almost home

I have been back in Holland now for a week and have spent most of that time in bed with a nasty stomach virus, maybe I was a bit vulnerable to picking up bugs after the 10 week exercise , I don't know. I am flying back to Auckland tomorrow and I am looking forward to it.
So I still have to write about my Italy experiences which were a mixed bag, I met some great people, enjoyed wonderful hospitality, also received the worst welcomes and service of my trip. I saw some amazing landscapes, buildings and sculptures, also cycled 2000 km through the rubbish which got me seriously depressed.
I told you before that the weather is just doing the weather and in this case that meant 35 - 40 degrees Celcius for a month, I lay down under a tree , if the rubbish allowed me , for a few hours between 12 and 3 and I had to drink so much that I could hardly eat anymore.
Anyway I owe you guys the drug story which started when I arrived in a small coastal town south of Salerno. I found a small family orientated camping that was packed to the rafters but they found me a little spot in between a few caravans and soon I was surrounded by a few local lads who invited me for a drink. One of them had just returned from his OE in australia and had a good command of the english language which is very rare in Italy.
The Don of the camping decided I was to stay for free , which we celebrated by buying his wine for $4 a bottle. After some pizza from the neighbouring resort for $6 , the daughter of the camping boss appeared all dressed up and ready to rock and roll and to hit the town. It was 11pm so I took a bit of convincing to go with them, at least 5 seconds , and off we went.
The five of us walked up to the road and they started to hitchhike as they did not want to walk the 3 km into town. 2 minutes later a little Fiat stopped and a squeezed into it. The driver had obviously spent too much time in the gym, he was very muscular and a sharp dresser. he started talking to the girl who was sitting in the front and my mate translated a bit and said that this guy was from Colombia and that he spoke very good Italian.
We stopped at a Hotel as Mr Colombia indicated he needed to deliver something. My mate poked his head out of the window and asked him if he had some weed. He looked at us indignantly and said " I only do Cocaine" and showed us this plastic egg that he was about to deliver. As he went inside the youngsters got scared and excited, they obviously already had a few puffs at the camping, and started looking for a gun in the car. When he came back my mate got so nervous that he tried to joke with the Colombian by saying "I thought you were going to kill us ", the guy just laughed and dropped us off in town and wished us a pleasant night.
He was the kind of man that could turn up on Career day at your kid's school and after listening to him you would probably seriously consider it a good career option for your child.
We chatted a bit about him in the pub and we came to the conclusion that he was the real deal as they did not know of any Colombians in Napels and Calabria who came there to pick tomatoes.
These kids were about 28 years old and all university trained but that did not stop them from having seriously fucked up ideas about women and relationships.
They started with giving me tips on the price of Pizza in Naples and quickly moved on with tips you will not find in the Lonely Planet guide for Italy such as the price of Nigerian hookers which lies at 10 Euro ( NZ $20 ) in the whole of Naples because of the Comorra, the Napolitan version of the Maffia. They were all regular visitors and they assured me of the quality by saying "Riccardo , she is going to make you sooo happy "! When I pointed out that this was modern day slavery and that the girls would probably get 5 Euro for the privilege of being violated they just shrugged their shoulders. In fact one of them explained that it was good for relationships because his girlfriend knew that if she played up or started nagging him he would just go around the corner to the nigerian girls. If it costed 50 Euro he would have thought twice about it but for 10 Euro it was an effective way to keep his girlfriend in check, so they were happier as a result and the nigerian hooker still got some business from him so all in all everyone was a winner ! You can't argue with that.
Arrividerci

Dino and Marina's B and B near Messina

just a little plug for these guys who hosted me in their fantastic family home in a little town called "Villaggio di Mili " , just outside Messina in Sicily.

I had a great meal with home made wine and fresh fruit and veges out of their own garden and if you wish Dino will arrange great deals to the vulcanic islands , cycling tours or horse trekking.

for more info or bookings email : escursioniinbici70@libero.it or phone 00 39 348 4096 198

Rome , the end !

strange feeling to not cycle anymore, i am doing some sightseeing in rome today and trying to find a box to put my bike in for the plane ride to amstrerdam.
Internet cafes were invisible in rest of italy, I still have a few stories in the pen like the one wehere I got a lift from a colombian drug dealer and we had to do a delivery of cocaine to a local hotel. It is all in a day's cycling !
So updates from the last 2 weeks and photos will follow early next week.
ciao

messina !

Sorry for the long delay in writing, I had already given up on finding internet cafe here in Italy, but the man from this fantastic B and B has kindly given me access to his computer.
I have cycled right through to Sicily where I arived yesterday and I have one more week to make it to Palermo. Done 6000 km in 60 days , not too bad for an old dude eeh.
Anyway I have lots more to tell but that will have to wait maybe til Rome.

Hotels closed for a summer break !

Down from the Dolomites mountains, I arrived on the shores of the Lago di Garda, it has steep mountains all around it and beautiful old towns on its shores with little ports and lots of al fresco dining, so what is the cath ?

It is very popular with tourists and being Italy, egoes are running wild here. Ferraris, Porches etc. are plenty and out of them emerge bronzed people dripping with gold and Chanel glasses, they really put on a show , the poor bastards. The men wear white ironed designer shorts with matching Polo shirt and the whitest sneakers I have ever seen, they must look at me with my old t shirt, pants 2 sizes too big by now and my Crocs and think that I am here to scavenge in the rubbish bins. They are not far wrong because the cost of living is considerable. I booked into a little camping ground up on the hill, away from the crowds and that set me back Euro 20 or about nz $40, makes Norway look like real bargain. For that you also have to provide your own toilet paper. The fact that the weather was great and I was parked under some big olive trees with grand views over the lake made it slightly more bearable.

As beautiful as it was, it was too busy for me and I left yesterday. I spent the first 2 hours manouvering between the kerb and the cars, there is only space for one road between the lake and the mountains, there was a constant traffic jam. When I arrived at the bottom of the lake and finally was able to turn into a side road that directed me south to the country side, the traffic was literally gone within seconds and after 5 minutes I was on my own on a country road to Mantova.

I did meet a great dutch couple at the lake in Castelletto and after a couple of beers we had dinner together with a good conversation that was a welcome relief from the usual "where are you from and what do you do" kind of mindless chatter.

Sometimes you meet people who you start sharing personal information with after a couple of hours because you feel you are on the same wave length, very satisfying and it leaves room for thoughts and opinions to come to the surface that you would otherwise not be exposed to.

I still have to get used to the fact that everything closes here between 12 and 4 in the afternoon, that there are no campings outside the real tourist areas and no Broccoli in the shops, which for me is a staple in my diet.

