Padova, Italy

After Cologne, I had been hoping to say goodbye to my mindless motorway riding days. But the weather had other plans for me. There was a storm coming from the west which I needed to escape. And there weren’t very many cool small roads to ride through in the part of Italy surrounding the Milano area. So motorway it was. My destination for the day was Padova. It was far enough from Milan, close enough to to Venice to take a train there, and south of the Dolomites, should I decide to ride north through them to Slovenia.

I steeled myself against the long, boring journey and hoped that the horror stories I had heard about the Italian autostrade were just hearsay.

Once again I (illegally) took the motorway in Switzerland out of Bellinzona until I crossed the border into Italy. The motorways in Italy do not require a vignettes, rather they are a series of toll roads owned by different companies. I had vivid memories of the toll booths in Boston and New Jersey from last year, and how much I had loathed the stop-go traffic for miles to go through them. There was nothing to be done though and I had to suffer through it. The first couple of booths I encountered were confusing. I hadn’t gone through anything where I could get a ticket to show where I had started from, so I wasn’t sure how they would know how much to charge. Turns out it was a flat rate for that section of road, although I realized that only in hindsight. The toll collectors didn’t speak a word of English, so any attempt at communication was futile. The tickets were usually inexpensive, in the neighborhood of 1.80 euros each for motorcycles. The last couple of hundred kilometres did require me to pick up a ticket, which they ran through a machine at a later point to find the total amount I needed to pay. I think I overall spent less than 15 euros for the entire distance.

While I was aimed for Padova, I couldn’t resist getting off the road when I saw signs for Verona. Shakespeare-land! Memories of reading the Bard’s famous plays when I was little swept through my head and with a vicarious thrill, I pointed the bike towards the center of Verona. I didn’t stay for very long because I kept missing turns and got warmer and warmer. It was the kind of city best explored on foot anyway, not in full gear on a hot day. At first glance, it looked very old and dusty, with crumbling buildings lining crowded streets. I found a gas station to fuel up and took off.

Riding on the Autostrade was fine. Better than fine actually. Once again I admired how traffic flowed smoothly on the German and Italian freeways. People strictly adhered to the rule of “keep right except to pass”, unlike in the United States where people just camp in the left lane. In Europe, I also didn’t encounter any of the passive aggressiveness that I’m so used to at home. If you turn on your indicators to pass someone, they yield. Overall I felt really safe on the freeways here even at speeds as high as 140 kmph. That’s the highest that I think I went because that’s the most both my bike and I were able to handle. It was about on par with most of the other vehicles on the road, although occassionally you got people going 200 on the German autobahns.

The only downside to riding in this part of Italy was the air quality. I don’t know if this area is more industrial, but it felt extremely polluted, to the point where the humidity and pollution made me feel like I was back in Bombay again. Towards the end of the ride, I could feel my eyes stinging.

Padova came up around 2:00 in the afternoon. I rode through a series of cobblestone streets – these were different from the ones I had ridden over in other countries. I bet they got really slippery after it rained. I was unfortunate enough to be stuck behind a car going extremely slow. it was a lot easier to ride over this surface at a spirited pace, rather than 10 kmph.

I found the hostel easily enough. My heart sank when I saw that the checkin time was 4:00PM, but luckily they let me in and allowed me to put my stuff away in the storage room. I took off my gear, changed into walking shoes and packed my small backpack to head into town.

Walking through the streets of Padova felt like I was in an episode of Doctor Who. I had the strange feeling of having been transported into another time and era. The streets were deserted as I walked past a small river and crossed a bridge along more cobblestone paths. The buildings were like the ones in verona had been – old and crumbling, almost ancient.

  

There was not a soul on the road – I realized later that it was siesta time. Everything shut down in the afternoons. Most shops were closed – completely unheard of back home! I was starving by now, so the charm of this phenomenon wasn’t completely endearing right at that moment. I went to a couple of cafes and managed to find some small sandwiches to eat. I realized more and more that communication was going to be a real problem, because unlike in Germany and Switzerland, nobody here spoke English. I was left with communicating purely in sign language. It was a little more isolating than I had thought it would be.

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and trying to keep cool. The head and humidity tired me out rapidly and I finally staggered back to the hostel to take a long nap. When I woke up, it was 9:00PM. I realized with a shock that once again I had to go hunt for food and be back soon. For some arcane reason, this hostel closed its gates at 11:30PM, but didn’t give me a key, so I had to be back by then. Fortunately, I found a good restaurant close by, where I got some pasta and a mojito. The cold drink was perfect for the weather and I felt considerably more refreshed afterwards.
When I returned to the hostel, I made plans for the next day. I would ride the train to venice. By the very nature of the city, no vehicles can go into the city, so it didn’t make sense to ride the motorcycle there. I would spend the day there and ride the train back in the evening. It seemed like a good plan.

Riding through Switzerland…

This was supposed to be a short riding day from Basel to Interlaken. It would be my first day of riding through Switzerland. As always, the prospect of riding through a new country was exciting. It was sprinkling down in Basel when I walked out of the HI hostel in the morning to go get the bike. Rain again! Is there ever any escape? And to think that I thought I had picked the wrong month for visiting Europe, imagining it would be unbearably hot. Turns out, I had indeed picked the wrong month, but for an entirely different reason. I zipped in the liners to my jacket and pants. Even if it was just sprinkling, I didn’t want to take the chance that it would turn into a downpour.

I needed to fuel up before I left – I never appear to get into the habit of fueling up at the end of the day so that I could just get out and ride the next day – but the Zumo routed me to locations where no gas stations existed – twice! It was beyond maddening because Basel was an incredibly difficult city to ride through and I kept making wrong turns and needing to backtrack. All this while moving really slow and gettijng more and more warm in my gear, while the rain kept misting up my visor. I finally found a gas station and after puzzling over the options – none of them were in English – picked one that looked least likely to be diesel and fueled up. This was the first station I had encountered that accepted only credit cards. Almost every other gas station required you to fuel up first, leave the bike parked, and to go inside and pay the attendant (unlike in the US where you insert a card, fuel up, and the machine automatically deducts the correct amount). The machine asked me to enter a pin number, even though I had used a credit card. Not wanting it to do a cash advance, I used my debit card instead.

Since I was routing through non-toll roads, the GPS routed me through various small roads and cities to Interlaken. There was a lot of construction on the way and traffic moved slowly. I found a few really nice roads that went through forests and fields. Most of the route was over small hills, nothing overly dramatic, since I’m guessing I was still in the lower foothills of the Swiss Alps.

The road got dramatically better as I neared the last 50kms to Interlaken. It went right past the lake, which was a vision. Co-incidentally, the music playing in my helmet switched to “Welcome to Dreamland”, which I thought was fantastic timing. The lake and sky and mountains blended in a vision of deep, sparkling blue. The sun wasn’t out yet, but it had stopped raining and it really felt like I was riding through a dream. The road surface was impeccable, and it twisted and turned past the blue waters. Far off in the distance, I could see the mighty mountains… finally!! I reached the hostel in Interlaken all too soon.

Throughout the ride, I had been thinking about the weather forecast. It was sprinkling today, but they predicted heavy thunderstorms through the area I would be going through the next day (Interlaken to Bellinzona via the Grimsell and Furka passes). I was already a little spooked by the thought of riding through my first high mountain passes, and I was less than thrilled about having to do it in spectacularly bad weather. By the time I was pulled over at the hostel in Interlaken, I decided that I would try to cancel my reservation there, and keep going towards Bellinzona. It was only 2:00PM, and if all went well, I would reach Bellinzona before dark. I wasn’t too tired, although I knew that I would be before long, but it seemed like the only sensible thing to do.

The hostel refused to refund the booking fee, in spite of me having bought the cancellation insurance, which was irksome, but they did help me call the Bellinzona hostel to move my reservation from the next night to that night, and advised me on my route. They said to skip the Gotthard tunnel, which was a 48km long tunnel – not much fun for motorcyclists – and go on the outside roads instead. I took heed of their suggestions and left.

It’s a shame I couldn’t stay in Interlaken. It looked like a gorgeous place, and a haven for outdoors-y people with tons of climbing and kayaking.

I ventured on towards Grimsell Pass. It was raining steadily now and as I climbed, it got colder. The road was very challenging to me as I wasn’t used to riding switchbacks like these. The weather meant that there was hardly anyone out, and I didn’t see very many motorcylists on the road. I kept climbing higher and higher, getting ever so nervous as I did. The views were spectacular and panoramic, and I eyed them with fascination mixed with trepidation. At one point, I turned a corner to see an almost otherworldly vision of an immense landscape of green strewn with grey boulders of every shape and size. The mountains were huge and towering. If only I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get out of the bad weather, I might have just stopped and gazed and gazed. I had never seen anything like it before.

I managed to take these two photos when I stopped briefly to check that I was on the right track. It doesn’t quite convey the enormity of the mountains and how dwarfed I felt by comparison.

  

I reached the top of Grimsell Pass and pulled over to take pictures. They weren’t very good because of the fog and the rain. A few other motorcyclists were stopped too. We left at about the same time, and I trailed them for a little while until they lost me.

  
Onward now to Furka Pass. I was a little cocky now after having gotten through my first mountain pass unscathed. This was nothing to be afraid of, I thought. It was actually getting to be very good fun! If only I had had enough sleep and rest and slightly better weather, I might have had the time of my life on those roads. As it was, I had a big grin on my face as I descended the first mountain and ascended towards the next pass.

