7 countries, 27 cities and 47 places according to Google timeline and about a million small villages according to me

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So not knowing where to go is a bit of a conundrum and life is hard for us who can’t make up our minds.

After som very unserious planning I had two alternatives, The Ardennes or the Carpathians.

But luckily I could postpone my decision until i got to Germany, right to the Ardennes or left to the Carpathians.

The last and final moment came at a T-junction, luckily the was a traffic light so I could, like the donkey with the two hay bales, shilly- shally for a few seconds more, in the end the left side won.

I set forth to go south with an overconfident goal , well i could have made it but suddenly I got up to 29C so I ended up taking a hotel in Prenzlau, out of energy.

Black gear, black gloves, black boots makes you warm, no hot, and after a while tired

Prenzlau will not be in the guide Michelin, I had a below par dinner and some brews.

Next day I set an even more ambitious goal, Slovakia 1044 km away.

I avoid motorways when travelling for fun, there are many small villages in Germany so it takes for ever , but you get to see a lot of the land and I’m in no hurry, I almost made it, the rain who wanted to come down decided it was time to do so and gravity helped it on it’s way.

Rain is a very efficient speed limiter, gluten free and zero carbon footprint.

The Hun and the Slovaks have a lot of road works and closed roads some with no or very obscure deviation signs, especially when you get to Slovakia and basically do not understand one single word.

I changed my plans a bit and headed to a large city not very far from Slovakia, Olomouc in the Czech republic

The hotel was more pricy than it was nice but after 11 hours i considered that I was worth some comfort.

The concierge gave my directions to a very nice restaurant with traditional Czech food, they also had some big glasses with some concoction of fermented barley and water, that helped the traditional Slovak food to enter my stomach, some churches and statues later, back to my digs.

After a decent breakfast i set forth to infiltrate Slovakia and the forecast of no rain turned out to be false, bugger.

I could see the rain coming my way and even being a relatively small object i got my share of the wet stuff, it would have been nice ride but for the rain and when my rear tyre losing it’s grip in a tight switchback.

A bit later a big deer crosses the road, brake, brake, brake, no horns so it’s female and at this time a year they have kids, and there it came trotting over the road, a lonely mountain road in Slovakia is not a good place to have an accident.

Two pucker moments in no time flat, and the rain kept on being wet, I arrived in the bonny city of Liptovsky Mikulas, had a look at the forecast , the forecast was more rain so I got myself a room, lots of google translate later, I was inside, the bike secured in the back of the hotel.

Half an hour later the rain stopped and I went out for some food, the restaurant called Bonsai turned out to be Vietnamese, some bon bo nam bo and a beer and happiness was restored.

The hotels breakfast was absolute crap and the weather forecast even worse.

To top this there were more road works than road, here and there and everywhere with those annoying traffic lights who always turn red as you approach.

I kept on going in a southerly direction when I passed a petrol station/cafe and thought that a coffee would be nice.

More forecast looking and my plans to go into Romania were thwarted, basically shit weather for the next few days or so.

A quick change of plans, Budapest here I come. so instead of going straight I took right, and started to clime some mountain range, going up there with lots of gravel on the road having been washed out by some have rain, some branches and twigs too.

I took my time to the top and going down saw that my tax dollars had been a work, a good road with railings and all the bells and whistles, had great time riding down.

Some fuel, and some kind of sandwich and off to Budapest.

Got a decent hotel and went for a walkabout.

Old Budapest is lovely city full of history, just my cup of tea also nice and warm 26 C compared to 12C in rainy Slovakia.

So nice in fact that I decided to stay another day, and the best breakfast by a long shot.

So some more Budapest, some back streets and alleys, i wandered like my mind, in strange ways.

Enough of Hungary, Vienna here i come.

Vienna is just a wow place, at least the old parts, if Budapest is an eight , Vienna is a twelve on par with Sevilla, I even spent some cash on some concert with baroque music, maybe i let my mind wander too far In Budapest.

But it was quite nice I’ve heard most of it before, I did NOT sing along!

Instead of the Carpathians I got the Alps. never planning , less in what general direction this ,time I did.The eastern part of Austria is just boring flat, it almost gives flat a new meaning, but suddenly in a sneaky way it became unflat, and suddenly peaks all around, the choice was the tiny roads that looked like smudges on the map, and it did not rain, all in all a delightful days riding, a crummy dinner put a tiny corner of a wet blanket on my pleasure.

I did not know that you could cut meat in such thin slices, breakfast was equally crap.

Why of why not put an extra 5 euros on the price and give some value for money.

But the again compared to what I got in Slovakia it was a feast worthy of a king.

So more sneakily hidden alpine roads, no major things but still nice and new to me, i even got a new sticker to stick on something, included in the toll.

Dry roads and sunshine makes hairpin bends a delight, there was even a waterfall, albeit a minor one,

As the trip not turned out as ”planned” I would pass the service interval on the bike and after having called every BMW service place in a thousand km radius and basically told that I could call back after x-mas I took an excectutive decision that the Alps would probably be around for a while yet and headed for Garmisch Partenkirchen.

Garmisch was hot and stuffy and packed so I hit the road going north to Bumfuck and found some hotel or other.

There was a pizza place close to the hotel but for me pizza is carbs and not food.

But up the road a couple of hundred meters that turned out to be a km there was a restaurant that made food, Central Europe thrives on the meat of dead pigs.

Anyway I got some schnitzel or other and managed to talk my way out of fries, one top item on the menu of every restaurant.

I even got some hot sauce that was ketchup with chilli flakes sprinkled on top.

Time to pay and the olde plastic came out, and the lady said sorry we don’t take cards.

I did not have cash to pay but there was a cash machine down the road next to the town hall.

It had just stooped to rain so to be sure not to get wet I got the restaurants umbrella and directions to the cash machine, it took a while to find and finally I could pay my bill and got a discount for them having sent me to find money.

The skies promised more rain and I did NOT want my Kindle to get wet, reading keeps me out of mischief, they did not have a plastic bag, but they did have cling film so I carefully wrapped my ”book” and set forth to my humble abode.

The next stop was by my friends who live a bit north of Frankfurt and the sat nav said something like 590 km.

Had I taken the motorway, 5 hours top. but no motorways for me, I had another look at the maps and went for one last fling on some small mountain road and then north in same very meandering way decided by some algorithm at Messers Garmin, 11 hours later there I was, Ruderstalstrasse in Donsbach-Dillenburg, somewhat sweaty and hungry and thirsty.

After a shower and a beer I trotted down to the restaurant who just had closed for the evening.

So back to the house I made some sandwiches and got some more fluids into the system and hit the sack.

I got brutally woken up by my friends coming home and sat up with them for while and then had two nice ”do fuck all days” with them and set of north to Luneburg, sort of halfway home.

It was a hot day and with all the gear on including my new airbag vest. I was more or less half dead when I arrived, lots of road works and long detours.

Luneburg’s old parts are nice with some types of houses that I have not seen before.

The only flies in the ointment meant that being famished I stopped at the first restaurant instead of walking along, a nice Turkish restaurant up the road, damned and blasted.

Erdogan is a class A wanker, but I do like Turkey and their cuisine, totally devoid of the meat of dead pigs.

The internal alarmclock chimed a bit before 5 am as to get an early start aka avoiding the rush hour going past Hamburg.

Only fools and farmers get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and I'm not a farmer but the traffic was light so I made it, no traffic jams at all.

The last part was jut equally as boring as the last time when I took the same route, flat , flat and the some more flat.

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Photos

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Wash day

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Workers haning of ropes breaking loose rocks

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Cling film on Kindle