BikerThomas.com

Sunday 3rd of August 2008

The 32 km long Afsluitdijk is awesome!

It was Sunday morning and I checked out of Camp Zeeburg at 11.30am. I wasn’t sure where to go next. The rain was pouring down and there were dark clouds everywhere. I thought about going with the original plan and ride to Antwerpen and Brügge in Belgium but I was tired of all the rain and decided to start my ride back home, but this time I would ride through North Holland and ride on the Zuiderzee works.

The 32 km long Afsluitdijk separates the IJsselmeer from the North Sea, protecting thousands of km² of land. The dam is quite impressive and as a result of building it Holland has actually expanded their landmass as water in the IJsselmeer has been pumped out in the North Sea and land has risen from the sea!

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While paying for my petrol at a petrol station in Bremen there was a German guy running towards me, pointing at my bike and asking me “Is that you’re Harley!?”, “Umm, well yes… that’s my bike” I replied as I didn’t care to explain that it was a Kawasaki… and he seemed very worried that that there were leaking petrol underneath of the bike. I freaked out a bit myself as I hadn’t seen this happen before. A quick call to my local mechanic and he could assure me that this was only because I had filled my tank to the absolute maximum and that it was perfectly normal for the bike to get rid of some excess fuel and told me to fill a little bit less next time… I remember thinking that this was one of those moments where I wish I had learned a few German phrases like “Where is the closest mechanic?”. (Note for future trips through Germany: "Wo ist der nächste Mechaniker?").

I finally arrived back in Hamburg and stayed at the same camping site that I stayed at a few days back (Campingplatz Schnelsen-Nord). The hot shower that night felt greeeeat! And the weather is much better in Germany, things are looking up. So far on this trip I had left behind 1768 kilometres.

 
My bike at the Zuiderzee works (left), A map of the area (right)

  
My über-cozy tent from the inside…

Make sure you bookmark www.BikerThomas.com so that you can come back and read about the rest of the trip. Day 9 of the trip will be out real soon!

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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!

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Tuesday 29th of July 2008

 
On my way to Hamburg city centre.

The weather was good this day and it was 32 degrees Celcius. It was time to check out Hamburg.

Once again, I stopped at Haupfbahnhof Nord. The first thing that hit me was that there were kebab-shops fuckin’ everywhere! Not that kebabs aren’t tasty, but I remember thinking “is this all they eat here?”.

I went further to the centre of the city and discovered there was a tivoli in the middle of town and the ferris wheel turned out to be a great way to see the city from above! I could spot places that I wanted to go and check out later  and it was an opportunity to take bird-eye photos. As you’d expect when in Germany, there was a beergarden in the middle of the tivoli. There were also restaurants serving great snacks like “kartoffellecken mit bier” for €4,80 (US $6), which is basically potato wedges with dip and beer which tastes great!

The infamous Reperbahn is a street with shabby erotic shops and strip clubs. I didn’t visit it during night time but I walked through it during the day and damn it looked dodgy… not pleasant at all. It’s one of those street names you hear everywhere and are told that you have to go and see. This was just silly though, and strangely enough you feel kinda dirty just walking through it.

Safely back at the camping site some heavy metal fans where pitching their tents next to mine. They were on their way to Wacken Open Air Festival which is like the largest metal festival in Europe or something like that. They had the classic long black hair, black t-shirt, black shoes, black jeans, devil worshipper-look… but they turned out to be great guys and we had alot to talk about including their fascination for church-burning and good metal. Turns out you don’t have to have the same opinions to have a great chat with some great young chaps from England.

By now I’ve had the chance to taste several different German beers. König pilsener tasted just like any other beer, nothing special, quite boring actually. The local Flensburger pilsener was OK. Warsteiner is also fairly ordinary and Jever Pils tastes like what alcoholics buy because it’s cheap… Duckstein Weizen was a good weissbier and really the only one so far on this trip that I can recommend.

Hamburg City (left), Hamburg city railroad (right)

Tivoli (left), German beer (middle), Hamburg city (right)

Kartoffellecken mit bier, great snacks!

Make sure you bookmark www.BikerThomas.com so that you can come back and read about the rest of the trip. Day 4 of the trip will be out real soon!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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

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