sprocket i/o

On Wednesday we attempted to leave the hotel by 8:30am to ride to Berlin, but failed miserably. Our first attempt at 09:45am had some issues:

My bike decided to take a nap as I tried to leave with the disc-lock brake still hooked up (see the yellow/black hoop in the front wheel?). The R1150GS has a wet-weight of 536lbs (243kg), so I had to take the luggage off before lifting her up again. With the right technique however, even a 5′3″ lady at 118lbs can pick this bike up.

We took a good mix of autobahn and back-roads up through some gorgeous countryside in between Frankfurt and Berlin. One of the nicest stops was in Elm, outside of Schlüchtern, Germany. Dallas had some ancestors who lived in this tiny farming town, so we wandered around it’s graveyard for a while taking photos of anything that looked like a possible match.

From there we followed the twisty backroads alongside the Rhön, up to Observation Post Alpha, and had quiet lunch in Geisa, the western-most city in old East-Germany. We continued to wander the vast hills, forests, and farmland until we got up to The Wartburg, a massive, but not so picturesque castle built in 1067.

The rest of the way into Berlin was boring Autobahn, as we had a dinner date with one of my coworkers to meet up with. It ends up that I did not get a chance to spend much time as a tourist there, but did have a good time working there and meeting up with my coworkers. I had a lot of good food while I was there, but the climax was the “Napalm” flavored hot-wings at The Bird which caused me to tear up a bit.

One of the images of Berlin that is going to stick with me for some time was that of a young teenager dressed up in punk regalia, playing a catchy tune on his beat-up acoustic guitar while sitting on the dirty floor of the subway. The cheap yet well-worn acoustic guitar had writing all over it, and his voice alternated between growls and falsetto’s. He beat on the guitar and strings with a knife before dramatically dropping it on the floor of the subway which caused his strings to break. He then courteously canvased the rest of us in the subway for some change before moving on to the next car.

Berlin is surprisingly punk-rock – it’s an image you see not only in advertising, but in the people you meet out on the street. I’m not sure how much of it is to blame on the wall, but it’s good to see people who are living on their own terms.

Next stops: Dresden & Prague.