Every beginning is hard: Starting the Scandinavia trip by bicycle [Part 1]

On the first day of the trip, I first take the train to Greifswald, and from there cycle 75 km to Sassnitz. The route across Rügen was certainly very beautiful - but thanks to an unplanned night ride, I hardly saw any of it. The first part of the bike trip and the second part of the bicycle tour blog series.

Chapter 1: Every beginning is hard (and dark)

Friday morning, the journey finally begins. Thanks to the late departure of the train in Heidelberg (I wrote about how that late departure in Heidelberg came about in the preparation post for this trip), I was able to sleep in and started packing the last things for the trip at a relaxed 09:00. Refill drinks, check the train connection for delays, and head off toward the station.

Right away, I noticed the unfamiliar weight and sluggishness of the bike; after all, I'm usually riding around the city with minimal luggage.

I arrived at the station with plenty of buffer time and waited for the S-Bahn, which was supposed to take me punctually toward Mannheim.

From Mannheim, I took ICE 690 (a connection I traveled almost a dozen times in the summer of this year) to Berlin Gesundbrunnen. Boarding, and especially securing the bike in the ICE, was a science in itself: with the panniers removed and without any other luggage, I only managed to lift it and thread the front wheel in at head height with the help of another cyclist, who thankfully was able to help with the lifting.

Why do 80% of people on the ICE to Berlin already get off at Südkreuz? Did I miss something? 🚄August 6, 2021

Arriving in an almost empty ICE in Berlin Gesundbrunnen (nearly all passengers had already gotten off before Berlin Gesundbrunnen at the Hauptbahnhof or at Südkreuz), I was faced with the first bigger problem of the trip: the quick-release straps for fastening the sleeping mat to the luggage rack were missing! What doesn't sound like a big problem at first was pretty inconvenient for me: I wouldn't arrive in Sassnitz until 19:53 at the earliest, too late to visit a bike shop. The quick-release straps made sure that my load on the luggage rack didn't fall off - without one of those quick-release straps, a longer ride on the bike would have been unthinkable; without it, I had to keep one hand on the bag on the luggage rack at all times so the luggage wouldn't fall off.

With one hand acting as the fastening for the sleeping mat, I first got on the ICE to Sassnitz, where I kept dealing with the problem. My calling around for possible alternatives for finding quick-release straps in Sassnitz was unsuccessful; either the shops were already closed or they had no quick-release straps available.

So I looked for options to get quick-release straps at an IC stop before Sassnitz, in Greifswald. I found what I needed at a Toom branch, which was even open until 22:00 on Fridays. Great, now I had found a solution to this first problem. During the rest of the IC ride, I chatted with fellow passengers and got to know a resident of Greifswald, who kindly helped guide me in the direction of the Toom branch.

With a quick-release strap installed again, I could finally set off around 20:00 on the first stage to Sassnitz, with the sun already slowly setting. First, though, I had to make up the distance I had lost by getting off earlier; the ride to Stralsund alone took almost two hours.

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After far too many kilometers of cobblestone road, I finally arrived in Stralsund. The sun had long since set, and only twilight remained. Standing in front of the mighty Rügen Bridge, the "official" bike tour as I had planned it finally began - though six hours later than hoped and three hours later than expected.

Crossing the Rügen Bridge, I left the German mainland; on Rügen, I then continued mostly on country roads toward Sassnitz. On the one hand, country roads are well suited for covering a lot of distance quickly; on the other hand, closely passing motorists who like to honk for no reason and overtake with a speed difference of 80 km/h are not uncommon (especially in Germany). So country roads aren't exactly pleasant either, but I guess I'm not telling anyone anything new there. What was interesting that evening while riding along the country road was that countless combine harvesters were working on the island. The dust they stirred up was at times so dense that it felt like morning fog to me - except at night, in summery 20 °C weather and under a crystal-clear starry sky. With 20 kilometers remaining, I first continued through smaller villages on a bike path, then afterward on a field track that kept getting narrower.

Suddenly I found myself in front of a small path ending abruptly in a patch of forest; thanks to the stinging nettles lying there beforehand, my legs weren't exactly happy when I stopped either. A swarm of mosquitoes immediately set upon me while I searched for a way out of the forest with my flashlight. In complete darkness (I didn't even try to get a photo), I pushed my bike first through undergrowth and then for a long time parallel to a field, until after a 25-minute detour I reached the nearest country road. I then followed that to continue toward Sassnitz. In the village of Litzow, around five kilometers before the ferry port in Sassnitz, I finally found a suitable place to pitch the tent for a few hours. By then it was 01:00 in the morning; with the ferry departing at 08:00, I would have to get up again by 06:00 at the latest. As the last part of this exciting and nerve-racking first tour, I set up my tent, and at around 01:40 I was finally able to fall asleep.

Part 2 of the bike trip will be published here on the blog again next Sunday evening and linked here as well.

https://p3g3.de/content/media/2026/04/windraeder-1.mp4

A bit off-topic, but one discovery of the day on the way to Stralsund: I can hardly imagine that the wind turbines in the distance (unfortunately a bit blurry because of the poor lighting conditions) happened to light up at the same time by chance. Does anyone have an idea how and why they do that?