A morning journey to the nearby train station helped us to organize a couple of tickets with our bikes on 2 regional trains heading by way of Wurzburg to Frankfurt
It also gave us just enough time to load our bikes and head into the historical old town section of Bamberg a delightful collection of half timbered houses one being the iconic image of Bamberg with its structure hanging over the towns fast flowing river.
Bamberg done we took a 55 minute train journey back to Wurzburg giving us acalln opportunity to view the same countryside we'd covered over the last two days - in fact a fair bit of the trail actually ran along side the train track.
The 2 hour journey following to Frankfurt gave some nice glimpses of the Main river but mostly of flat dry countryside before we approached the big business center of Frankfurt.
Even on a Sunday the main station was teeming with people possibly more than we'd seen during our entire time in Germany.
We exited out the main standing looking non plussed with no maps to guide and our hotel supposedly only 300 metres away ! With the help of a few locals and their mobile phones we finally found our hotel in a dodgy looking area with a low level comfort factor caused by local beggars and quite a few immigrant street people standing idly around.
With no area to store the bikes it was an effort to manoeuvere them up 4 floors to our hotel room where with some rearranging of furniture we were finally able to place them in our room.
Our next day was pretty much full on trying to chase down a bike store to score a couple of bike boxes to allow us to repack our bikes for our respective flights.
The closest bike shop only just around the corner was closed, the 2nd about 3 kms away (we walked about 6kms trying to find it) had no boxes nor did the 3rd a further 3-4 kms on
With the help of one of the young bike shop attendants though from shop 3 we were at least able to establish the availability of boxes at a store some 15 minutes further away by U Bahn.
With a crash course on how to use the UBahn we finally arrived at an outer Frankfurt suburb to the amazing bike store called Stadlers.
Wow - about 4-5 times the size of Ivanhoe Cycles this had everything including its own 50 meter indoor cycling track with ruts and hills for prospective MTB buyers
We scored ourselves a couple of boxes but quickly had ourselves under surveillance when Kev thought one of the boxes was empty when actually it contained a brand new bike ! Exactly how we were going to walk out the shop with this bike was a little beyond us.
Without too much trouble we got the boxes back on the UBahn to our hotel vowing next time to use the internet better and ring the shops first before wandering around
With the boxes assembled and our room now resembling a bike shop it was time to invest in a local Thai meal and spend some quiet time with Kev who is no doubt feeling the emotion of going home.
With boxes secured our 3rd day included a little time acting the tourist as we visited the nearby Main Tower for impressive views of the Frankfurt City Landscape.
From the Towers vantage point it was easy to see how much Frankfurt had suffered during WW2 being a major industrial center under the Nazi Regine. There was little evidence at all of the old town and more evidence instead of Frankfurt's growth into a major business center with over 650,000 inhabitants
With a walk along the Main river, a watch of the TDF and some more packing it was time to bade Kev a temporary farewell but not without one more final drama.
We'd given our receptionist our bike box measurements hoping we wouldn't have any issues with our booked Taxis. The first one that rocked up not only said they couldn't fit Kev's bike but also indicated there was no taxi big enough in Frankfurt to take his box.
With Kev a little on edge I communicated with our receptionist who spoke to the taxi company who sent another cab this being identical to the first - the only difference this time though was that the new driver got off his backside to lower the rear seats to allow Kev's box to fit and cause Kev to breath a great sigh of relief !
So for Kev its an emotional journey that we'll see him home for 2 weeks before rejoining me in Copenhagen on 31 July
For all his friends I'm sure he would appreciate a kind word or two to help him through this time !
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