Finding Hamburg

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Turns out to be bloody hard.

Its 97km by autobahn from bremen to Hamburg, 150km by the bike route, what they don't tell you is that half that route will be unsealed tracks between feilds as you are led between every small, identical town along the way... this can be a little frustrating, like when I had been biking for over an hour, covered 20km of some rough ground after leavinf Zeven, where I had stayed overnight, and came across an intersection between my route and another path to Zeven, distance 8km... but then, that might not have really been 8km... the Germans seem to enjoy givign you a distance that is probalby the direct distance, not the roundbout route they are goign to lead you on... for a while I thought my bike computer might be overreporting the distance I travelled now I think its signs underpromising and overdeliviering.

Haivng a map might help, but actually I*m not so sure, I'm findign the hardest thing is to get out of big cities once the route into them has disappeared - it is eery rare indeed for the next route to start in the city centre or have the name of any fo the major cities along the way on it.. and anyway, maps aren*t avialable in the kind of detail you need for city navigation.

Things got fun on the second day on the way to Hamburg when the path led over some particually rough old cobblestones in yet another dreary field - the vibration is obviosuly bad for the bike and risks puncutres, but the side of the path was sand, which will make you fall off if you aren*t really careful (actually I came off for the first time on the way to Zeven: findings 1) if you are biking to Zevena nd you get to the intersection take the longer path that also says Hamburg, the shorter one leads thgouht a sandy forest 2) if a joker falls off his bike in the German forest and no-one is around does it count? yes, but only as a half becuase I landed on my feet), so ,where were we? oh yes, cobblesotnes, vibration, suddenly the chain won*t move = shit, the chain and the wheels these are the vital things, I can*t fix them myself, lucky the chain was stuck only becuase the carrier rack had coem lose, lost a allen nut thansk to the vitbration, so its a simple matter of flipping the bike over borrwong a non-vital nut form elsewhere on the bike, and making the swap - which is obiovusly why it cose to start rainign at the poiint....

long story short, got to hamburg, it was seedy.

Now, I'm on the ferry from kiel to gotaborg, its also seedy, there's soemthing truely pathetic about these ferrries at night, the old people, the gambling (if you can call mindless plaiyng the pokies gambling, I think its a betrayal of all that's good in a game of luck), its not humanity at its best - but at least there's no gypsies - Iä'm not being bigoted, peopel who have been on the ferries in this region knwo the gypsies are not wecloem travel companions.

I would have phótos but no such tranfer cable, plus I ran out of battereis, which is a pity becuase there were amzing clods at sunset - actually cuased by jet contrails - if you don't knwo about jet contrails and their effect on global warming, you shoould look it up.

So, that was Germany - 600km in 4 and a hlaf days and I even have a radler at the tradiotanl pub. still ,good times

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Comments

[DestinationAlgeria]

amzing clods at sunset
is this Danish?

[Emufarm]

re danish
no such danish, didn't go there joker. its swedish on a ferry at midnight.