That’s a Wrap

As I begin this post, I’m on the very familiar RB-66 train from Kochel to Munich. It’s familiar because during my year in Bavaria I often took this train on the weekends, to towns like Kochel, Mittenwald, Krun, Garmisch and other beautiful places at the foot of the Alps in Germany’s far south for hiking and biking and to immerse myself in the idyllic setting. I just hammered a Magnum Classic ice cream bar and soon I’ll pop open a Löwenbräu Helles, both purchased at the gas station across from the Kockel train station. Out my window is a painting. Rolling hills, farm fields, small cabins and barns, the occasional home or small village. It’s an understatement to say I love this landscape. The meadows, the mountains in the distance, the footpaths, the small streams and sometimes larger rivers. My train ride is just over an hour, if memory serves, and I’m assuming this post might get a little on the lengthy side, so I’m convinced there’s no way I’ll finish saying everything I want to say before arriving into the city. I’m sure they’ll be a scene change at some point during my writing.

So. It’s all over. My ride has officially come to an end. I began on June 8th, and now, July 14th, I’m making my way back to Munich, the first time I’ve been on a long-distance train since going from Frankfurt to Flensburg at the very start of this whole adventure. Thirty-five days altogether, with 29 days on the bike and a million memories in between. It’s one of those things where it feels like the trip happened with the snap of the fingers yet, remembering back to that first cold, rainy day leaving Denmark, it feels like those early days happened months ago.

I’m proud. Proud of myself. I honestly didn’t really know if I had what it takes to complete this trip. I wrote about that prior to my ride. I had a ton of doubts, about the dependability of an older, mid-budget bike, about the strength of my physical body to ride for 29 long days when prior to this my longest ride had been just three, and mostly about my mental and emotional capabilities. As I’ve written in some detail before, I’ve struggled a lot in my adult life with depression and anxiety, both of which have, at times, been triggered by time away from the safety and security of home or time apart from loved ones. I doubted myself almost daily back in Mexico this winter as I was dreaming about this ride. I doubted myself continually in the days leading up to the ride, and during Day 1 I had serious concerns about my ability to continue and even contemplated stopping at the end of that day. But I reasoned with myself. I told myself, “Bike for three days. See how it goes. After three days you’ll have completed 10% of the ride, then maybe you can go another three and see how that goes. Make it to Berlin and you’ll have completed 25% of your ride.” The more I rode, the stronger I got, both physically and mentally. The doubts and depressed mood I felt on that first day out of Flensburg became tinier and tinier in my rearview mirror the further I rode. After a few days in the saddle I began experiencing the joy I’d hoped I’d feel when I’d dreamed about this adventure. The dream started to become a reality, and indeed, by the time I made it to Berlin I had left most of my doubts behind and was enjoying the ride, anticipating each new day with excitement and hope.

Pride is a strange thing. We’re allowed to be proud of our kids or our friends or our loved ones, or in the case of teachers like me, our students. But to be proud of oneself, and to declare that for others to see and hear, that’s different. Maybe it’s a Minnesota thing, but I feel that to be proud of oneself is to be considered a boaster or a bragger. To be considered vain. I’m the first to admit that my ride has been a bit of a vanity project. I’ve been blogging and vlogging and posting photos and reels and updates to social media every day. I’ve welcomed the comments and the pats on the back and the encouragement. Actually, I invited it. I asked for it. I wanted it, and in a lot of ways, I needed it. I needed the support of all of you, the encouragement and the connections to keep me going and to keep me on an even emotional keel. To need help and then to ask for it is something that’s taken me a long time to learn. I’m still not very good at it, admittedly, but I’m trying, as is evidenced by this ride. So, yes, I’m proud. And in a lot of ways, I even want to brag. Life isn’t always easy – it isn’t for most of us – so now, after having the vision to dream this and then the courage and strength to complete it, I feel damn, damn proud of myself.

So, pride. Pride in yourself. Do you feel it now? Have you felt it at times in the past? Have you allowed yourself to feel it? I hope so. Because you deserve it. You deserve to feel proud of all the things you’ve accomplished that have gotten you to where you are today. As I’m embracing my pride in completing this ride, I hope you will take a moment to embrace your own pride in your own courage to do something difficult or in the compassion you’ve shown others or in the drive to embrace a dream or achieve a goal. Again, you deserve to do that. You’ve earned the right to just feel damn happy for all that you have done. That’s my message from my soap box. Ha!

