friday, 25th of july - 69 km

how i loved my day off! of course, it was over much too fast. i clearly had to prolong it - slept long (wild dreams of my father living in the woods with 'the pink man'), and a long and substantial breakfast with susanne and helena - i only left at one pm. 

a lot of people think that friends found on the internet will not be friends in real life. i deeply doubt that.... i would make a case against it with my experience later in the afternoon. bodo! we used to race against each other in online games. he was following my journey and we met me on the road today, to accompany me for a bit. as we passed his home village, he showed me around a bit and i got bockwurst - he swears that his bike runs on that. i really enjoyed his company and so achieved one goal of my trip.

after around 35 km he had to go back to his work and i had to go on alone, but it felt like a safe day (susanne had packed a big lunchbox too, so all very safe)

in this mood i went on, partly through rain, until seven in the evening (always risky to wait that long to find a place to stay) to teschendorf. big thunderstorm was approaching and the first attempts to find something failed. luckily enough i could avoid getting soaked.

on the way to the next village with a parish, i passed an old farmbuilding that looked so inviting, i just checked in. the people in ela's hofladen were extremely nice and we had quite an interesting and amusing talk, and i was allowed to stay in an extra hut in the middle of their farm. they also invited me for supper, where they had other guests as well.

i'm really grateful for all these enriching experiences.