BikerThomas.com

Saturday 2nd of August 2008

I’m still at Camp Zeeburg and it was very hot this morning and some scattered clouds. I decided to ride towards Hague to visit Corpus -  a science centre based on the human body. Riding towards Hague is an experience in itself! Holland’s main airport, Schipol, is situated between Amsterdam and Hague and you get to ride straight through it! There are large jumbo jets on both sides of the road that you’re riding on and there are also planes landing and taking off right above your head! How cool is that!? This was definitely the highlight of my day.

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There was a queue to get into Corpus and I had to wait 1 hour. So if you’re going, you should probably book in advance to avoid the wait. The tour is partly guided and you get a headset that tells you all sorts of fun facts about the human body, in fact the whole tour is built as if you were walking through a huge person… you walk through his body, listen to his heart and walk inside his ear and so forth – no doubt probably very popular with schools. I guess it’s fun if you’re a bit younger… I myself found it a bit boring and the price was a bit high at €16,50 + €5 parking.

Camp Zeeburg did have deposit boxes where you can store your valuables like your camera or computer. It’s free and you only have to pay a €20 deposit – well worth the effort instead of leaving them in your tent or in your saddle bags or some other stupid place, and carrying them around everywhere is hassle.

It started raining in the afternoon and I started to get a bit fed up by all the bad weather as I wanted to ride towards Brügge in Belgium. I went to bed early and hoped for better weather in the morning.

 
Corpus – Reis der mens (left), What you taste where on your tongue (right)

 
Another poster showing some statistics about teeth.

Make sure you bookmark www.BikerThomas.com so that you can come back and read about the rest of the trip. Day 8 of the trip will be out real soon!

Wednesday 30th of July 2008

This Wednesday started with rain, so there I was in Hamburg planning on riding 363KM to Amsterdam in jeans… not a good combo! I wish I had brought some proper waterproof pants. I wanted to check the weather forecast online but there was no Internet connection at the camping site. I decided to ride no matter what but I waited a while just to see if the weather could clear up a little bit. And guess what, at 10am my prayers had been heard and the skies cleared up, once again I started riding with a big smile on my face! :)

Now that’s what a real biker looks like, haha! :)

Riding on the Autobahn was boring… *reminder to myself: find some alternative routes next time!*. It was efficient though, and there were few traffic jams, whenever the traffic stopped I just annoyed the shit out of cagers by splitting lanes.

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I arrived at Camping Zeeburg in Amsterdam at 5.30pm. They charged me €13,50 (US $19) per night for me, my tent and my motorcycle. My immediate impression of Camping Zeeburg was that there were alot more younger people at this camp than in Hamburg. There was a hippie-feeling about the whole place, there were even goats and other animals on the camp! You could rent bicycles on the camp which is a good idea as walking to the city centre would turn out to take about 1 hour. There were also canoes for rent, which looked really cool since Zeeburg is really an island. There were also an Internet café and hot showers that cost €1 for 10 minutes. In addition there were a couple of washing machines and a dryer that you could use for a couple of euros or so.

A German slug had been living beneath my tent… (left), Camp Zeeburg had a little farm (right)

There were sheep (left), …and goats (right, in case you can’t tell)

Camp Zeeburg in Amstedam, Holland

Make sure you bookmark www.BikerThomas.com so that you can come back and read about the rest of the trip. Day 5 of the trip will be out real soon!