From Gdańsk to Riga: bike tour on the Baltic Sea

Actually, I'm not afraid of men. But I'm afraid of Frank and Hartmut. The two look pretty harmless with their over 70 years, but at our introduction round in the Gdansk hotel they reveal themselves. Quite incidentally, the two amateur cyclists tell where they have been on tour all over the world: Uganda, Senegal, South Africa (Frank from Berlin), North Cape, across the Alps and just from Niedersachsen to Berlin (Hartmut from Soltau). What did I actually get involved in here? My cycling experiences are rather local, my condition is moderate. Anyway, I trust in the promise of tour guide Peter, to lead all of the eleven-headed group in a good mood from Gdansk to Riga. And the e-bike that I chose.

During the day it started so relaxed. My friend Sabine and I strolled through Gdansk. Now, in summer, it's warm. The sun is shining, and Gdansk, as the city is called in Polish, is filled with happy people. A holiday procession hangs over the pier, soft ice cream in one hand, man, friend or child on the other. There is a humming in the locals on the Motlawa, and boats crossing the water are heading for the Baltic Sea beaches. Teens celebrate parties on yachts. We stroll past patrician houses that stand side by side in the Langgasse like candidates for a beauty award. Gates lead in cobbled streets, to small thrift shops, to cafes with homemade cake. In Frauengasse, one amber store is crowded next to the other.

Everywhere sounds music in the old Hanseatic city, violins and harp, the bass of an electric guitar. These are students who earn a few zlotys on their own or as a miniband and - in a nice prelude to our big trip - put us in high spirits.

Dogs yap as we set out the next morning. We will cycle about 550 kilometers in twelve days through four countries: Poland, the Russian exclave Kaliningrad, Lithuania and Latvia.

As soon as we leave Gdansk behind, I sink in the landscape. All around meadows with poppies that weigh in the wind and wheat fields as far as the eye can see. We cycle past stork nests, where the offspring are waiting for their parents with hungry beaks. Through villages where time does not seem to pass. Lace curtains hang behind wooden shutters, hollyhocks bloom on gray house walls.

The old port of Gdansk, the town of Frombork & cycle on the Curonian Spit

Most of the roofs are crooked and crooked. Cabbages and carrots, cucumbers, parsley grow in the gardens. Anyone who has made it to some money decorates his garage entrance with paving stones and the front yard with lawn and conifers. Our paths are sometimes gravel and moguls, sometimes old tank roads, countless potholes included. "Hello Germany," a man with bare torso calls us over the fence and waves until we disappear into a grove.

My fear that Frank and Hartmut could produce a tempo that forces me to gasp, turns out to be unfounded in the first few days. But on the contrary. Frank chatted so amusingly on the drive over his life and his loved ones, that I forget all efforts. Hartmut never rushes forward and gives me tips on how I can spare my strength while driving. The other Mitradler, two couples from northern and southern Germany, brother and sister from Hamburg and a single woman from the Rhineland, are team players and adapt to the group rhythm. If there's anyone here, it's my bike, my "gazelle," as she calls herself on her black frame. In headwind, this e-bike likes to stop pushing me, and let me kick it properly.

The fact that everyone stays in good spirits is also due to Arnim, our second tour guide. He makes the best picnics between Ural and Pomeranian Bay and tells us anecdotes and stories. As in Nida (Nida), the well-known seaside resort on the Curonian Spit with its Saharan dune landscape, where we visit the summer house of Thomas Mann. It is a wooden house with a dream view of the lagoon. In a small chamber under the thatched roof, the Nobel Prize winner wrote to "Joseph and his brothers". He was with his family in the early thirties only three times before he emigrated to Switzerland. After that, the house fell into Hermann Göring's hands.

German history accompanies us almost everywhere on our four-country tour. We drive over the old imperial road from Elblag (Elbing) to the summer residence of the last German emperor at Kadyny (Cadinen), a modest mansion with a small park that can not be visited. We explore Frombork (Frauenburg), a small town with a cathedral in Nordic brick Gothic.Next to a pillar is the tomb of Nicolaus Copernicus, a golden Madonna smiles like a queen down on the visitors. We climb up the bell tower and are rewarded with a view of the fresh lagoon. I have to think of the thousands of refugees from the German eastern territories who, at the end of the Second World War, died of cold weather on the ice here or died in the bombing of the Russian army.

