Vienna Verboten

the Danube

I've been looking at lots of maps since I got to Vienna yesterday. In the end I took a long-cut from Prague heading straight South on the Vltava, then Straight East on the Danube, instead of South East without any river. It added a couple of days but it is good to follow water; rivers are also going somewhere, coming from somewhere. And you can wash socks in them. The Danube goes all the way to the Black Sea and I have a decision to make. A cycle route follows its banks through Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. I picked up the path in Linz shortly after entering Austria, and for two days to Vienna I averaged almost 15 miles an hour. For those unaccustomed to loaded cycle touring, that's fast. Really it's a highway; fast, flat, signposted, easy. Slovenia, and Croatia have more or less opposite qualities. I could be in Istanbul in a month and a half, or I could spend indeterminate weeks struggling lost up sweaty hills with no obvious route beyond the Croatian coast. But I'm in no special hurry... I think the decision is made. 

the Vltava

Perhaps its just my ignorance in history but national borders always seem arbitrary to me. Nonetheless, the border between the Czech Republic and Austria pretended in every respect to mark a genuine distinction. Over a couple of kilometres the tarmac improved several grades,  the peoples' skin tone lightened several shades, the tractors became Audis and the farmyards vineyards. They'd even infused the breeze with marzipan and quince to mask the familiar base notes of horseshit and oilseed rape. But despite all this, the cooler air and now mountains looming afar, the most noticeable thing for me was the reappearance of my favourite German word on the signage - verboten. A different country altogether from anything-goes Czech where I happily camped in building sites and was right at home drinking tinned beer on the road from my bottle holders. Austria is genteel; expensively functional but a bit repressed. In Wachau province along the Danube every village is covered in roses, surrounded by vineyards and framed by castle ruins atop a scenic crag. And each is nicer than the one before until it becomes almost too much to bear. I struggled to find places to camp feeling I had to hide away from the healthy families out walking, the sturdy, milk-drinking children out practising sports everywhere. It is not the easiest place for tramping and wild camping; shitting in the woods doesn't feel right in Austria (and for sure it is verboten).

4 o'clock jobs in the Czech Republic

one of the castles on one of the crags

For now it feels good to stop in Vienna. I'm staying with an old friend Anna, who I met in almost another life on a beach in Thailand 8 years ago. She surprised me with strawberries and third trimester pregnancy. It's been good to rest up, catching up. So today I've seen some of the sights and all of the cafes in Vienna. History and art are everywhere again. I liked a plastercast olive tree in a white building amidst a rose garden, and the big, bright plastic couches scattered around the trendy areas. I went shopping - black paint for where my panniers chafe their racks and a tough new back tire. Tomorrow I'll go looking for a little aluminium hob-top espresso pot and since my flipflops failed in Prague I've an idea to swallow my pride and pick up a pair of Crocs. I understand they vent well, and might be just the job for evenings around the tent.... It is good to keep on top of my scant domestics.

Austria

leaving Czech

Praha Pivo

Thursday:


I'm sat in a park before a panorama of Prague. Above hangs a strange bunting of shoes on a cable suspended from the giant, functioning metronome to my left. To my right a scurry of red squirrels are practicing parkour. I am mildly hungover. Some of those shoes look new, testament to Prague's artistic streak (or didn't fit?). I'm tempted by some leather daps, they're slung low but I'd still need a triple, or at least a leg up. By the time I left, Germany was warm. The Czech Republic is scorching; crossing the border was not unlike stepping off a holiday plane. It is good to be in another country although I'll miss the functionality of everything German. And the language, not that I spoke it but after a month I could deliver my meagre range of bastard phrases with just enough confidence to invoke pitiful assitance. Back to square one with Czech. So it goes. I arrived in Prague last night, ditching Joe at the city limits to meet my couch surfing hosts Kamila and Ondrej at their local. The pub was out of Goulash so it was pork loin and mash with X amount of Pilsner before I slept on the absent flatmate's yoga matt. Perhaps tonight the yogi will return and I'll cook dinner for everybody. Even the most basic kitchen is a joy after my two pan camp stove plastic bag tupperware routine on the road. Meanwhile I'm waiting on a lunchtime rendezvous with Kamila and Ondrej. Gracious hosts are fast becoming a happy theme. After Bettina's tour of high culture in Dresden, the Gothic and the Baroque; the bombed and rebuilt, Felix and Kristine further indulged me with an equally edifying Saturday night concert party at an(other) anarchic but well organized Wagenplatz. Felix's band were great and I enjoyed seeing another functioning commune space. Tonight Ondrej will take me to a beer festival in the enormous Stromovka park; I am being spoilt (literally by beer). 

