Archive for the ‘Log’ Category

After a very long trainride I arrived back in Amsterdam.

And was it good to be home again? Nah I miss it now already. It started by a Dutch railways message that the trains to Almere didn’t run. Great, so I cycled another 40 km. Total distance 980 km.

A more detailed update later, have to work now!

Well… not yet.

We bought our tickets. We’ll be getting onboard a nonstop train to Amsterdam CS. So I’ll be at home around 12:00-13:00 on sunday!

Now let’s get some food…

Yup we did.

We woke up way late, and with still about of 100 km to go it felt like a mission impossible.

We left with the idea of “mission impossible”. For the last 20 kilometers the road has been heavy. We had lot’s of hills and we expected to get more. But how did we do? It went great!

I was amazed how my condition went up! We went uphill with speeds of 20 km/h or higher. Downhill… hehe.

So are there any bad sides?

Yeah, the road that we took turned into a HIGHWAY. A highway 4 rows wide. And with people doing speeds of 140 km. But still we did it. After about 20 km of highway we stopped and I figured out a new route thanks to my GPS computer. We did that and it was okay.

Then we had some food and we took contact with our couchsurfing host. When we arrived she had a special welcome for us: MAD DOG!!! Omg I love that stuff! Now we are 4-5 mad dogs further (the vodka bottle is empty) and we learned her to play toupen. We’re still thinking of going out tonight.

All is great. We arrived, we did it. It feels great! I’m so happy I did it and I still can’t believe it. I love this kind of life. We’re talking to Polish people and it’s awesome. The culture is so different and everything is so new to me. Victor is doing a GREAT job on his Polish and well.. I feel like being far away from home. Yet it feels great.

Either way..

I think today I had my closest encounter with a truck. While flirting with 2 girls in the forrest who seemed to LOVE ME (aparently they where prostitutes from Romania but okay.. they trully loved me..I believe them) a truck passed by with a super high speed (120 km/h at least) and the distance was less than 0.5 meters. I was shocked. Ah well.

Apart from that.. no weird stuff. Just great adventure, lot’s of hills and lot’s of kilometers. I had some more issue’s with my bicycle but I managed to fix them all. So far the bike has been a miracle. I love it! It has lived up well to the expectations. I can’t imagine meself going on a bicycle trip with a regular bike.

Ah well… That’s it for now. Much love from Poznan and see you in the Netherlands after a couple of parties and some liters of vodka!!! Sweet sweet world…

Nah, I’ll updated tomorrow!

-Steve and Vic (who says hi)

Bad news, Vic didn’t hear the alarm clock.

Good news, I slept till 10:00 and got the rest that I deserved. Well, kinda. Haha!

Anyway, we’re both having a splendid breakfast… pancakes with yoghurt and more fruits than any painter ever painted in a painting! That’s a lot.. haha!

We are planning to arrive in Poznan around 8 in the evening. So let’s keep going! Thanks for all the comments guys and:

DO NOT WORRY ABOUT US, WE WILL BE FINE!!!! THANK YOU.

Hey guys! Word from us again!

Okay after an incredibly bad day yesterday, today we had some more luck. Or well luck, nah we DID GREAT. Yes I can bluntly say that.

We left Berlin around 4:30 or 5 or so, wich left us with about no time left to make some milage. We had LOT’S of rain again so we had to shelter and wait for about 3-4 hours. This was incredibly annoying since we felt great and this way didnt even make it to the border.

Around 8:30 I said “thats it, it’s getting dark let’s make camp. Today wasn’t our day”.

We found a nice place aside an empty house in some kind of village. I think it was called Herzfelde or something.

The day after… (today actually)

In the morning we woke up around 7 and left around 8:30. Victor was amazed to see how quickly I could pack (while we discovered the little piece of grass we stayed on was actually filled with about 200 slugs…).

We had some coffee at a nearby bakery, got some bread. Later we bought some more stuff when supermarkets opened. Whiskey, 4.99… Rum, 3.99. All 0.7 L. Too bad we couldn’t bring any haha!

Some kilometers before Seelow, everything looked fine untill during a downhill ride I felt the rear doing weird. It went everywhere and I lost controll of my bike while going about 45 km/h. Trust me that’s fast! I mean the bushes just fly by and sometimes you can see insects going slower. That’s quite fun to see. I remember this one time I was overtaking a wasp and I could have sworn he said “Oh my god!” and then tried to pursue me. And this other time… oh wait downhill, problems, yes that… now ladies, back to me.

I put my feet almost on the ground to regain balance, used my brakes slightly so I wouldn’t drift and got to a stop. Flat tire. And not just a flat tire… nope there was a HUGE piece of glass in my outer tyre. With some strength I pulled it out.

We fixed the inner AND outer tire, went to Seelow, went to a store where I bought a great backlight (mounted to the bike permanently) and we had a chat with the friendly store owner. Then Vic bought a bicycle computer and we visited the local museum. Quite impressive what happened there!

Then we continued. We entered Poland and it is amazing here! We saw (and entered) old bunkers, almost got killed about a zillion times. I could have sworn I touched a truck… they are doing incredible speeds at incredible narrow roads (Joost be happy you are there in convy Almere on SAFE ROADS). So yeah we are now VERY careful. But still it does feel safe. I mean we take distance, we watch the mirrors CONSTANTLY (I love those) and it’s allright.

Now I’m in Przytoczna where we went to a motel. We have long day tomorrow. We planned to go to Poznan in 3 days but we lost a day (monday), but now it seems we can still do it since Poznan is just 95 km away from us!!! That means we did quite some km’s today. But hey let’s be honnest, we woke up around 7 and got on the bikes. We biked for about 12 hours with some long brakes, and constant high speeds. I think we did 30 km/h for about an hour. Nice.

