The art of taking it easy

I stroll down to the little supermarket to buy a bottle of water and three bannanas. These are my rations for later as I decide to go for an off road ride today up into the hills. I mount my bike and set off through the hills. It isnt long before two dogs decide they want to start chasing me. I get worried as they get very close and I dont want their heads to get caught in my back wheel as it would damage it. I turn back and check my map. There are little villages dotted up in the other hill's so I decided to go and ride through them. After an hour of riding I noticed a swelling of clouds heading in a North West direction which is the direction of Divin. So I raced back. Within twenty minutes of parking my bike up in the back garden the rain came. It was so excited it just could not wait until tonight.

Helena has a large, covered back porch which overlooks her garden. I sat there in my favourite wicker chair. I decided to turn my hand back to whittling wood which I quite enjoy as I brought a couple of whittling knives with me. Hours passed by until I realised how terrible I was at it and put it to one side. I sit back and relax. I have never been one to get bored easily, and even more so I hate to say the phrase "im bored".  I have always found it annoying being out with a group of people and when the atmosphere softens someone say's their bored. Can't they just be? Relax the mind, the body will follow and just enjoy the nothingness. Maybe those that are bored quickly have a short attention span or are not able to entertain themselves with their own thoughts... perhaps this is because they have nothing interesting to think about!

I sit for an hour or so in my wicker chair watching the rain. Im content. I think of that quote I read long ago

         Your true traveller find's boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty. His excessive freedom. He accept's his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically but almost with pleasure

Aldous Huxley

I take satisfaction in this and at the same time I have at the back of my mind a feeling that something will come along. Just relax and wait for it. 

Sure enough ten minutes later, the next door neighbour Luda pop's her head over the fence. Luda live's next door to Helena and she has been very kindly cooking me breakfast and feeding me randomly for the last three morning's. Luda is standing there in the pouring rain with two umbrella's. She points at me then at herself. She motions with her finger's a walking movement and then say's the word "cafe". My point exactly!

I slip on my flip flops, roll up my jeans and off we plod down the hill to the village in the pouring rain.

I must be able to speak maybe four or five words of Slovakia ńot including swear words and can not speak any english at all. However we have fun and laugh alot walking to the village. We learn eachother's age's, name's, that she has a son Michael who has worked in London for the last five years and his age, that she is a nurse and works in a hospital in neighbouring Lucenec, how I know Jan, Helena and my relationship with Rusty and so on. Despite language barrier's, a lot can be said with hand expressions, nodding and drawing pictures with your fingers!

It turn's out that her husband Stephan and her actually own the cafe that she has brought me to. Im quickly seated and made a large coffee and given cake. They wont let me pay for anything either. I finish my coffee and cake and spend some time discussing football with Stephan which of course I know nothing about and again he doesn't speak English so he can't tell. After me and Luda walk back over to the supermarket so she can do a little shopping. I carry it all back to her house for her where she invites me in and we go through her photo albums. She gives me a massive chunk of watermelon as a parting gift.

A few hour's later, the rain has stopped, the sun is shinning, im still sitting in my wicker chair, but this time im spitting watermelon seed's into the grass. I am content. The art of taking it easy...

That evening I decide to take a stroll back to the village, I go to my pizza restaurant and after to the supermarket to get supplies plus I want to see the supermarket women as I have been spending a bit of time in there. The women working in there remind me of school dinner ladies and that's how I refer to them. Everytime I go in I ask them random and simple questions, sometime's even question's that I know the answer to, just to make conversation. After 3 day's it has paid off. I am now one of them, I am now a dinner lady. I walk in and it's all "Allo's!!!" as it is late and there are no customer's we all gather round a till and chat, I have no idea what about as we dont understand eachother at all but again the hands and laughter does all of the talking. One of the dinner ladies grabs a packet of crisps from the shelf and we crack them open and pass them around... when a customer comes in, the secret crisps get hidden and we all go quiet like school kids... until they leave and then all of a sudden the place erupts in laughter. Actually I think I'll go see how their doing....

Hello Divin

So I have arrived in Divin, a small village in between Detva and Lucenec. Im here waiting for my Slovak friend Rusty to arrive from England with his bike. I have set up camp in his mothers back garden. She is also in England so my only company is Jan, his uncle... who along with nearly everybody in this village speaks not a single word of english.

At first, the people of Divin are not all smiles and even the women in the little supermarket are upset with me when I want to pay for a bottle of water with a 10 euro note. Well I have four days here so its my mission to make them smile by the end!

My camp in Helenas back garden, you can see my shower bag hung up to the right!

After collapsing the first night Jan decides to take me for a walk on the second day. We end up walking to the ruins of the Divin castle and enjoying the view.

  

I do quite like spending time here, In Helenas back garden. However, it is a bit weird being woken up at 7 in the morning to the sound of Abba and their Dancing Queen being blasted over the village loud speaker system. They have them dotted all over the village even up the hill where Jan lives so nobody misses out!

The weather in Divin is very strange. It is boiling hot during the day but as night draws in the clouds sweep over the village and the heavy rain, thunder and lightning all get together for a huge party over my tent. Divin, as is most of Slovakia, is covered and surrounded by hills and mountains so it can be difficult to see the rain clouds coming.