around the Czech border

soundchecking

Friday:


It was nice, then, to spend some time in company to whom I felt no debt. Joe was one of a trio of young men with laden bicycles I found convened over maps in a square in Litoměřice on Tuesday afternoon. The two Italians were headed for the Norwegian fjords by way of Dresden, Berlin and Hamburg. Joe the Frenchman, like me, is headed for Istanbul. Mapless again I was glad of the geography seminar, the mutual exchange of topographical experience. Alone again it was with more than a sense of politeness that I suggested to Joe that we ride together to Prague. There are of course different ways of going about cycle touring. I tend to be bashfully well equipped (except cartographically), enjoying the fact that all my gear is high spec and works very well, but careful to avoid discussions of its cost. Joe, au contraire, is proudly ill-equipped; waxing lyrical about the virtues of budget fleamarket kit, boasting his bargains but complaining incessantly about his myriad equipment failures. We rode slowly and I enjoyed his company. Perhaps we'll catch up en route Vienna.


There was something about the overwhelming potential of cities in a previous post. Looking at all the Italians' maps I started to feel that same kind of vertigo about the spaces in between them. There are so many roads to Istanbul! So yesterday in Prague I visited a map shop and am starting to feel a little more on top of things in that respect. It gets more difficult from here, with hills and heat (I burned through my shirt on Wednesday) so I am trying to engage with the problems responsibly. I have three maps, new suncream (thank you, Shiv, yours was indespensible) and even some mosquito repellant. In a few minutes I'll head South again, this time along the Vltava. First proper stop České Budějovice, aka Budwies - no prizes for guessing what they make there.


Oh and with sixteen days riding (I think) I´ve just hit 1000 miles on the odometer. I'm sticking with miles for now because I get a better rate of exchange against the roadsigns. 

bike crew

company

litres

Kafka

Praha

Dresden Dubweg

 It was tough leaving Berlin. In fact when I tried I made less than 20 miles, to a birthday party at a boat house on lake Sedinsee in Schmöckwitz. By misunderstanding I arrived some hours before Eva and Hiula who had invited me along. I didn't know the birthday girl, or any of the guests, I was wearing cycling shorts and jersey with my silly blue cap and still hadn't learnt to pronounce "excuse me" properly in German. Oh and on top of this I was kind of hope expecting a bed for the night. Soon I was happily ensconced next the lake with beers and mixed grill, Pablo the Ecuadorian Syphilis doctor and a young journalist intern from Burkina Faso whose name escapes me for a happy chat about Syphilis and the ambition of Africans given half a chance in Europe. Eva and Hiula arrived, wine and percussive Mexican music flowed and I slept top bunk in the dorm. Hospitality from strangers can be truly humbling. Sunday morning I said goodbyes to Eva & Hiula and bless them once again found myself pedalling off with tears in my eyes. It was a beautiful three days to Dresden. It seemed to me that the landscape changed somewhat, forest and wetland giving way to agriculture (Camomile fields in full bloom); flatland to faint contours. I had another dawn visit from another friendly farmer who was concerned that I might have been interfered with by pigs in the night. I don't recall.

