Sixteen

Thursday. It was the oral Abitur test today, so everybody had the day off school. We that opportunity for our bike tour. I woke up at 7:00 and got ready as usual. We then rode our bikes to the S-Bahn station Neugraben (one away from our stop). My bike was too small and had a shifting problem, but that wasn't too much of a problem. I was far away from the worst off- Dan had a girl's seat.

We split up into three groups of twenty at the train station and headed off into the "wilderness", which was only a couple of city blocks away. The first portion of our trip was across a couple of farm fields. Then we ended up on a paved bike path and took that for about twenty minutes. The "altes land" around us was really pretty. There were a lot of apple and cherry orchards to either side of the path.

We turned and rode for another 15 minutes down a gravel bike path. We ended up at the house of Michael Smotkin's family where we ate a snack, took pictures of their single sheep, and waited for the other groups to catch up. After about 30 minutes, our group (with some people added, as they lived much closer to the house than Neugraben) left and rode out along a dike next to the Elbe. Getting up and down from the dike wasn't fun, as I don't normally use the required muscles. We stopped next at a 300 year old church which was really nice on the inside. The pastor talked to us about the history of the church and we heard the organ be played. They then had candy and water outside. It was really nice.

After that, it was back up the dike, except now we were riding right next to the Elbe. It was pretty cool, but there weren't many big ships, as the Elbe goes up and down with the tide. We stopped next to a lift bridge and looked out over the river and saw... Airbus Industries. I puked.

The group rode on through a small village to a cherry farm that had been in that family for 600 years or something ridiculous. There, we had a cherry pit spitting contest, ate awesome cake in a barn, and generally hung out for a couple of hours. Everybody was really tired, so some of us took the option of loading up our bikes on a truck and taking the bus back to Neugraben. Me and Max then rode back home.

The bike tour was cool, but the soccer game afterwards was possibly cooler. I couldn't go to a public viewing because Max had to do his homework, so I sat around and watched at their house. It was Germany vs Portugal. Everyone expected Portugal to win the whole tournament, until Germany beat them 3 to 2. It was an awesome game.

I went to bed afterwards, tired from the hours of bike riding. Seiler- let's still do the KATY trail when I get back.

RwH