The village is super cheap, it is so cheap it makes me laugh when I pay for things. My favourite pizza restaurant here serves a large pizza, ham, cheese and herbs, large enough to fill me up and it comes to a grand total of TWO POUNDS and twenty pence. Crazy stuff.

Slovakia

As I enter Slovakia, the rain follows me. I look in my mirror and see it coming up fast behind me. Within twenty minutes it overtakes me and brings it friends thunder and lightning. I ride past Bratislava and head in a North Eastern direction. Using the Horizons Unlimited Website I found a lady called Julie who had moved to Slovakia from England and had emailed her a week or so ago about camping on her land. So I had a direction to head and potentially to get out of this storm. After an hour or so of riding the storm clears and my clothes finally dry. Obviously bear in mind that I only have jeans and my jacket is not what one would call waterproof. I ring Julie and she tells me how to get to her village Podluzany, but also says its raining and thundery there. To ride back into the storm or not? Why not! 

Finding the village

By the time I got there it had luckily cleared up. In a little village called Podluzany, somewhere in Slovakia I met the nicest most hospitable family I have ever met whilst travelling. The Talbots. Richard, Julie and their two children Jinx and Garett. Richard owns an motorcycle Enduro track in his back garden, a motorbike workshop and used to take people on off road tours up the mountains...Theres a horse, cant remember how many dogs and a couple of cats....

So the family take me in straight away and I get a meal, hot shower and a bed in the house to stay the night. The next day Richard performs a service on my bike and they invite me to stay another night. I really enjoy spending the time with the family and listening to their funny stories.

To be honest, and im sure they will agree, they are truly a crazy bunch but I do love them and they have really added to my trip. I do believe its not the places you go or the sites you see that you remember when travelling but the people you meet and friends you make. 

I left the next day, we bid our farewells. The sun was shining, I had my lid up and a big smile on my face. Not for long.... whack, straight into my eye goes a huge bug. Im used to flies and bugs in the eye but this one absoloutly stung like a *****. I pulled striaght over as it was painful, I squinted into the mirror and saw it wriggling about, I pulled it out and rinsed my eye with water. It took ten minutes before I could open it again. I rode on and checked it after another 5 minutes and wouldnt you know it it had stung my eye and made it swell up, I looked like bloody popeye. On I rode. I pulled over and had to release some oil from my bike. Sods law I drop the bolt and oil falls to the floor. I arrive back at the Talbots an hour later, a little red in the face. Thankfully the piss isnt taken too much, Richard fixes me up, tightens my exhaust and sets me back off on my way! 

Slovakia is stunning to ride through, even when I take the motorway the views are fantastic.

I decide that I want to see more of Slovakia and make my destination towards the Tatras mountains. I head closer but decide to ride past them to the castle Spissky Prodhradie... apparantly the largest in Europe! Again the roads are beautiful.

I make camp that night not too far from the castle.The next day I plan my route for Divin. A small village West of Lucenec as that is where a friend of mine is from. Once there my plan is to set up camp for a few days and wait for him to get here. That night camping near the castle, I meet Berty, a Dutch dude, cycling through Romania, Ukraine and Slovakia and I meet him again randomly out on the route through the mountains.

En route to Divin, I decide to only take mountain roads and veer of the main road whenever possible. It took the entire day to get to Divin but it was so worth it. The roads wound and bend all over the place. There were continuous inclines and declines. I was constantly turning and leaning the bike right over. It was biker heaven.
I did feel as though me and and my bike connected together a lot more yesterday. For the first time it felt a lot more real. Sounds gay but we were as one. 

Bamberg, Austria and into Slovakia

 I decided to stay another night with Clause in Bamberg. We met up with his uni friend and had a miniture tour of the place, drank coffee... you know, the usual. The night ended with more uni friends at Clause's, beers and films etc until 4am... good times!

So I made my way to the Austrian border the next morning, but as I left Clause's quite late I looked for a place to camp a few kilometres before the border. I had a few hundred miles of hard riding to the border so the day was purely filled with riding.

I ended up pulling off the motorway at a place called Deggendorf, it was 7pm and the sun was rolling behind the hill's. I found a campsite which looked like a nice place, it had a beer garden, lots of people, food being cooked etc. The chap told me it was 7 euro's for the night and without realising it I found myself politely saying "no thank you" and getting back on the bike and for some reason joining the motorway.

Only as I was riding on the autobahn did I realise why I had said no to the campsite... regardless of how appealing and easy it looked, it was not the experience I set out to find. Maybe staying in Clause's apartment had made me soft and it was still early days in my trip. If I started with the campsites now I would take them more often. Start as you mean to go on etc.

I pulled of a few kilometres away into a very remote farming area. I found a nice looking farm house and asked the farm hand if I could stay the night, as he spoke no english he fetched the farmer. The farmer spoke good English and said it was "no problem!". He showed me around, I met the hunter of the farm who showed me his gun which was very exciting! Twenty minutes later the farm hand comes out with beers. We sit there by my tent... me not knowing any German and him not knowing any English. But its funny how with a couple of beers, warm weather and the sun setting we understood each other perfectly. This was the experience I was searching for and the reason as to why I got back on my bike.