'til next time, Eva & Hiula x

not a pig in sight

Camomile fields

chez Keyserlingk

Now I am in Dresden. As my hostess Bettina (Konrad's mother) pointedly said over dinner, "The first thing to know about Dresden is that it was destroyed." We didn't go into the by-whoms or whys, instead she told me about the surviving culture; Dixie music festivals and porcelain (produced locally since the 1700s, the formula having been discovered quite independent of the previous Chinese monopoly) famous paintings from August the Strong's personal collection, and a certain eccentric, bohemian spirit even through the old Communism. When Bettina arrived in 1991 there were still piles of rubble in the town centre. Cycling through town on Tuesday, happily along the Elbe again, I was struck by the harmony with which old met new. Admittedly I was riding pretty fast to keep just ahead of a thunderstorm, so I looked more carefully the next afternoon to see if that impression was born out by exploration. Bettina took me on a kind of cultural tour of galleries, museums and an exhibition opening. Many of the historic buildings have been painstakingly rebuilt and my surprise at the extent of the bombing was matched by admiration for the dedication and skill with which the reconstruction continues. Controversial bridges aside, Dresden looks a fine work in progress.

Thursday was Herren-tag, Men's day. Gangs of German men roam the countryside with trolleys of beer to sing and celebrate their masculinity. Not the best day to explore Sächsische Schweiz with Marie from Eschenhof, but we found some quiet spots and it was really special to arrive at my first properly foreign looking landscape. After 800 miles on the flat some hills felt a welcome development. Tonight I'll stay with Couchsurfing host, Felix. He is a member of "Dresden's finest reggae dub band", who'll perform somewhere in town this evening. I expect I'll get back on the bike tomorrow. Or Sunday. Perhaps Dresden will also be tough to leave.

the black stones are originals from the rubble

Waldschlösschen Bridge, ugly enough to lose Dresden's UNESCO World Heritage status

Berlin Multikulti

 I like Berlin. It is good to be here. Still I can't wait to get back on my bicycle tomorrow. Other than mileage and a general directional trajectory I'm not at all sure what my aims are for this trip. It is a question much easier to ignore (and perhaps, in solitude and mental quiet, to answer) if I keep moving. So the city stop-off, grand in culture and welcome in amenity as it may be, leaves me a little uncertain. I love the murals on the Berlin wall's remaining fragments and all they say for Berlin's character and resolve. I love the parks and street art. I love the Turkish markets and the German, Mexican, Swedish and English hospitality, the varied diet, the history and the zeitgeist, the bars and the beers in good company. The Multikulti. On Wednesday night I saw Dizraeli (from Bristol of course) and Lee Westwood do folk hip-hop with guile and guitars in the crypt beneath a Kreuzberg church and really it was excellent. On Thursday night I broke my Kindle screen and spent this morning on the Amazon, Parcelforce and Couchsurfer websites to arrange its replacement's delivery ahead of me to Dresden. In its frustrating way that was also excellent; efficient customer service, international logistics, my father's assumed good grace in postal errands and the promise of warm, Dresden hospitality combining to deliver a very useful tool to a willing host I've never met at an address I've never been. That's the theory, anyway. I guess it is the limitless potential of cities that leaves me uncertain. Perhaps it can take years of habit and routines, work, life, virtue and vice to even begin to navigate that potential. For me scooting around Berlin on the big yellow bike, even shielded with shades and headphones and faintly embarrasing technical clothing, it is a little overwhelming.  So I'll be glad to slip away tomorrow, bereft of ebooks and 3G internet, back into the excellent pine woods which I hope will line the roads bearing South.

out of the woods

Yesterday morning I woke up lost. Lost but with strength and purpose. Strength in sweet sleep and deep coffee, and purpose also twofold: avoid detection by breaking camp quickly and then establish my location and onward direction. The farmer (who from his moustache and get-up could just as well have been of the local militia), despite foiling my first purpose, quite obliged the second. Perhaps farmers have an inherent respect for early risers - he caught me wiping down the tent just gone 7am. Anyway I soon knew I was between Vehlgast and Damerow, just South East of Havelberg, and which way along the dykes would take me to Rhinow.

