I am under way by 0900 hours and continue my route north-westwards. There is an obstacle in the way, it's called Berlin, but I have plotted a course northwards of that place. The road varies from "immaculate" to "diabolical" and back, all within five minutes. You wouldn't believe that I am just 10 miles away from that palace called the German Chancellery where the culprits responsible for this desolate state of affairs reside. Sometimes the road even deteriorates to cobblestones. My North American readers certainly won't believe that unless I have some proof, so here it is, from today around noon:
That road in the picture is the federal state route 14 near
Prignitz and not some hidden
byway I looked for on the dark
side of the moon...
A few years back I asked a pair of (local) old geezers about the horrible condition of many roads in the former
East Germany decades
after the re-unification was supposed to bring "blooming landscapes". I asked if it
was
Erich or
Walter who last had any repairs done to their
local main road in their village. The old coots looked at
each other, shrugged their shoulders and told
me "We think it was the
RAD". Well, silly me, I had to ask..
Near Schwerin the temperature exceeds
27 degrees, but then I reach the influence of the
Baltic Sea and the mercury
drops down to 23 degrees once more. Near Lübeck I reach
the former West Germany - and after only four blocked roads so far today.
Now the old foe of badly potholed roads paired with ridiculous speed restrictions is back.
One thing is certain; I need a break from this despicable road system, I have to visit a civilised country for a change.
That's at least part of the
reason why I have decided to go to Scandinavia for a few days.
Soon it's after 1700 hours and time to look for accommodation. I call six or seven hotels in the vicinity, but they are all
full with weekend warriors - and who can blame them, the weather for this time of year is most exceptional.
Hotel number eight just got a late cancellation, and that for their best room overlooking a lake - what a nice stroke
of luck. So I end the day in the town of
Eutin looking onto
Lake Keller.
It is raining towards the west over the
Jutland peninsula, but here in the East it is fine. The rain
represents the last
remnants of a depression that has brought rain to the UK and France, but has simply run out of steam battling against
the high pressure ridge over central and eastern Europe. However, the good weather is finally about to go, and quite
unexpectedly so for the meteorologists; a huge depression is developing over England and will give the high pressure
ridge over central Europe the final blow. Getting home to Switzerland by next Sunday is getting a more interesting
proposal by each new weather model, but we'll look into that later...
Because of the rain I will take the ferry from the island of
Fehmarn to the island of
Lolland this morning. I am off at 0900 and the
75 km from Eutin to the ferry terminal are good fun - I see a few road blockages, but none of them is on my route. By
1015 hours I am at the ferry. The next sailing is at 1045 hours. At the precise time the ferry company employee
with the remote control
for the traffic lights above the lanes of the waiting vehicles opens lanes two to seven (I am alone in lane one where motorbikes
are always placed as they have to board the ship first). Next the campervans get the green light, then the trucks. It dawns
on me that the guy with the remote got it all wrong, so I just drive through the red lights onto the boat. Imagine that
you had a job where all you ever had to do was to press a single button - and now imagine screwing that one up.
Anyway, I am on board. The distance is just over 10 nautical miles, so assuming the ferry does 26 knots you'd expect them
to get you over that little hop in well under 30 minutes. Wrong, for my 54 Euros I get a mini-cruise lasting nearly an
hour, the ferry is creeping through the water with the speed of a canal barge through the
Caen Hill locks.
After this however the fun starts; Denmark's roads are entirely free of any potholes, road blockages, idiotic speed restrictions caused by the utter state of disrepair of the road or any other of the endless array of annoyances that the third world banana republic formerly known as Germany incessantly throws at us frustrated bikers. Sure, Denmark is densely populated, but proper traffic management and keeping your roads in good repair can make biking such a place sheer bliss - it being Sunday and therefore having no trucks on the roads did however help a lot, too.
Those 250 km though the Danish islands of Lolland and Zealand under these circumstances are a breeze and by 1500 hours I am in Helsingør and board the ferry to Sweden. Before 1600 hours I am on the far side and continue my route eastwards. The hotel I end up in today is one of the weirdest places ever; my GPS lists it as the "Best Western Klippan" hotel in the town of the same name, but the place has certainly seen better times. The landlady is clearly in the early stages of intoxication, no one speaks anything except Swedish and the room has the flair of a youth hostel. The room price of 499 Kronas (less than 50 Euros) is also so laughably low - at least for Sweden - resulting in me getting rather curious if my bike will still be present in the parking lot of the hotel tomorrow morning. Here is a snapshot of the place:
The weather forecast indicates - aside from the bad weather heading for central Europe later this week - that I am in the best place for motorbiking at the moment. Have a look at how hot it is supposed to get tomorrow in mainland Europe as compared to southern Sweden:
I didn't sleep too well last night, mainly because the window doesn't close properly and from 0400 hours onward a
myriad of trucks from the local paper-mill is passing by. To my surprise Tigger is still in the parking lot and nothing is missing.
I don't want to push my luck, so I skip the hotel breakfast and am under way by 0830 hours
When I proudly presented the temperature chart yesterday I ignored one aspect of the cooler Scandinavian airmass; it is 8
degrees centigrade when I leave Klippan. This meant that for the first time during this entire voyage I had to open my
bag with the cold weather gear and get some extra layers plus the heated gloves out. In spite of that it is still rather
nippy and twice I stop for a warm-up break, basking in the glorious sunshine. By noon I stop in the small hamlet of
Korsberga and have a lunch-break to offset
for the missed breakfast.
That very soon proves to be a less than bright idea; not being used to lunches the food together with the lack of sleep
makes me dangerously tired. An
hour onward I am about to fall asleep on the bike - not a good idea at 100 kph. I stop again, this time at
Ingatorp, at a small
coffee shop. 30 Kronas buy me two huge mugs of strong, black coffee - and after that the tiredness is immediately gone.