So we’re alive, love the people here, have a great time and we cant wait to arrive in Poznan. Oh and Vic does a GREAT job with his Polska speaking. I just attract ALL the eyes thanks to my bike. Everyone looks at us with an open mouth, I even started to wave at random people.

Take care ya’ll. Joost we miss you man, but trust me this isn’t your cup of tea here… it’s about 30 degrees, a LOT of dangerous traffic and a LOT of heavy bad roads. See you soon and we’ll party like sunday. Cheers from us!

Wyświetl większą mapę

Hey guys, the plans have changed a bit.

Because of his ancle, Joost decided to leave to Holland again. So tomorrow he has to catch a train to good old Amsterdam.

Tonight we will party again and perhaps meet up with some old friends, that would be nice! Vic and me will be going to Poland with the 2 of us then.

Yes we’re in Berlin. But not on the way we hoped it.

Yesterday we wanted to cross the Rogätz channel. That worked out. However, when we were on the other side of the river the rain started. We used a ferry to go to the other side of the Elbe.

But before that we have to tell about the first bad news of the day.

We woke up on a very special place. We slept ON the iron curtain, or well, where it once was. Well 2 meters next of it. We started to cycle and we had a good beginning. Then Victor had a flat tyre. Now normally you can fix m but this was on an amazingly annoying place, next to the ‘ventiel’ (where you insert air).

By going to neighbour villages and trying stuff we lost 4 hours in total. What a mess. In the end Vic bought the wrong inner tyre and brought it back, I managed to fix the tyre and am kinda proud of this fact. Seriously haha.

When we hit a large village Vic went to the bike repair store and bought a new inner tube. I made him buy another spare.

After that we went to Rogätz. We crossed the Elbe by ferry and then it started to rain heavily…

We raced to the nearest tree wich was on the other side of an electric fence. We climbed under the fence and looked for shelter under the tree. But alas all for none. The tree didn’t hold the water. Then I found some kind of sewer tunnel. We went in the tunnel to find shelter. In the beginning this was awesome but then the water started to rise. We tried to stop the water but no avail! We had to run in order not to drown. Okay… not to get wet feet.

We ran to some other trees wich at first looked massive and big enough to form a natrual umbrella. We ran through the field and arrived under the tree… wich didn’t fend against ANY water.

After about 30 minutes of a natrual shower the rain seized for a bit. We went back to the ferry and back to Rogätz. We tried to find free shelter but no luck so we had to go to a pension. This was quite good since we could dry our stuff and take a hot shower.

In the morning we had breakfast. I discovered my mobile phone has died. I hope to repair it at some point but for now it wont work. Damnit.

We slept till 8 and left the building around 11:30. Around 1:00 we were on the other side of the Elbe, again.

From there we made quite some kilometers. It’s amazinglz obvious that we’re in former Eastern Germany. The buildings are all very large, with lot’s of concrete and many are in an extreme bad shape. We also saw a large 5 floor apartment building with balconies that can collide any minute… scary. One was for sale, gotta ask the price soon! Ha!

Around 3 we arrived in Genthin. Here Joost had his bike repaired and I also fixed some stuff on my bicycle. Then we saw a car with about 8 cyclist all equipped with professional bikes and clothes. With the gear we had, we just HAD to pass them. We did and for the next 45 min we had an average of 30 km/h just to stay in front of them. We did a good job there!

In Plaue stuff start to become nasty again. We calculated how the clouds would go and we figured we had a chance to make it. By doing this we arrived in Brandenburg. Then it started to rain again quite heavily. At the time we just crossed a gaz station so we stopped there and ate some stuff. Since tomorrow it will be raining too we figured cycling the last 40 km would be stupid, and its still VACATION. So we took a train and arrived in Berlin where we had to cycle the last 5 km to our Couchsurfers place.

Thats where I am now. We went to a cafe, had some drinks and its fun. Tomorrow we’ll be going into Berlin, buy some stuff and party till the sun will rise. On monday or tuesday we’ll head for Poznan. Joost isnt sure if he’s joining but we’ll see.

Oh I didnt take a lot of pictures, but we sure filmed a LOT.

Thats it for now, keep the comments coming haha, thanks folks!

-Us.

More later. We äre now in Rogätz. Ugh.

BUT WERE STILL ALIVE! …. sort of…

So we woke up, and we’re fresh to go. Just had a shower, now packing stuff and then we’re off.

It has been a long night but we also sure did get some sleep. Kinda got a sore neck but it’ll work out during the day. We copied all the photos and film that we shot to the mobile hard drive that I took with me. So we’ll leave with empty memorycards and a clean body.

The next 2 nights it might become difficult to update the log. But I’ll try anyway. It’s still 280 km to go to Berlin. Doing it in 2 long days of 140 km will be a tad too much, so we’ll just do it a bit more relaxed. 110, 110 and then 60 would be great. That would leave us a short final distance to Berlin on Friday. Would be great since we want to see Krampnitz.

Thats it for now, see ya!

Okay, we managed to reach Hannover. And how…

We woke up around 10 minutes after we went to bed. Why? Well, victors Soja milk was leaking and it spilled over Joost´bed. He learnt us a lot of new swear-words in a very small time.

After that we went to Hannover, we had a great speed and there was only rain during breaks. Awesome timing o mighty Gods of ze weather!

Here in Hannover we are staying with Sybille. A very nice young woman who offered 2 rooms to us. Yes we took ‘m.

The mood is good, we’re doing lot’s of kilometers and the spirrits are high. Let’s go further tomorrow!

More hills, more downhills, more people to meet and more villages and stuff to see.

Cheers!