 I had left Havelberg the evening before in angry haste. Becoming enraged with a whole town just because its cobblestones rattle your panniers is clear indication that soon you should be stopping for the night. Stupid old town. So I took the wrong road on the wrong side of the river (Havelberg sits on a small island) and pigheadedly rode 15 miles through the woods still cursing the cobbles before giving up, lost, to sleep it off. But yesterday there were many helpful directions, notably from a man whose electronic voicebox whirring to life in sync with his precise gesticulations gave such a perfect impression of a cyborg that in my dawn mental fog I twice checked his limbs for some sign of a titanium skeleton. There were also two groups of deaf (or Deaf?) cyclists both of whom excelled at directing me. Anyway I made the 70 odd miles to Wustermark or wherever it was by midafternoon and skipped a train into central Berlin. Cheating perhaps; I had no map for the city and the motorways were increasingly getting in the way. Have a look at Emily Chappell's blog for a far less compromising cyclist!

I enjoyed riding along the Elbe, chasing deer and hares and looking at the big birds.

Less the Havel which seemed to me more a mess of a tributaries and impassable wetland than an actual river. It is good to be indoors, staying with German Eva (who I met at Eschenhof) and Mexican Hiula, just 10 minutes ride from the central train station. They are not only gracious hosts but have a washing machine and a PC computer...

green pastures

leaving Eschenhof

 Yesterday afternoon I finally recieved my tent's 'footprint' at

Echenhof, the commune in Hamburg. The package's absence had been a

happy excuse to stop a week there, not that I needed one, or to rest

any particular fatigue - I'd only ridden 6 days before. Really I

stayed just because it was such a pleasant and inspiring environment;

six days flew. I must've spent 6 or 7 hours each day working on their

various construction jobs and amost as many eating of the excellent

and apparently infinite vegan banquet that was in a constant state of

being served to residents, guests, workers and indeed hangers on

alike. As well as gorging it was also good to learn how to use a

chainsaw, to give my two bits towards the tricky extrication of

failing ceiling joists in the barn and to install their replacements.

By night we had fires in the courtyard, wine and shandy; once to the

pictures in town; twice out dancing. May Day was of course a holiday

for the anarchists (the whole of Hamburg also) and was accordingly

blessed with full summer sunshine. I rode the hour into town, via a

quick swim in the Elbe, for sightseeing. I followed the 'Euro May Day'

parade for a bit (like a family friendly alternative to the hardercore

protests going on - still with placards and soundsystems but without

the kettling and baton charges) and thoroughly enjoyed exploring a

city where cycling is evidently completely mainstream. It was also a

joy to relax into riding one of Eschenhof's old and unladen guest

bikes; fun like a toy after a few days on mine with its ridiculous

load and spec. 

kindred?

But it was an equal joy to settle back into my own (rather fine)
saddle this morning and to start heading South East along the Elbe. As
I write this, sprawled between the thin young forest of my camp and
green pastures sloping to the river, I am being barked at by a small
stag. He quite surprised me having snuck right up to within 20 metres.
I didn't know they barked. In the time its taken me to write that down
(the Kindle 3G makes a clumsy typist of me) he's circled back into the
woods and is crashing about and barking somewhere close behind
me. I hope he's not calling his mates for a midnight goring. Actually
the wildlife has been ace today (mosquitos and headburrowing, blood
sucking forest ticks (yes, just near my groin) excepting): loads of deer
and massive birds and hares even. It is nice to be out amongst it.

In other good news I got a huge haul of food out of the supermarket
bins in Bleckede. I hadn't thought to look anywhere yet but I will do
now and if it's that good regularly my outgoings will be almost nil
once I've invested in a trailer to tow all the food...

