What does a pupil do during his summer holidays for relaxation? Exactly, he rides from Hamburg all the way across Germany to the alps. At least I did it within three weeks in 2002. By bike.

I started in Hamburg and the route took me to Frankfurt, Stuttgart and finally to Lake Constance in the very south of Germany. After already 1000 kilometers on the bike, I decided to head towards the Germany's eastern border with Austria and to go afterwards to Munich. 2000 kilometers and three weeks came together with a lot positiv and some negativ experiences. Half of the time I had to face joy, frustration and every kilometer alone. During the rest of the journey, my friend Linus accompanied me.

Town hall of Hannover	First real mountains in the Sauerland	Little city of Marburg

Continuous rain over six days was one of the most negative experiences. Every morning, when I got up and looked out of the window, I saw the same demotivating scene: low hanging clouds and moist air. All hope for better weather was completely destroyed when nothing changed for six days. Thus all our motivation was gone completely.

An odyssee by boat and train may be the most ridiculous event of the journey. Today we still smile at this occurence, but when we had to face the facts, it was really frustrating: soaking wet to the bones, we were happy to have the possibility to bridge the rest of the day's distance on a ferry. Stupid as we are, we managed to take the wrong one and we sailed completely into the wrong direction. Luckily we timely got off – otherwise we would have landed up in Switzerland...

But the rest of the time, we were rewarded by many amazing landscapes, which sometimes were more hilly than you want them to be. But our physical condition grew with every single day in the saddle and soon every hill was mastered easily.

Frankfurt Main at night	Heidelberg	Somewhere in the south of Germany

And when the sun shone, the birds chirped and the warm head wind blew around your head, all efforts were soon forgotten.

Very impressive was the day, when we went up to highest mountain of Germany - the Zugspitze (not by bike of course!). The sun shone, the sky was blue and the visibility great. From the top we had an incredible view over Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Italy.

Most of the time we stayed in youth hostels, where we met nice people and other travellers - even a biker from South-korea was among those travellers. Funnily he had his digital camera with him and a few months later I found the picture in my mailbox.

When we finally arrived in Munich we visited all those beer gardens and the Olympic stadium. Back to Hamburg we went by train – not by bike. We did not want to overdo it...

In the alps in Bavaria	Yeah!	Munich