The grin was completely wiped off and replaced with a deer-in-the-headlights type terror as I climbed to the top of Furka Pass. It was high up there and no guard rails to speak off. The cars ahead of me slowed to a crawl, as did I. I had one near death moment when a tour bus lumbered towards me from around a corner, but I didn’t dare to swerve right to get out of its way. I also happened to be in the wrong gear, so I couldn’t even accelerate out of trouble if I had wanted to. Fortunately, the bus went past with a few inches to spare, but I really thought I was a goner then.

The descent was equally scary for at least the next ten minutes, with steep hairpin turns that plummeted far below into an abyss, should you miss a turn. It also got colder and colder. This was the least fun part of the ride. Once I had more or less descended, I was okay, but still a little shaken and wondering what Gotthard Pass had in store for me. I soon found out – almost zero visibility rain and fog. I had to ride with my visor up so I could see anything at all. I stopped at one spot and turned into a restaurant I spied to ask them how long the weather would continue as it didn’t really seem safe to keep going when I could barely see. There were a couple of motorcyclists there who had stopped for the night. They said that it would be terrible weather until I got down to the motorway, but I should keep going and go slow. From there it was only about 40 miles to Bellinzona. I was so close now that there was no way I could stop, even though I was tempted to stay there for the night.

This was on top of Gotthard Pass. The only dry spot here appears to be directly under my bike.

Go slow I did. The rain kept up throughout until I reached the point where I could get on the motorway. I didn’t have a vignette to drive on it, but I was beyond caring. I had gone so slow all day, that I just wanted to get to my hostel in the fastest way possible and stop for the night. I made good speed on the motorway and surprisingly enough found that I had that high you get after you’ve been through a long, hard day. It had been a day well lived, in spite of the scary moments. In many ways, it had been the first real motorcycling adventure day. I’m sure that in ideal conditions, this would have just been a fun little ride, but on this particular day it had really tested my mental and physical endurance, and I was thrilled on the high of having made it.

Bellinzona was cool and yet another city that I wished I could have spent more time in. The hostel was clean and affordable, the town square was walking distance from it, and I was able to get some good ravioli and red wine to celebrate the end of a very full day and feel like I deserved it.

Here is a picture of Bellinzona that I took the morning after. It looks positively tropical in comparison to the Switzerland I had seen thus far.

My next decision would be whether I should go north back into the mountains (and more rain) or south towards warmer climes. It was an easy decision.

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[See more photos of Grimsel Pass here, Furka Pass here, and St. Gotthard Pass here. And more about the Alpine Passes here. And this guy here has a fantastic set of photos that document the ride I did.]

Here are a few that show the roads that I rode. I’m slightly frustrated that I couldn’t have done them on a better day, but I feel privileged that I was able to ride them at all! And I know they will still be there when I return. In fact, I have a feeling that this is going to be the beginning of a lifelong obsession.

The below pictures are courtesy of www.pictures-switzerland.com. The first two are of Grimsell Pass and the last two are Furka and Gotthard Passes respectively.

  

  

The Black Forest…

Today was fantastic, plain and simple. The riding was the best I’ve done on this trip, this year, in fact, for pretty much all the time I’ve been riding. Today had everything – warm, sunny weather, twisties, panoramic views, a big blue sky with big white puffy clouds, lush green landscape, and roads that made me weep with their perfection. Even getting stuck behind a few cars didn’t dampen my enthusiasm. Everyone needs to ride the roads in the Black Forest once in their lifetime.

I left Freibourg around 9AM this morning and headed north toward Waldkirch. From hereon started the twisties. The road was a narrow, single lane one, which climbed up steadily. There were a few uphill decreasing radius turns that caught me off-guard. Before I knew it, I was above the tree line. I wondered if my fear of heights was going to kick in, but out of nowhere, the road suddenly widened to signal my first via point – the village of Sankt Peter. A few minutes before there had been nothing but a tight winding road through the forest, now there was a big hotel with tens of motorcycles parked outside it. I stopped and took all the pictures I possibly could.

 

After a brief stop at the hotel, I took off again, this time towards the village of Sankt Margen. More brilliant roads, more unbelievable views – lush green meadows, cows grazing, elevation changes, gloriousness.

Southward bound now towards Odenback and Birklehof and then the B31 to TItisee-Neustadt. There were way too many tourists there for my liking, so I did a quick circle around the town square and fled. The B317 took me toward Barental and then the B500 to Schluchsee. The lake was gorgeous. I rode past it for a little bit before turning around. Once again, there were too many tourists at this resort town. I did stop for a quick meal before heading on the road though.

  

There were hundreds of motorcyclists out on the roads today, fully clad in leathers. The Europeans take their safety gear very seriously. I followed their example and started passing cars and lane splitting. Why oh why do cars drive so slow?! Most of them were good enough to move over for me although I did encounter a few a**holes who did their best to not let me pass.

On this ride too, there was that feeling of riding through town after ghost town. Big empty houses flanking the streets with not a soul in sight. The only times I saw people were at the bigger resort towns near the lakes.

Southward again on L146 towards Todtmoos and a little detour towards Utzenfeld. East again towards Sankt Blasein, a picturesque little village. I wished I could stay, but I didn’t. The road was a-calling! And what a road! South all the way on L154 to the Rhine. Hundreds of little twisties! The road was narrow and flanked with a cliff to the left and rock barriers to the right. Everyone needs to ride this road once before they die! I truly did shed tears at the end of it. I was this close to turning around and doing it all over again. The only thing that made me continue was the thought of wanting to get to Basel early enough during the day that I’d be able to see a bit of the town.

I had picked the last part of the route to run parallel to the Rhine and ride into the city of Basel in Switzerland. It looked like it would be pretty on the map, very like riding past the Mosel a couple of days ago. In hindsight though, this was a mistake. Even though I rode past the Rhine, the road was lined with steel mills and foundries. I guess they build the industrial towns right next to the great river.

The road also went through numerous towns with low speed limits and slow drivers. It was really hot and humid now. It was only 36km more, although it seemed longer. I rode a total of 233km (approoximately 140 miles). Did I mention that it was the most glorious riding I have done, even though I didn’t come across any trolls or gnomes in the Black Forest? :)

I finally reached Basel a little past four and checked in to the HI hostel that I had booked the previous day. The hostel was very nice although I got a bit of a sticker shock at the cost of everything, even though I had been forewarned. Wifi was 1 franc for 10 minutes or 6 francs for an hour or 15 francs for 24 hours. Laundry was 15 francs with a 24 hour turnaround, so that was out of the question. Dinner was 17 francs. I escaped into the main town in a little bit and got a doner kebab type wrap for a whopping 9.5 francs, and it wasn’t even that good. A latte at Starbucks was 5.80 francs. Given that a swiss franc is equivalent to a US dollar, this was all stupid expensive.

I wonder if it is possible to not eat or drink at all for my remaining 3 days in Switzerland.

I roamed the town of Basel for a little while until finally turning around to the find the hostel again. I was rewarded with probably one of the most spectacular visions of this journey – the Rhine at night, calm and clear, glittering with a thousand lights.

Update from Freibourg…

I left Luxembourg a little later than I had planned. Woke up late and wasted a little time at a motorcycle shop at the edge of town.

I took the freeway to Volkingen, and then a brief stop at Strasbourg, my little sojourn into France. (On the way, just before I entered France, I was amused to see a sign that said “dernier sortie a Allemagne”. Why wasn’t the sign in German?)

I felt tempted to stay in Strasbourg for the night because it was so nice to finally be in a country where I can more or less understand and speak the language. I had to keep going though. Strasbourg did surprise me in that it was a little… dirty. I got lunch at a small roadside shop – a sort of kebab roll. The bread was amazingly French – fresh and crisp, but the lamb tasted tough and overcooked, so that was a bummer. It was starting to get really, really hot too and I was feeling like I was getting slow cooked in my gear. I took the liner out of my jacket.

  

After this backroads all the way to Freibourg. It felt a little like the universe had finally aligned to put together my favorite riding conditions – warm, sunny weather, winding roads, emerald green trees and hedges, and next to no traffic on the streets. I had a fantastic time! :) Wish I could say more, but the fact that I have no pictures is proof that it was a brilliant ride that I didn’t want to stop.

I got to Freibourg around 5PM and checked into the hostel. It was on a river bank and surrrounded by beautiful green meadows. I lounged about doing this and that until it was time to get dinner. There was a German restaurant down the street, so I walked past the river, crossed a little bridge and found it. I ordered some Hefeweizen beer (tasty!) and some bratwurst with onions and bread (tastier!). While I waited for my order, I saw a couple of guys at the table next to me playing a game of chess. I looked at them longingly (possibly weirding them out a bit) before finally plucking up the courage to walk up to them and ask if I could play the next game. They were very welcoming, so I brought my drink over and sat with them. They introduced themselves as Ralf and Dominic (and one more super nice guy whose name I cannot recall now). As usual, their English was better than my German, so we conversed in some broken English. I understood that they were part of a chess club that met there every Friday. Great, that meant I’d be playing some high rated players. I didn’t care, even if I lost badly, it would be good to just play after a month long break.

We were joined by two more players – Isaac and Andy. They were both hilarious. Isaac creamed me at one game and he especially made me giggle because he corrected practically every move I made, telling me what the repercussions would be four moves down. At some point, it felt like he was playing against himself. ;) It was educational though and he meant well, so I didn’t mind at all. After this, they started playing blitz chess with a timer, something that never fails to fascinate me. I think I’d get a stroke halfway through a game if I ever tried, but it was still pretty cool to watch. Hmm… maybe I *will* try my hand at it sometime.