So anyway I'll add some photos to this once I get to a computer
somewhere, Berlin next week probably. Its totally dark now and the
barker is back so I'm gonna go hunt him.

farrahd frei

After the farewell fanfare I managed to drum up in Bristol it was in the end quite a sedate send off from Norwich, a hug from Mum at the front gate; Dad immediately cycling off out the back gate as always taking the long way round the block onto Earlham Green Lane. We took it very steady to Harwich, cycling just 40 flat miles each day and entirely missing both the afternoon rains. We spent Saturday afternoon picking crud from shoes and brake calipers after a comically muddy track into our woodland camp outside Ipswich made a mockery of my pre-trip polishing. We arrived by 2pm Sunday and spent a couple of hours squatting in a bike shed servicing my stove before the ferry check in. It was good to have the time with Dad.

Sleep surprised me on the ferry and made for a short crossing. I left Esbjerg twice on Monday afternoon. Suffice to say the second time I chose the clearly signposted and perfectly engineered cycle routes over the rather less agreeable motorway. Headwinds, rain and serial punctures conspired against my confidence along Denmark's Southern Jutland. But there were also rainbows, miles of majestic wind turbines (like something from a sci-fi ecotopia it seemed to me) and as the showers relented I found a perfect camp spot between lake and seawall; just in time to witness an enormous red sunset with macaroni, stew and cognac. Birdwatching is big in Denmark and I saw a few special looking ones on the wetland around that lake.

Tuesday was a long day, just shy of 85 miles once I'd met Marlena at Husum train station and found a quiet verge to pitch the tent quite in the urgency of nightfall. Marlena is an old friend of an old friend who responded to me inviting myself to stay at her place in Hamburg (more of which later perhaps) by inviting herself to join me in cycling down the North sea coast for a couple of days. In fact we didn't even see the sea, Marlena suggested instead that we head inland to stop the night with a friend's parents in Gribbhohm. I still hadn't picked up a map and of course Marlena had forgotten hers, so we followed our noses and the directions of various patient passers by - some people are skilled at giving directions; others enjoy it... beware the latter! 65 miles and four punctures in M's front tyre later, on the cusp of darkness, admidst a forest just South of the Baltic/North Sea shipping channel, we finally found Gribbhohm and in it M's friend's parent's country manor where we fed and slept. I shant go too far in describing the grandiosity of this particular manor house: they had a wine cellar, a forest, cattle and of course a peacock. The hospitality was immense and welcome, personal issue Crocs a nice touch for tired feet.

And then on to another big house in Hamburg. There are 17 fully grown anarchists and one baby living here, in an ex-derelict farmhouse compound thing near the river Elbe on the South Eastern outskirts of Hamburg. Apparently it was bought cooperatively three years ago and is unique in Hamburg. We arrived last night just in time for the start of one of their quarterly construction weeks. So having slept through the first two hours of work I spent the rest of today sheepishly helping to lift and install new ceiling joists in what will ultimately be the cafe area of the planned 'public space'. The organisation is impressive (a klaxon at lunchtime) it's good to see people making it work. I guess I'll stay here a few days working on the cafe and trying to dent the huge larder. Once the last piece of my new tent is finally shipped here I'll head South East along the Elbe cycle trail before making for Berlin.

kit's off

I had thought I would try to avoid waxing sentimental about leaving my friends in the fire service. Just as I would try to avoid choking on my thank yous, all snotty and tearful over the last ham and egg supper two nights ago.  But it has been emotional and I think I owe the Avonmouth Abandoned and all the rest a little space here (not least because some of you might even read it). Rather to my own discredit, when I was young in my (four year) career I vainly tried to maintain some kind of distinction between friends and colleagues. Of course there was no specific moment at which that silly illusion folded, just loads of increasingly good times as I became increasingly sure of you all. Gradually I realised work was somewhere people wanted me to be myself, and that was only thanks to you lot making it quite clear. Then came all the great times where (almost) every shift I’ve been happy to be there, the hand tennis and the boxing, the second day Friday nights stroke Saturday mornings, running jokes, japes and mixtapes and basically the whole unconditional vibe I’ve had from all of you ever since you helped me out of my shell. Not to mention of course the solemn and not at all calamitous cycle escort from fire station to train station for my last commute. So thank you, all, again. White 05 and the rest. I’ll leave it there else I’ll well up, again.