I'm in Stralsund- sort of the gateway to Rügen. It's another beautiful day. I rode 58 miles and I'm headed to Rostock tomorrow. The odometer reads 789 miles and I feel pretty good. Rügen was really beautiful but I felt once again odd and out of place. And indeed I am out of place, a bit. The island is overrun by other tourists. They are at least twice my age and generally they ride in big buses. The trails on the island were a myriad of wonderous and devilish choices. But let me start over, I've started in the middle. I left Berlin in a train and a little bit in a funk. I was rested but that only seemed to accentuate the feeling that I was unclear as to what I was doing. I mean the World Cup had given me some direction but now that my games were over and the initial buzz of being in a new place was dissipating, I was drifting. Simultaneously I was going to places that I had read and dreamed about for the better part of a year but the reality was, of course, not like what I had put in my head months ago. Greifswald is famous for having produced the famous German artist Caspar David Friedrich and it was in Greifswald that I tried to reformulate my perspective. The train ride was 2.5 hours and as the train passed by the openness and emptyness of Mecklenberg Vorpommern I tried, as Bill Bryson once said in A Walk in the Woods, to pretend that this was where I most wanted to be. In eastern Germany there are lots of abndoned buildings left over, I guess, from the DDR days. But these buildings seem to put the proper flavor on a regin that is not like the vibrant hills of Hesse or the teaming srteets of Niedersachsen. Ever since the crappy streets of Halle, I have been realizing that I may not see the likes of the Radwegs that were so luxurious along the rivers in Hesse. So the train pulled into train stations that were broken down and seemed to be without a town to call home. People too felt sadder and the whole situation felt like it was commenting on my state of mind and the particular stage of this trip. At Greifswald I got off of the train and realized almost immediately that I was off the train at the wrong stop. As the train was pulling away I saw that I was at the south Greifswald station. A woman and her teenage son had clearly made the same mistake as the three of us stood and looked around, thinking. She approached me and said in stilted German that she couldn't speak German well and asked if I knew where we were. I responded that I didn't speak German well either and she asked, as everyone does, are you English? No American I said and the asked, somewhat rhetorically, are you all from Australia? They were and we had a good laugh at the funny situation. I said that there were two Greifswald stations and we had gotten off at the South one. Then she inquired about the bike and my trip. She asked the obligatory questions- how long? alone? where am I staying?... The as she waited for her nephew to come from the other station we chatted about politics mostly. She asked what was going on in the U.S. and expressed her concern for - the world I guess. You get the feeling quite a lot here that World War 2 was not that long ago as indeed it was not. We remember it heroically in the U.S. I think. But here there constant reminders of just what the war and the occupation meant. A guy in a bar in Berlin had told me that one of the problems with Germany is that because the persecution of other ethnic/racial groups, Germans were overly cautious about criticisning anyone these days. His example was, interestingly, Israel and what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. So the war is ever-present. But this woman was worried about the sad state of American politics because she had always seen the US as leading the way, the good way I think, she meant to say. She invoked the war by saying that the US had saved them (Australians) in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Huh I thought, I didn't know that. BUt she was very distressed about Bush, and creationism, and other headlines from the news that are of course very concerning. I offered what I could- empathy, no promises, and the hope that things would swing around. This was what I had expected in Europe. The WhatThe Hell Is The Matter With America questions. Her nephew arrived and we parted under gloomy skies. I put on my helmet and rode into Greifswald. After a pastry in Greifswald I headed out. I wanted to get to my campsite early enough to eat and shower. The campsite was an odd place but I arrived about 8 at night and found most of the other tent campers already in their tents, I guessed for the night. I was so hungry that I leaned my bike against a tree and hunched near the ground chowing at my food like a kind of starved animal. I set up my tent, showered and went for a walk. I was fully into my funk now and went to find the beach. I was full of those kind of totally depressing thoughts that one can have staring at the sea alone. I walked and thought and then came across a dead cormorant which seemed, well, perfect. But as I moved on I found a piece of white sea glass which made me quite happy. On the Pacific Coast green sea glass is common and brown too. Red is a treasure as is blue. I don't recall where white fits into the sea glass frequecy chart but it was well-ground and in a nice triangle so I put it in my pocket. The I saw a little trail that jutted off and into the high grass away from the beach. I decided I'd had enough of the smelly beach and went for the trail. I look up the trail and about 20 feet away a little red fox-face stared at me. We watched each other without moving for a few seconds and then it started down the trail perpendicular to the one I stood on. I walked to where it had been and it was maybe 100 yards away still on the trail. He was large, more like a coyote than a fox but had the standard huge bushy fox tail. We watched each other again and than it lept into the high wheat fields. I could see its movements from the way the grain moved. The, maybe a minute later, a deer jumped up because of the fox's proximity and bounded across the field. I leaned against a railing a remarked to myself at what good luck it was. Back at the campsite I went and got one of my beers. There was the oddest mixture of night sounds. A screeching bird-sound came from the trees and what sounded like a theramin was coming from Stralsund across the water. It was surreal to be surrounded by trees that leaned in with such haunting sounds. Which direction, I wondered, would the hound of the Baskervilles come from. As it turned out the theramin-like sound was the opera Aida coming from the outdoor theatre in Stralsund. And I discovered, much to my delight, that the screeching was two owls calling to one another as the caught insects from the night air. The next day I rode north to see the island. I have realized that all that you need to designate a pathway as a Radweg (bikepath) in Germany is a landscape that isn't currntly occuppied by a tree or building. On Rügen I biked through swamps, wheat fields, and sand. That's right sand. As a matter of fact at one point when the path was quite atrocious I said aloud, just because I enjoy tempting fate sometimes, Man you know what would be really good is if the road could just turn into sand- that would really be sweet. And then it did. So, I know Mom doesn't want to hear this but I had to. I went to the roads. I mean the roads it turns out are the way to go sometimes. I can move fast and pretty safely as the German drivers are used to cyclists and generally give tons of room when they pass. One particular road, Chuck will really appreciate this tale, I turned down on my way to Sassnitz. I turned a corner and smell, what seemed to be a very sweet, good smell. I looked around for fruit trees but saw none. Then as I went on I had a realization. The realization went like this. Huh, what's that smell? Smells like something sweet. Naybe there's a place canning fruit or something. I dunno- huh? Man, that actually kind of stinks. Smells more like- I dunno paint I guess. I and then I figured it had been like that first smell of firecrackers of gas or something which is initially good and then acrid and gross. Hmmm, I thought. Then....That paint smell sure is strong. Hmmm. Then I thought, man these white lines on the road sure are bright white and very straight. Chuck would approve. (For the uninitiated Chuck used to supervise the Shawnee Co. KS traffic department.) Huh I thought again and then hmmm. Then I thought, some time later, Oh that must be it- they're painting the lines on the road. Huh. I rode on watching the white line under me and trying to stay true to it lest I slip off too far to the left or right. The the paint smell was very strong and I thought wow they must be close and the I thought Wait a SECOND! No WAY I AM NOT... I peered over the handlebar bag and passed the sleeping pod and sure enough my front tire resembled a skunk far more than a bike tire. I couldn't believe it. How long had I been riding on their fresh paint?. It was terrible. And then they they were maybe a half mile ahead. Oh no! I hoped, foolishly that the paint would wear off before I got to them. As I passed them they yelled at me across the lane and I said I was sorry as best as I could. Crazy. The cafe is closing. More tomorrow.