Back in Amsterdam with a final word.

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Amsterdam,
24-04-2000.

I watch the sunny Dutch countryside gliding by from the closed confinement of a Dutch train. I listen to the conversations around me, other passengers speaking Dutch, outside I read the steet and traffic sign in Dutch, the headlines of the newspaper the elder gentleman in front of me is hiding behind, scream at me in Dutch, the train conductor checking my ticket "mag ik uw kaartje zien meneer?" too in Dutch.

Goodbye to the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst People and hello to the Land of Wooden Clogs and Smelly Cheese. Hello back home, back to my job and my house in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam,
30-03-2009.

These were the last lines I found in my sketchbook. I remember I had to take the train back to Amsterdam instead of two more days of cycling which would have been fine with me.

I made the mistake of phoning the company I worked for at the time from a small bar where I had breakfast informing them of my return in two days time. They informed me I was two days late for the job but were willing to compensate the trainfare which they never did.

As for this trip....like the other trips I've been uploading to the internet, rereading my own stories and editing them in my house here in Amsterdam, looking at the drawings..it brought the whole trip back full circle, the rain and sleet and even more the mystic feeling I felt surrounded by there in these dark-green forests of Eastern Germany - sh*t, I wouldn't have been surprised if I had seen an elf or a gnome running across the road.

I still vividly remember that total despodence in the dull rumy eyes of the last inhabitants in these decayed villages.

When I left Amsterdam I set out on this trip to visit Berlin, a city I had always wanted to visit and ended up cycling through Eastern Germany enjoying it to the Max.

Thanks for reading my stories and I hope the God of Thunder Thor with his magic hammer Mjölnir will smile down on you a bit more benignly as he did on me.

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Photos

A black swan
seen while cycling in Germany

Sketches
from my cycle trip in Germany

a bat
late at night overflying my tent