I cycled in this reasonably big town called Carpi and asked for a camping, yes turn left and then 1 km and ask again. After cycling around for half an hour and repeatedly asking people ( most of them do not speak english ) I figured out there was no camping so I went into the centre looking for accommodation and found that there were 2 big hotels and both had a sign on the front door saying that they were taking a summer break and closed down for 2 weeks !

So today it is off to Florence, one city I do want to have a good look at.

Arrividerci !!

17 aug more photos

From the north of Norway to here in Italy people have the same habit, throwing their rubbish on the side of the road.

The north point of Lago Di Garda

Deatail of the centre of Trento

The photo with Fausto Coppi on the top of the Passo Pordoi

wrong video , sorry

16 august Lago di Garda

This morning I am off to the Garda lake, had a lovely long conversation with my darling last night who celebrated a big birthday without me. She really is the most wonderful woman around, just the fact that she lets me spend the life savings while she walks the dog in the NZ winter is a sign of true love !

14 august honeymoon the french way

After a rest day in sillian on the austrian-italian border I took off towards the famous ski resort of Cortina d'ampezzo. The rest day had done wonders, the first 40 km was a slow and gradual climb to Cortina where I had my lunch on a bench on one of the main streets and all the old italian ladies wished me bon appetito or something to that effect.
After lunch polished off 2 mountain passes, the first one at 2100 meter, the next one, Passo Pordoi at 2237 meter. On the top of the latter I stopped to get the rain gear out for the descent and several other cyclists were doing the same. I got talking to these 3 young french guys about the usual boring stuff and after a while when I was ready to go I asked them if they were leaving as well, ah well they couldn't because one of the guy's wife had not reached the top yet. This was getting interesting. The couple had gotten married 2 months ago and it was her idea to go on a cycling holiday as a sort of late honeymoon. I told him that if he wanted to stay married he should not leave his wife to climb on her own while he is having coffee with his mates on the top, I mean what was he doing anyway on a honeymoon with his 2 mates !
On the top of this Passo Pordoi was a huge foto of Fausto coppi arriving on the top in the Giro d'italia of 1952. Now that's the stuff that gives me goose bumps, one off the greatest cyclists ever raced here where I was standing, we cycled the same roads !
I thought it would be great to take a photo of the photo and as I was doing this I noticed the puzzled looks of an italian couple. To explain why I was doing this I said to them " Fausto Coppi eeh " . No reaction, I had just found the only 50 year old guy in Italy who had never heard of Fausto coppi ! That is like walking through auckland and meeting a 50 year old kiwi bloke who has never heard of Edmund Hillary or Colin Meads, it just doesn't happen.
He laughed a bit embarrassed and apologetically said " we live near the beach", quite what that had to do with his ignorance I don't know unless news has not filtered through to the italian beachside communities for the last 50 years. Fausto coppi is more famous than the Pope here , he was no one trick pony like Armstrong and Indurain, he won the lot, classics, 5x Giro D'italia I think , tour de France, wordl championship, the lot. If you want to know more about him, google him and find out about the Dama Bianca affair that reached the Vatican.

Just when I thought I had seen all the campings and situations possible I arrived in Canazei, another ski resort that has ski lifts situated right next to the shops and hotels in the middle of town, now that's service ! Something for Queenstown to think about.
The camping was full but he could fit me in somewhere, the friendly owner told me, so off we went around the corner to about 8 m2 of grass cramped in between 3 caravans. I had to be careful not to touch any of them when I pitched my handkerchief. I have gotten used to the disbelieving looks of the other campers, no I am not mad, now fuck off and shut that kid of yours up so I can go to sleep.

11 august The biggest day ?

Last night I made it just over the border into austria again and tried to ring my wife from a phone booth , yes they still do exist but obviously are not used a lot so people like me are charged 19 Euro ( NZ $38 ) for the first minute and 4 euros for every minute after ! Luckily they announce the cost before you are asked to dial the number so I hung up as I fell down from the shock.
Today was the day I feared most because of several reasons not the least the height I had to cover. another reason was that I planned to have a rest day before attacking this climb but it just did not work out so off I went to cross the Alps via the road with the beautiful name of Grossglockner hochalpenstrasse. The Grossglockner is one of Austria's more well known mountains which lies to the west of the actual road. I had to cover 60km to get there which was through a valley and then just past the Zeller Lake the road starts at about 850 meters and for about 25km climbs relentless ( 12- 14 % ) to 2571 meters.
Climbing high mountains is both a physical and a mental challenge. I tried to get into a rhytm but I really felt the 20 kg of luggage dragging me back and the steepness changed all of the time, in the end it didn't matter because I was on the granny ring the whole climb ( for those non cyclists, the granny ring is the lowest gear). The mental game is played around the height notifications on each hairpin and being able to see the road far above you and I started doing the maths of how long it would take to get to the top which is even more demoralising if things are not going well.
Half an hour before the top it started to rain which somehow sucked a bit more of what little I had left out of me. By the time I reached the top I started crying, it came out of nowhere and it wasn't because of the sense of achievement, it was pure and utter exhaustion, I was fucked, shagged, knackered, quartered and drawn and for the first time this trip I felt my age.
10 minutes on the top, then into warm gear for the descent and that's where I cursed very loud!
I started the descent but to after about 2 km the road started rising again and I had to climb again back to 2500 meters where unbeknown to me was a "second top", fucking austrians.
Ended up in Heiligenblut at around 6.30pm after about 105 km of pure masochism and very happy with myself.

10 august diving hairdressers

So after a big night with the locals it is on to Salzburg, beautiful town but one I wasn't happy in because I saw everything twice or more as I got lost. Before I got there I decide to get a haircut and found a friendly young woman who could do the job straight away. we engaged in a conversation of were I came from blah blah... and she told me she likes to go somewhere warm, she had been to the Dominican Republic and she had also been diving in the Maledives which was also in the Carribean she informed me. My suggestion that it might be in the indian ocean was brushed aside and then there is that decision to make in a split second to decide to argue or to ask her if she was driving a Mazda MX5 but decided all of that was pointless and left her in the Carribean. Finally found my way back to the german border to take a shortcut to austria again ( if you look at a map you will know what I mean) . You end up in this far little corner of Bayern well known for the town Berchtesgaden where Hitler had his Bach which he called the eagle's nest. I believe you can visit it but it fell outside my 100 meter rule and besides it is too creepy for me.
Cycling around here is like riding on a model train set, this has to be the classic design for model railway enthousiasts around the world, it is pretty and fastidious, every village filled with big traditional style houses with geraniums hanging off the balconies and beautiful mountains in the background.
I can guarantee you that a non conformist person would not survive here, if the locals don't drive you out, you'll leave before you go mad in this Truman show.
When they say hello here and in austria a lot of people say "gruss gott", which means " greet god" and although it is clearly an old custom it still souns pretty fundamentalist to my ears, I mean what does the local turkish restaurant owner say in reply? " gruss allah" ?

