, a pasta dinner, and buy some groceries to get me through most of tomorrow at a convenience store. I walk around in the town as it grows dark and then I return to my room in the hotel. There is nothing to do now in this quaint little dead town. I read to stave off the boredom.
PHOTO: central Regensburg on the Donau (Danube) River
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