On June 30, 2026, my mom and dad and my little sister Anaïs and I started on a bike trip for ten days from Ottensoos, Germany to Prague! At first I was really excited. I couldn’t wait to hop on my bike and start riding! It would be easy, wouldn’t it? At least for the first day!
Already on the first day it was extremely exhausting. My bike kept breaking down and we had to go to bike stores several times just to get it fixed! My dad even rode his bike half an hour from where we were staying to a bike shop that could replace my tire, then rode back. I was happy to see him when he came back with the tire.
Day after day it got harder and harder and I didn’t think I could do it! But I tried not to complain, because that wouldn’t make it any easier for me or my family. Most days it was really hot, but sometimes we rode through cool forests and there were always tons of fruit, like wild blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and cherries! If you know me, you know I love fruit. So I would keep stopping to pick them! Even sometimes when I think my dad wanted us to keep riding and make more progress.
There was also one time when we were riding through this field, when we came to this huge cherry tree! It was filled with cherries from top to bottom! But it did have tons of yellow jackets swarmed around it! We stopped and my mom lifted me up and I climbed to the top. My dad gave me his Bookshop Santa Cruz cap, and I filled it up then I passed it down to him and he would put all those cherries into my basket and we did that until my basket was full! And when we started riding again whenever I wanted cherries I would reach back and eat some. And I ate so many my stomach hurt! Another time we stopped to take a break and I got a slushy and then we went in this lake and I swam across it all by myself! It wasn’t easy!
I also saw a lot of animals! (Some dead, some alive.) Like I saw a baby wild boar in a forest and it was so cute! My sister thought it was a rabbit, but I’m positive it was a baby boar! And I saw six dead birds. Three of them were whole and three were squashed like a pancake! I tried not to ride over the squashed birds.
When we crossed the border to the Czech Republic we stopped at this restaurant and it was amazing! For starters my sister and me got a homemade mint lemonade and it was so good! It wasn’t too sweet and it had the perfect amount of mint in it! And to eat I had strawberry palatschinken, a pancake with pudding inside and strawberries, and my sister had strawberry knödel, another czech specialty, where there are balls with strawberries! By the time we made it to Prague, I think we almost couldn’t believe we were there.
