French coast
I took a ferry from Dover to Dunkerque. Dunkerque greeted me with its inhospitable face at first – docks, refineries and a large migrant camp. But the city centre improved the impression and after some tasting of French instead of English cuisine I continued across a pleasant coastal resort area and grassy coastal dunes, a flat route and with a helpful tailwind, to Belgium.
Belgium
The route in northwestern Belgium was flat, on exemplary cycle paths around drainage and navigation canals, with a stop in the beautifully preserved historic center of Bruges. My destination was Brussels, from where I wanted to return home by train via Germany.
And since I have already been to Brussels on a cycling trip, instead of going to see the little pissing boy and the city center, this time I went to see that Brussels – the harsh giant headquarters of the EU, crammed without any architectural continuity into a hole bulldozed in the surrounding neighborhoods.
And home
The plan was to take a train from Brussels back to Prague. But the German railways were just rebuilding signalling and safety systems in Frankfurt, and at the same time their search engine only knows connections via Frankfurt, but with a note that a ticket cannot be sold. And when I finally found an alternative connection, I got to Berlin too late to still catch any train from there home. So I hopped on a train that went the closest to the border – a slow train to the Lusatian Lakes, in a flooded brown coal region – and from there continued home by bike. It ended up being quite a pleasant journey, around the lakes, the Elbe river and with an overnight stay with a nice view at the top of Žižka’s Kalich castle.
