Day 5: "Färvälj", stormy winds!

Last night it was raining hard, but luckily not anymore in the morning. However, it was cold and the wind was blowing near storm levels, when I got out. And from the worst possible direction. But I only had 50km left to Rostock, my final destination in Germany. From there I would take the ferry to Gedser on the Danish side of the Baltic Sea.

The going was fighting for every meter. In fact, I had rarely seen so hard wind, and definitely not so far from the sea. Everywhere branches were flying from the trees. Trees were bending like hell, some of them made sounds like they will fall any minute. I saw a small bird trying to fly headwind, but the poor little fellow ended up flying backwards! A weird sight, I can tell you.

Stormy winds!

Rarely it happens that I need to use the smallest gear of the bike, even in steep upward slopes. Now I needed it. At one point on an open field, I had to bike several kilometers with the smallest of my 24 gears to get forward! And this was even ground. The most fun part of the morning was, when for about three kilometers, the bike lane went to the direction of the wind. My speed was probably between 50 and 60 km/h and I covered the road in a few minutes.

When I got to Rostock, I felt like immediately crossing over to Denmark so I biked straight to the Harbour. Enough Northern Germany for now! About three hours later I was happily in Denmark! Some weird urge in me wanted to fight the wind still more, so I decided to continue biking for the few daylight hours there was left. Wind and direction had not changed, so biking was a slow struggle still. Shouting "Perkele!" to the wind gave me the necessary bit of extra strength, and I think that tamed the wind also a little bit.

I reached the village of Vaggerlose when it was becoming dark. I started the habitual evening ritual of finding a place to stay for the night. I found a small shop in the center of the village. A few really nice cashier girls helped me to find an open bed&breakfast place with their smart phones, and searched me the directions and phone number for it. They even taught me how to say bye bye in Danish! It goes something like "Färvälj!" (Probably I spelt it terribly wrong.)

Last kilometers to the bed&breakfast were easy going almost straight to the direction of the wind. For the sake of curiosity, I tried if it's possible to roll for three kilometers on even ground without pedaling once. The answer is: yes, it is!