  

It was a little gratifying how they asked me questions and tried to include me in their conversation even though English was not their native language. I wished I had more pictures of home and my life on my phone or something so that I could show them. I had a really pleasant time nonetheless and after winning my only game, I decided to call it a night and left the good natives of Freibourg to their matches.

On the way back to the hostel, I briefly talked to Tobi, a CSer from Lausanne. We were both disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to meet like we had talked about because of conflicting plans. It’s too bad, now I get to enter Switzerland without knowing anyone there. This will be the last leg of my journey as I get ready to cross the Alps. My plan is to cross the Grimsell Pass and sort of make my way to the Dolomites and Venice before turning back to Ljubljana.

I feel a little tired today though, so maybe I will end up staying in Freibourg an additional night.

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I felt completely exhausted to the point of feeling sick all of the next day, so I spent another day in Freibourg, most of it just laxing aruond the river and enjoying the sunshine. It was just what I needed.

  

Later in the evening, I took a tram to the Old Town and took some pictures.

  

  

In Luxembourg!

I left Koblenz and headed west to the Nurburgring. On arrival, I found that the ticket office was closed, although I could see cars on the track. I don’t know if it was a car-only trackday or how it worked, but I wasn’t very keen on getting on an unknown track with a low powered bike and a bunch of high powered cars vrooming past me. :| A motorcycle only trackday would have been fine, but I’m not sure how frequently they did those. Oh well, I was really disappointed but still glad that I got to see the iconic track.

Here on, I took the scenic route past the Mosel river, which was beautiful, green, winding roads through vineyard country. The sun was shining and it was a bit windy, but other than that, the conditions were perfect and I had a pleasant afternoon of riding.

By later afternoon, I reached Trier. I realized that Luxembourg was a mere 36km away. Rather than go south towards Saarbrucken like I had planned, I was tempted to go visit yet another country. And so I did. :)

I’m glad I did too. I got a bed in a really nice hostel, which was walking distance from downtown. I managed to get in touch with Wojtek, an ADVRider acquaintance, who was wonderful enough to give me a walking tour. We saw the Duke’s Palace and the cathedral and various scenic viewpoints. I simply loved how the city seemed to be build in different layers. We walked on the “rock” or the embankments of a fortress, and  we could see houses and roads and water spread out down below us. In the distance, there were bridges with trains and cars going cross them. There were lots of elevation changes in a very small area. It also looked very, very clean, like Ljubljana.

  

  

  

  

I wish I could have had a couple of days to spend there, but time was now a luxury. I had to leave the next morning to be able to carry out my plan of getting to Freiburg the next day.

Update from Koblenz…

I was holed up in Cologne for a good three days due to really bad weather. Fortunately, it was with Silke, who was a great host, so it all worked out rather well. She introduced me to a lot of German food like blood pudding and currywurst and her favorite beer Fruh. She also took me a to a pub to get absinthe, which tasted a lot like aniseed water and made me very sleepy. :P

I also took the opportunity to take the bike to BMW Cologne where they replaced the gas tank cover. It cost an arm and a leg and I had to say goodbye to my desire to go to the spa and get a sauna and massage. Ah well.

By Wednesday, Silke was ready to kick me out though. :P We made a last minute impulsive plan to go to Koblenz, a city about 60km southwest of Cologne. We decided that I’d ride there after visiting the Nurburgring, and she would take the train, and we would meet up at a hotel we booked over the phone.

It was a good plan in theory except that the “light rain” they predicted for the afternoon was anything but. About 10km on the autobahn, it started pouring down. I changed my mind about going to the Ring pretty quickly and decided to focus on just getting to Koblenz in one piece. Heavy rain, wind and noisy helmet combined to make this the least fun ride I’ve had in a while.

I was relieved to make it to Koblenz. The hotel turned out to be a bit of a disaster. It was way more expensive than the crappy room we got warranted. The bathrooms were disgusting. The customer service was non-existing. We found out later that it was a 2-star hotel, although it cost about the same as a Motel 6 room.

Koblenz itself was interesting. The architecture was old and I especially liked the roofs and how it looked like it had waves going through it. Apparently most of Cologne had to be rebuilt after being bombed in WW2, but cities like Koblenz survived the bombings and still retained the old buildings.

  

After Silke arrived, we found a bus to take us to the city center, from where we walked to Deutsche Eck – the spot where the north-south flowing Rhine met with the east-west flowing Mosel river. It had a very cool statue and columns for every German province pre-WW1. The weather was now pleasant and it was lovely to walk by the river.

  

   

  

We had a late dinner and took a taxi back to the hotel. The next morning we said goodbye. I don’t know when we’ll be able to meet again, but I hope it’s within the next ten years. :) It’s the curse of our times that although the internet has enabled us to connect with like-minded people in a way that was impossible a mere 20 years ago, they are so far away that meeting as frequently as you want to is not very realistic.

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In other news, I also appear to have really fucked up my left knee and I spent most of my time in Cologne hobbling around. We went to an apotheke (pharmacy) where I got a neoprene brace and some painkillers and ointment. I don’t think they’ve made the least difference though. I’m mostly okay walking short distances on level ground, but walking downhill, especially on cobblestone streets is really difficult. I guess it will have to wait until I get home though. Even though my insurance covers me at 80% cost for out of network providers, I can’t afford to waste time waiting for an appointment or to pay 20% of the bill to go to an ER. :|

Arrival in Cologne…

You know what’s really nice? What’s really nice is curling up with your girlfriend in jammies with cups of tea and talking and laughing and giggling without a care in the world. :) I’ve been craving female company for so long that spending a couple of days with Eva in Stockholm and now Silke in Cologne have been exactly what I needed.

Yesterday was another “mindless riding” day on the A7, A2 and A1 autobahns to get from Hamburg to Cologne. The riding itself was fine, and a lot easier now that I’m used to it. There were a few construction zones where the four lane highway narrowed to two lanes and the speed limit went from 130 to 60. It sprinkled a little in the beginning, but nothing too alarming. And then I did something completely stupid. I stopped to refuel at the 200km mark and as I lifted my saddlebag to put the hose in, the gas tank cap *broke off*. WTF!!! After I got over my initial shock, I refueled, moved the bike over to a side and tried to lock the cover back in place. No luck with that though. I had to take the seat off and wrap tape around the cap and the body of the bike to keep it in place. I was worried that it wouldn’t be watertight, but the saddlebags went over it and would cover  the cap until I got to the next city. I got Silke to look up the address for BMW Motorrad in Cologne so I could stop there on the way. They were closed on Sunday though, so that would have to wait until Monday. I wondered gloomily if I was doomed to visit a BMW shop in every city I went to. It seemed like a bit of a cosmic joke.

100 km later, I turned onto the A1 and the skies opened up. All of a sudden I was in a deluge. Visibility reduced to two car lengths in front of me. There was standing water on the freeway and I started getting sprayed with water from cars going past me. I had neglected to put the liners into my pants and I paid for it by getting completely soaked in minutes. There was nothing to do but keep going though. I was so close to Cologne that there was no sense in stopping.

After a very long, wet hour, I rolled into Cologne Zentrum. It was a relief to be on city streets going much slower, although I did completely blow one right turn, felt the bike slipping on some rail road tracks and had to slow down and stop. Luckily there was no traffic behind me so I was able to gingerly ease my way back to the street. I made it to Silke’s street, called her and parked on the sidewalk in front of her building.

We carried my gear up  to her fifth floor flat where I proceeded to get out of my wet things. Ick! I thought fondly of having done laundry the day before and all the clean, bone dry clothes I had packed away.

She took me to a local pub – Unkelbach – where she got me some blood pudding – a Cologne specialty. It was some sort of meat with mashed potatoes mixed with apples and some cabbage on top. It was tasty! We spent a good long time eating and catching up. :) Then we took a train to the city center to go see the Rhine. I was going to see the Rhine! Honest to goodness with my own eyes! :D

It was still pouring down and the Rhine looked gray, but it was still thrilling. :) We walked away from it and towards the Cologne Cathedral. I had been of the mind of “see one church, seen ’em all” but I caught my breath at the beauty of this gothic church. I don’t know if it was the effect of the gray skies, fog and rain, but it was quite simply the most marvelous building I have seen. I couldn’t stop gazing up at it and wanting to take in every single square inch. Water spouted out of the mouths of the gargoyles high up above, adding to the dramatic effect even further.

  

  

After stopping for coffee at a cafe, we went inside the cathedral. We had to wait for the service to get over before we could wander around. The organ music was lovely and made me want to come back to hear a proper concert within those walls. It was nearing the end of the day and the crypt and the sarcophagi (containing the bodies of the Three Kings, reportedly the magi who visited Jesus after his birth) were cordoned off. I’d just have to come to see it again.

  

We got an early night with dinner and watching Season Five of Doctor Who. For some reason, my left knee was very sore and appeared to be bruised and inflamed. I cannot imagine why but I hope it subsides. Some ice and Tylenol will hopefully do the trick.

This morning I called BMW Cologne and talked to Andreas, the service manager, who was fantastic. He said he would special order the part and get it installed for me. I got off the phone feeling relieved and thinking of how much I loved strong, confident men who just Knew What To Do. :P

Today we will wander the city some more, possibly stopping at the Modern Art Museum. They predict more rain until Wednesday, which is depressing. I was hoping to leave tomorrow morning, but that might not happen. It impedes my progress a bit, but there’s just no sense in riding in such miserable weather. For now, I will enjoy this beautiful city with one of my best friends. :)

I loved Stockholm!