The temperature has also increased to a very comfortable 21 to 23 degrees - perfect for motorbiking. Needless to say that the roads
are also just perfect, empty and the nearest pothole from here is a ferry ride away on the European mainland. My destination for
today is the harbour town of
Västervik, but instead of heading there directly
on highway 40 I take a scenic diversion north
via Åtvidaberg. Even the smallest byroad is in
perfect nick and simply great to bike. Around every corner is another
beautiful spot where one wants to stop and relax. Here is an example from near
Kisa:
Shortly before arriving at my destination, just outside of Överum another stop is up, though this time not for the scenery; the Swedish cops are on the lookout for drunk drivers. Given that it is 1630 hours that tells a lot about Swedish drinking habits. I get the "all clear", a recommendation for the best hotel in Västervik plus the permission to take a snapshot:
By 1700 hours I am in Västervik - that was the easiest and most enjoyable 500 km of the entire trip. My "cop connection" gets me a very nice room at the "Centralhotellet" for 900 instead of the usual 1350 Kronas - I suppose it is safe to say that even the cops in Sweden are more useful then elsewhere. What a terrific day.
I am off at 0830 hours this morning. After just about 60 km the GPS goes on the fritz. It's not that it is malfunctioning,
it simply goes into a mode whereby it no longer routes and instead shows "approaching" all the time on the screen. I know this
condition; reboot won't help, the only thing possible is to let it recalculate the route. This of course gives me the two
options "faster time" or "shorter distance". The recalculated "faster time" route then guides me most of the way I came
along on the outward ride.
The only other alternative is to delete all pre-planned routes, get the laptop out and re-generate the route from scratch, as
even re-uploading the already planned route usually won't fix the software bug in the device firmware. Someone yet has to
design a GPS unit that is up to my (and probably most other bikers) standards - they all are crap, without exception,
consisting of cheap hardware botched together by some underpaid slaves in some poor country and fitted with software
written by infantile monkeys that know as much about motorbiking as I do about flea picking.
Given the good condition of the road I am back in Helsinborg by 1400 hours. There is no waiting at the ferry, I arrive at 1412 hours at the terminal and by 1415 I am on board and the ship is leaving the harbour. I meet two Swiss bikers, father & son, on the boat:
When I mention "biking through Germany" they shake their heads in abhorrence; "Who needs that crap?" I am told, "We
get our bikes on the train from Hamburg to Basel. We'll certainly not ride through THAT country."
Well, I can't blame them - however, I am here to ride my bike, not the train, even though if it's through a rathole
of a place like Germany.
Once in Denmark the GPS decides that it would be a jolly good idea to switch itself into "shortest distance" mode
without so much as a beep to tell. After an initially enjoyable ride along the coast it dawns on me that something is afoot
when this pinnacle of US engineering decides to guide me through downtown
Copenhagen.
I know when I have been beaten by an incompetent firmware programmer and call it a day a few miles on at
Solrød Strand. But all
hotels are full - apparently there are a few huge conferences going on in Copenhagen and the "overspill" has booked
all rooms around the Danish capital solid for weeks in advance. So I ride to
Roskilde instead, a town to the northwest 20 km
away. The hotel "Prinsden" in town is a three star place that has seen better times and is in dire need of refurbishing.
I get their second-last room - for 2100
Danish crowns. You can work out for yourself how much that
is in your
currency. If I had to live in overcrowded Denmark, then I'd open a hotel here - I'd be stinking rich in no time.
I have diner at a pizza parlour around the corner. The guys in there speak a very peculiar language, which turns out to
be
Aramaic; the guys running the place are expat
Assyrian catholics - I suppose Danes must be like heaven compared to those
neighbours from hell these guys have in their homeland.
After all not as good a day as yesterday, but I still covered another respectable 500 km in spite of the GPS gremlins.
A hard reset followed by a re-installation of the firmware has hopefully sorted the GPS problem - at least for a while. I am off
at 0800 hours and the final 150 km from Roskilde to the ferry port at
Rødby is a breeze - the temperature is ideal and the roads
are good. By 1015 hours I am at the port, the next sailing is at 1045 hours. While waiting for the boat I meet Thorsten, a German
biker from
Hamburg and his
Triumph Sprint 900.
In that company the one hour trip on that slow ferry passes quickly. Once in Germany I take the motorway to Lübeck - the surface
of that motorway is in parts so worn out that a speed limit of 60 kph is enforced. Once out of the range of the sea breeze the
temperature climbs up and hits 32 degrees during the afternoon. My ride south continues on the B4
federal trunk road - and only once, near
Gifhorn, is that road completely blocked. In spite of
the ferry ride I again manage
500 km today and end the day at a comfy hotel in
Salzgitter,
Lower Saxony. From tomorrow onward I will have to watch the sky
again very carefully as the bad weather is going to move into Germany from the south-west.
I am off at 0900 hours. Having diverted from the main road I was on at the time (the B248) to get to the hotel yesterday I have plotted a connecting route that will get me back to that route - only to find after two miles that L472 road I intended to take is blocked for all traffic for refurbishing. Two more road blockages on the first 100 km of today's ride convince me to try my luck with the famed German motorway, in my case the A7. So after biking down the B27 (which was in fairly good condition) I take the A7 from Fulda onward and stay on the motorway for nearly 500 km until I reach Switzerland. I am lucky and all traffic jams I see on the motorway are in the opposite direction, so by 1900 hours I am back home after a final 740 km. The sky is looking threatening when I arrive, but I make it in the dry all the way.
Below is the usual map with my GPS tracklog.