9 august geraniums and ghurkins

Nothing like starting the day on a terrace in front of a decent Konditorei ( bakery) on a old market square in a nice german town. All the houses are covered in geraniums and other annuals which gives it a cheerful look. I am a man of habits and this one has become a favourite, every morning I take off between 8 and 9 am and after about an hour and half I stop for a coffee and something sweet which usually means some kind of fruit pie as it is a bit early to have a go at one of the girls behind the counter.
I am really warming to Germany, the people are without exception very friendly and relaxed, good service and the food is great, a real easy country to travel in.
This morning I as I cycled past a field of ghurkins I saw a german take on the number 8 wire attitude. There was a tractor with 2 big wings about 2 feet off the ground and the wings each had a tarpaulin roof on them. On each side lay about 6 kids on their bellies with their feet pointing towards the direction the tractor was going and they picked ghurkins as while the tractor slowly moved forward. They threw the ghurkins on a belt in front of them and the ghurkins ended up being spit out at the back onto a trailer. all of this was done accompanied by loud german hoompa music, you know the lederhosen slapping kind.
The day had a happy ending too . When I crossed into Austria for the first time i found this neat little camping ground right across the border and after putting my tent up and having a shower I went to get a wheat beer or as they say here, a Hefe . The little cantina on the camping ground is also the Local for a few people who live around the neighbourhood and they immediately invited me onto their table, did I mention that the beer is great around these parts of the world and very beneficial for your health ! Of course it would be rude to say no so I joined in and after finding out about people's health , careers and dreams of coming to NZ and what I was doing here and another Hefe they felt safe enough to talk about dutch tourists and their habits !
How they bring so much food supplies with them from home that the car exhausts and caravan axles glow and sparkle on the road. We all remembered the famous story of the dutchman who was pulled over by german police because he was clearly overloaded and when they opened the boot there was, amongst the contents of a small supermarket, about a 100 kg of potatoes.
I did not feel safe enough to share my conversation with a german pensioner that I had had earlier in the day though. As I was having my lunch on a park bench he approached me and we started talking about pensions and how he didn't get much because he had done too many cash jobs over which no deductions were made and about world politics and it is always good to find someone in agreement , someone just as cynical. Anyway I told him I was about to cross into Austria on my way to Italy and he did not have a lot of nice things to say about his neighbours, he ended the conversation with the advice of putting a Swastika on my passport, that way they would welcome me with open arms !
It is true that Austria has always been a breeding ground for extreme right politics but holland, France, Belgium and england all have their share of right wing nutters.
I have to say though that checking into a camping in austria is like trying to get into the USA, short of finger printing and DNA profiling they want to know everything, some insist on holding your passport until you leave .
We have a saying in holland that roughly translates into : The way the Innkeeper is, is how he trusts his guests.

6-7-8 august Czech Republic, home of pilsener

THe Czech Republic has not had the money behind it as East Germany had from the west and it shows. The roads are pretty rough, I was lucky to have a mountain bike, a lot of the cycling path along the Elbe was unsealed and the sealed roads are all patched up or still full of potholes. Some houses have been done up but the overall look is pretty dreary, admittedly I saw it through the rain for 2 days which does not help.
I ended up in a little village and booked into the locla hotel. As usual my " please no meat for breakfast" was met with the now familiar look of disbelief and " you sad bastard".
In the pub annex restaurant there were 3 guests of which I was one and we all sat quitely staring into our beers and waiting for the pint to start talking. I got the menu card which was useless as I could not read a word on it, apart from a fact that did worry me and that was that behind every dish there was a number of grams which had to mean that everything was meat.
Luckily there was fish on the menu.
It is always a bit awkward dining out on your own, all the couples are looking at you and the staff hate losing a whole table to 1 person, one waiter helpfully gave me some car magazines with my first drink.
While you sip from your drink ( in this case a very fine pilsener that originated from around this town) you look at all the kitsch hanging on the wall, check for phone messages and observe the couples sitting silently opposite eachother having stopped having anything to say to eachother a long time ago.
Tonight with just the 3 of us sitting there I felt like a right sad bastard I can tell you, I had some much promise and this is where I ended up.
Back to the bedroom then with the brass bed ends and sagging mattress, glass side boards and discoloured 1960's prints that people pay a fortune for on Trademe, the plastic flowers on the table finished it off nicely.
At breakfast I was met by an old woman who was taking the bread rolls out of her bag and dumping them on the table. I had by now figured out that the Czechs are generally not a barrel of laughs, they are not rude, they just do not say more than necessary but if feels a bit grumpy when you are on the receiving end.
All of a sudden she got quite excited and came over to me with some grey slices packed in plastic and she started making chicken noises and flapping her arms, quite sweet really. I am always amazed by the number of people who don't consider chicken to be meat.
The homemade apricot jam looked promising until I lifted the lid and found more mould than I have ever seen on a Petri dish in a Lab, luckily the cheese she gave me did not move.
Back to the room and in the corridor were the first smokers to have their ritual "cough up lungs" early morning fag. One guy I had seen the night before, he was such a heavy smoker he had to buy carbon credits to offset his own emissions and his lungs probably contain enough tar to fill a pothole in Memory Lane when the time comes.
On the bike again and the deep tracks in the roads were turning into little streams as the rain came down, I had difficulty keeping my eyes on the traffic and cycling through those streams when out of the corner of my eye I saw a car approaching me and the driver had his arm out of the window which seemd quite unusual in the rain. As he came closer I realised he had a bottle in his hand and was aiming for me, sutre enough as we passed eachother he threw it at me and missed me by a couple of meters.
I did not take it personal as I did not know him but with a bit of luck he would have hit a tree in the next ten minutes. I know you should never wish that on anyone but who hasn't once in his life wished that some nuisance would just disappear and die ?
I had decided to bypass Prague, it did not fit into the 100 meter rule by a factor of 50 and I was told that it is a tourist trap with nice old houses, well I had just entered Plzen ( no, that is not a spelling mistake, there are a lot of place names here that read like personalised plates ) and it had lots of beautiful old buildings and big avenues to get an idea, as I said before it is all a variation on the same theme.
About 50 km before I cycled into the city I came across the hop fields and a bit later I was passed by a truck that had a big image on it of a blonde woman with plats, tits hanging out and a few beers in her hands, I was on the right track !
What Mecca is to the muslims and Jerusalem to the Christians and Jews is Plzen ( the germans call it Pilsen and nearby is the town of Budweis ! ) to us beer lovers. Instead of hanging a sheep upside down and perform some form of animal cruelty we go to the local pub, make ourselves comfortable and brace ourselves for the taste sensation that is about to follow. Having said all of that, after a few of those monster size steinies you have no idea anymore why you came here or where you are.

fotos

this is at the top of the Zeller Lake, Austria

I had to get across the mountains in the distance

typical tiroler village snapshot

they take their wood collecting for winter very serious here.

