After buying a large stack of maps in Berlin, my plan for leaving the city was to not use a map at all. I simply headed south looking for roads that looked friendly to bikes. Berlin is a city of bikes with infrastructure to match. I was on dedicated bicycle lanes or paths almost the entire way out of the city.
South of Berlin is flat with lots of roads and villages so I just continued south in the direction of Dresden. I sat in the small park in the middle of Trebbin for the first of many, many lunch stops and was treated to a full orchestra concert. The philharmonic was rehearsing at the concert hall next door for an upcoming performance. Off to a good start, I’d say.
I crossed the bridge to Dresden a day or two later and was blown away by the restored old part of the city. The reconstruction here reminded me of the impossible task of rebuilding the Tell Halaf statues. OK, in Dresden they didn’t use the same rocks in the same places, but they rebuilt an entire historic center from rubble. Tourists love this place of course, and there were swarms about on this beautiful sunny day.