Stockholm was one of my favorite cities in Europe, quite possibly because I had such a good host to show me around so that I didn’t really have to use my brain at all, just relax and follow her lead.

Eva picked me up from the train station yesterday evening. It was wonderful to see her smiling face and I felt all the stress and tiredness of the past couple of days fall away when I saw her on the platform. It’s not very often that I get to meet one of my best friends twice a year and I’m glad we could make this happen. I really wished I had longer than a mere day to spend with her. I had originally thought it wouuld be two to three days, but I hadn’t counted on the train ride taking almost an entire day on my return to Hamburg.

We exchanged news and she gave me a train pass that I was valid for three days, so I wouldn’t have to worry about transportation. How thoughtful! We took a couple of trains to her place and walked up four flights of stairs to her apartment (there’s no escaping this in Europe… grrr!). Her place was delightful and most exactly like how I had pictured it from her descriptions and photos. The first thing my eyes set on were her New Rocks, which I coveted immediately, and her stuffed dragon Pjukkan, which also I coveted. Lol…

I unpacked a bit, cleaned up, and then we went hunting for food. We stumbled across an Indian restaurant which was closing in 30 minutes and ordered a ton of very delicious food. Indian food in Sweden… seemed odd, but it was good. More talking and more catching up as old friends do. :)
I was too tired to go out and do any more that night, so we came back where she made up a very comfy bed for me with her pullout couch. I slept really well that night!

The next day the weather was still warm and sunny. She planned on taking me to the Old Town (Gamla Stan) where we would just wander the streets and walk and talk and rest when we were tired and really have no set agenda. It sounded wonderful to not have to visit any of the must-see tourist places and just spend alone time with her. It struck me that she was a lot more animated and cheerful than the times when she had visited Seattle, quite possibly because she wasn’t jet lagged and on her own home ground. I wonder if I must have been more quiet and subdued than when she saw me in Seattle.

We went to a vegan buffet for lunch, which was okay. The restaurant had a fantastic view of the harbor and the Old Town beyond. As usual, my camera couldn’t do justice to the panoramic view.

  

Afterward we walked by the water around the harbor to the city. I liked the unusual architecture of the old buildings and enjoyed walking past them and gazing up at the roofs. The old town was a labyrinth of little cobblestone streets with cool houses and stores lurking around various corners. I thought it was neat that people still lived there, just like in the olden days.

We went to a few gothy stores, but I didn’t end up buying anything more than socks (nice and portable!). After a couple of hours of walking, we went to a cool underground cafe that reminded me of an opium den. I wondered if it had been one back in the day.

Later in the evening, we returned to her place and I made plans to meet Hank, an American motorcyclist who lived in the city, whom I had connected with online. He had just come back with a big tour, co-incidentally with a Slovenian guy who was friends with the guy I rented my bike from. The motorcycling world is truly a small one, even in Europe. Hank met us near the train station and we talked for a little while and he gave me route ideas.

In the evening, Eva took me too a restaurant for dinner where I got some very tasty lamb. Nummy! On the way home, we picked up Ballerina cookies, my favorite thing to come out of Sweden, and went home and had tea and cookies and watched Buffy (the Dracula episode) and giggled a lot. Then for some blogging, shower and bed.

The next morning she dropped me off at the train station where she stood waving until the train started moving and I was out of sight. Awww… :D Whenever people are so good to me, I wonder what I did to deserve it. :)

Towards Stockholm…

Rocks, sand, water, and swathes of green streak past my window. The water is the Baltic Sea. It looks peaceful out in the distance. It looks like the right setting for a cold, wintry day, although of course, it’s the middle of August.

W’re on a bridge now, one that stretches on for a long time. Pretty soon the sea is lost from sight and we pass a settlement of warehouses sprayed with graffiti, construction sites with gleaming new forklifts, and train stations with foreign names. This is a new journey and I don’t know what sights to expect.  I expect today’s ride betwween Copenhgen and Stockholm to be very different from yesterday’s in Northern Germany. I’m impatient to get to my destination, but I know that I should try to relax and enjoy this moment.

This morning I was in Roskilde, a town about 40km west of Bagsvaerd, home to Roskilde Cathedral, built in 1170 and the final resting place of many of Denmark’s kings and queens, including the famous Harald Blatand (Bluetooth) and Queen Margrete I. There were numerous sarcophagi and tombs throughout the interior of the church, and some magnificent, intricate woodwork and iron carvings. I was pleased to have been able to see a slightly non-touristy, important part of Denmark’s history, far from the crowd of Copenhagen’s noisy, bustling city center. I did miss seeing the famous mermaid as she is on loan to another exhibition.

  

My visit to Copenhagen with Skjalm was short. I will have slightly longer in Stockholm though.

Denmark…

Today I entered Denmark. The high speed train carved it’s way from Hamburg’s train station through Schleswig-Holstein, on board the ferry across the Black Sea and in a couple of hours, I will be in Copenhagen. I could have ridden to Copenhagen, but I decided against it to avoid more mindless hours on the motorway. My initial relief at getting to freeway speeds has evaporated since the ride from Berlin to Hamburg yesterday. Three hours of riding at 130kph, with nothing to break the monotony but endless passing of mammoth, lumbering semis took its toll on me. The thought of riding in the train instead, and relaxing by a window seat as I watched the country rush by seemed a lot more appealing. It cost a little more than I would have spent on gas, but it’s just money, and keeping my stress level low seemed a lot more important. My bike is parked in Alex’s garage in Hamburg and I’m bringing just a few belongings with me as I enter Scandinavia to meet two old friends.The train ride has been uneventful, even dull. The last train ride I remember was taking the Amtrak between Seattle and Portland, which makes its winding way past rivers and lakes through endless evergreens. This one went through miles of endless empty plains. I finished reading my latest Sookie Stackhouse novel, feeling more relieved than satisfied at the end.

The train arrived at the exact scheduled time at Copenhagen’s main train station. I had a few hours to kill before catching another train north to Klampenborg station to meet my friend. I got out of the train station and went to the tourist information center across the street to get a map of the city. I thought about taking a quick walk through the historic center, but my duffel bag was too heavy, so I decided against it. I did walk a few streets down to find a small cafe to eat at (Cafe Katz). I ordered a capucchino and a tuna sandwich. It was the biggest, sloppiest tuna sandwich I’ve ever eaten. So much for eating healthy. I found out that Denmark does not use euros, which was quite a revelation as I had assumed that all the EU countries used the currency (apparently the Scandinavian countries don’t). The cafe accepted payment in euros though, and gave me back change in Danish kronors.

By this time, it was almost 5PM, so I headed back to the central train station. I passed the Tivoli gardens amusement park and saw the tall merry-go-round spinning up in the sky, looking like a many tentacled insect spinning round and round.

  

I bought a ticket at the train station which allowed me to use public transportation for the evening and was shocked at the price of 10 euros. It finally dawned on me now why everyone had warned me that Scandinavia was expensive.

It took about 20 minutes to get to Bakken where I met up with Skjalm. We went to another amusement park to get dinner. It was a pleasant walk through a forested area with huge oak trees. I even spied some deer standing under some of the trees in the distance. It was a rainy, grey day, and this place looked like it would be gorgeous on a nice, sunny one.

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We ate dinner and caught a couple of buses back to his place in Bagsvaerd, where I got to meet his two adorable cats. I was pretty tired and looking forward to the next day.

Blogging from Hamburg…

I woke up at 6AM, got myself ready and the bike loaded up, and was out of Berlin at 7AM. I wanted to get through the freeway slog early in the day and arrive in Hamburg early enough that I still had most of the day to enjoy the city.

I made a brief stop at another section of the Berlin Wall at the east end of the city. This section was not cordoned off like the one from the day before had been. It was painted with all kinds of street art and graffiti which I slowed down to look at. I pulled over at one section and took a picture of the bike with the Wall in the background.

This done, I got onto the freeway to head out of Berlin. It was about 270km to Hamburg. The ride was pretty uneventful. I kept a good 125kph clip, the monotony broken only by the recurring need to pass semis. I stopped for one quick gas stop at the 210km mark.

10 km outside of Hamburg, I saw a motorcyclist pushing his bike on the side of the road and slowed down and pulled over. He was riding a beautiful, old vintage BMW, which had stopped running for some reason. It turned out that one of the cylinders wasn’t firing and the spark plug kept getting fouled for some reason. He was going to need a tow. He looked relieved and happy that I had stopped, although I wasn’t sure that I could really do much to help him. I certainly couldn’t help him fix it, but I know that at times like this, it helps to just have someone with you and not feel like you’re alone. He spoke a little bit of English and expressed his gratitude at my having stopped. I told him that we should try to get off at the next exit where we could decide what to do. He said okay and I told him to get started so that I could follow him. He could ride the bike on one cylinder for a short while and at least go that distance.

He rode in the shoulder while I got back on the freeway. He was going really slow though and I didn’t think it was safe for me to go at that speed, so I picked up the pace and turned off at the next exit (which incidentally was my exit after all). I found a safe place to pull over on the side of the road and I waited. I took my gloves off and drank some water as I waited for him to catch up. About five minutes later, he blew past me waving his arm. Huh… well, I guess he was fine after all. Glad that he didn’t need my help, I too took off on my way. (A few miles down the road, I saw him pulled over again, but it was too late for me to stop. I felt bad, but I wasn’t familiar enough with the area to find my way back around, and I figured he was close enough to help that he would be okay.) That was a really nice bike though. I wish I had taken a picture. I mused to myself that that’s the kind of vintage bike I’d love to race someday.