So this is where it all started ....

From left to right: Lisa, Marcel ( my best mate from Holland ), my nephew Pim, brother in law Bram, and my sister Anita. taken in Bad Schandau on german -czech border.

still a bit of old east germany left

seen while cycling into Berlin

in front of the Brandenburg Tor, Berlin

3 august Berlin

like all big cities, Berlin is quite stretched out , it took me a good 50 km from north to south to cross.
The centre is befitting of a world city, big treelined avenues, imposing architecture both modern and classic and tons of upmarket shops with marble facades. The streets aren't too busy , possibly because this is the holiday period for the german workers.
On my way to what turned out to be a fantastic vietnamese vegetarian restaurant I turned into a street that was blocked off on both ends with steel pillars that could be sunk into the ground.
Only cyclists and pedestrians could get through. One whole side of this street was taken up by an enormous office building that turned out to be the british embassy and it had big steel gates and four loitering german police officers in front .
I guess the powers that be had decided that it was unlikely that Al Queda would ram a Mountainbike with panniers filled with explosives into the building. Quite why an embassy had to be the size of an airport terminal I wasn't sure until I realised that the brits are probably still unaware that the wall has come down around the corner. Are they still playing 007 in there?
The no doubt hundreds of staff could be doing most clerical work from London one would think. With fast broadband around these days passport and trade work can be done anywhere, just leave some skeleton staff to deal with applications and england's greatest export product: the hooligan. Every time Man United or Liverpool play in Germany there are always a few who get carried away in the spirit of the game and do a professional demolition job of a pub and its customers and then they need to be shipped out of the country.
I would be very surprised if that place costs less than a million pounds a week to run.



The next day I had to cycle through the city centre to go south towards Dresden. I had a coffee at Starbucks next to the Brandenburg Tor. The Mc Donalds under the coffee places, they can afford the prime locations but the coffee they turn out is sweet milky froth, how hard can it be to make a decent coffee when you have the resources like they have. Imagine countless people in the head office being paid big bucks to dream up new silly recipes and then ending up with selling half a litre of sweet milk with coffee flavour ?

When you turn south at the Brandenburg Tor you cross into old east german Berlin pretty quick, and despite the enormous renovations you can clearly see the difference , the overall look is still a bit shabby.
I caught up with my sister and family and ended up on a lovely old market having dinner and beers outside and catching up.
The next day my brother in law , Bram and my nephew Pim who is 12 cycled with me to Bad Schandau which was a 115 km demanding trip, Pim did not give in, that's my boy !
My sister had organised a hotel in Bad Schandau, right on the river Elbe and she was already partying with my mate Marcel and his partner Lisa. They had come across from Holland to catch up and to see an old tram that rides up a valley there . Marcel is sort of a tram geek, you want details of what series drives around any old european town and you've got the man.
Marcel had had a few wheat beers, german size, by the time we arrived and was in a very good mood which really made the night.
5th of August: Bram and Pim cycled with me over the german border into the Czech Republic.
After lunch they put the bikes on the car and went to Berlin, Marcel had to stop at the german border because he and Lisa had forgotten their passport and thought it a bit unwise to travel further.

2 august Beer and Hotels

Just as well I left a bit later this morning because at 9 am the local baker arrived in a truck and when she opened the side it revealed a full on window display of breads, pastries, cakes and rolls!
After buying my croissant and fresh strawberry pie she wished me a good breakfast.
On the road then and it keeps getting better, the roads are mostly hidden in majestic forests with deciduous trees of all descriptions. Every now and then a little village pops up and all the signs that advertise the fact that this or that accommodation is coming up in the next kilometer are accompanied by a label of the local beer they are selling, they really do have their priorities right here, bed and beer and she'll be right mate.
I entered the outer suburbs of Berlin late in the afternoon so decided to get some accommodation there as it should be cheaper than in the centre and I immediately found a newish hotel/ apartment building and a receptionist who wanted to deal as long as I did not want an invoice. He did not want a name either, this was obviously going straight into his pockets but it handed me the keys to a very spacy apartment with bath and kitchen for NZ$90.I even got to do all my washing for free in his commercial machine in the basement.
Wasn't so good for him this morning though I think. I decide I wanted to stay another night and to go and find an internet cafe and have a look at the centre of Berlin and I went to pay for another night. A woman was in the office and asked for me name on the register, there was no name i had to explain. Then she wanted to charge me 60 euro to which I replied that last night I paid $45, more frowning and question marks on her face, it took a few seocnds for the penny to drop and then she said " you obviously do not need an invoice". right again honey !
So off to the Brandenburger Tor und Ein Bitburger.

1 august east german cobblestones

Immediately after leaving the port of Rostock I got my first taste of old East Germany, a couple of kilometers cycling over cobblestones with deserted and derelict factories and overgrown railway yards along the way. This turned out to be quite common along the roads to Berlin, there were a lot of renovated houses and good raods and then all of a sudden I would encounter grey soviet style apartment buildings in the middle of a town the size of Kohukohu, very weird.
After about 20 minutes I came to a petrol station and bought a road map and a coffee and breadroll. As I sat there 4 guys cme in to buy beer, this 7am in the morning, and as 3 of them stood at the counter the obscured number 4 from view of the staff and he put a bottle of drink in his backpack with ni intention of paying. I stared at him and he turned red as a tomato and had a whisper to his mate who looked at me. At this point I made the decision to not say anything as I did not want a knife in my back for the sake of 2 euros, I did however inform the staff just in case they were regulars and they asked me why I did not say anything and I explained that with 4 guys and my bike and gear outside it did not seem a good idea to intervene.
I ended the day deep into enemy territory about 120 km from Berlin, in this delightful little village and a camping ground that reminded me of my holidays as a child, in fact that is the general feeling I have here, one of nostalgy, even in the small tourist towns around the lakes, where there are still the old fashioned tours on boats with probably cringing jokes.
The camping owner and I had a great conversation about fishing in Norway, which he does once a year, after he had gotten over the shock of seeing someone from NZ on a bike, loosely translated I would wrap his comments up as " you are fucking mad ".
Come the next morning though he refused to take any payment, I really hope you have good time here he said !
In the evening i wandered into the village, the main street lined with old oaks and there she stood: Cafe In die 3 Linden and man did they have the goodies !
I started off with a pint of the local brew, followed by a simple but beautiful main course consisting of pan fried native fish out of the lake accompanied by potato salad and some greens, quite possibly the best tasting fish I have ever had. After overhearing another table discussing the dark red beer that was on offer I made my choice for dessert.
The owner, a woman in her late thirties I think, was talking to some guests who were from the west of Germany and they behaved like aucklanders do when the come to the Hokianga, slightly superior and at the same time intrigued. They made some comments about how it was before the wall came down and she got a bit defensive replying that growing up in the eighties she never had the feeling that she missed out on anything and that it was not all bad, she probably has people commenting about East Germany all the time.
In a village nearby there were a few deserted baracks and offices and in front of one of the offices, on an overgrown lawn, stood an old horse plough on an engraved stone and it said on one side " I am free " and on the other side "never be someone's labourer again" .

