"You notice what you've forgotten, as soon as you leave"

To live up to this motto, we decided to take a test ride with our new setup - Eve (Tilman's recumbent) and Glados (our new cargo bike).

The test drive was supposed to go from Haldensleben to Potsdam and back. Meanwhile, we took the opportunity to visit a few people in Potsdam again.

As already announced, it turned out in the end that we probably would have forgotten one or the other little thing.

Our little trip started early on Sunday (26.03.). As typical for Sundays, we have of course forgotten to shop before (in Germany shops are closed on sundays) and plundered a few leftovers from the kitchen. The weather forecast was promising! Always only tailwind and occasional light drizzle. We first rode along the Ohre River, until we had to change then on the road around direction Wolmirstedt. I was positively surprised about the variety of bike paths next to the country roads. I would not have thought Saxony-Anhalt had such an infrastructure! We took our first break with the Müller family. We chatted for a while, gratefully received some travel provisions in the form of delicious chocolate, and then drove up to the bike path next to the Mittelland Canal.

We continued roughly along the Elbe and the Elbe-Havel Canal. Past Burg and Genthin. Going along a Canal can sometimes be quite boring if you overdo it. But on this day we enjoyed the car-free route!

In the process, we noticed the way signs along the Elbe very positive! Even with consideration of tandems!

Our destination this day was Brandenburg an der Havel, where we were allowed to sleep in a small garden house via Warmshowers. The day just flew by and our setup proved to be good. One goal of this test ride was also to see if Tilman would drive away from me or if we would have to give him more luggage. But the conclusion is: Everything tippitoppi!

Since we had not yet organized anything for dinner, our last hopes were the city of Genthin. A kebab would probably be found somewhere! - One would think so... - Genthin showed itself not exactly from its best side - empty sales stores, a "foot opponent zone" for cars and run-down house facades. In the absence of an alternative we got the last 10 minutes of the opening time of the local bakery still a plate of sugar cake and two Nussecken.

Later we seemed to be lucky after all! In Plaue - so shortly before Brandenburg - we finally found a kebab store and were happy about our dinner.

Shortly before Brandenburg Andy from Warmshowers came to meet us and accompanied us by bike to their garden cottage. He showed us everything and after we had chatted a bit he left us and we made ourselves comfortable on the sofa, talked on the phone with Sonja and then disappeared into the land of dreams.

On Monday (27.03.) we woke up early in the morning. However, our legs said that it would probably be time to lie down again and so it was just around 11:00 when we hit the saddles again. We enjoyed it to drive along the lakes of the Havel and arrived in the early afternoon at Benjamin, in my old WG. Just when we enterd Potsdam, we had a lot of closed roads. We friendly asked whether we were allowed to pass by carefully. Finally we arrived at Benjamin, took a hot shower which was urgently needed and prepared for a relaxed Potsdam-weekend :-)

We spent the time in Potsdam meeting friends, playing board games, amusing small children and of course paying a little visit to the local planetarium. We also found and organized a new U-lock and a new flagpole for the recumbent.

On Friday (31.03.) we then headed back home. Our destination for the day was not Brandenburg an der Havel, but Martin from bewelcome in Genthin. So far we have not made so many experiences with bewelcome and were curious to learn more about it.

This time the weather wasn't quite as accommodating to us. At least not in the way we would have liked it, because we got a bit wet anyway. In order not to drive the exact way back again, we chose some other routes in between and got to know the long and relaxed Brandenburg country roads better.

As the sun approached the horizon, we arrived in Burg at Martin. There we spent a nice evening with lots of talkin. It turned out that Martin has spent an Erasmus semester in Portugal and could give us, after our experiences in Portugal, a different perspective. After midnight we said goodbye to the land of dreams.

After a short breakfast we started to tackle the last kilometers home on Tuesday (01.04.). These went by so quickly that we arrived back at Ida's parents earlier than expected. There we were welcomed by a very happy cat :-)

Our conclusion is: The setup works very well. During a longer tour, there will certainly be one or two things that will come up organizationally, but so far we have not been able to detect any gross errors in our planning :-)

Now we are looking forward to the second leg of our big tour and hope that our problem with the insurance will be solved soon!

Till the next blog entry!

Tilman & Ida