Day six (September 18, Prague-Ústí nad Labem, 115 km)

Ferries

I will remember today as the day of the ferries. After having left Prague (we saw some very nice quarters with houses that could easily stand in Josefstadt and villas that would fit to Döbling, but ended up in rather stressful drinving conditions in the outskirts with three lane roads without bike lane and lots of traffic) and some kilometers along the beautiful river Moldava (with many taverns just like at Danube when you go to Klosterneuburg, unfortunately all closed), Komoot finally suggested, then insisted that we would need to cross the river.

But there was no bridge. There was a ferry that looked like this.

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The captain, wearing a uniform as if he were on a cruising ship, brought us here:

The ferry is part of the Prague’s public transport system so that the transfer was cheap - and a nice surprise.

The next hours were diversified - beautiful, easy routes

alternated with hills (again) and some very unpleasant kilometers in heavy traffic on main routes.

Lunch was (almost) as usual

in a “Beisl” that reminded me of the film Indien (that has 30th birthday this year).

After some more kilometers we arrived at the river Elbe and should have passed it at Nučničky (map here)

The tiny line on the map

is, unfortunately, not abridge but another ferry connection - that is no longer in service on Mondays due to end of season. I had been aware of some restrictins but had mistakenly believed that the ferry is still going in the afternoons (which is true, but only Friday-Sunday).

Komoot is very bad (or I am too stupid) in offering alternative routes. It doesn’t offer alternatives at all, it simply repeats stupidly but permanently that one is off the tour and should return - no matter whether the deviation is because one had forgotten where to go or because there is an unpassable river between you and the tour.

It was rather difficult to reorientate and renavigate so that we ended up with approximately 20 km more than forseen on our route (and there is a difference between 95 and 115 km).

Terezia and Ústí nad Labem

The new route brought us through Terezin - which is Theresienstadt in German and the place to find the remains of Theresienstadt Ghetto. I read (again) that about 141,000 Jews had been sent here before 20 April 1945, the majority from just five cities: Prague (40,000), Vienna (15,000), Berlin (13,500), Brno (9,000), and Frankfurt (4,000).

We finally managed, after one more rather steep rise, to pass the Elbe via a bridge and cruised along with first autumn leaves

and castles

and interesting investment opportunities

We now stay overnight in Ústí nad Labem - of which I had never heard before which is a shame because it’s a city of almost 100.000 inhabitants (so that only six Austrian cities - Vienna, Graz, Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Klaenfurt - are larger) with a university - Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. We had dinner nearby and bought our breakfast for tomorrow in one of the Mini-Markets one finds in the cities here - open, in this case, from 6am to 3 am.

21 hours a day.

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