Day 9: A Chicken in Our Midst, 'Park Place' and Time to Czech Out 

(And I Don't Apologize for My Attitude About Altitude)

Day 9, From Bad Schandau across the Czech Border to Usti nad Labem


    If you'll recall yesterday, you saw a photograph (below right) of Charlotte Sutton and my wife, Kay, looking up

Charlotte and Kay look up yesterday.

at a vantage point high on a cliff en route to our night's destination in Bad Schandau. Would you like to know what they were looking at? Unfortunately, I found out on a bus ride up to those cliffs this morning. Our Road Scholar adventurers took a field trip up to the Basteibrucke (a bastion cliff formation), which affords spectacular views of the surrounding countryside and the Elbe River below. Umm, "spectacular" is in the eye of the beholder, of course. The only thing spectacular to me about being up on those cliffs is how far down you could fall if you happened to slip. Am I a chicken? Yeah, I guess so.

Group Leader Dirk Broeren (left) is so unaffected by heights he leans back with hands on the railings. To the far right, Dick Morasch aims his camera at the gorgeous Elbe River below. The photo below is what Dick captured.

    Not long after returning from the Basteibrucke cliffs to our hotel, we loaded up for the exciting day

Bettina Caffrey may have heard one of my jokes, but not the udder one.

ahead, an adventure complete with crossing the border from Germany into the Czech Republic, meeting three generations of Czech women at a resting spot, exchanging our Euros for the Czech currency, and bedding down for the night in another country.
  Dirk Broeren couldn't tell us for sure what our border crossing would be like. The border crossing for automobiles is on the other side of the river from the bike path. Dirk said he's encountered Czech border agents verifying the passports of cyclists; to that end, he'd made sure we were all carrying passports in our pockets or packs. So anticipating fanfare of some sort, we all were a bit disappointed when no Czech official was there to frisk us, or even greet us, as we left Germany.

I crossed from Germany into the Czech Republic with my wife, Kay, and Dirk Broeren. As you see, it was a snap.

    Few words were spoken about it at the time, but immediately upon crossing the Elbe River Bike Path from Germany into the Czech Republic, the difference in the level of maintenance from one country to

Three generations of a Czech family roller-bladed to our water break.

the next was evident. The difference between Germany's place as an economic super power and the more fiscally humble Czech Republic trickled all the way down to the bumps our seven-speed cruising bikes felt on the Czech Republic surfaces, be they bike paths or road. Houses weren't kept up with the same care, nor were yards as neatly kept and landscaped. It was an authentic eye-opener for us.

   That said, during a water break at a shelter house just off the bike path, a Czech woman, her daughter and granddaughter sat with us and we briefly exchanged pleasantries. Nearby the shelter house was another reminder of the fierce devastation of WWII on the natives of what was then Czechoslovakia. We saw a bomb shelter that had simply become part of the landscape. Farther down the river, another bomb shelter was the lounging place for three teenagers smoking cigarettes.

Bomb shelters along the Elbe River Bike Path have lived up to their intent, standing intact since WWII.

   Our first experience in a town in the Czech Republic was in Děčín, where we rode across a bridge over the Elbe River and went our various ways finding lunch. My wife, Kay, and I went to a local supermarket

Dirk, Logan,  Sue, Paul and Elliot eat lunch in a Decin park.

where Dirk Broeren had suggested we could find lunch meat, cheese and bread to make a sandwich and sit down in the town square to eat. We did that, and many of us also took the time to go to an ATM to secure enough korunas to last us through Prague.

   We rode the early part of the afternoon and we were all grateful to pull into our Děčín hotel. Kay and I took an evening walk with Elliot, Kate, Larry and Nancy, then it was lights out.



Elliot's Day's Biking Total: 33 miles.