House in Nida & a covered picnic table

We are not homesick tourists. None of us is looking for traces of his family here. But as we drive through the former East Prussia, over those long tree-lined avenues that protect us from the sun with their green arms full of oak leaves, above us the sky, as blue and high as nowhere in the world, I can better the pain of the displaced understand.

In her book "Images that are slowly fading away", Marion Gräfin Dönhoff wrote that she grew up on a farm in East Prussia and lost everything: "I can not imagine that the highest degree of love for homeland is documented by the fact that one is in hate run aground against those who have taken possession of them and slander those who agree to a reconciliation. " If she was thinking about East Prussia, then she was sure that it was just as incomparably beautiful as when it was her home. "Perhaps this is the highest degree of love: to love without owning."

Kaliningrad is pretty ugly. Tall concrete buildings from the Soviet era crumble more or less to itself. And where the old Königsberg Castle stood, a haunted house, the "Dom Sowjetow", juts out into the gray sky. The city administration was to move in here in the seventies, but during the construction period the complex threatened to collapse. The Russian government promised years ago to rebuild the castle, we hear from Tamara, our travel companion in the Russian exclave. "We are actually doing well here," says the former engineer, "we can not complain - in the rest of Russia there is so much more sadness and poverty."

Food is not lacking in Kaliningrad. In the supermarket Viktoria melons, tomatoes and cherries pile up. Sausages and freshly slaughtered chickens are on the meat counter. Bread comes fragrant from the oven. In my shopping cart lands a sauna cap for men with red Soviet Star and a gossip: On the title page smiles Putin, the "most beautiful groom of Russia".

We are happy to leave Kaliningrad. We enjoy the nearby Baltic Sea, which rolls in long waves on long sandy beaches, and the small town Klaipeda (Memel) in Lithuania. Last sunbeams accompany us on the ferry, which brings us to the port city.

Students sit outside the old storehouses on the River Dane, laughing, passing by the Ännchen-von-Tharau fountain on Theater Square and continuing through the narrow streets of the old town, lined with half-timbered houses. In the Friedrich Passage after 19 clock there is no more space in the restaurants, the guests are elbows on elbows, while hearty fare on the tables is: dumplings with mushrooms, potato dumplings with meat filling. A fresh draft Svyturys, a beer from one of the city's oldest breweries.

Kaliningrad's seafront promenade & Riga nightlife

But it is rather the quiet moments that make this tour so unique. If we sit with red heads somewhere in the nature and stretch our legs, in a meadow, dabbed with the blue of the cornflowers, the pink of the wild vetches. On lakes, where the reeds rustle softly and a pheasant flies out of cover.

When a village church is unlocked and we kneel in front of the altar, which is lovingly decorated with holy pictures and candles. When we roll through forests, where there is a motorist at clearings, to make a small business with cappuccino for cyclists and hikers. If we climb the "Hill of Crosses", a national sanctuary in Catholic Lithuania. A hill with innumerable crucifixes, a thicket of wood and iron, of plastic and wheel rims, hung all over with rosaries and paper flowers. Every one intercession, one wish, one thanks, one apology. Bulldozers rolled everything under Soviet occupation. A few nights later, the first crosses were resurrected.

Riga is celebrating. The life. The summer. The bars and pubs have opened their windows, music is ringing out, pop and jazz, folk and blues. We head for Livenplatz, where large tents are set up, like in a beer garden. In one, a rockabilly band plays their fast rhythms, over the wooden table beer mugs slide in our direction. A sip, and already Sabine grabs the laughing Frank, they sweep in the disco box on the dance floor. Actually, we wanted to move on, to the frilly art nouveau houses. But now we just switch down a gear and stay. Clap and rock and celebrate with.

Good to know

The guided bicycle tour is offered by the cycle travel specialist "Die Landpartie" (Tel. 04 41/570 68 30, www.dielandpartie.de) in cooperation with the ADFC. It is part of an extraordinary tour from Hamburg to St. Petersburg: Section 1: Hamburg - Gdansk Section 2: Gdansk - Riga Section 3: Riga - St.Petersburg

The sections can also be booked individually. The accommodations are usually simple, the luggage is transported, a bus accompanies tired cyclists.

Daily stages: between 33 and 75 kilometers.

Cycling Route Bike the Baltic - Poland (April 2024).