The scene change, as predicted, has happened. I’m now on another train, this one bound for Treuchtlingen then Würzburg and then, eventually, Frankfurt. It’s now Tuesday and I’m making the trek to Frankfurt, and my friend Molly’s house, to pick up the suitcase and backpack I brought with me from Minnesota but didn’t take on my ride. The train to Frankfurt is essentially free as I have a 49 Euro pass that gives me access to all trains and public transport in Germany, save for the high-speed ones. That means my journey to Frankfurt is slow and involves two changes. I don’t mind, because I’m not meeting Molly until after 4:00 this afternoon and being on trains is rather soothing and relaxing for me, especially after so many days on the bike. Plus, it gives me a chance to write. I decided to book a high-speed trip back to Munich later this evening, however, as doing another 6-hour train, late in the evening, probably wouldn’t be so much fun. This way it’s a direct train to Munich, with a seat reservation and no changes.

It’s quite difficult writing this post. I want to wrap-up the events of the last few days of my ride, but I also want to spend time reflecting and writing about the entire adventure. I suppose this, honestly, won’t be the last time I write about my ride, so I shouldn’t put too much pressure on myself to sum it all up here. I don’t doubt in the next days and weeks I’ll have more to say as the experience sinks in and I think back to the most moving moments of my trip, those that have stuck with me and affected me the most.

My last few days… On Thursday I rode south from Munich with Penzberg as my destination. It was to be an easy day, with only 65 kilometers to ride and very little elevation to climb, so I knew I’d be able to go slow and take my time. I had two stops planned. One in the tiny village of Wangen, about an hour south of Munich, to visit friend and former colleague, Katja and her 6-year-old son Sasha. The other a rest break along beautiful Starnbergersee south along the lake from Starnberg, the town I called home during my one year working in Munich. It was great to see Katja and Sasha, as we enjoyed coffee and good conversation, and my rest along the lake was also very nice, as I munched on some of the picnic food I’d packed along with a radler I’d purchased at a lake-side kiosk. Admittedly, however, it was somewhat strange being back in the Starnberg area. So much of this ride has been about new experiences and looking forward. One of my mantras over the past nine months, since deciding to leave Frankfurt, has been, “Forward Momentum.” Being in Starnberg didn’t feel like looking forward. Instead it brought back the past. Not a negative past in any way shape or form. I loved my year in Bavaria. But it’s a past nonetheless, one radically different from the future I’m trying to forge. Being in Starnberg kind of took me out of the mindset and mood I’d been feeling over the past month, the mood of the ride and of the adventure I was on. Starnberg, I guess, felt a little too familiar. Like it really didn’t fit into this new future I was pursuing, this adventure I was on. So I had my picnic. I enjoyed the lake, but then I was quite happy to continue on, on paths that were once again new, into experiences I’d never had before.

I made it to Penzberg, and the home of Warm Showers host Marco, around 4:30 in the afternoon. Marco lives on the edge of the city, his apartment living room and balcony looking out to a forest and a peek at the Alps in the distance. We enjoyed a coffee together and talked about our rides, while subdued tunes from a metal playlist played out over his expensive-appearing sound system. A mural of Metallica adorned his kitchen wall. Large photos of other metal bands hung in his living room. Marco was a super cool guy and knew a lot about biking. He’d been on several adventures, one of his longest and most recent was a ride from Penzberg to the northern part of Norway. While talking, we discussed Marco’s love for “bikepacking,” a sport I’d only recently come to know but had heard a lot about from other cyclists I’d met on my ride. Bikepacking is a lot like bike touring, but while bike touring might include stays in hotels or meals at restaurants, bikepacking is more like backpacking, or backcountry camping, in which one camps in a tent in the wild and survives mostly on simple meals cooked at camp. I mentioned to Marcos that I’d like to do some camping on my next ride, that I like the fact that it would give me more flexibility on where to stay and when to end for the night. He then, much to my surprise, proceeded to offer me a tent, an extra one he said was given to him as a gift and had never been used. Wow. What a gesture. I, of course, accepted and am now the proud owner of a compact, light-weight tent for my next “bikepacking” trip. After settling in a little and having dinner, Marco and I ended the night with a walk through the forest and a couple of beers at a bench overlooking the Alps. Marco told me that spot reminded him of his father because at one point recently, when Marco was injured and needed his dad’s care, the two of them would walk to that spot together nearly every evening. What a great way to end my day.

Friday, then, was the day. My 29th day of riding and my last day of Biking the Euros. By Friday morning I’d put the strangeness of being in Starnberg behind me and I was ready for one final, amazing day, this one involving an absolutely gorgeous ride toward the foothills of the Alps in the southernmost part of Bavaria. The day wasn’t perfect, as I was met by a nuisance drizzle during the first couple hours of my ride, but, I guess, in some ways it was poetic. With a rainy morning and an absolutely gorgeous, sun-soaked afternoon, I suppose I experienced all the weather I’d encountered on this trip in the course of one single day. Amidst the rain I continued to smile. It didn’t really get me down. It felt par for the course and just another part of this amazing adventure. The scenery was spectacular. Streams, rivers, fields, forests, barns, mountains and cows. It wouldn’t be Bavaria without the cows. At times during my trip I’d wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to have done the ride from south to north, rather than the way I’d done it. But, to finish my ride, with the beautiful Allgaü valley guiding me to the stunning Alps as my final destination, it was clear that I’d done the ride the right way.