I rode to BMW Hamburg on Onnakamp, missing the small entrance the first time. BMW occuped the entire set of blocks on that street, but only a small section was for motorycles. Almost the entire store was dedicated to their cars. I went around the block and turned in at the right entrance this time. The service guys pulled my bike over into the garage area and had the lowbeam bulb swapped out in the minutes (like James had said, the rubb covers at the back of the headlamp came off and there was some kind of elaborate clip mechanism that released the bulb). In all honesty, I could probably have figured this out on my own with instructions. but at nowhere the speed at which they did it. The also didn’t charge me, so it was probably a good thing I decided to let them do it.

From here, I called Alex and asked him to meet me downstairs, since my mobile phone minutes were over by now. I found his place without any trouble, pulled in to his garage and parked next to his Honda Shadow. We walked up four flights of stairs to his flat to put away my gear and luggage. Next we went to the train station where I bought tickets to Copenhagen and Stockholm. We had a very tasty lunch at a Turkish restaurant, before heading back to his flat. I was feeling a bit dizzy and needed to lie down for a little bit.

  

Later on in the evening, we decided to go out for dinner and a small tour of Hamburg. I was still feeling dizzy and a bit out of it, so I rode on the back of his bike. Chalk that up to be the second time this month that I’ve ridden on the back of a guy’s bike. ;) The control freak in me appears to be taking a bit of a backseat. I have to admit that it is a little nice to not have to worry about riding and just enjoying the ride instead, as long as it’s just a short 30 minute ride.

I soon found out the immense advantage of seeing the city through the eyes of a local. Earlier in the afternoon, Alex took me to a kaffehaus where I got some excellent cappuchino. Now we went to a pizza place where I got some delicious thin crust pizza and a local beer.

After concluding a delicious meal, we went for a ride through the city where he called out the most significant sights that might or might not be on a typical tourist’s map. The most impressive one was the city’s inner harbor and the historical warehouse area.

I was beat by the end of the day and it was all I could do to climb into bed and read a bit of my book before falling asleep. The next day, I’d leave my bike behind and take the train to Copenhagen.

Blogging from Berlin…

I spent only one entire day in Berlin, but it was enough for me to say that this is one fantastic city and I need to come back for a much longer trip someday.

To recap a little, I arrived here yesterday afternoon, a little after 4PM and checked in at the Circus Hotel, that my friend Marc had recommended from a previous stay. I booked a bed in the hostel this time instead of a private room. At 19 euros a night, it was a pretty good deal. They put me in room 410 and I got a bed in the lower bunk by the window. My room has a fantastic view! There is something to be said for this high rise living after all… At first sight, this neighborhood reminded me an awful lot of Portland with the little cafes fringing both sides of the street and the trams going across it.

I intended to get something to eat and then go stomp around in the city, but things didn’t quite go as I had planned. I had underestimated how tired I was from the day before. I had ridden about 250km, practically all on the autobahn. Speaking of the autobahn, most motorcyclists would say that this is the worst, most soul-crushing riding you can do, but to tell the truth I was relieved to be on it and just making good speed. The past few days in the Czech Republic had been good riding, but slow going and I constantly had to have my wits about me. Out on the freeway, I could finally turn my brain off and just ride, and it was delightful to be reaching my destinations at pretty much the pace at which I expected.

The only exciting thing that happened on the freeway was getting pulled over by a cop. I was passed him and then he passed me and he turned on a sign that flashed and said “Bitte” and “Folgen” alternatively. I had no idea what it meant, but my superior deductive skills reasoned that whatever it meant, I was probably meant to follow him and stop when he stopped, which I did. We pulled over at the next exit at a gas station. He was pretty nice and informed me that my light was off. I groaned when I realized that the lowbeam bulb was not working. Thankfully I had brought a spare from Seattle. I told him that I was riding to Berlin and I would replace it there, and he said okay, although he didn’t think it was safe. I was planning to ride in daylight hours only anyway, so I’m not too concerned about the safety aspect. Riding with the high beam on is *not* looked upon kindly here, like in the US where motorcyclists are advised to leave their highbeams on at all times to make themselves more visible.

I was going to fix the light in Berlin, but when I looked at the service manual, I realized that replacing the bulb wasn’t a simple matter of pulling the headlamp off and swapping bulbs. It meant taking off the rails of the storage area, the side panels, the instrument panel, the headlamp housing, and *then* getting to the bulb. I was *not* crazy on doing that on a sidewalk in Berlin with a maybe-incomplete toolkit. Meh… I called BMW in Hamburg and gave them the spiel – international traveller passing throug the city – can you please squeeze me in? They asked me to come by the shop tomorrow when I got into the city.

(I made a pleasant stop at Dresden on the way, which is a pretty little city. I ate lunch at a really cool place where I ate liver and mashed potatoes. Mmm…)

As I neared Berlin, my GPS promptly turned itself off (ARRRRRGHHHH… die!die!kill!kill!). I turned it back on and luckily it stayed on and I got to my destinaton. No idea why it decided to do that, of course.

Switching back to Berlin, I ate a very early dinner at Fabisch, the circus Hotel’s restaurant, which served organic food. I got some schnitzel with a green salad and gherkin. It was pretty tasty for a deep fried piece of meat. I went back to my dorm to rest for a bit, and ended up spending the rest of the evening in bed, reading and then falling asleep on my book. Time was a-wasting and Berlin was a-waiting, but did my body care? Noooooo…..

I woke up bright and early the next morning, got a chocolate croissant and capucchino at a bakery across the street and walked south towards Potsdam Platz. I saw the remnants of the Berlin Wall and remembered when I read about the fall of the Wall many many years ago when I was a little girl, and not quite understanding what was going on. Little did I know then that I would be so close to the real thing when I grew up…

I saw some more tourist sites before I realized that I’d had enough and retreated into the Dali museum. It turned out to have only some lithographs of his, not the famous paintings, which was a bit of a bummer.

Next up I walked to Alexander Platz and got myself a SIM card for Germany. Then I wasted 6 euros on getting a day ticket for the subway and used it only once to get back to the hotel. I had intended to head out again to a couple of museums, but I ended up just lounging around and reading (damn those addictive Sookie Stackhouse books!).

If I had to tell the truth, Berlin is so huge and there is so much I want to see here that it would be impossible to see it all in one day. Rather than run myself ragged trying to catch everything, I just saw what I most wanted to see and allowed myself to rest up for the rest. For once I remembered that I am after all on vacation.

Tomorrow I wake up early and ride up north to Hamburg, where I meet Alex, a fellow couchsurfer.

A curious thing happened on the way to Berlin…

I got an early start in Prague. I think I must have been out of the city around 8AM. I was going to ride to Prague Castle and take a picture of the bike in front of it, but the GPS directions got muddled and confusing, so I decided to just get the heck out of town and head towards Berlin.

As I got out of town, I realized that I had made a big mistake with not checking the weather forecast. I had mostly had hot sunny weather so far, so even though it had rained in Prague the previous day, I had assumed the good weather would continue. Wrong.

About 10 km out of the city, it started pouring down buckets. I stopped at a gas station, fueled up, put my liners into my jacket and overpants, put the storm covers on the side bags and started out. 10 km later I realized that this wasn’t going to cut it, so I stopped at another gas station, parked the bike under a bit of shelter and went inside. They had a couple of tables and chairs, so I resigned myself to taking my gear off, getting a cappuccino from a vending machine and reading my Sookie Stackhouse book.

In another time, I would have been beyond pissed off at the weather and chomping at the bit to get to my destination, but maybe I’m just older and wiser now. There was no point fighting the weather. I’d have kept going if I had to go about 20-30 miles to a safe place, but there was no way I would ride through 250 km of this weather. These things always blow themselves out, and it made sense to just wait it out. I sat there for about an hour and the rain did abate, at which point I reluctantly placed the book aside, geared up again and got back out.

This time I made it another 20 km before the rain came back with a vengeance. The wind was blowing full blast now, it was getting cold, there was standing water on the highway and water was seeping into my boots (I guess they’re not that waterproof anymore). I was completely out of my comfort zone. So I – you guessed it – stopped at the next gas station to wait it out once more. This time I was not so lucky with a comfortable table and chairs. I was wet and miserable and must have looked quite a sight to the woman at the gas station. I called Skjalm and asked him to look up the weather patterns for me (I so hate not having a phone with a data plan to look up radar maps on the road!), He confirmed that I was in the eye of the most awful weather and it wasn’t going to stop all day. The weather for the next day looked better. There was nothing to it but to wait until it calmed down a little bit and ride to the closest town Louny about 10km away to look for a place to stay.

I bought a sandwich and some chocolate and ate it while watching the storm blow outside. An adventure is never fun while you’re in the middle of it – I reminded myself. I wasn’t looking forward to stopping at a no-name town at one of the pensions my GPS listed and explaining to non-English speaking folks that I was looking for a place to spend the night.

I had sunk to the floor by now, reading my book and eating, when the gas station owner very kindly brought me a chair to sit on, bless her!

About an hour of this passed when I heard the rumble of an engine outside and a saw another motorcyclist stop. He was waterproofed from head to boots (his boots had waterproof covers!) and he seemed quite oblivious to the godawful weather. He walked inside, exchanged a few words with another patron, bought something and left.

I hesitated a bit, then ran outside after him and asked him – rather stupidly – whether he spoke English. I had to say something and that was the first thing that came to my mind. “A little”, he said. Of course! That’s what they all said. It usually meant, “No, but feel free to make funny sounds at me and I’ll see if I can decipher any of it.”
For some reason, my English goes bad when I’m speaking with someone who doesn’t speak it, so I continued with more idiotic talk in the nature of – “Bad rain! For how long?”

