Day 8: Krakow and further planning

After walking the city more or less aimlessly yesterday I had a new strategy for today: Visit all bike shops in walking distance. This is actually quite nice for seeing the parts that are not famous. My velomobile still has the interim solution for the gear shift and I wanted to get a replacement for this little trouble maker:


Even though this is from a normal gear shifting system (nothing specially constructed for a velomobile) nobody had this part. So I got to see 6 different bike stores and three of them referred me back to the first one as the most likely supplier. Bad luck. So now the interim solution has to work for an additional 700km. I hope it will not break down and some slight friction between the chassis and the spokes will not cause bigger issues in the mean time.

After that I went back to the hotel room since it was simply to hot to be outside and did some "regeneration" (sounds a lot better than hanging around, doesn't it? ;) and planning of the next few days. I had found a nice route to the slovakian border, when I read the sentence "Some smaller border crossings will be closed from Juli 5th" on  https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/aussenpolitik/laender/slowakei-node/slowakeisicherheit/206360. But there is no official list to be found anywhere. The only source I got is the traffic information on google maps which seems to indicate that all nearby border crossings apart from the E371 are closed.
Since this is a rather big road I will try to get on it a few kilometers before the border and leave it again as soon as possible (I just hope I am allowed on the road with a bike at all).

Just now I got an SMS: "Alert RCB: Warning! Storms, strong wind, heavy rainfall and hail expected at night and tomorrow morning. During the storm, seek shelter". Now I am quite happy, that I have a hotel room for tonight. Staying in the tent in a night like this would probably be uncomfortable and I wouldn't get a lot of sleep. I just hope my bike does not get damaged and that the weather shift leads to lower temperatures. Even in the evening it is almost to hot to stay outside :(

Referring to the long term plans: Cycling the Pamir Highway is cancelled even if I make it to Tajikistan. The comments in https://caravanistan.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12699 range from "still safe" to "you will become a Taliban hostage". But even if it is safe, I wouldn't feel that way. And it would take longer than a month to prove to me that nothing happens. This should have been one of the highlights of the tour, so I am a bit reluctant to give up on it, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

For those interested: "thesuntrip" had a similar idea of cycling from Paris to Shanghai. After Covid they planned some trips in Europe. The videos are quite nice. They seem to cross my route but are a few days ahead. Perhaps I will meet one of the the late arrivals on the road.

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