{"id":3109,"date":"2025-07-18T22:42:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T22:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/?page_id=3109"},"modified":"2026-02-10T16:23:31","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:23:31","slug":"2300km-through-germany-01","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/2300km-through-germany-01\/","title":{"rendered":"2300 kilometers through Germany \u2013 Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back to trip overview<\/a> | Part I<\/strong> | Part II<\/a> | Part III<\/a> | Part IV<\/a> | Part V<\/a> | Part VI<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preparations and travel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is the second year Tara and I decided to fully dedicate our vacation days to bikepacking. After last year\u2019s long trip<\/a> from Niagara Falls to New York City and back to Ottawa and a lot of riding already this year we believed to be ready to tackle Europe this time, adding a bit more complexity to trip planning. Not only because it involved a transatlantic flight \u2013 we were also registered for a long-distance running event (Chemnitz Marathon<\/a>) in Germany, which we wanted to incorporate into our touring plans.<\/p>\n\n\n

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We started riding early this year \u2013 including the local Almonte Paris-Roubaix<\/em> gravel race through some sketchy terrain.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The overall itinerary<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our original plan was to cycle from Germany\u2019s north coast all the way to Venice in Italy. That plan had to be scratched when I found out that booking a train back from Italy to Germany wasn\u2019t possible by the time I tried; apparently reservations for bicycles sell out very quickly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We decided to alter our route, avoiding the need of public transport: Starting from L\u00fcbeck at the Baltic Sea, cycling all the way south via Chemnitz and Regensburg towards Munich, crossing the Alps into Austria to Innsbruck, then turning westwards through the Allg\u00e4u to Lake Constance, before crossing the Black Forest into Freiburg and finishing it up in Heidelberg. Those roughly 2000 kilometers would let us experience a great mix of landscapes from coastal regions, calm paths along rivers and canals, country roads through central Germany\u2019s low mountain ranges and forests, alpine regions, farmlands, as well as countless picturesque castles, towns, and villages along the route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detailed route planning<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

During last year\u2019s bikepacking tour through New York State we planned every single overnight stay in advance. This did not seem feasible this time around. A lot can happen during five weeks of vacation, and we wanted to stay a bit more flexible and spontaneous. A couple of fixed dates provided a rough structure for planning: we needed to be in Chemnitz three days before the marathon race, and a couple days after for recovery. There was a high school reunion that I wanted to attend a week later, just outside of the same town. And of course we had our flights booked.<\/p>\n\n\n

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These two machines needed to be cleaned, checked, packed, and prepared for travel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first two nights after arriving in Germany we planned to stay at a good friend\u2019s place in Plankstadt, South-Western Germany, and relatively close to where our flight would arrive. I figured we needed some time to deal with a potential jetlag, reassemble our bikes, and do some smaller test rides. I booked train tickets from there to L\u00fcbeck, where we wanted to start the actual trip. That then gave us three days to reach Chemnitz, about 550km away. <\/p>\n\n\n

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RideWithGPS: my preferred tool to plan rides \u2013 both, shorter local routes as well as multi-day trips.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Using the RideWithGPS platform I started mapping out a route following the Elbe River to Magdeburg before crossing south to my hometown and booked two accommodations along the way on AirBnB and Booking.com. Since we\u2019d stay in Chemnitz for more than a full week during the Marathon and high school reunion, all remaining routing and booking details had time to wait until later. I was going to bring my iPad with me, which would allow to plan routes and overnight stays relatively comfortable as long as there was WiFi available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traveling to Germany<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Taking my bicycle on air travel has not been anything new to me but travelling with two bicycles and plenty of extra luggage turned out to be somewhat adventurous. For my own bike (titanium frame, carbon wheels) I used my  Scicon triathlon soft case bike bag. Tara\u2019s carbon gravel bike got packed into a hard case Thule bike box. In addition, we checked in two suitcases in which we packed most of our luggage, including all the panniers and bike bags. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Packed and ready to go: two bicycles and two suitcases just before checking-in at Ottawa International Airport.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

All our gear arrived safely at Frankfurt airport. After a quick health check of our bike frames and wheel sets, we made our way to Plankstadt, using Germany\u2019s dense train network. For two nights a good friend provided shelter for us to settle, relax, recharge body batteries, do some test rides, and get ready for the coming five weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Test ride around Heidelberg and Mannheim: bicycles in working order, legs felt great, now we only had to put all the luggage on the bikes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Back to top<\/a> | Next page: Part II<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back to trip overview | Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI Preparations and travel This is the second year […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3109","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3109"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3412,"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3109\/revisions\/3412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/followfichte.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}