June 17, 2009
Leipzig - Bad Schmiedeberg
Before we pack up and leave, we have a look at a few more sights that we hadn't gotten around to - the former Stasi headquarters, now a museum, and the Neues Rathaus, a monumental townhall completed in 1905 to meet the demands of the city's rapidly expanding population.
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The day starts out cool and grey, around midday we see the sun and in the evening it's warm. Again praise for the GPS - we navigate out of Leipzig without getting lost and are soon on small roads. We ride past fields of grain, woods with giant ferns, conifers and deciduous trees. When we get closer to Bad Schmiedeberg some hills appear. The small towns and villages usually have stretches of jarring cobblestones.
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Bad Schmiedeberg is, as the name "Bad" or bath indicates, a spa town. The main building in the town is a large Art Nouveau sanitorium or health facility. We wander around the town, look for a private room for the night, stop for something to drink in a cafe.
A while later Janos notices that his wallet is missing from his handlebar bag. Uh oh! It has his credit cards and about 300 Euros in it, fortunately his passport was not in the wallet. He realizes it must have fallen out of the bag when his bike toppled over when we left the cafe. Obviously, when he collected the contents of the bag he overlooked the wallet on the ground. The search starts.
We go back to the cafe - nothing there. But the waitress suggests we try the lost and found department at the sanitorium. The office there seems to function as a tourist office. When we enter, Janos is greeted with "Hello, are you Mr. Kertesz?" We're in luck - almost. An honest soul found the credit cards lying on the street and brought them to the sanitorium office. Apparently, whoever found the wallet kept the cash and threw away the credit cards. We're not going to get the cash back, but the credit cards are even more crucial. However, the honest finder decided it wouldn't be safe to leave the cards there so he left his telephone number. That also sounds promising. Except he is no longer in Bad Schmiedeberg. He is now at home some 60 km distant, with the credit cards!
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We telephone. He wants to send the cards to us but since we are traveling, we have no address. We agree that he can send them to my daughter-in-law in Berlin. Which he does. Too bad that's not the end of the story. The finder, meaning well, taped the cards to the letter and thereby damaged their magnetic stripes. Now the cards are useless. Of course, banks replace lost or damaged cards ... don't they?
Not yet the end of the story. Yes, they do, but they aren't willing to send them to any address other than our home address. An inconvenience, but we can get along with my card while travelling. The final chapter to the story is yet to come ... in Rouen on the last day of our trip.
Today's ride: 65 km (40 miles)
Total: 596 km (370 miles)
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6 years ago