BikerThomas.com

Monday 28th of July 2008

It was a bit windy when I woke up in the morning. Lærkelunden camping had excellent sanitary facilities so I took a hot shower. Wireless Internet access was available for 30 Danish crowns (US $6) for an hour or you could pay 50 crowns (US $10) for 12 hour access. This was great for checking the weather forecast :) There was also a pool room with electrical outlets where I could charge my mobile phone.

View Larger Map

After packing my tent I was ready to ride past the border to Hamburg in Germany. While packing, an older gentleman from Germany stopped next to the bike and admired it, “Wünderschön” he kept saying, haha :) I think I smiled all the way to Hamburg that day.

I arrived at Campingplatz Schnelsen-Nord, just north of Hamburg. This camping ground was very different from the one in Denmark. In Denmark I had to struggle to find a good spot to pitch my tent, but here all the spots where marked with numbers and I had my very own 20 square metres or so. And the ground was flat, which is a good thing! In Denmark I was sleeping in a slight downhill which isn’t very comfortable…

I parked my bike, pitched my tent and decided to go and eat dinner in Hamburg City. The staff at Campingplatz Schnelsen-Nord were very friendly and explained how to get to the city by bus and train. If you’re thinking about doing the same, here’s the route:

Take bus 191 to Niendorf-markt then take subway-train U2 to Hauptbahnhof Nord in central Hamburg.

The subway is dirty and there were rats around… oh well, it’s all part of travelling!

I had some nice pasta in the city and went back to my tent. There was a guard outside the entrance to the camping site and you have to show him your receipt to gain access. This is actually quite good, and I guess this will be a more common practice everywhere since some of the camping sites around Europe have had thieves stealing from peoples camping vans.

Staying at Campingplatz Schnelsen-Nord totalled at €17,40 per night (US $25). I paid €7,40 for pitching my tent, €7 per person staying and €3 for the motorcycle. I also had to pay a €10 deposit for a key to the WC…

The entrance to Campingplatz Schnelsen-Nord (left), Opening hours (right)

Lots of space for my tent and bike (left), Me tired, hungry and looking like shit after a long ride (right)

Make sure you bookmark www.BikerThomas.com so that you can come back and read about the rest of the trip. Day 3 of the trip will be out real soon!

Share This!

Sunday 27th of July 2008

I had 3 weeks off work and I intended on using most of that time on two wheels! My girlfriend was working her ass off all summer so I was on my own – just me and my newly washed black Kawasaki VN900 Classic.

View Larger Map

I had planned my trip for weeks. I was going to ride to Hamburg in Germany, Amsterdam in Holland and finish off with Brügge in Belgium. I figured the trip would take about 2 weeks. I didn’t plan the route in detail and I wasn’t sure which way to take home – I figured I’d find out while on the road. I guess I like it that way; I don’t like planning every detail of my trips, that sort of takes the fun out of being free and on the road. If I was to meet someone who said that I absolutely had to go to Düsseldorf  or someplace else I’d be free to do so and being on my own meant that I didn’t have to consider other peoples opinions – perfect!

I started my trip in my home town Kristiansand in Norway. My girlfriend had arranged free ferry tickets to Hirtshals in Denmark. The ferry left at 8pm and arrived in Denmark at 11.15pm. I topped up my tank to the maximum limit and headed for Århus. The speed limit is mostly 110km/h and the roads are good. For those of you who don’t know, Denmark is extremely flat so the roads can be built very straight. It’s not a very fun ride, but the weather was nice and I was very excited to finally be on my way on my first international trip with my motorcycle.

I had a quick stop in Aalborg to log on to some random people’s unsecured wireless network… so that I could find myself a place to pitch my tent… I also had a quick stop in Århus to… well for no reason really, just because I could! Oh and I could plot in my camping site on my new Garmin Zumo 500 Deluxe GPS. The GPS, by the way, was the perfect companion on this trip. I never had to buy a road map or anything like that, I could rely completely on the GPS alone!

I guess most people ride through Denmark in one day as it’s a fairly small country and not awfully exciting. I could have had my first stop in Hamburg but I started to get tired so I stopped closed to the border of Germany. The camping site was called Lærkelunden Camping. I parked my bike, pitched my brand new tent (took a while to figure it out…) and went hunting for food late at night. I ended up finding a pizza restaurant that had opened on that very night! A brand new pizza shop, if I remember correctly I think the owner was from Turkey. He was super friendly and the pizza was awesome!

In Denmark they were promoting lead free 95 octane petrol with 5% bio-ethanol. The sticker explains that there’s no real difference, that it won’t harm your engine and that it’s environmentally friendly. 

 
Lærkelunden Camping in Denmark (left), What my bike looked like when fully packed (right)

Rinkenæs Church (Rinkenæs Korskirke) in Gråsten

Here’s what I brought with me on my trip (at least what I can still remember):

• Ultra compact 2-person tent
• Tiny sleeping bag
• Compact inflatable camping mattress
• A knife (which turned out to be very useful a few days later…)
• Toothbrush, toothpaste, some soap and other necessities
• A compact emergency kit (band aids, pressure bands, anti-burn gel etc.)
• DSLR camera (Canon EOS450D 12,2mp) with a standard 18-55mm lens
• Compact camera – Casio Exilim 5 megapixels
• My good old lightweight laptop (Dell Latitude X1) with an extra battery
• Garmin Zumo 500 Deluxe GPS crammed with maps of most of Europe.
• Pen and paper (a must)
• My mobile phone
• T-shirts, underwear, socks, a jumper and jeans
• And of course standard riding gear (helmet, jacket, boots, gloves)

What I SHOULD have brought but didn’t…:

• Water proof riding pants!
• A pair of extra gloves for colder weather
• A pair of comfortable sneakers
• A bunch of those vicer protectors that you can stick on and peel off after the vicer had been bombarded with Danish bugs from hell.
• Mosquito repellant!
• Sandals
• A better backpack (the one I brought sucked…)
• A lock for the tent
• A mobile phone charger that uses AA-batteries

Make sure you bookmark www.BikerThomas.com so that you can come back and read about the rest of the trip. Day 2 of the trip will be out real soon!

Share This!

Motorcyclists get 25% off for travels before April next year (it’s still a bit cold at that time of year so put on some warm clothes!)

A coworker of mine told me about the autozug in Germany. It’s a train where you can put your car or motorcycle on the train, go get some sleep in a comfortable cabin and wake up in a totally different country the next morning, how cool is that!

Now, I know alot of you will say something along the lines of “why bring your bike if you’re not going to ride it?”. But I’ve tried driving on the Autobahn and though it’s efficient, it isn’t all that fun. I’m talking miles and miles of straight road with no turns here. And besides, how cool wouldn’t it be to get on the train in Hamburg, Germany and wake up in Verona, Italy or Narbonne in France? And you’ll be all relaxed and ready to take your monster out for a ride south to the east coast of Spain or deep into Italy or over even over the Alps!

This is something I’ll have to try sometime.

For tickets and more information hit Autozugs website:
http://www.dbautozug.de/site/dbautozug/en/start.html

Share This!