Day 14 - The Road to Niesky

Up early in the peaceful pines after a lovely night's sleep among the spider webs. Back on the paved bike path heading south along the Neisse, though the odd village of Steinbach, which seems to be a single grand ruined estate, small pieces of which are inhabited and being renovated.

Here we leave the paved bike path (yes!) for a paved road (no!) heading west, leaving Poland and the Neisse behind. Before long we're on a pleasant gravel road (huzzah!) bordering a military training ground. We're not allowed to go in there...

...but there aren't any noisy exercises going on at the moment so it's a really nice forest to be walking right next to, even if we can't go through it. Can't last forever though, eventually we're sent back out along the road through some other villages. One of them looks just like home:

It's not a real village, just a western-themed fairground, and only open on Sundays... too bad, I could really go for some hot beans and old men's ice cream!

The trail takes us back into the forest, and back onto real trail... well, it's mostly logging roads. But there are some hints of actual elevated terrain here and there, pretty exciting stuff after a long time in the flats of Brandenburg. Still no water, aside from a few stagnant ponds, but things are looking up.

South of the forest, a long road walk takes us into the large town of Niesky. Founded in 1745, it's a very young town by German standards -- San Antonio is older than this place! Our route takes us near the railroad station which is completely unused -- the tracks here were destroyed in WWII but astonishingly have never been repaired, though they're working on it now. The train station does have a döner kebab stand though, which is really just delicious. Pitas, gyros, schwarmas, and non-döner kebabs cannot compare!

Döner kebab makes us thirsty, so we find water by checking into a hotel in town. ("Pension Body-Sun", named after an infrared sauna room that they used to have.) This isn't a beautiful town, but the shopping here is good, so we stock up on trail food and other supplies, then early to bed (and early to rise?)