*shrug* *smile* “Don’t know!”

“Going to Berlin. Cannot make it.”

More smiles. “No!”

Feeling a little hopeless, I thanked him and turned to go when he indicated a sticker on his bike that said “Zerotin”.

“Biker party. Only 5 minutes away.”

“What?” I blinked stupidly as rain poured into my eyes.

“Biker party. Lots of bikes. Camping.” He smiled some more.

“Camping?” I repeated, a little slow on the uptake. The wind was howling, the flag on the flagpost outside the gas station fluttering wildly, my hair getting rapidly soaked as I contemplated the thought of setting up camp in the rain. Also, the thought that five minutes away, in what I thought was the middle of nowhere, there were other motorcyclists and what he called a party.

He made a sign with his hands to indicate a house and for emphasis repeated hopefully, “Small house. Camp?”

“I know what camping means.” I said hastily, “But camp in this weather?”

He smiled some more, “Yes.”

“How many other bikers?”

He thought a little and said “One thousand.”

One thousand bikers? This wasn’t a party. This sounded like a full fledged rally. Except… camping in this? No way! What I wanted was a warm, dry room and a cozy bed to snuggle in with my book. A safe shelter to wait out the weather before getting on the road the next day. No *way* was I going to follow some strange biker into the middle of nowhere to set up camp and continue to be wet and miserable for the rest of the day if I could help it. No way!

Instead, I found myself saying – “Wait for me! I’ll get my things.” I ran into the gas station (benzina station?), collected my things, pulled on my helmet and soaked gloves and followed him. He double back a little the way I had come, then turned off into a village. All this time, my mind was buzzing and I couldn’t stop giggling. This couldn’t possibly be happening! Here I had resigned myself to an uneventful day waiting out the crap weather and now I was going to be smackdab in the middle of a Czech biker rally.

Before I knew it, we had pulled up outside a makeshift gate complete with a registration booth. My friend – his name was Pyotr and he was Polish – explained to the other bikers who I was. I don’t understand Czech, but I could hear the words “U.S.A”, “American”, “Slovenia” etc. thrown around. They all gathered around me and asked me the same things – “Where are you from?”, “Why are you here?” and finally “Welcome!”. They were all tickled by the idea that here was a biker “all the way from USA!” Pyotr was beaming at them, delighted to be the one who had produced this novelty. They filled me in on what I could expect. Live music, food etc. The entrance was 300 koruna, which I paid up. They said that there were a couple of cottages empty, if I decided I wanted to go that way instead of setting up camp.

Now I had been craving the outdoors and wanting to camp ever since Vienna, but I’m ashamed to say that I completely chickened out here and coughed up 30 euros for a cottage. I was assigned cottage #21 which had four beds and not much else. No water or electricity of anything. Pyotr was camped in the neighboring field with some friends.

While I took off my gear and set out my things, he returned with a couple of beers. What a nice man! I thanked him and we tried to communicate in broken English. I produced my map and filled him in on my journey so far and what lay ahead. He showed me the part of Poland he was from. So on and so forth. He produced a bottle of Bekherovka – Czech vodka from his jacket, and I drank a shot (tasty!), I in turn shared my hip flask of Glemmorangie scotch. (I spent most of this day a little drunk). He told me that he was a train driver (machiniste) back home, and I told him about my day job.

We walked down to the village to the pub and met up with his other Polish friends (Artur, David, Bartolej), all of whom were really amused at my appearance. Bartolej was the only one who spoke good English and he became the unofficial translator. I learned later that between the three of them, they had put away 25 tall beers. They had a lot of questions for me.

  

We walked back to the rally after a while. In my five years of riding, I’ve never actually been to a biker rally. Indeed, I’ve avoided them like the plague. So it’s just a little bit amusing that my first rally was in the Middle of Nowhere, Czech Republic.

It was mostly a cruiser crowd, with a few sportbikes and dualsports thrown in. There was merchandise and food booths and beer gardens. People were trudging around ankle deep in mud in full leathers with umbrellas or just getting  soaked in the rain. A heavy metal band was playing. There was something  just a little surreal about hearing popular American heavy metal songs being sung in Czech.

I was having the time of my life.

The one band that was FANTASTIC was a three-woman (girl?) band called Sweetzone who did some unbelievably good covers of Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Nirvana and a bunch of other bands. They did “Run To the Hills”! The guitarist did the Steve Harris machine gun thing! There is nothing more powerful than watching a group of kickass teenage girls… ummmm kicking ass on stage! They looked so very young that I wondered if they were even old enough to drink. It made me feel a little like I do when I watch MotoGP – old and over the hill and wishing I had practiced playing the guitar more when I was younger. :P

There was more music and more drinking the rest of the evening. I finally hit the sack at 10:30 PM. The festivities were far from over, but I was knackered. (Apparently I missed a live on-stage sex show. Hoo boy, we’re really not in Kansas anymore, are we?).

I read a bit, mighty pleased to finally use my Coleman LED lamp, before falling asleep. It was still raining when I went to bed.

The next morning I woke up, filthy and bedraggled, smelling evil. The floor was covered with dried muddy water from my boots. I opened the door of my cottage to take a peek outside and it was bright and sunny. A few bikers were staggering across the field, beers in hand, at 8AM. I packed up my few belongings and got the hell out of there. On to Berlin now, for real!

Still, it had been quite an adventure.

The Church of Bones (and Prague!)

I woke up in Kunta Hora feeling refreshed and ready for the day. It helped that I had a relatively short riding day to one of the most famous cities in Eastern Europe, and before I got on the road, I would make a stop at the Church of Bones – the main reason I had elected to stay in this little town that night. I felt enthusiastic and eager to start my day.

Lugging luggage across parking lots is never fun, but a necessary evil. In the United States, I always try to park my bike as close to my hotel room as possible, sometimes close enough that I can see it outside my room. Out in East Europe, it’s not uncommon for the parking lot to be a block away from your hotel. I had made the mistake of not loading/unloading close to the hotel entrance, so I was stuck with carrying my stuff out to the hotel parking lot. It wasn’t far and I pack fairly light, but it was hot out and I was sweating profusely by the time I had it all hitched up and was ready to go. I cooled off pretty quickly once I started moving though.

The GPS directed me to the church, which was a few kilometres away. I was afraid that parking might be an issue, so I parked a couple of blocks away outside another church. It was too hot to walk around in my gear, so I took my jacket and pants off, draped them on the bike and ran my steel cable lock through them and my helmet. This done, I crossed the street and walked a few metres to the Sedlec Ossuary.

I had first heard mention of this church in “Long Way Round” – the motorcycling documentary most adventure riders cite as their inspiration. Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman made a stop at this church on their way out of Europe towards Russia. The history of the church details that for myriad reasons, the church was considered sacred enough that a lot of people wanted to be buried in its grounds. They were soon being buried on top of each other after they ran out of space. In time, they started running out of space and one of the monks was charged with doing something with the bones. The end result was the church as it stands today. The tiny chapel is decorated with an elaborate chandelier and decorations all made from human bones. Macabre perhaps, but also a thing of beauty. It had looked spooky enough in the movie that I had made up my mind that someday I too would go visit this church. For some reason, I had imagined that it was in Romania, so imagine my surprise and delight from Christoph had mentioned that it was actually just an hour east of Prague! What a fantastic beginning to my journey!

The minute I walked through the doors of the chapel, I realized that reality was far removed from what I had imagined. Ewan and Charlie must have merited special treatment and the church must have been closed off to visitors while they filmed. Right now it was crammed full with tourists busily taking pictures. I cursed myself for not having stopped there the previous evening when there might have been fewer people.

I had to force myself to ignore the people buzzing all around me, The hushed spookiness and effect of the skulls and bones was entirely gone, but I could still appreciate the workmanship that had created this work of beauty. The chandelier was magnificent, as were the chains made of human bones that stretchec all the way across the ceiling and down the walls. The four corners of the chapel had gated off rooms piled from floor to ceiling with human skulls. I wondered at these humans that had lived and died hundreds of years ago, whose final resting place was this pocket of the world. What might they have thought at being the object of admiration of other humans from such a completely different era?

     

After I’d had my fill, I left and walked down the street back towards my bike. I stopped at a couple of stores that sold crystal and picked up a set of beautiful hand-made crystal glasses, which I would later ship to Ljubljana from Prague. It would be a lovely momento of my time in the Czech Republic, and I dearly hoped they made the journey unscathed.
To Prague! 60 short km to this big city that I’ve wanted to see for so long. I entered the city in a deluge of traffic in too narrow roads. I found my hotel – St. Christopher’s Inn at the Mosaic House without too much difficulty. They got me checked in and I had to park my bike a few blocks away in an underground parking lot. I’d rather have just left it parked on the sidewalk, but so many people had warned me about theft in this part of the world that I reluctantly opted on the side of caution.

The Inn itself was probably one of the swankiest places I’ve ever stayed at, not unlike some of the new boutique hotels in the US catered towards younger people. The receptionists were hot, young guys who were Czech but spoke in American accents. The ground floor had a bar area with a gigantic projector screen that was showing the British Superbike race with electronic music playing in the background. Welcome to Prague! I felt like I was in a movie.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor to my room. The corridors were dark with wood panneling and pleasantly perfumed. My room had a single bed with huge, soft, square pillows (I made a mental note to find pillows like these for my apartment back home.) :P The sight of that comfortable bed made me want to spend the entire afternoon indoors, curled up with a book. I was on vacation after all!

