Everything I owned fitted in a Bob Yak trailer and two panniers, which tells you either that I was twenty-eight or that I'd made some decisions. 280 km, three days, a headwind that started at the border and kept its appointment all the way to Neukölln.
Day one, Poznań to Świebodzin, past the giant Jesus statue that every Polish cyclist has a photo of and none of us can explain. Day two to Frankfurt an der Oder and across the bridge into a country where the bike paths are painted and the drivers wait. Day three was the flat, dull, perfect run into Berlin along the Spree.
The trailer lost a wheel bearing outside Fürstenwalde. I fixed it in a bus shelter with a spoon. A man brought me coffee. I decided, in that bus shelter, that I was going to open a workshop, and I did, and the radio in it still only gets one station.
Would I move house by bicycle again? No. My back has an opinion now. Would I have arrived in Berlin any other way? Also no. You should always enter a city at the speed you intend to live in it.