Im Naturpark Dümmer. 22-04-2000. I make camp in a small forest of birch trees just before sunset. There are several farms nearby but I don't expect any problems wild camping like this. Not like the inhabitants of the nearby farms will phone the police and I'll end up sleeping on the hard wooden bench of a German police office holding cell on charges of vagrancy. One of these farms is actually so nearby that I can hear the clatter of storches that live on a nest overhead the farm. I have heard that storches are soundless, that their throats can't produce sounds so instead they clapper their beaks together. They fly to and fro their nest carrying half a forest for nest building purposes and in the last of the day's light I see them mating, ... read more

Im Wald in der Nähe von Soltau. 20-04-2000. Having my breakfast in a small McDonalds roadside restaurant I realise that my time of cycling through these dark-green and mysterious Eastern German forests has come to a definite end. Long and solitary days on the bike cycling under overcast skies that never promised anything positive, endless showers of sleet and rain, thunderstorms at night with flashes of lightning lighting up the inside of my tent at night. Ancient small nearly deserted villages where time seemed to have come to some weird sudden end, devoid of young people, where old people looked like they were under a strange and mystical spell, live energy gone from dull old rumy eyes. The sounds of animals at night adding to the overall feeling I was in some sort of fairy land ... read more

Im Wald in der Nähe von Wietzetze. 18-04-2000. Flashes of lightning light up the inside of my tent while I work on a couple of cans of Weissen brew. The rain is once again coming down like a tropical downpour reminding me as always of my trips to Thailand and the little family I have there. Thai voices ring inside my head drowning the steady patter of rain on top of my tent. I'm slowly getting into phylosofical mood brought about no doubt by the alcohol and several weeks of wild camping in German woods, living it rough, shunning human contact as much as possible, living a solitary life of cycling all day on a bare excistence, my only luxury of the day my runny eggs and stale bread served with luke-warm watery dish water that ... read more

Im Wald in der Nähe von dobbertin. 16-04-2000. In the difuse light of the small bar where I have breakfast I try to make sence of the Berliner Zeitung I found on the table and which is several days out of date - to say the least - and a touchy bit yellowish. The runny eggs with stale bread that seems to have to rule the menu in these Eastern German villages, has already gone down to my starving belly. The watery and luke-warm cup of coffee is still waiting for consumption. Not that I expect to really wake up seriously from this low cafeine brew that looks more like dish water then anything fit for human drinking purposes. I've no doubt that an impoverished Indian or a Thai individual from the poor north of the ... read more

Im Wald in der Nähe von Neustrelitz, 14-04-2000. I'm in a small bar in Blankenförde, a small settlement in the Nationalpark Müritz consisting of narrow cobble-stoned streets that are lined with mostly empty two storeyed houses that look in a serious state of decay, many of the red colored tiles missing from the roofs, windows broken with the incessant rain slashing through the jagged holes. No parked cars anywhere in this old and derlict Eastern German village, just a few ancient looking rusty bicycles parked in front of the village's only bar that doubles as restaurant where old and wrinkled men with unkempt beards play checkers nursing small glass cups of Schnaps called Asbach Uralt. Nobody paying me any heed despite my ragged and worn appearance due to nearly two weeks of living rough and wild-camping ... read more