Greetings from Copenhagen

Two weeks at home were kind of a pre-func for the actual vacation. Of course, since it was Vancouver, WA, the weather was cool, rainy and generally miserable. The real holiday started last week in DC, then continued on to Munich, Berlin and now Copenhagen. Of course, to be expected with the journey this summer, storms in DC caused a delay, which caused us to miss our connection in Dublin, which caused us to rebook and add a stop in Amsterdam, which resulted in us getting to Munich 7 hours late, which cost us one of our two days in Munich. The bright side was we didn’t have to haul or luggage around Munich for hours until the Air BnB was available.

After an extensive walk all around Munich, which sadly needed to end about 20 minutes before it did (see pic below), we rented a car and drove to Dachau and Berlin. Without turning this into a soapbox, seeing Dachau was a grim reminder of just how horrible people can be to other people. The drive to Berlin was a different kind of eye-opener. Cruising at 100mph in the middle lane and people passing so fast on the left that the car would shake. Berlin wasn’t nearly as clean as Munich, but there was an undeniable vibrancy to the city. We managed to rent Lime scooters, which was a first for me. The learning curve was about 3 seconds. Berlin has had a lot of history in the past 100 years and we took in as much of it as we could. We arrived in Copenhagen this afternoon and are looking forward to a couple days here before we move on to Hamburg. We’re even doing a bike tour on Wednesday. Either as a way to ease back into the saddle before I return to the States next week, or as a tune-up for the Tour de France that starts here on July 1st. Roads are already closed in preparation and signs are all around. This is a very bike-friendly city. Probably next to Amsterdam, the most bikes I’ve seen in one place.

Surfing in the Englischer Garten in downtown Munich

10 miles of walking in Munich was about 1/2 mile too far. Needless to say we were a bit damp by the time we got back to the apartment.

Sign of the times in 1930’s Germany and 2020’s a bit closer to home

The longest intact section of the Berlin Wall has been turned into a mile-long mural with numerous artists painting sections of the wall.

Fortunately, my bike didn’t need as much repair as these ones.

TDF 2022 Stage 1 Time Trial route for this coming Friday. Too bad we will miss by one day.