travel writers and sex

Travel writers and presenters of travel programs are notoriously asexual, Paul Theroux, Michael Palin, billy Connolly and Bill Bryson will tell you all about the fermented Yak milk they have been drinking with some obscure mongolian or welsh tribe and they'll go on about the warm traditional welcome they got in the japanese teahouse with the slippers on the doormat, but under whose bed they put their slippers at night we never get to hear, maybe partly because some of them are married, that doesn't make for liberal writing necessarily.
As for me, well i am not a famous travel writer so there is no need for me to elaborate on my findings at this stage, the fact is that after 10 hours on a bike I am well and truly shagged !
By the way, if you like Michael Palin's travel documentaries don't make the mistake to rent the DVD " nailin' Palin " in which a busty Sarah Palin lookalike invites a couple of russian soldiers into her home in Alaska ( after all she could see Russia from there) and gets served some russian meat in interesting ways. I have seen a preview and it gets pretty messy, not a lot of traveling involved either.

28 - 31 st of July flying visit of Sweden

My earliest memories of Sweden are of Pippi langstrumpf, knackebrod and the 4 petterson brothers from Faglum who won 3 world championships and a silver medal at the olympics in the team time trial. I know it is an odd fact to remember but there you go.
As young guys we went to Sweden and Norway on holidays sneaking a peak of the topless ladies at the beaches, the saying "happy as a sandboy " has never been more appropriate !
In the next few days after Pele and Astrid's B and B I flew through Sweden, averaging 120- 150 kilometer a day even though it rained most of the time. Because of the weather I stayed at another B and B and this time it was in a Cottage on a farm beautifully situated in a forest and of course on a lake, this one district had 400 lakes alone varying from a few hundred square metres to a hundred square kilometers.
As you have noticed this blog is not so much about the sightseeing, I have a rule that I don't stop to see anything that is further than a 100 meters off the road I am on ! So this rules out pretty much anything but the odd church. I make an exception late in the afternoon when i am looking for a camping ground but only if it is within 500 meters , I have been to a few that are full or not my cup of tea and then I had to peddle back again. Sticking these simple rules and not having a guide book makes life a lot easier, you don't know what you are missing so you are never disappointed and I have seen enough churches, museums and fortresses to know they are all a variation on the same theme, a bit like listening to Cold Play really.
I arrived at 7pm in Trelleborg and found out that there was a ferry going to Rostock in Germany that night at 11pm, so I visited the local Italian ,had a good kai and jumped on the ferry.
I never really saw the ferry as it was dark when I went on board, and from the cardeck , where I parked the bike, I went straight to the info desk and payed for a cabin, had a shower and went to bed. At 6am the ferry docked in rostock and I cycled to the nearest petrol station to get myself a map of Germany, always handy when you want to find your way to Berlin.

27 July B and B in Sweden

As I crossed the border yesterday at around 3 pm in the afternoon I was prety sure that there would be some camping grounds around but when 3 hours later I still had not seen any signs I decided to stop at a B and B just outside Amatfors.

It was a cosy, renovated old school building and the kind owners allowed me to use their washing machine and dryer, not unimportant after 10 hours cycling in the rain.

Pelle is a professional musician and he gave me a CD from his band's latest recording at the Red Bank studio in New Jersey, which I have not been able to listen to yet, so that will be a nice surprise for home.

Time for a verdict on Norway then. The landscape is quite overwhelming because of its huge steep rock walls , open plains, fast flowing rivers, enormous forests and fjords. It sometimes felt like everything was going to fall in on me, I really enjoyed biking around in it as there was hardly any traffic, especially in the north and it had a certain energy to it that really made me feel alive.
Everything in Norway happens with a murmur , no voices are raised , and although people are very , very friendly and ready to help I did not get a sense of excitement, maybe this is what happens if you live in a country where everything is taken care of, there is no need for real entrepeneurship. There were no big signs on the road telling me to come and visit their cafe and good food in the next km, no just a small sign easy to miss as you drove past and often they would be open for a few hours a day, I never saw a cafe open before 10 or 11 in the morning !
I got used to the prices and that should not put anyone off going there, just adjust your lifestyle to what you can afford, I hardly drunk any alcohol there, just the odd beer after a long day.

Here is another video, of a village in the mountains of East Norway. It has been placed on the world Heritage list of Unesco. I had a restday there and when i woke up the second morning it was minus 5 degrees ! The water in my drink bottles was frozen. Anyway as you will see it turned out to be a great day.

I finally managed to find a place where I can upload some videos, so this is an old one from day 3 on the trip.

170 square meter shops

I made a monumental mistake yesterday by ignoring the fact that all shops close on Sunday except the ones that are smaller than 170 M2, I was told they are allowed to be open. I did not have a measure tape with me but that was okay , they had done the measuring for me and decide that every store I came past was too big ! The fact that I was sticking to the road less travelled did not help either, I missed all the decent size towns so I ended up at night arriving at a camp ground in the rain with some rice and a can of lentils in my pack. I went to the kitchen which, bizarrely , shared its entrance door with the women's toilets and showers. So there I was eating my mash, standing as there was no chair, and listening to farting women, yes they sound just like us blokes. It created a mental picture that will take a few sleeps to get rid off ! Monday 26 July. After a few kilometres I feel my back wheel giving up on me, 2 spokes have ripped right through the rim and with a bit of luck I just make it to the next town where I buy a new wheel from a friendly and knowledgeable dealer I and I am on my way to the Swedish border.

