It's now 3.01 p.m. and what has happened to me on all my previous expeditions has happened once again.
The rain has come.
I have ridden about 10 km into the theCzech Rep. and have reached a total of 116 km. I have covered very little ground today. First of all I got delayed by morning rain, which started about 4. a.m., so I left somewhat later that I normally do.
About 20-30 km before I reached Zittau (The boundary city) I ran into very steep and long hills and even if it is much more fun that a flat countryside it demands a little more time and strength.
I said good bye to Germany for the time being and tried a couple of times, before I reached the boundary to get hold of some Czech money.
However, no bank wanted to acknowledge that kind of transactions.
But there was an exchange booth as soon as I had crossed the boundary. It looked official to me, but I have probably been cheated. For 300 Danish kroner I had 1349 CK. That means that 1 Danish krone is worth about 4.50 CK.

Right now the rain is pouring down, but fortunately I am standing in a bus shed.
-Whoops, a Swedish car just passed by. You don't see a lot of them here.

I experienced that the part of the country 30-40 km before I reached Zittau looked more and more poor. The housed looked worn out and I spotted more Trabis than ever before. I crossed the boundary without any further inspection. That made me a little disappointed. I had expected a thoroughly check of my person and my entire equipment.

-Whoops, one more Trabi passed by.
This one had Czech number plates.

From here I have 18 km to the nearest big city, which is Liberec. After Liberec there are a lot of campings sites according to my map, but we shall have to wait and see what happens. The day has up till now been cool and windy, which means that I have been able to call off my assaults on the shelves in the super markets with soft drinks.
It's a fact that I do not feel like getting soaking wet today.
But on the other hand standing here is extremely boring.

Now it's 3.14 p.m. It's very interesting to learn that it took my 13 minutes to write this last chapter of the diary.
It's still raining a lot.

I didn't make it much longer. For more than 1½ hour I was standing in this shed and the rain was constantly pouring out of the sky. I found out that there was a military barracks around the next corner, and I spent some of the time watching how the soldiers made use of a special "Hitch hike tactic".
How young they were.

At last I began to get very cold, so I had to do something. And when the rain decreased a little I rode away.
It was not pleasant at all.
To start with my right knee protested against riding at all, but after a little time it was ok again. There was plenty of water in the roads, a lot of traffic, and nasty ascents.
Eventually I reached Liberec, which is a big city, and right after my arrival I saw a sign which advertised for the world-wide organization "Zimmer frei".
I rang the bell, and a younger man promised he would look into the matter. After quite a long time he returned and told me I could push my bike behind the house.
I had the feeling, I lacked one very important piece of information, the prise for the room, and he told me that unfortunately all they had left was a double room, and that the price was DM 30. It sounded a bit expensive to me, and furthermore the man appeared to be a little weird, so I rode on.

And a few hundred metres down the road I saw the next sign. This was from another organization, "Private Zimmer", but I wanted to give it a try. A younger lady came to the door, and said that the price was DM 20, which included breakfast.
"Sold", I said and was allowed to push my bike into the garage.
I was shown into a very nice and clean room in the basement with shower, toilet and TV. She have me a key to the house and told me that were a couple of decent restaurants just around the block.
Breakfast would be served at 7 o'clock a.m.

I went to one of the restaurants and had a very good dinner. Soup as a starter and then a spear with some kind of meat. I had also French fried and different salads. To go with the meal I had two glasses of beer.
I paid 136 KC for the whole lot.
I like the prices they have here.
Anybody can join the party.

After my return to the room I saw an interesting amateur contest on Czech TV, which was called Caruso, before I went to sleep at 10 o'clock p.m.

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