I'm quite exhausted now, after having biked fast and covered quite a distance. Instead of following the Spree and its biketrail, I took a short cut from Lübbenau to Spremberg.

There I got accompanied by an unemployed 50-something who gave me a paper with the titel: ”Ist es vernüftig, in einen Gott zu glauben?” (Does it make sense to believe in a God?) He had written it because he considered people stupid. We biked together along the Spree biketrail for an hour or so.

At Uhyst we separated and I took a short cut again over Kleinwelka until I reached Bautzen, where a little kid exclaimed hilariously to his father: ”Der Mann hat viel gepäck!” (The man has a lot of luggage!)

There was a reason I biked so fast today: The rain. Yesterday's forecast had virtually promised rain during this whole day. Not a single drop fell. Even the landlady from who I'm renting a room tonight emphasized how today's weather diverted from the forecast.

Yes, I decided to rent a room since there doesn't seem to be any campings around. It wasn't so easy to get a room in this little tourist resort, once bigger than Dresden, but now I have a huge room with four beds all to myself.

There are still some sorbs living in this area, and that's the reason why all the signs are in two languages: German and Sorbian. There are also some slavic-sounding names of villages here, like Kleinwelka, where welka means big in ”slavic”.

I have now enjoyed a big and fatty potato gratain in a restaurant in central Bautzen. Over a draught Feldschlößchen, I now plan tomorrows stage. I will try to reach the Czech border, and I'm feeling full of high spirits when I think of that. Or maybe it's just the beer.