24 july empty villages and women

this photo was take in Roros, a village on the Unesco world heritage list


I have stuck to the secondary roads as much as possible but the further south I come the more the traffic heats up, we are talking a car every 5 minutes so not exactly 5th Avenue .
The surroundings are starting to soften, more farmland cut out into the forests and the mountains have lost their steepness. The villages are still few and far between, they are more like a collection of houses randomly placed along a kilometer of road or so and when I fly through ( such is my fitness at the moment ! ) there is barely any life to be detected, certainly from what life there is I can see that the good looking girls have left town a long time ago, not that I am in the market I hasten to add but it is nice to browse, click on "add to basket" without actually going through with the purchase.
Like a lot of small towns in New Zealand there is no heart to these places, just a main drag and you know you are in the centre when the houses are built a bit closer together and sometimes there is a Dairy ( local shop for non NZ readers ).
All of a sudden I hit an entirely different kind of town that I could not place in any category and it t does make life a lot easier as we know to put people and places in boxes in our little brains just for future reference.
On both sides of the main road of this town called Otnes where flagposts situated every 50 meters or so and this went on for about a kilometer. Since all the properties along the street were beautifully maintained houses with immaculate lawns and lovely trees I wasn't sure whether I was entering a military cemetry or a small town in Alabama. I found it very creepy, this kind of patriotism, imagine the traitors who voted against the plan when it went through council, they have probably all moved to the North Cape.
The norwegians do like their flag a lot, every second house has one flying, presumably so they are reminded where they live when they wake up each morning.
Earlier this morning I had an entirely more positive experience when I stopped to have a look at a barn that was decorated on the front with wood carvings of soldiers ( like the tin ones we used to play with ) and animals. As I took the photo the farmer approached me and asked me where I was from, this is a difficult question for me by the way, if only they would ask where do you live or what nationality are you but no they want the long version.
Anyway we got talking about the barn and then I started asking him questions about his other ginormous barn, 200 years old I was told and completely built out of massive logs, it even had a ramp made from logs inside so horse and cart or later on tractors could drive up to the second floor where the hay was stored. I had seen farmers cutting the grass and putting it green inside these barns and he showed me how they have huge fans underneath that dry the grass while inside, this is due to the unpredictable weather around here, I could attest to that as the temperature dropped to minus 4 last night and the water in my bottles were frozen.
Then I asked him what kind of farm it was, milk he said. so how many cows did he have ? He looked a bit embarrassed when he said 13, he had read about New Zealand dairy farms obviously.
Did he make a living out of that I asked. Well with a bit of forestry on his property and his wife working in town they could manage, I should say at this point that what norwegians call manage is slightly different from our "manage", he had a brand new Volvo on the driveway and a stately home, so unless the bank owned the lot he was managing alright.

23 july : due to high demand some photos

I was asked to add some photos, so here we go:
first one is dried fish on the island of lofoten.

This is mowing the lawn norwegian style
on the beach near Andenes, waiting for sun to go under and come up again a few minutes later.
I just camped here because it seemed a nice place to be and free .
A rock I saw who knoiws where, but the bloody thing is probably 8 metres high and i have no idea how the graffiti came where it is apart that you have to be a rock climber and master painter.
Me at North Cape, as I said , a bit like the Waikato coast !
I love grass roofs, my next whare will have one !
Morten, Kristian, Beks and Me in Reina. Thanks for the hospitality guys !
and underneath I am at a lookout on the island of Senja.

blind cyclists and hippie scams

Because of the amount of ferries I had to take it was inevitable that I would catch up with the same cyclists at the next ferry terminal or Camping ground and at the moment this litlle community consists of 3 norwegian guys with trailers on their bikes, who are really pushing it by riding late into the night ( that is an advantage of the fact that it does not get dark at all), then there is the duo on the tandem, the one on the back seat is blind and deaf. He is having a great time taking in all the smells of the mountains and the sea. Unfaltering positive his interpreter asks if he can have chat with me about New Zealand as she had told him about me.
The Norwegian government pays for the interpreter and a rental car to give this man a holiday. Well he had been around, he talked about the Maori and about the 2 New Zealand women he had cycled with in Burma not too long ago for a cycle trip for peace. Very strong he called them, I didn't bother telling him what words we have in NZ to describe a so called strong woman ! ( just kidding darling ).
These guys on the tandem were flying, I could not keep up wit them.
The last one of our little cycle/ferry group was Dave, a 57 year young american hippie who used dude and rock 'n roll a lot. He has been cycling around europe for 11 years and has dreamt up this scheme where he has a business card that tells you some story about a call to world leaders to not invoke religion for war and torture etc. and it does not really ask for money but his " organisation is called "Swiss spiritual appeal ". He gets sponsoring for his trips through all sorts of means, for example where I got my bike fixed and payed 200 NKR he got a free wheel out of the same guy, in return for putting a photo up on his website, I am reluctant to call it a scam because he was a genuinly nice guy but it reminded me of a dutchman who came to Kohukohu a few years ago and emptied our cupboards while having this story abou the universe providing.
Ended up this particular night on a camping ground run by some pensioners, the old guy followed my every move, he wanted my passport number etc. He really must have thought that I was going to ripp him off . In the morning when I wanted to leave and make some breakfast before I went I found the kitchen closed with my food in the fridge with it, as if I was in a Youth hostel again . These camping nazis tend to charge to highest prices and have to lowest quality facilities, I am not kiding you, the best campings with modern clean facilities have been the ones under 100 kronor. I am sure there is a lesson in there somewhere.
It is mid afternoon here so i will leave this lovely library in Namsos and go and eat some more tarmac before dinner time.

13 july Fresh fish and ratatouille

This day I caught up the Rebekka and Kristian and his brother Morten in the litlle fishing village of Reine on the Lofoten.
They had seen me but I was oblivious to anyone standing on the water side, where they were catching our meal, so I ended up a few km further down the road before getting a text asking me if i was the Yellow creature that flew past a few minutes ago. They had rented a Rorbu, which translates roughly to rowing house and they are little cottages along the water that have been done up.
I ended up learing how to play 500, apparently a game that is played very seriously in a certain household in Kohukohu. Next day Kristian dropped me off at the ferry back to the mianland.

