Adventures with my bicycle, Part 2 of 3

The Monday of my first full research week here in Dresden, I had an appointment with myself at the Main Saxon State Archive, which I had visited once before while doing pre-dissertation research several years ago.  After eating breakfast and packing a lunch, I checked Google Map one more time for directions to the archive, which I remembered as being in the Neustadt rather near the river.  It looked like I had a rather “straight” shot along the curve of the Elbe.  Just to be sure, I entered the address from the archive’s website into the directions form…and was surprised to discover that the archive had moved!  Sure enough, when I read the archive’s website closely, it gave its “interim address,” which was rather more north.  Fabulous.  I had almost ridden to the wrong part of town!  But the map suggested a 30-minute ride, so I wrote down the major streets, packed a city map just in case, and set out.

Right off the bat I ran into trouble: cobblestones.  Not the little ones either, but big bumpy ones. This was going to be an uncomfortable 2 miles.  Just after I noticed an older man going through a doorway in the wall holding up the hillside, I looked ahead and was disconcerted to discern what looked like continuous cobblestones and wall as far as I could see.  Which wasn’t far, considering the fog (right, a look back at the way I had come).  But what if there really wasn’t a path for me to turn north when I needed to?  So I back-tracked to the doorway.  Big mistake.  There followed the most ridiculous exercise of me pushing my bicycle up what I swear was a 45-degree angle for at least 10 minutes.  The path seemed never to end.  Below is a look back from the top of the path, which unfortunately was still not the top of the hill, so I had to continue up, up the street.

At the next intersection I checked my map, and I appears that I had taken 2 sides of the triangle that included a rather “straight” shot using another street that runs by my house.  Great.  Well, at least I was up now, and it should only be a matter of riding those two miles and then making a slight jog to the right.  Yeah, right.  This mostly down-hill stretch actually wasn’t too bad, if you excuse the calculations I tried to do in my head between whizzing cars on my left and when the signs allowed me to be on the sidewalk (i.e. not at tram stops).  My first attempt to turn right required another consultation of the map, because despite being a major intersection, there was no street sign.  Okay, I had to go another two blocks and then turn right.

And this is what I saw when I got there: Strassenumbau! (construction).  The picture doesn't really do it justice; to the left, where I wanted to go, the entire street is torn up several feet deep.  So I walked my bike through the gauntlet of pedestrian fences to the next street I was looking for, where there was more Strassenumbau!.  So I walked my bike along the street, until finally I came to the next turn.  Which I made.  Then things started getting a little strange: the road became a dirt footpath through some field with random trash piles.

And this is what greeted me at the end of the path:*

Just kidding, actually, it was a locked gate.  Thank you, GoogleMaps, for sending me the back way to the archive, which is currently housed at a low-key military base.  I didn’t stop to take a photo but turned around, retraced my route, and took the street like a normal (law-abiding) person.

An hour later, I had arrived…but I didn’t relish the trip home at the end of the day.  I ended up taking a different (cobble-stoned) street down to the main road, where I braved the traffic as I climbed the hill most of the way, before finally giving up and walking my bike to the top (no gears, remember!).  To break up the hike, I took a short detour, which is the adventure described in my next post.  To get home at the foot of the hill, I wasn't about to go back down the wooded path, so I decided to take the hypotenuse of the triangle from this morning (Schillerstrasse).  If I hadn’t been afraid of careening into the enormous intersection at the bottom, I might have actually enjoyed the slalom.  But—and this is the catch I mentioned in my last post—the brakes on my bicycle are rather "soft": you have to squeeze the handbrake all the way down, pedal backward to engage the pedal brake, and then will the bike to stop.  It was thrilling, to say the least.

I finally made it home, but I haven’t replicated the feat since, in large part because of the cold I had caught in Bonn developed into a full-blown sore throat/fever/cough, and also because the weather is getting colder, especially in the mornings.  It takes 30-40 minutes and a bus, a streetcar, and a bus to get from home to the archive, but as a compromise, I now walk one third of my commute each way: up the streets under construction in the morning, and down, down, down Schillerstrasse in the evenings.  So I get about 30-40 minutes of exercise each day that I go to the state archive.


*--This graphic courtesy of Electronic Captain.