It started out in Nuremberg at about 6 am to do our usual packing. We stayed in a superb hotel that promised a genuine German breakfast but the cook never showed up for work so we didn’t get to eat our breakfast. Instead when we were finally packed the girl who was dressed in an ethnic German costume came to give us a lunch to take with us. The bag she gave us had to ride on the back of Emmanuelle’s bike for a couple of kms before we opened it up to thin it out.

I dropped Emmanuelle off at the train and then met her in a town just outside of Wernberg-Koblitz. It was only 20 kms into town but Emmanuelle had talked to a guy who recommended going south to a different town. This town was in fact 50 km away. Emmanuelle was really tired at the end and our average speed was only 7 kmph but she held in until we ended up here in the forest of lights.

During the duration of the day we managed to accumulate 5 maps and a hundred different pieces of advice but we still ended up way off track. But we managed to meet many people and even went for coffee at the old mayor’s house from a town along the way. Helmet showed us his retirement project of raising bees and served us coffee in his hobby house. He was nice and gave us some good advice but we didn’t have much time to spend with him because it was starting to get dark and after 12 hours of biking even I get a little sleepy.

I must say that my body has withstood a lot more punishment than I had originally expected. The hundred or so kms are long but I can easily pass the day on the bike. I think that the hardest part now is putting the bike to bed at night. Emmanuelle says that I cannot bring the bike in to sleep with us.

Emmanuelle is sleeping now but I think that I'll stay up for a little while and watch the fireflies.

The waitress offered us a huge lunch-to-go for the trip. It was so heavy I could barely ride my bike to the train station. It was time to say good bye to Chris again. The plan was to meet him in Schwandorf to then do some biking with him towards a town close to the border. We ended up doing wild camping in the forest because we never found a camping ground. That was a good, free night in the wilderness with 2 huge schnitzels and bread we had bought in a little village on the way. Best meal ever! We watched the fireflies until I fell asleep exhausted while Chris was typing the log of the day.