Chapter 6 : Arriving in Hamburg

Arriving in Hamburg

The storm I left behind yesterday in Denmark finally caught up with me in beautiful Lübeck. I was exploring the city center when the clouds unleashed a heavy, furious rain that soaked me and all my things before I could run back to the place I had locked my bike, along a canal west of the Innenstadt. Couldn’t find anywhere to stay in Lübeck, or in the suburbs, so I kept biking along until I was drowned in darkness and the city was lost behind me. A roadside map indicated an autobahn overpass ahead. I thought I might sleep under the bridge in case it rained again, but when I arrived it proved impossible to climb down there with my bike. I finally settled on a little bus shelter surrounded by farm fields and laid down in my wet sleeping bag on the concrete floor, with nothing to warm me but the bottle of wine the folks at the tourist information center had been kind enough to leave unattended. I was cold, wet, uncomfortable, and even worse: I was turning into some kind of caricature.

I woke up at the first sound of morning, afraid the proper German locals would see me sullying their proper little bus shelter and level me with a glare of sheer disdain, or perhaps call the cops. Still wet, I got on my bike well before sunrise and started pedaling hard towards Hamburg. By noon, I was sprawled out to dry in the delicious sunlight in a little park on Lübeckerstrasse.