What a nightmare stage! I started out at 6:45, after a more or less sleepless night on the floor of the ferry. And let me tell you: The harbour of Rostock is not made for bicyclists. Between the trucks and cars I tried not to slid in the rails for trains, and eventually I made my way into and through Rostock.

This is where the problems began. I had ordered bikemaps on the Internet from Bielefelder Radkarten long before I started out. God knows how many hours I've spent with them at home, planning my way from Rostock to Berlin and praising Germany as such a bikefriendly country where they have so specialized bikemaps.

However, it turned out that the stretches that on the map was called ”gut befahrbare Feld- und Waldwege” (well accessible field- and forestroads) weren't so well accessible. Actually, some of them weren't even accessible at all: I had to lead my bike – downslopes!

Never in my whole life have I biked on so bad ”roads”. My bike was literally thrown between the stones of the road, and only a miracle must have saved me from getting a flat. Yes, you read it correctly: Despite a whole day on these hellish roads, my bike was OK when I reached the camping in Röbel. Thus quality has a name, in this case Schwalbe (tubes and gears), CyclePro (bike) and Abus and Agu (panniers). I thank them all for the fact that they didn't let me down in the middle of nowhere. (And no, I'm not sponsored by them, this is authentic appreciation.)

Not only were the biketrails I rode on in an extremely bad condition. Small as they were, they were also badly signed, which made it hard to know where to go. Hence I biked the wrong way at several occasions. The most unbelievable thing with these so called roads, accessible only with MTB and then without packing, was that they were part of big biketrail, like the ”Berlin – Köpenhamn Radweg” (Berlin – Copenhagen Biketrail). But no – and I do indeed mean NO – normal person would be able to bike on these roads without swearing his or her way through the nightmare.

Of course one shouldn't be stressed on a bike tour. If I had a lot of time I could just have taken it easy and stayed the night somewhere closer to Rostock after having biked only some few kilometers on these roads. But Andreas, my friend in Berlin, is away and counts with me arriving tomorrow night, because as I arrive I'm gonna feed his cats! That's why I was so eager to bike halfway to Berlin today, and that's why I became so desperate when I couldn't change from the forestroads to a big road since I already was stuck in the middle of the forest.

OK, enough is enough and I think I've made my point. During the day I passed Güstrow and Krakow am See, the latter by the touristy lake of Müritz, which I circled since I missed on the map that you could actually pass it on a small bridge in the middle of it. (But since it wasn't marked as suitable for bikes, it was also hard to detect.)

When I approached Röbel I realized that I actually had biked halfway to Berlin. The little camping seemed welcoming and I raised my tent next to a couple of bicyclists. They are Martina and Rafail from Switzerland, biking from Dresden to Rügen. (Rügen is close to Rostock.) In the evening they invited me for barbeque with red wine under a tree – do I need to say that that was a welcome end of the day?

I must praise this German camping somewhat. First of all, you pay for a tent and then you pay per person. That way they don't discriminate solo travellers as they do at Swedish campings, where you only pay for the tent, no matter how many people sleep in it. This is much more fair! Second, the atmosphere at the camping is so nice. On my way to the bathrooms, I started to talk to another bicyclist, on his way to Rügen just like Martina and Rafael. What a contrast to the Swedish campings where middleaged couples lock themselves into the shells of their huge caravans.

It's not even 10 pm, but the previous night's bad sleep, in combination with today's nightmare stage and the wine I've just drunk will make me fall asleep in SECONDS as I now cuddle down in my sleepingbag.