I am in a cafe in Bamberg and I am wearing a long-sleeve shirt. My jacket is on my bike because it is likely to be quite chilly tonight. No you have not entered the Twilight Zone. It is cool day and night now. The weather is all stirred up and I can't say that I mind. I am in Bavaria now having left the green rolling hills of Thuringa behind. As I traveled by train to get here I sat watching the landscape roll by and was pretty happy that I was not riding it. The mountains or hills are not high but there is a good stretch of them and they looked tough. But I also left Erfurt very happy and rested. I stayed three nigts in the surprising town of Erfurt. Largely that was because the people at the hostel were so wonderful. I fell into running conversations with them and both the hostel and the people were amenable for a longer stay than I otherwise would have thought to. The town is great in itself . It has long winding streets. I can walk for a hour or more and simply wind through alleys and roads and then emerge into a recognizable part of town. Besides, the Gera river runs through the city and some house are built straddling the river where it runs narrow and shallow. Erfurt has great churches and on the edge of town is an old citadel, high above the city. But the people at the Opera hostel were likely the best part of the stay. Jens, Alexandra, and Simone work there and, being world travellers themselves, knew how to make quick friends. Jens seemed to always be there when I was and I talked with him more than the others. The funny thing about that was that he spoke the least English. Alexandra's was nearly flawless and Simone and I did the kind of Germanglish speak. Jens and I muddled through and my eagerness to talk with someone and his laid-back-ness made a good match. It's amazing how much we could talk about in my limited German. The night before he told me about being a young man, living in the East when the wall was coming down. He was 26 and he and a friend grabbed a car and drove to Berlin. He pounded the wall with all the others we saw on TV. The wall went in his pocket and he went into West Berlin for the first time. I think the ability to do so was more important than the West itself for him. He told me of the Stasi police and how people began to find out about their friends and neighbors being Stasi agents. You could see the intensity of the memory on his face and then he held up his arms to show that even now the thoughts of those events brought goose-bumps to his forearms. It was in a way tough to leave such a nice group of people. And it brought some things to the surface in me. I miss my people and I've decided to cut the trip short and go home. I want to see Kenny before he moves to Japan. Also Kenny is going to San Francisco to see his Dad before he leaves and Jane is going to LA to see her family. So I'll keep traveling but with my people and that offer is way to good to pass up. I am sad that there is much that I haven't seen but it'll be here- supposing GW doesn't see the armageddon through. I have only touched Bavaria and I'll miss Vienna. But I started thinking that Vienna would be best with company anyway. That's what the future is for. So I worked on moving my flight today. The woman at US Airways told me she couldn't do anything that I would have to go to Munich or Frankfurt and talk to the people at the airport. That spun my head and I spent half the day in a funk trying to figure out which way to go and assuming the change fee was going to be extravagant. But then I came to my senses and realized that that was stupid. Why could they help me at the desk which would be in German and not on the phone talking to English speakers? So I called back with my arsenal of attitude at the ready. The man I spoke with had me all fixed up with a new leave date in about ten minutes. I was happy with that. I still have to leave out of Amsterdam. Therefore tomorrow I will turn west on the Main river and head back towards, of all places, Frankfurt. I leave on the 18th so I have about two weeks to get to Amsterdam. I think I will ride the Main river to Frankfurt and then go to the Rhine. I can ride the Rhine into the Netherlands. I will miss many things that I wanted to see. Austria, the Alps, the Bodensee, Switzerland, Bastogne, Max's mom in Pforzheim, but I am ready to go. The tedium of figuring so much out everyday is overshadowing the new and the amazing. It hapens I guess. But on my new route I'll get to see the Rhine. I'll get to see castle beyond counting and drink wine in the famous regions of Germany. I'll see that cathedral in Köln (Cologne) that has been stuck in my mind since the war documentary Shooting War which featured a tank battle shot by combat phoptographers around that massive church. And there will be surprises no doubt. Now that it's two weeks away instead of five I feel the end is coming quick and the whole summer seems like a flash of light. Tomorrow I go west, heading home, with the sun.