18 july it is just doing weather

In the last week there have been a few days where as I said yesterday , the men are separated from the boys. I am talking heavy rain and winds approaching storm in your face. I was almost blown off one off those arch bridges that connect different islands, they are 40- 50 metres high in the middle and have a little rails of about 1 metre high to keep you from falling off.
By the way the Norwegian s have spent billions building these bridges and tunnels to enable people to keep on living in these remote areas. on top of that they have hundreds of ferries crossing fjords, I crossed 6 in the last 3 days on a tourist route called route 17 ( www.rv17.no ).
I digress, the summer is hiding somewhere but I am not too bothered, my wife always says that it is just doing weather , we make a judgment as to whether it is good or bad and adjust our mood accordingly. Now that I am putting this in practice I find it easy to just cycle in whatever the weather throws at me, I adjust the clothing. Talking about clothing I can now definitively burst the myth of the breathable wet weather gear, it just does not exist ! The only time a rain coat breaths is when it is dry and there is a little breeze and it is not too hot, which is the time you don't wear it !
So no more complaining about the weather but there is plent left to winge about, my bike crapped out on me a few times although some genius in sortland has seemingly fixed, touch wood.
Then there are my fellow human beings, a few nights ago I found a nice camping ground and had barely pitched my tent or a young german couple arrived and proceeded to pitch their tent right on top of mine although there was half a football field available, no idea what goes on in these people's mind, maybe they are just very social.
Now I have to listen to this endless drivel about the setting up of a tent, it is as if they are reading from an instruction manual and they then confirm every stage with eachother as in : now we can put ze peg in the corner, okay das ist gut. Oh dear , he just said the wrong thing and she is pissed off, no speakies anymore, fuckin great ! He is still young and hasn't learned yet that after a long day driving through the rain she will pounce on you at the first opportunity.
An hour later I went to the camping kitchen to do my cooking and i open this door and am gretted with what looked like scene from a Bangkok prison, the one you see in druggie gets locked up doco's, where countless people are stacked in a little cell trying to find space and privacy while doing whatever they need to do.
This kitchen was 2.5 x 2.5 metre with one little window, it had 2 little kitchen tables in it with chairs, one wall was occupied with 2 sinks and another wall had to cooktops on it. There was a finnish family in there with 3 kids, one of whom was in a stephen hawking wheelchair, 2 woman doing dishes, a guy waiting with dishes en then me !
The men with the dirty dishes started to loose it, he put his plastic tub on one of the elements that I just turned on and then his wife came in seeing what took him so long, she picked up the towel and was going to give him a hand until her eyes met mine and I gave her the dirtiest look imaginable, out she went. In the meantime the finnishe father talked non stop in a monotomous voice as if he was reading from the Koran. I felt this rage coming up, the kind that you see in Mcdonalds customers when they try to stand out from the crowd by individualising their mass murdered burger with some extra lettuce and when things go wrong the go away and come back with an AK47 to settle the bill, that kind of rage.
Finally 2 nights ago I camped at a picnic spot alongside the road as is common practice in Norway, they don't rape and rob tourists they we we do in New Zealand, and around midnight this car pulls up and starts hammering in pegs right next to my tent, by this stage I am thinking my tent must have some pheromone on it , anyway he hammers away and then starts to cut down trees the whole night, this guy snored like nobodies business, frenzied knife attackes came to mind.
You see it is not always easy going on the trasvelling trail, and then I have not even mentioned the thousands of Campervans or as I like to call them Holiday Delivery trucks, we'll keep that for later as the experiences build up !

17 july just a quicky

I am going to keep this short as It costs a fortune to use the internet here, had some more funny and excruciating experiences ,more later.
Spens a few days in the rain , that.s where the men get separated from the boys !
Crossed the artic circle yesterday by boat not by bike as i am doing route 17 which has a least half a dozen ferries in it. Hope to end up in Bronnoysund tonight.
catch you later, and yes I have eaten humble pie about the dutch going to win the world cup !

9 july manuel from barcelona

Four seasons in one day, I started off in the rain , after a while the sun came out and at 6pm when I arrived on the island of Vesteralen I planted my tent on a white sandy beach and sat in shorts only till late at night. That sun is a funny thing, it crossed from left to right on the horizon over the water, then disappeared for a few minutes and popped up again. The eye protectors that you get on planes are lifesavers, otherwise you become an insomniac within days.
With the World Cup final coming up I have only encountered spanish people today, isn't it funny how that works. The guy who was running the cafe on board of the ferry to Vesteralen was from Barcelona and we did a bit verbal sparring all in good fun.
It will be a pretty straight forward win for holland, nothing flash but functional. I know this is a bold statement but in times like this you can't stay on the fence !
As I was sitting on this remote beach 2 cyclists approached me to ask me how to get off the beach !
They were of course from spain and had rented some bikes for the day. I am sure the rental guy will be pleased as peaches to get his bikes back with sea water and sand having reduced all the moving parts to rubble.
One little observation for the day, why can't car manufacturers make hub caps that stay on the rims of their cars ? I have seen hundreds of these car frisbees lying around , even in the most remote places, of course there is always the obligatory guy who adorns his fence or shed wall with them thinking it is original and looks the part. We send space shuttles up ( maybe not such a good example as they loose the odd tile as well ) but we can't make a hub cap stick , millions must go missing every year around the world, maybe time to put a deposit on them like the on cans and bottles.
Up to the pub tonight for the football, the pub is run by an afghani refugee who is also into cricket big time, watches test matches on the internet ! The rest of his family is in Australia because when it got unsafe all the boys from about 13 - 14 years old where sent out of the country by their parents as they were the target of the Taliban who wanted to mould them into fighters , so he was accepted by Norway, the rest went later to Australia.
In 2 days time I hope to catch up with some friends from New Zealand who have rented a cabin in the Lofoten, should be fun.

8 july is lance armstrong an atheist ?

This morning i went into the first pharmacy I had seen since arrivng in Norway, I already have enough supplies with me to keep a small african village alive but no voltaren and my knees were hurting.
With not a word of english in her vocabulary the woman from the apotheke opened the doors of the cabinet to me to have my pick ! Did I tell you they are friendly ?
My wife and I are self medicators from way back as we both worked near doctors and think the knowledge has rubbed off , anyway I popped a couple and felt like Lance Armstrong on a difficult stage in the Tour.
By the way I suspect Lance might be an atheist, I have never heard him utter the word God which is unheard of for an american athlete. Lance knew from an early age not to count on anyone else, only to rely on himself and see where it got him. Funnily enough doping ( = sinning) thrives in catholic countries,like Italy. spain, France, Belgium, I love the sight of an italian cyclist winning a mountain stage, looking to the sjy and making a little cross and a few hours later he is handcuffed in the paddy wagon for doping offences !
I have only seen about 2 churches in 600 km which is quite uplifting for the spirit, apprently there are some archtectural masterpieces coming up further south, that is certainly something religion has given us together with art, suppression of women and sex education to little children !
Off to the apperently gorgeous island of Senja and then the boat to Andenes.

