Day 28 - 13 July 2018 - Cesky Krumlov, CZ Republic to Heidelberg, Germany

Today was planned to be another 330 mile ride to get us back to our home base in Germany at Knopf Tours in Heidelberg. After another wonderful breakfast and loading the bike and Czeching out from the R-Penzion, we headed out of Cesky Krumlov past the Castle and on to the nice two lane roads of the Czech Republic. We made a fuel stop to try to use up some of our Czech currency. The road parallels the border with Germany but finally cuts through the mountains to a remote and unmanned border crossing. With the advent of the EU, there are no border checkpoints between member countries.  

Once we were on German roads again, our pace picket up substantially as the German roads are superior to anything we experienced in the other two countries. Since we were "heading for the barn", a fast pace was now preferred over the meandering pace of much of the past month. Near Passau, Germany, we turned north and rode the A6 freeway until we encountered the worst traffic mess of the whole trip. It took us 2 hours to go just a few kilometers. Finally I had enough, and made our way to an exit and changed the GPS settings to avoid interstate type roads. That worked for a while until we encountered another road closure due to an accident and a required unsigned detour. The remainder of the ride we spent on little back country roads and in one little village the road was blocked, but we snaked our way past the barriers and connected up with our route on the other side. Nothing like having a GS for a little sand and gravel fun.

There were a few rain showers in Germany but in Heidelberg, it was very warm (80f plus). We fortunately were assigned a main floor room in the BMW suite, and we unloaded the bike for the last time this trip, cooled off with showers, and then walked into town for a little Doner Teller dinner at the local Doner shop. Those are very popular here in Germany and fairly nutritious. Another traveler, Norman, from BC was here and we chatted about our rides. It's really encouraging to meet other like-minded travelers and share our stories. He had been 8 weeks to the north into Scandanavia and to Moscow and St. Petersburg.  

And so ended our trip at just under 3,000 miles for the month. Tomorrow, we need to ride about 24 miles to the local BMW dealer and get an oil filter so I can change the oil. I'll also wash the bike and prepare bluetooth intercoms, and they were fabulous. They lasted the entire day and were quite clear. Previously we used very inexpensive bluetooth intercoms, but the sound quality suffered. The bike ran perfect and we averaged around 41mpg. While we camped for the first 4 nights, the weather turned cold and wet, so we didn't camp the rest of the trip. We think that for future trips that we'll forego camping as it's just not that much more expensive to stay in pensions or bed & breakfasts. It'll sharply reduce the bulk of what we are carrying. We'll likely continue our routine of riding for a day and then staying at a location for a minimum of 2 nights to allow for some sightseeing. If a location is worthy, we can extend our stay. I can't say enough good about motorcycling around Europe. We hope to be able to do it for at least a few more years.