Dear all commentators, Your comments always gave me really good energy to continue. I just didn ´t have enough energy to write back. So I will do it now:
Mami, Papi, Andrés: Gracias por tantos mensajes de apoyo. Espero que nos veamos muy pronto para contarles todos los detalles.
Tamara: you were so right !!!!!We ate more than we pedaled although now I can challenge you any time you want to endure 20 days, doing 60 km per day, waking up at 6:30 am.:)
Martin y Matylda: Gracias por cuidar a los animales y leer nuestras aventuras. Gracias por acompañarnos un el trocito praguense!
Dearest Grace: I totally felt you were here with me as if I you were riding with us in the "back seat". You knew exactly what were talking about! Some pictures were done specifically for you like the one with the weird t shirt...and you knew it. He had a pic of himself with his son. Please tell me you do not have something like that yet.
Eva: Espero que podamos algún día hacer un viaje similar en menos de 15 días.
Myriam: Te apuntas?
All the other readers who I do not know who thet are, thanks.
We saw: Zdenek, Bela, Martin and Matylda in Prague!!!
We ate: breadwith salt andfruits from Boris father's garden
We pedaled: 52 Km
Our average speed: no idea
We slept: Pension Josefina, Prague
We made it. We finally got to Prague, our last destination of this trip. It is hard to describe the feeling about it. The first word that comes to my head is silence.
Anyhow, I will start to describe it like any other day…
We left early in the morning and agreed to meet Zdeněk and Běla (Boris' father and his wife) somewhere along the way to have lunch with them. Trying to avoid the roads with traffic, we took the train to Kralupy nad Vltavou to get back on the cycle path.
We pedaled and as we were riding down a hill, in the next town called Roztoky, we finally saw Zdeněk waving to us.
Zdeněk and Běla were waiting for us at Hotel Alexander and welcomed us with bread, salt and strawberries, cherries, cranberries and blueberries picked from their garden. Then, they crowned us with a crown made of leaves that they did by hand for us. It was so beautiful! Běla made some arrangement with the hotel to serve us some lunch. We had a nice beef broth with noodles and the some chicken schnitzel with really good potatoes. We chat, told them about our experience and continue our last kilometers to the center of Prague. For me, this was the end because the way they both received us made me feel like we had cross the finish line and win the gold medal. I am sure that for Boris was a much deeper feeling having gone back to his home land after such long journey and having met with his father like that.
Soon after leaving them, we met on the road with Martin, (Boris' brother) and his step daughter, Matylda. They both biked with us all the way to Prague. This also closed part of the circle because they were the last ones we saw in Sevilla before leaving for the trip. They took care of our dogs and cat for a long while. So, we chat, stopped for some ice cream and beer (great combination) and afterwards, Martin guided us through the beautiful gardens of the city. We said good bye and continue to our final destination: Penzion Josefina.
Penzion Josefina, our last hotel, is located in the street called Nad Borislav, in Prague 6. This is the neighborhood where Boris lived through his university years until he left Prague in 1989. We usually stay here every time we come to Prague.
So. we arrived and…..we were finished. As I said, it is hard to describe. For me it was silence. It was a similar feeling as when you go to the movie theatre to watch a film. No matter how beautiful the film was, you just get up of your seat and go.
There is definitely a void, though. Pedaling was our daily thing. We will miss it. For me it was an unforgettable experience, worth it to repeat it again and again.
Thanks to Boris internal GPS, the I phone GPS and the maps, we pedaled 900 Km. Thanks to my diet intentions, we ate 9 million calories. We drank hundreds of liters of beer. We lost 0 kg of weight. We laughed every day. We are stronger in spirit, and we have stronger legs. Nothing hurts (ok maybe our upper legs hurt a bit when we go up the stairs). Our ass is intact and it is actually harder. This trip was truly about pedaling, food, an a huge lot of love.
Thank you all for being with us along the whole trip, wherever you were.
The trip has 3 more days so I will keep posting until then.
Day 20_ From Bad Schandau to Roudnice nad Labem (CZ)
We saw: the last part of Germany and the first of Czech Republic
We ate: chicken schnitzel with potatoes and sopsky salad
We pedaled: 64 Km
Our average speed: varied very much along the day
We slept: Hotel Amber Vavrinec, Roudnice nad Labem
This day was very long, very hot, very unusual to the rest of our days so far. We started pedaling quite late. We crossed over to the other side of the river with the ferry and left Bad Schandau, the last German town before crossing the Czech border. From the boat we could alreadythe first Czech mountain ahead of us. We pedaled along the cycle path and nothing changed except for a discrete post with the national shield of Czech Republic. Close to this post, there was also a peculiar sign with interesting advice from the German police. It showed a car with a big black hand over it saying:
"Stop the stealing! Do not leave any of your belongings inside your car! Lock your vehicle! Your Police."
Boris was not impressed…this was the way wewere welcomed to his country.
Perhaps it was just a typical German paranoia. So we kept pedaling, hoping to reach Decin, the first Czech town, where we could have a nice real Czech beer, real Czech sausage and so on. My first thought of this town was: "Where are the nice colorful houses with the geraniums on the window sills and the grandmothers watering them?"
It was a gray city, dirty, poor and sad. The only Czech people that we saw were gypsies poorly dressed andthat was it. But we were hot and extremely thirsty so we try to find a hospoda which is a bier tavern that you find in every corner of the Czech Republic I used to know… Even this was difficult. But we found one. There we had some bier and a cold sausage but as we were going to pay, we realized we had no Czech crowns so we went to the closest bank machine, to only find out a sign that said "Out of Order". The truth was that it was completely "out". Someone had stolen that entire machine and there was only one hole in the wall!!!!!!!
I honestly felt bad for Boris, this was for him shocking, disappointing and I suppose also embarrassing to experience in front of me. I completely understand the feeling because this is how I feel about my country (Colombia). The feeling of impotence is overwhelming.
So finally, Boris paid the man in euros and we left. Another cyclist who was having a beer there with us, recommended to stop in the next town at some restaurant called Tivoli, where a nice waitress would serve us.We pedaled away although the cycle path was suddenly over and we had to take the normal roads with trucks and cars not giving a damn about the cyclists on the road.
We stopped at Tivoli restaurant, as the man suggested and indeed, the waitress was there…what was nice about her were her tits. She served us beer, chicken schnitzel with potatoes and we left again. We still had a long way ahead of us. But he heat was unbearable and the landscape was very industrial, so we reach a train station to cut some time and decided to finally stay in Roudnice nad Labem and call it a night.
This is the blog of Vickie and Boris created to remember the crazy adventure of riding our bikes from Copenhagen to Prague in June 2010. It will help us save the experience from the planning to the making and this way, we can also share it with you.