One final, steep – and again, symbolic – climb took me to Mittenwald, a gem of a mountain village. But, I wasn’t done there. I needed to reach Austria, to be able to say to myself that I’d ridden completely across Germany, from the Danish border in the north to the Austrian one in the south. Lynne, a friend of mine from my Munich days, and I had done this ride during Covid. At the time of the lockdown we wanted to see if we could sneak across the border by bike, just to say we’d done it and to have lunch in Austria when no Germans were allowed to do so. I remembered that day but couldn’t remember, exactly, the route we’d taken to cross the border. I looked at my map, found a place that seemed logical, then began the trek just a few more kilometers beyond Mittenwald. Fortunately, I found the border, but unfortunately, it was a footpath, a narrow one, into a river canyon, that was controlled by a turnstile and that required a small fee to enter. No bikes allowed. Feeling bad that I couldn’t take “Black Betty” with me across the border but definitely needing to get there myself, I locked her up, paid the fee and walked into the canyon. It ended up being an extremely, extremely cool way to end my trip, this raging river and this tight, steep canyon as my backdrop. I had no idea this was where my ride would come to its culminating end, but really I don’t think I could’ve picked a better place. I popped open a beer and a can of sour cream and onion stapelchips (generic Pringles that have been my go-to salty snack throughout my ride) and just stood and embraced the moment, amid the mist of the waterfalls and rushing rapids. I said a prayer of thanks, did a couple of loud whoot whoots into the canyon, and allowed myself the time to soak up the awe of accomplishing the thing I’d set out to do, and of finally being at the finish line of this 35-day adventure.

It was emotional, and I was happy it was. I was a little worried the moment of the end of my ride would be anticlimactic, that it would feel like any other day and that when I was done I’d just look around and shrug my shoulders. I had resigned myself, earlier on my ride, that perhaps finishing would be somewhat of a let down. That I would get done and wonder, “Ok, what now?” But it didn’t feel this way. I credit the sheer beauty of the surroundings at that end point as the main catalyst for summoning up all those feelings of deep emotion, satisfaction and gratitude I was experiencing. The canyon and the rushing river and the waterfalls were the spark. They weren’t the reason for my emotions but they were the match that started the fire. The thing that caused all the emotions to come pouring out. It was a tremendously rewarding feeling to be in that spot, at that moment, on that wonderfully beautiful sunny evening on the Germany/Austria border at the end of my ride. I felt blessed.

Then, my extrinsic reward. Two nights in a cozy hotel room in Mittenwald, complete with a mountain-view balcony, a pool, and a spa with not one, but three, saunas!!! “Heaven. I’m in heaven.” I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Saunas and swims each day, a great roast pork dinner one night at the Mittenwald Brewery restaurant down the street, two enormous breakfasts I could actually take my time to enjoy, and a wonderful hike to two mountain lakes that I’d done previously with Sammie when she’d visited from Denmark years earlier. Oh, and I actually figured out where Lynne and I had crossed the border during Covid and I biked into Austria so that my bike could enjoy the border crossing as well. Symbolic and cheesy, yes. But necessary!

While my bike ride was over, The Euros, or Euro 2024, was not. To cap off what had been an adventure of a lifetime, after returning to Munich on Sunday (by bike and by train), I went to Munich Olympic Stadium that night to enjoy one last Fan Zone and the final match between Spain and England. The pre-game was one big dance party with the DJ pumping out songs I’d become quite familiar with during The EurosFire, Freed from Desire, Waka Waka, and the German version of Major Tom – and the match gave me everything I was hoping for. A great game and a well-deserved victory for Spain. Going into the tournament, the team I was cheering for the most was host nation Germany, but Spain was definitely second on my list, so I was extremely happy to see them win as well.

So that’s it. It’s done. I’m done. With memories that will live on forever. If you’ve made it this far – this has been a long post – please add just a short comment below. I want to thank you so much for your support, for reading these posts, for your donations, for your encouragement. For everything. Again, I needed the help and I’m extremely glad I asked for it. Thanks for answering the call. Even if all you did was read a few posts and give me a few “thumbs ups,” they mattered. Believe me. So thank you. Here’s to many more rides in the future, both literal and figurative. And here’s to feeling happy and proud of what we’ve all accomplished, whatever that might mean for you. We all deserve it!

21 thoughts on “That’s a Wrap

  1. Marianna

    Amazing! I’m so so proud of you. To tell you honestly I’m not sure I would have done that. Even though I missed many days of your journey but the once I was with you, I truly enjoyed and cheered for you. I was totally immersed in the beauty of the surroundings and being with you in small villages, in the middle of the valley and having mountains behind you! What else do we need? Simply stunning and relaxing. So celebrate and enjoy the rest of your stay in old Europe.