I went back downstairs to the restaurant, ordered some goulash and potatoes, which were excellent, and ate while watching the end of Superbike race. We had to come up with something like this for Seattle, I told myself. Our MotoGP nights held at our apartments on our LCD TVs were great, but what I really wanted was to ride to a big pub and watch the races on a movies theatre like screen while drinking good beer.

I fulfilled my resolve to spend the afternoon in bed with a book. I think I liked being on vacation.

Towards the end of the day, I decided to drag myself outside and walk to the main city centre to have a looksee and maybe a bite to eat. It was about a 15 minute walk to there, with numerous cool little shops lining the streets. They were closed now, but it was fun to check out the window displays and thinking about which ones I’d go to the next day.

As I neared the city center, I had the same reaction as I did in Vienna. I froze at the sight of a billion tourists thronging the streets. They didn’t have the smoking ban here either and it felt like everyone smoked. I wandered miserably for about an hour before  giving up and retreating to my hotel. I decided that I would wake up early the next morning and walk back again to the see the city before everyone woke up.

This is precisely what I did end up doing. On day 2, I saw a few of the sights like the astronomical clock, and did a little bit of shopping. I also caught a musical performance at the Municipal House in the evening where a few members of the Prague Symphony performed selected pieces by Mozart and Dvorak. It was delightful to hear Eine Kleine Nachtmusik being performed live in such a beautiful place. That made two musical performances in two gorgeous cities so far! I felt pretty lucky and privileged to have experienced them.

     

The next morning I intended to head out early, see the Prague castle, take some pictures and then head north to Berlin.

In hindsight, I think Prague is a city that I would like to come back to with a group of good friends someday. I’d probably want to keep avoiding the more touristy parts of the city and experience more of the nightlife instead.

Update from Kutna Hora…

I was riding up a steep, cobblestone street trying to find the turn my GPS was asking me to take only to find that it didn’t exist. The street I was on looked like it was going to end in gravel. I was tired, sore, hungry and thirsty and just wanted to find a place to rest. Asking for directions was out of the question seeing as my Czech was almost as non-existent as most people’s English out there. And then the GPS froze. In my despair I wondered why on earth was I there and what had possessed me into coming here and thinking I could do this.

Fast forward to a few hours later, after a good meal and rest, and flying through one of the many little backroads leading up north from the Czech border and I knew exactly why.

It’s unfortunate that riding isn’t consistently a euphoric experience where everything is always right, the sun is always warm, but not too warm, it never rains, there is no traffic or construction on the roads you happened to pick, little children on the street smile and wave and blow kisses at you and your Garmin Zumo never freezes. Anyone who has been doing this for a while knows that reality has its way of crawling into your dream motorcycling vacation and turning it into your worst nightmare in the flash of a second. The highs and lows that come with it are not unlike being in a turbulent relationship. At the end of the day, whether you think it was worth it is what determines how much longer you’re going to be in it.

So it was with today. I got out of Vienna as planned. I appear to need very little sleep these days and wake up at 6:30 like clockwork even if I go to bed after midnight. The good Christoph guided me to a couple of spots where I could see some good views of Vienna. Unfortunately there was a hazy fog hanging over the city, and I wished I had taken him up on his offer of seeing it last night instead.

He rode with me to Klosterneuburg where I stopped to get a full tank of gas and then we said goodbye. Words cannot express how grateful I am for everything he helped me with, in spite of being a complete stranger. Of course, I could have made it this far on my own, but to have someone get me through that first intimidating day of riding in a foreign country, putting me up at his place for three nights, taking me out with his friends, helping me fix and troubleshoot stuff with the bike, helping me plan out routes and generally do a hundred little things makes me feel like there still are good people in the world who look out for each other. It took a lot of the pressure off and helped me ease into the ride.

Riding to the border of Austria and Czech Republic was slow and boring. I passed through endless little towns all of which looked so deserted and unnerving that they reminded me of The Village of the Damned. It was really windy too and I always get a little psychotic when it’s windy out. My helmet gets super noisy, I constantly feel like I’m going to get blown off the bike, I have the death grip of doom on the handlebars, and I feel like I’m going to crash and die any minute. I’m not sure if this is some sort of disorder that only manifests in my head, because most other riders appear to be immune to it. :|

  

  

The aforementioned getting lost and tired and frustrated happened in the early afternoon. That’s when I took a deep breath, stopped at a restaurant and decided to go get a good meal, even though my original intention was to just grab something quick from a gas station to save on time.

My heart sank when I saw that the menu was entirely in Czech, but with the help of the super-nice waitress, I managed to order a roasted fish and a salad. I wasn’t expecting much but the fish was probably the tastiest thing I’ve ever eaten – it had to have been doused with its own weight in butter to taste that good, but I tried not to think about that. I was surprised to find that it was really cheap too. Apparently the exchange rate is about 24 Czech koruna per euro, so my meal cost less than 5 euros total. It would probably have been a good $30 meal in Seattle. There was a bit of muddle when it came time to pay and I produced a 50 euro note, and the waitress had only 20 euros. Apparently they prefer to use their local currency to the euro. I asked her to give me my change back in koruna, killing two birds with one stone. It saved me a trip to the ATM to get local money, and she didn’t have to deal with paying me back in euros.

  

After my meal, I was considerably tranformed. I had gotten off the main highway and was taking the smaller roads now. They were super narrow which made me a bit nervous, but I got used to it soon. The landscape until then had been very flat, like the American midwest, but there were pleasant little copses of trees and small towns to break up the monotony. The roads also had a lot of elevation changes. The temperture was perfect too. About the only aggravating thing was a couple of times when I got turned around by construction and the Zumo’s detour function didn’t work that well. I wasted a good hour going back and worth between a set of roads around this one town that I thought I’d never leave.

  

Leave it I did though because come 5:30 I was fed up, enabled highways/interstates on the GPS and took the fastest route up to Kunta Hora. It wasn’t all that bad either, and that worked out well. I got into town around 7, found a 40 euro room in the downtown area and checked in. The room is clean and comfortable and my bike got gated parking.I

I got dinner and wandered around the deserted town  little bit before returning back to my room.

     

  

  

 

Tomorrow I plan to wake up early and go see the Sedlec Ossuary (Church of Bones) before heading west to Praha.

All in all, a good day of riding! So I guess this partcuolar relationship continues.

Bratislava and last evening in Vienna

This morning, I took ferry from vienna to Bratislava in Slovakia across the river Danube. It felt a little bit like being in an Agatha Christie novel. It was a very rainy morning and the view wasn’t very much more than blurry shades of blue and gray as we sailed over the waters of the famous river. Not gray enough to dampen my enthusiasm though. After a scorching hot couple of days, the cool weather was very welcome. I had borrowed an umbrella and raincoat from Stoffl’s mum, so I knew I’d stay dry when we reached land.

After 75 minutes, we reached Bratislava. I didn’t have a map of the city nor did I have to find one because all you had to do was follow your nose. I walked away from the river and within five minutes, reached close to the city center. It was a rather delightful sight, like a real life version of some fairytale town in a Miyazaki movie, with old buildings, a castle off in the distance, and electric trams lazily making their way through cobblestone streets. There were few people out and about due to the earliness of the hour. I spent a good couple of hours walking around the Old Town, checking out the church and tower and other assorted buildings in their art deco styles.

  

  

  

I had lunch at a little cafe where I got a galette with chicken and spinach. It turned out to be quite a bit larger than I had expected – again with the American portion sizes!

By mid-afternoon, I had explored most of the town and I found a chocolate cafe (Cafe del Doge) to rest in. I got a hazelnut capucchino and a slice of delicious tiramisu to go with it. The rain had quieted down during the day, but it’s started up again, and more people started pouring into the cafe.

I missed the ferry back to Vienna, which turned out to be a good thing, because I ended up taking the bus instead, which cost onlz 6 euros.

Later at night, we caught a performance of Die Fledermaus at the Opera House, which was possibly one of the raunchiest performances of anything I have seen in a long time.

 

Tomorrow, I ride up north through Ceska Republica to Kutná Hora and the Church of Bones.

Vienna Day2

Posting this one a little bit after the fact. Day 2 in Vienna was the morning after I arrived late the previous evening. I hadn’t got to see much of it then, having just taken a short stroll around the block and a quick drive to get food. I woke up around 10 the next morning, feeling sore in every bone of my body. I finally made it outside by noon.

C. had left excellent directions, so I was able to find the subway without too much trouble. On the way there, I passed through a few streets that allowed me to see what kind of neighborhoods the local people live in. Shockingly enough, not very different from other places – old buildings, rows of cars lining the streets spelling a parking place nightmare, grocery stores and parks with old men sitting on benches…

  

I bought a day pass at the subway station and caught the U4 to Karlsplatz. This turned out to be a mistake at this time of the day as I walked straight into an onslaught of tourists in the hot, blazing sun. The lines of stores selling Mozart memorabilia didn’t help either. I took refuge in a McDonald’s after getting a kabab (lol). I walked a little bit more and saw the cathedral and Mozart’s house, after which I fled the area.

I took the subway to the Museums Quartier, which was immediately a lot quieter. Apparently the tourists are content with chintzy tourist shop trinkets rather than real culture. :P It was still hot, but there was more shade here. The courtyard was filled with scores of big pink chais type constructs where people lay and sunned themselves. It was fringed with museums on all sides. I wish I could have seen them all, but I only had a couple of hours and elected to see the modern art museum (MOMKA).