7 july : fencing norwegian style

One thing that has already become clear is that norwegian farmers do not know how to puty a fence up. I say this because of my observations, there might be climatic or other reasons for the fact that their fences look like they put some sticks in the ground that they found on a walk and then attached something on to it like plastic bags , packaging pallets or a bit of wire. I can honestly say that in 600 km i have not seen one decent fence, the best one had a plank at 50cm high and one at 1 metre high and there were sheep in the paddock !
In New Zealand we already export workers to London and the Outback , fencers could probably make a killing here.
I also propose to name the norwegians the friendliest people in the world, Fiji used to be famous for that but after 3 military coups and an under current of racism I think we can safely put that claim aside.
Finally went into one of those Sami tents where they sell souvenirs and boil coffee on an open fire. Bolit coffe is spoilt coffee we always say but this wasn't that bad it certainly grows hair on your chest.
A bit further I rode into a deserted camping ground and found out from the owner that he was closed because he had heart problems, his son worked in a factory and the daughter in law had cancer, and this all in 2 minutes with some poor use of th german language on both sides. Anyway I wasn't interested in his personal problems , I was fucking cold and miserable and I wasn't going anywhere ! So he offered me a hytte ( hut) for a friendly price and we shook hands on it.
Pity about the moaning dog though, reminded me of New Zealand, always someone who has a dog locked up all day or on a chain, mkaes you wonder why they have them. Well in this case that was easy to answer, these guys spend the winter towing the old guy around trhough the woods!

5 july bike repairs

THe bike shop in Alta took out all the stops to fix my bike but as he took the casette off the back wheel he started to show the worried look, the one that says: " I can fix this but it is going to take all my skill and your money to get there", that look. An hour or so later and lots of Kroner lighter I left on a wonderfully light ride, that is for about 40km when another spoke broke !
Spent the next 90 km in the rain and found another bikeshop who did not have any appetite to try and fix it but I could have access to their workshop and do it myself ! Very generous and I ended up learning something, not about bikes b ut about listening to the locals when they tell you to stay in town because further down the road you will not have access to the big screen for the semifinal of the world cup.
I meet cyclists on a regular basis, from Poland czech republic, holland etc. and they are all male and in theit forties and fifties, mention the word Mid life crisis and they get really upset, quite rightly so we are a well adjusted bunch just doing what we love doing.
Even met a French guy in his sixties who had an old bike and a walking stick on the back that he needed for walking.

4 july: on a wobbly wheel to alta

My back wheel gave me heaps today, I cycled most of the way with the brakes open. The landscape is unforgiving, a few shrubs and the odd reindeer, oh and lest I forget touring car busses. One bus approached from behind as 2 cars came from the opposite direction, all he had to do was slow down wait for a second till they passed and pass me, he did and then deliberately drove me off the road ! Luckily he wasn't going very fast. I will send his boss an email once i am finished with this.
Rain set in late afternooon so i managed to get a wash before i arrived at the campsite in alta.

3 july: first real test

Did I mention that next week somewhere up here they have to Artic open beach volleybal tournament ! THe posters look appealing but as I look at the skimpy lycra suits jumping up and down I have to put the collar of my fleece jacket up to avoid frostbite on the ears.
My first serious day in the saddle wasn't too bad, 104 km was always going to give me some aches and pains but it stayed within the limits the Bush administration set for torture techniques at Guantanamo Bay.
The 7 km long tunnel that connects the Island on which North Cape is situated with the mainland dives down 212 metres under sea level . It is quite eerie to be underneath millions of potential granite bench tops as it wasn't very well lit and the sound of a car or truck approaching is something else, neither was there light at the end of the tunnel so to speak as there was a bend 200 metres before the end.
Also discovered I already have my first bike problem, a broken spoke, but that will have to wait till alta another day away.

cycling to north cape

Assembled my bike and took off around midday for a 32 km trip to the North Cape visitor centre.
This is situated at 71 o 10 o 21 o degrees which does not mean a lot to me but it further north than the top of Alaska which I do understand. I left not too heavily dressed but with a lot of extra clothing in the bags and boy did I need them , again that icy wind but the first climb kept me warm. Then as entered this empty plateau it started raining and the wind picked up and my fingers froze up in minutes. I put on my neoprene overshoes, raincoat, gloves and still I froze, then all of a sudden it started clearing and as I entered the north cape the sun came out. As a cyclist they give you a discount, it is only $35 to see the sea !
It actually looked a lot like the area between Port waikato and Kawhia with the difference being that farmers knocked down all the trees there as here there were never any to begin with.
Met a nice german guy who took just 18 days to cycle from Berlin to here, a mere 3400 km, that should give me confidence but it had the opposite result, not sure why.
the video that follows is shaky, I am not in rehab just learning how to handle this little thing.

shrimpsalad and the war on terror

I arrived late last night near the North Cape in a place called Honningsvag. I had several stopovers with the one in Hammerfest being the longest and most memorable.
I had 7 hours to get through so I walked from the airport to the town centre which was about 3 km. By the time I got there I was cut in half by the icy wind.
Coming from shorts and t shirt in Oslo this was a wake up call to go and get a woollen hat and put my thermals on. It was about 10 C out of the wind and the locals were in complete denial, I saw one guy doing a demolition job on a building site and he had no shirt on !

This is country where my frugal nature comes in handy. Where it seems pointless and embarrassing to quibble over a few dollars in let's say Asia, here watching your pennies is a survival skill as important as CPR which is what you need after you paid nz$16 for a pint in the local pub ( consolation was that Holland won while I was there) or nz$14 for a latte and a muffin.
As I recovered from this first assault on my wallet I had to go through security at the airport.
Now this airport is the size of kerikeri's and lies on a isolated peninsula. It had 2 staff and 8 passengers at 10pm. As my bag went through the x ray everything came to a grinding halt, could he see the liquid I had in my bag he asked . Not sure what that could be. I started poking and came up with a little tub of shrimpsalad that I just bought in supermarket. I showed him the receipt and pointed out that it was factory made and sealed but all I got was the bureaucrat look that says you can talk all you like but you are not boarding with the shrimp, as a last resort I mentioned that there was no known use of seafoodchowder bombs in the vietnam war even though they have plenty of those critters, that went straight over his head too . Bush has got a lot to answer for.

introduction to my trip

Kia Ora Whanau and friends,

"agge oe eige nie kietelt dan lachte nooit" is a saying from my old hometown of Breda in the Netherlands and it means" if you don't tickle yourself you 'll never laugh" and torturing myself on a bike from North Cape in Norway to Rome, Italy is that tickle for me.

A couple of years ago I thought it would be a great fiftieth birthday present to myself to do a cycling tour with a bit of a bite, luckily my lovely and generous wife agreed and on Thursday the 1st of July I am off on a plane to the North Cape.
This is not a midlife crisis project although my failure to see it that way might in it self be an indication of just that !
After some erratic training in the last few months I have no idea what sort of distances I can cope with but a 100km a day would be enough to get me at the airport in Rome on the 12th of September.
As I am not carrying anything that connects to the internet I will add new posts whenever a computer is handy which might not be daily. You can click on Subscribe at the bottom of this page which makes it easy to follow me should you give a damn.