Day 10 - Cottbus

Briefly locked into the breakfast room at Zum Stern, but no breakfast room can hold us! Quick exit from Werben and through the little villages of Papitz, Rabinau, and Kolkwitz. 

The churches here have battlements -- to protect against thesis-wielding Lutherans perhaps? (Actually these are Evangelical churches.)

We slowly make our way east to the large city of Cottbus, through farms and little bits of woods, then the large fancy houses of the suburbs, then the Kleingartens, then the DDR-era apartments blocks, and finally into the heart of downtown. 

This city was heavily damaged by Allied bombing during WWII and is a little lacking in architectural personality, with grey office buildings, glass shopping malls, and a train station that feels more like an airport terminal. It does still retain a small "old town" where we enjoy a delicious Japanese lunch -- good to have some culinary variety. 

The trail leads us past this breathtakingly gorgeous electrical station...

...through Göethe Park and then to a bridge over... the River Spree! Hello again, Spree! 

We jump back and forth across the Spree on various bridges, with many puzzling little trail changes, always heading upstream. We pass the desolate and decaying stadium for the home team, the Cottbus Energie (soccer, not Radball, sadly).

Though we're still technically in the city, it's a narrow wild strip of parkland along the river, without any commerce. Which is a bit of a problem for us, because we need water. Too bad we have no way to collect the afternoon's cold, steady rain. We consider pumping straight from the Spree (looks much cleaner here than Berlin or even the Spreewald) but decide to detour into town instead. After an hour-long adventure on the public transit system, we return to the trail with bottled water purchased at the small grocery in the central train station. How do German hikers get their water?

Looks like they're resurfacing the trail here... hope it's not going to be more asphalt; no doubt the bikers love it but our feet don't one bit. For now it's loose sand and gravel, slow going but soft. A few kilometers upstream, on the city's southern outskirts, we snag a damp campsite in one of the few precious plots of forest. Fancy houses are a hundred meters away in every direction... we can see them, but they can't see us. Unless they have some sort of infrared vision gear. Hope not.