Wanderung 30

The area of hills, pastures, and small lakes just West of Haffkrug is called the "Switzerland of Holstein", and we had enjoyed riding through it on our previous stays in Haffkrug. So it was just natural for us to try out both my new bike and the Komoot software on a test ride to Eutin, which we knew was a pretty town by a lake about 15 kilometers away. Since we had ridden the route to Eutin several times, we really knew the way and there were no big surprises. We stopped in the picturesque central square or market of Eutin, where they were setting up for a band concert that evening, and enjoyed our lunch. I was surprised to see an honest-to-god Maypole still up in the central square, as the Maypole dance happened on May 1st as far as I knew. Monika said that the pole is kept up for the entire month of May--who knew?

After lunch we checked out a second-hand store ("Troedel Markt")to try to find old dishes matching the ones Monika had inherited from her mother and aunt Size. They didn't have that, but I found some really nice small decorative plates with German scenes on them that we purchased for 8 Euro or about $10. Score!

So we covered familiar ground on our test drive, but it was gratifying to see we and the bikes were in decent shape to begin a bike trip. It was also valuable to get a sense of how Komoot showed our progress on the moving map display on the screen of my phone, which was mounted on the handlebars. I found out that as long as the phone had a fully-charged battery, the display stayed nice and bright and was easy to follow, but when the battery became a bit depleted the phone went into an energy-saving mode and the screen went dark, which was disconcerting. I discovered I could SOMETIMES get it to illuminate by pressing the menu button or touching the screen, but at other times the phone would abort the Komoot app all together, which was very frustrating. That problem continued to plague us during our entire bicycle trip, but I gradually became somewhat more adept at pressing keys to keep the screen illuminated so that we could see our route on the screen.