May 16, 2025
Day 88: Leipzig to Markranstadt and back
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The Premier Inn here by the train station is charging us €170 per night, and for that they do not see their way clear to providing breakfast, as is customary in Germany. Rather, they want €17 per person extra. We looked at that, and decided to go find a café. The one we found around the corner was called Lukas - which seems to be a bit of a chain here. For €11 per person they put forth three fried eggs (scrambled for Dodie) with cheese, a bun, a hint of salad, and a coffee. That was cheaper in absolute terms than the hotel, but still not a giveaway. As you will read (spoiler alert) the wheels have now stopped turning for this tour, so our need to load up on breakfast food is gone. Accordingly, we have declared a pox on both their houses, and bought some minimal breakfast food for tomorrow at a grocery!
Our plan for today hinged on two requirements. First we needed to get the bikes in with a repair shop, you guessed it, for work on the brakes. Second, we needed to get all our gear that is not coming back to Canada to our friends Jo and Karla, where it will rest until we return. Jo and Karla live in the village of Markranstadt, 15 km out of Leipzig. Actually, they live in the little village of Altranstat, 4 km out of Markranstadt! (The bike shop is in Markranstadt).
Dodie spent time last night dividing our stuff into what would go to Jo and Karla, and what would stay in the Leipzig hotel with us, ready to get dragged back home. One of the things was wired earphones. At night we listen to bedtime stories (or nightmare inducing news analysis) over wireless earphones. But on the airplane, you need to plug in to hear their movies. So we keep two spare pairs of wired ones. Only thing, we haven't seen or needed those since we landed in Spain, three months ago. We must have stashed them somewhere clever, but where? We ripped every bit of our stuff apart, looking for them, with no results. So we were resigned to having to go out and buy some more, somewhere. Hold that thought.
Getting from Leipzig to Markranstadt is not all that complicated, because how much complication can you put into 15 km? But still, there is a river, a canal, a small forest or jungle, and a lake somewhat involved. Google looked at this and decided we would enjoy the canal, and the forest, at least. So if you look at the bit of track below, you see us coming from the right. Instead of turning us left on Lutzner Strasse, over the bridge and onto the green bike path beside the big, straight road, we went for a jaunt beside the canal, then left, to beside the forest, and right on an uphill dirt bit, in the forest, before being allowed back on the straight and obvious route. Thanks Google, we needed some fun (or aggravation) on our final ride!
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Back on track, we encountered a different kind of loaded cyclist, a Deutsche Post delivery rider. This has got to be more energy efficient than a van, and it is easier to get on and off.
There are two bike shops in Markranstadt. We had left a pile of money with one, once before, for general maintenance, and never saw evidence that they had done anything in particular. So this time we were trying out the second one. But it wasn't general maintenance we were after. Despite all the air purging, new levers, and pads that had gone into our brakes since Spain, we still had a spongy, almost non-functional situation. We decided that the only remedy was a complete replacement of the whole braking setup. Our Markranstadt friend Juergen had prepared the ground with the lady, Doreen, that runs the shop, and she was expecting us when we rolled in.
Doreen freaked when she saw our Shimano levers, insisting they were incompatible with our Magura wheel cylinders, and that the mineral oil in them also could not be right. We told her all about "Shigura", but she had never heard of and didn't trust such craziness. But also when we asked for the Magura wheel cyclinders to be swapped out, she balked, saying Magura is good stuff and if it ain't broke ... not that she said this, because language compatibility between us was very minimal. Doreen also wasn't impressed by our request to swap out the hydraulic lines. But we weren't just inventing this - one mechanic in Girona had posited an air leak in a line, inside the bike frame, and two mechanics in Mallorca had mentioned the possibility of hydraulic lines becoming spongy. We finally browbeat Doreen into saying, "well it's your money", though I still don't think she is about to thread new lines through frames. She then handed us what I thought was a rather eye watering quote, but really, we don't want to play games with brakes, so the deal was on. She now has three months to make it right!
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Before leaving the bikes with Doreen, we rode out to Jo(achim) and Karla. A bit of background: Once upon a time (and really long long ago now) two boys from Markranstadt came out to Canada after graduating in computer science, looking for adventure. Strangely they found that helping out on our farm. Soon, they also found it in jobs in their field that I helped them get. But they stayed on at the farm for a long time, and one finally bought a house nearby. And both now have new babies!
The parents of both have come out to visit in Canada multiple times now, and we have come here. And now, not only are the two boys among our closest friends, but so are their parents. These are Karla and Jo, and Juergen and Birgit. I must say that this is all an example of hands across the ocean that we are very very proud of.
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Language compatibility is limited with us and Jo and Karla, but we had no trouble spending the day together, mostly burbling about the new (ok now 7 month old) grandchild Ferdinand. We have the advantage of having hung out with "Ferdy" a lot, while their first visit will only be in October. We will look for an ok to put up a photo tomorrow of Ferdy, and also Troy. It will be a crude but effective bid for a lot of likes!
We also went over to favourite hotel/restaurant Rosencranz, where it was SPARGEL TIME. We all had some dish that included spargel. Later, Karla brought out coffee and three kinds of cakes from a Markranstadt bakery. I know its time to ramp down food consumption, so I only had half a piece (of three = 1 1/2 pieces!).
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4 weeks ago
Part of the discussion was about cameras, and the relative unreliability of the Lumix zoom models. Karla and Jo had seen the photo in the blog of the Lumix lineup of semi dead cameras. She posed for her own Lumix shot here, though I think both are currently working.
A whole afternoon of language struggle can be a bit wearing, so Jo brought out a dedicated translator machine that he had, while I experimented with Google Translate's "Conversation" mode. Both somewhat worked, but we ended up preferring using a lot of half understood words, context, and facial expressions.
Jo and Karla gave us a lift back into Leipzig, and we found that it involved quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, often fighting with construction. We found that Jo and Karla almost never come into the city, and that Jo feels of late he has driven 10x more kms in Canada than in Germany. We really appreciated their making the effort of dragging us in.
p.s. about those earphones - we very cleverly mailed them and some other junk, from Spain to Jo and Karla. When they presented us with the package, it was a total surprise. Now it seems we can't even remember what we are doing on the current trip, let alone past trips. I don't really think we are losing it, it's just that there are a lot of pieces to juggle!
Today's ride: 26 km (16 miles)
Total: 3,273 km (2,033 miles)
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4 weeks ago