It was a good choice. The museum had a great collection that filled me with glee. The top two floors were dedicated to scientific inventions. Hearing familiar names like Planck, Maxwell, Tesla and Brownian motion made me happy and brought back memories of being hunched over stacks of textbooks back in schooldays. It seemed fitting that was once science was now art. They had models of vacuum tubes and the Tesla coil, an old school camera and an odd contraption that looked like a video camera mounted on a machine gun.

The abstract art was pretty cool too. I’ll write more about this when I have the time.

 

Later in the evening, C. and I and two of his friends went to old Vienna to get dinner and beers. I got schnitzel, which was tasty but gave me an upset stomach later. After this we went to the Nachtmacht for drinks. The place was surprisingly bustling for that time of a weeknight – a stark contrast to us on the other side of the Atlantic.

Overall, it was a good day with a snapshot view of Vienna. I wish I had more time in the city, but I have a feeling I’m going to be saying this a lot in the days to come.

Ljubljana to Vienna…

On Sunday morning, I woke up 7:00AM, packed up all my gear, loaded up the bike and rode out of Matej’s building to join Christoph and Daniel. We made our way to Zmajski most to get pictures of our bikes in front of the dragon. That done, and after a brief stop for fuel, we made our way out of Ljubljana.

The bike felt good – it felt almost lighter than the SV and the same height. I took the top box off so that I wasn’t carrying any extra weight that I didn’t need. I spent most of the morning trying to get used to riding it. We went through some really pretty roads as we rode out of Slovenia. I made a mental note to leave at least 2-3 days at the end of the month to ride around the country. My jetlag in the beginning had prevented this and it would be a shame to not see more than Ljubljana.

We made a brief stop at the border. Like I’d been told, there was no border control any more, so no chance of getting a stamp on my passport. The world was just going to have to believe that I rode through all these countries. After we crossed, we rode through a stretch of twisties including some really tight hairpin turns, one of which I completely blew – a tight, steep, uphill one. Why don’t we have roads like this in Washington again? When we stopped for lunch after three hours, I realized how slow we had been going (because of me) and felt a little gloomy at how rusty my riding skills were. I had done no conditioning rides this year at all, and the narrow twisty roads here seemed quite technical. I know that I will get into it after a few days of riding though.

We stopped at Klagenfurt for lunch and Daniel realized that his front brake pad had *fallen off* and he had no more front brakes! what rotten luck! He ended up parking his bike and C.’s brother’s place nearby and taking the train back to Vienna.

That left just C. and I. Since we had to get to Vienna by nightfall, we decided to change routes to some slightly faster roads. It was still going to be almost six more hours of riding though – a total of almost 450km all together.

There were sections of the ride that were fantastic – long sweepers, somme tight turns, fantastic valleys and countryside, hot sun, trains rolling by to the right, little deserted towns… and there were a few dull sections, where all you did was go in a straight line. My energy level was fine until the last hour as we neared closer to Wien (Vienna). It was night now and we rode through the darkness on the outskirts of the city. Tired as I was, I love riding at night through city streets. :)

  

We finally made it to C.’s street, where we parked the bikes and staggered upstairs with our stuff. We went out after a while to a McDonald’s to get some food. I was pretty braindead by then.

I slept well that night. I also finally bid goodbye to the jetlag.

Day 3 in Ljubljana

Brief update from Ljubljana. Slept in this morning and felt pretty crappy even after I did wake up and get out of bed. Damn jetlag!

Got a spot of breakfast at the pizzeria from my first day here. Breakfast appears to be a rather novel concept here. Most people don’t do it like they do in the US. They didn’t have a breakfast menu and my scrambled eggs and toast turned out to be a fried egg with warm bread. It was tasty though, so no complaints. :)

Then I walked a block away to a tools store to get a Phillips head screwdriver because I forgot to bring mine. Got a set of four for a good price. Also picked up a hex wrench set to get the 2.5 mm one in case my GPS decides to go AWOL on me (the only way to fix a frozen Garmin is to take the battery out, and yes I appear to have misplaced the wrench I brought with me too). Walked about 20 more minutes down Dunajska cesta to find a key place I had looked up to make copies of the bike key (I only got one key) only to find that the place was closed. Meh… guess I should have called before. Took a bus back to Pegamova ulica.

Then went about fixing up the GPS mount and I finally have it working and installed and done. I find that the tank bag the bike comes with holds my camelbak bladder nicely too. I also found an assortment of locks in the tank bag and top case. I get the hint. :P I tried to take the top box off but couldn’t get any of the nuts to budge. I found out later tht Givi topboxes have a button inside to easily take the case on and off the bike. I’ll give that a try tommorrow.

After this I must have slept for about an hour. When I woke up, it was almost 3:00PM (where on earth does the time go?) and bright and sunny outside. Since my body was now synced to 7:00AM Seattle time, I was fresh and alive and ready to go. I changed into a dress and walked out the sunshine and felt like a million dollars. How I had missed the sun!

I took a bus down to the city center, took some better pictures, then walked by the river, which bifurcated to the right. This was far enough from the main tourist hot spot that I managed to find a good pizzeria with cheap food. I got a glass of red wine and horse meat goulash with bread balls. It was delicious, except that the portion size was very American and I could barely eat about half of it.

This done, I walked up north a little towards the Roman Wall – the remnant of a wall that stood in a city that exited there from 10-13AD. It was quiet and peaceful and a really nice walk down the park that was on the inside of the wall. I guess it was far enough away from the main hub that the tourists didn’t venture down there.

Christoph called and we arranged to meet at Preseren trg in front of the McDonalds (lol). :P Him and his friend Daniel were staying the night and we’re going to ride to Vienna tomorrow morning. They turned out to be a blast. We went to a sidewalk cafe and got the local beer. They got food and I got a Slovenian dessert – some kind of cake which I didn’t like too much because it was more bitter than sweet. We talked and talked and got along really well. I think I’m going to enjoy riding with these guys. We might make a slight detour instead of going directly to Vienna if Christoph can get Monday off. It must be the staying within the city for so long, but I am longing to camp. They didn’t bring tents though, so that might not happen for a few days.

Oh well, Vienna, here I come!

Ljubljana by day…

I woke up at 4AM this morning in spite of having gone to bed after midnight. I was still pretty tired, but completely unable to sleep. I lay in bed until Matej woke up to go to work at 6:30AM, then got up, got some breakfast and went to work on the bike a little.

It turns out that the bike does not have a toolkit, or rather the toolkit that was under the seat contained a screwdriver and a couple of wrenches. I thanked my stars that I had thought to bring the toolkit from my old wrecked F650GS. Most of the BMW spec torx wrenches worked on this bike.

I don’t know if the CS uses any tools that the GS didn’t, and if does, I hope I won’t end up needing them. I made some minor adjustments on the bike, like rotating the clutch and break levers higher. This had the unfortunate side effect of moving the mirrors closer to me at an
awkward angle. Try as I might, I could not get the bolts at the base of the mirror to loosen up.

I managed to get it at a somewhat okay angle. That will have to do for now.

Next up I tested that the GPS worked with the 12V adapter on the bike. I had to make a minor change to the mount, which I did at the apartment later. I’ll install it on the bike tomorrow morning.

I took the bike for a short spin around the underground parking lot, a little gingerly at first. It felt fine and should handle well on the road. The only thing I’m debating is the big Givi topbox installed on it. On the one hand it’s lockable, which is nice. On the other, it’s huge and I don’t like having that kind of extra weight so high up on a bike.

After I came back upstairs, I lay down to “rest” and ended up sleeping from 10:00AM to 2:00PM. So much for trying to work within the Slovenian time zone. After I woke up with a shock, still groggy, I forced myself to get up and take the bus to the city center (downtown).

The bus dropped me off at at Dunajska Cesta and Prazakova Ulica. I got a kebab wrap at Donner Kebab (I finally know what everyone was talking about!) and walked over to the PreÅ¡eren Square. I walked a lot and took lots of pictures. There were a lot of tourists in this area, but I managed to wander through several sidestreets and escaped the majority of them. I saw the Zmajski most (Dragon Bridge) of course. In fact, there were quite a few bridges crossing the somewhat dull Ljubljana river. Unfortunately the day was so gray and gloomy that I didn’t get very good photos. Ah well. The high point – literally – was climbing on top of a hill to Ljubljanski grad (Ljubljana castle). I got some fantastic views of the city from up above – a magical little old town dotted with red roofs and cobblestone streets.

  

  

  

  

In between the sightseeing, I looked into the little shops and stalls by the river. Since I knew I could buy a few things and not have to carry them with me on the bike, I ended up getting a couple of pairs of really cute socks, a violet glass candle holder, some lightweight, windproof pants that will be perfect for riding in, an inflatable travel pillow and a compass.

Matej met me in the town square at the end of the day and we went to Cafe Romeo for dinner. I got a burrito, which was unlike any burrito I have ever tasted… lol… Mexican food in Slovenia! Matej got the tastiest crepe I have ever tasted with nutella, hazelnuts and almonds with fresh whipped cream.

It was a pretty good evening! As we drove back to his place, I noticed that I had an email from Christoph in Vienna who was in town now. We had tentatively planned on riding to Vienna together, although I wasn’t quite sure I’d be ready to ride on Saturday due to my jetlag. I’ll call him tomorrow morning and see what we can do.

I’ve already packed all my stuff and sorted out what I need to bring with me, so if I decide to go with him, I just need to load up the bike and go. It’s very tempting to start the journey with someone who knows the roads so that I can relax a little. Let’s hope I sleep well tonight and ready to tackle the day. Most of all, fingers crossed that the confounded rain stops!

For the rest of the photos, click here.