    Reply
  2. Margaret M. Renslow

    Congratulations on completing this momentous journey. I’m glad you feel pride and can say so. You’re a man of steel! (Smile and say “thank you”)

    Reply
  3. Gwen Krueger

    What an accomplishment and WAHOO that your persistence, passion and grit kept you going! I hope that you have newfound clarity on the “what’s next” for you. Dave and I would love to see you when you’re back in MN.

    Reply
  4. Karen Mandt

    Wow, what a great adventure and yes, you should be proud! What a beautiful country and wonderful people you met ! Thanks for the blog — I enjoyed it all !
    Congratulations! Safe travels home.

    Reply
  5. Raquel

    AMAZING! CONGRATULATIONS! YOU DID IT! I’m super impressed, Chris! Impressed from beginning to end…your dream to do this, your planning, training, the vulnerability you shared along the way – which we all surely can relate to, your tenacity and perseverance to get through the difficult days, and especially how you have made this trip much, much more than an athletic achievement. You truly created connections… in so many ways, with new people you met, with those of us following along from afar, and surely in many other ways, including new threads of connection to yourself. BRAVO!!!! Keep basking in your incredible accomplishment!

    Reply
    1. Christopher Kreie Post author

      This is such a nice message, Raquel! Thank you so much! I appreciated all your support prior to my during and now, afterwards, I can’t thank you enough for your kind words. Let’s stay in touch!!!

      Reply
  6. Karla Harriman

    Awesome Chris !!! BIG CONGRATS on a great ride and a wonderful accomplishment.
    I hope you continue to share posts with us as feelings and memories pop up in the days to come .
    I’m already missing your daily posts and pics
    Are you headed back to Minnesota now or are you staying over there for more travel ?
    Excited to see where your life takes you next ?!

    Reply
    1. Christopher Kreie Post author

      Hi Karla. That’s sweet of you, but I also think my loved ones could use a break from me! hahaha

      I’m figuring out my next plan as we speak. I’ll keep you posted! 😉

      Reply
  7. Deb Srsen

    Truly amazing, Chris! It has been so fun and interesting to read about your adventures both the good ones and the bad ones. You for sure created a lifetime of memories and you have accomplished an amazing physical and emotional feat. All certainly deserving of those proud and happy feelings!

    Reply
  8. Terri Burnor

    Hi Chris! I read all your posts and am so PROUD of you!!! What an adventure. But most of all, the full heartedness and curiosity that you brought. I’m glad you gave yourself some space at the end for surprises and deeper reflection and know that you’ll keep discovering new understandings and insights. I’m excited for what’s next for you. Cheering you on all the way! Hope to see you back home sometime soon. Be well, my friend.

    Reply
    1. Christopher Kreie Post author

      Hi Terri. Thanks a ton for this thoughtful, kind comment. I’m blessed to have you as a friend. We’ll definitely need to get together once I’m back. Thanks again and cheers!

      Reply
  9. Laura Guadalupe Carreon Jimenez

    Mi último comentario es para felicitarte, no había leído oportunidad de leer tu post antes, pero ahora que lo leo concuerdo contigo, en lo orgulloso que debes estar por haber completado esta misión, y todos los esfuerzos que te llevaron a lograrlo. Si es para sentirse super orgulloso. Me da mucho gusto que comentes la estrategia que seguiste, de visualizar pequeñas metas que te van llevando poco a poco a lograr la gran meta. Pedalear tres días y ver que resulta, comprobar que se puede, y con ello, dar un nuevo impulso a la siguiente pequeña meta. Felicidades y mil veces más felicidades.
    Disfruta el resto de tu estancia, abraza toda la energía que se vive ahora en Europa por los juegos olímpicos, ha se ser muy interesante vivir esa adrenalina junta.
    Yo tomaré una pausa, ya te habrás dado cuenta, para poder leer tus futuras aventuras desde una posición neutral. Espero pronto poder conectar una vez más. La invitación sigue en pie, para que si te es posible, la incluyas en tus planes de fin de año. Felicidades una vez más.

    Reply
    1. Christopher Kreie Post author

      Thank you Laura. Your comments are always so meaningful and rich. I so sincerely appreciate all of the support you’ve shown me during this entire right, from start to finish. Muchísimas gracias!!!

      Reply
  10. Jan Kreie

    What a blessing to find relaxing and peace after your vigorous tour!! The soccer games were awesome, they were available here. I am so thankful that you could enjoy the scenes, people, and food. AND, not take too seriously those things that at times might set you back. I heard that you were part of the closing of the Olympics. Carry on!!

    Reply

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