My First Tour, Through the Middle of Germany
Five stages from Cologne to Dresden and back, through the part of the country you normally only know from the motorway.
Mid September 2026
My first multi-day tour, reconstructed from memory, which is a generous word for it.
In 2022 the idea was simple: ride from Cologne to Dresden on the Honda NC750X, spend the summer there, and explore the region at weekends.
Cologne to Dresden is a distance you can dispatch in six hours of motorway. Which is exactly why I didn’t. I took the country roads instead, straight through the middle of the country — the part that normally just blurs past the window at 130 km/h.
The way there was a night in Flieden, a weekend with family in Gera, then the last stretch to Dresden, which involved considerably more construction sites and considerably less fuel than planned.
A few weeks in Dresden followed, including one day trip into my own childhood. The way back went through Halle and the Harz in a heatwave, via a night in a castle, and ended in the Sauerland’s idea of rush hour.
Would I do it again? Spoiler: I haven’t. At least not on two wheels.