In Brandenburg everyone can hear you scream.

It must have sadly been obvious to her neighbours that she was home alone. They are quite a nosey lot, the curtain twitchers of Brandenburg. If you dont get the joke, look at her surname.

The cycle into Spremberg was great, arriving at the first road carrying a car was less than fun. Manic, impatient and in severe need of being dragged out of the car and thoroughly beaten about the head with a heavy blunt instrument.

Why could anyone from this strange and unusual little town ever EVER be in a rush? Its small, its dead and not very interesting. Yet everyone drives like a lunaic on Speed and Acid who thinks the Devil in the form of Margaret Thatcher is chasing them and the petrol tank  is empty.

I circled the metripole twice in search of an iNet cafe. The younger elements of the population were happy to tell me there was one but it had closed. The town council probably decided it was too exciting and would be worried the younger people would learn about things like women’s right to vote.

I had a couchsurfing contact here and knew there were two good chances of places to stay, so giving in I headed to the Tourist Info. The woman was great and could not have been more helpful. Not only did she tell me where the iNet cafe was but put my bike under lock and key while I headed there.

It was in the third level of hell, I should probably check with Dante but Im close enough.
I went into the shopping center – the sun disappeared.
Heading towards the down escalator the piped music started and all motion in the known universe stopped – briefly.
Approaching the escalator it juddered to a start and as I descended, I pictured Morlocks sucking the marrow from previous visitors bones.

Alighting from the escalator I crossed a vast grey barren sea of concrete, my mouth dry.

Entering the Casino, all the local mafiosi playing pool stopped and looked up.
After a brief discussion with the beautifully breasted, decidedly dumb bar maid, I waded through a soundtrack of assorted beeps, whirls, gongs and whoops of the various automated games, laid skillfully over blaring daytime tv, my soul shuddered and began to shrivel.

Eventually reaching the only working computer with broken keyboard, I found money had to be inserted in the slot. Having given the ferryman a euro I was allowed some brief time in purgatory. It seems the connection between Purgatory and Speemberg is a distant and slow one.

I managed to send an email to a young lad Id already had some contact with, but I knew he was heading out of town, so gave him an hour to respond and would then act on the info from the very helpful Tourist info woman.

I killed the time by chatting to the nice woman in the Tourist Information office.
Did you know they have a boulder that traveled from Sweden to Spreemberg on a glacier and it now stands with plaque behind the Tourist info office?

This riveting conversation exhausted the highlights of Spreemberg and its lump of Swedish Granite so I had an all too necessary beer, perused the bike shop and bought an ice-cream.

The hour was up and I headed to the Spree-Pension. I had a cheeky welcome from the owners son, husband and friends. The woman herself is very helpful and the whole experience very good value for money. What lets the place down is the rest of the family who appear to be bums, drunks and generally no good. They were a little noisy, the father being angry for some undefinable reason.

Luckily he soon fell asleep and I spent a very pleasant couple of hours chatting to another couch-surfing contact who wanted some background on various towns in Scotland and the relative merits of their universities.

She is very smart and self aware, I doubt I was so focused when I was 18, actually I’m not certain I’m that focused now.
Breakfast was good and as there was an iNet connection  I spent the morning preparing some more couchsurfing dates and it was nearly lunch before I left.