That night, I was scared. In England thunder and lightning has never, not once bothered me. Here it was absolutely intense and terrifying. I was counting the lightening at 6 miles away. It wasn't just mere flashes, you could see the bolts being whacked into the farmland all around me, as if Zeus himself was throwing lightening Javelins at me, but had a few too many beers so his shot's were on the piss. It absolutely bucketed it down, the thunder and lightning was continuous and lasted until 6 in the morning. Needless to say I did not sleep.

*Will post a picture of it soon*

By 7am, the rain had stopped, the thunder had passed and the sun came out. I staggered into the farm where I was quickly seated and made a massive late coffee. Followed by bread, Jam's, honey, fresh orange juice, sweets, apples, and 2 packed lunch's, also a selection of Bratwurst sausages. The kindness of strangers.

As I made my way to Austria, I pulled into a parking bay on the motorway for some lunch and to double check my map. There were a few people around but not many. As a biker with a ton of gear people do like to look. Which is no problem, they smile and say Allo! But there was one guy standing 15 metres away who I noticed was looking at me for a long time. He was Albino looking, had his arms continuously folded, shorts and a shirt. I fixed my eyes on him as I had a feeling he was after trouble... Suddenly out comes his tongue in the most perverse way. He was rotating it and licking his lips. Obviously being heterosexual this freaked me out. I’m not unaccustomed to homosexual advances and like to think I decline in a friendly way... but this guy was different. I shook my head at him... he continued... I looked away... he continued to stare... I shouted something over to him in a threatening way and he stuck his tongue out, he was not budging. If im honest I didn't know how to react. If he had come over and threatened me with violence I would know what to do... But in this case what the hell!? So I did what any straight man would do. Put my finger up and rode off.

Next stop Austria!

Again I find myself in someone's back garden. Drinking beers with the Austrian music maestro Gerrahd.

Currently in Slovakia, will take better photo's soon, and post when I have more time!

Bratwurst in Frankfurt

So I head into Frankfurt early Friday morning to stay at my friends house for the night in the city centre.

I use the day to catch up with with mail and to look over possible routes. The evening is spent walking around the city with Nina eating pizza, drinking wine and eating ice cream.... so I decide to stay another day!

The next day's spent lounging and eating Bratwurst at a music festival in the park.

Today im in lovely Bamberg drinking traditional 'smoked bear' and eating burgers with my friend Claus. Tomorrow.... Czech Republic I guess

The Greenhouse

After spending the night in Bernard, Peter and Ann's back garden, we have coffee in the morning and a long chat about the wonders of travel. Its a beautifully warm day and some of the neighbours decide to come and see me off with gifts of home-made sweet bread and chocolatey stuff... which of course is lovely of them. Farewell Belgium and Guten Morn Germany!!!


Im heading to Frankfurt to stay with a friend in the city centre but as I am terrible with city centres I decide to veer off the highway about 15 km before the centre and tackle it in the morning.


I find my way to loads of fields and farm land... when i spot a pretty looking house with 3 huge green house type things and plenty of grass. "Hello! can I sleep here tonight?"... "But of course!... put your bike in the green house as it will rain tonight!" Excellent!

99 Balloon's

Wednesday 6 July 2011


After having coffee with Piere in the morning I loaded the bike and set off. I calculated my route so that I would leave France as soon as possibe and get into Belgium as there are no toll roads and it's an easy route into Germany.


Warm weather, cool breeze, cruising at 70mph down the highway all day. Stopping off occassionaly for some fruit, water and sandwiches. I noticed the sheer amount of lorries and trucks and cars whacking up this particular Autostrada (E40). Im usually only cautious of the big lorries when they are in the middle lane and I have to overtake in the fast one as then I get some form of weird cross wind. But today im plodding along down the middle lane, singing at the top of my voice that 99 red balloon song... the really catchy one, but im singing it in German as I think there is a German cover of it?
   My handle bars snatch to the left and a car in the fast lane veers into the right. A car directly to the right of me swerves drastically... A shard of black rubber whacks into my visor followed by half a dozen smaller bits into my chest and right arm... A lorry about 10-15 metres ahead of me but in the slow lane suddenly had one of its tires burst. I was lucky as a few seconds later and I would have been right beside it and that would have been that! It sounded like a humongeous balloon being popped right next to your ear, thus making my bars snatch. It realeased a cloud of dust and debris which made those cars swerve and it made me whisper the rest of the made-up german words to 99 Luftballoons. My heart was beating like a Zulu drum all the way to the German border.


I felt I had done enough riding for one day and as I passed a particulary pretty slice of country side on my right, I decided to turn off and find a place to kip for the night. I pulled into a litle town about 20 km from the German border. I asked a woman who was walking with her son which direction those pretty green fields were and wouldn't you know it... 5 minutes later i'm setting up my tent in her 'magnific jarden'!

p.s If you are ever in Belgium and want to get to Germany and you are doing it with only maps be warned: For example...Your map may tell you that you are going to 'Liege' and thats (definately how its spelt), people may point you in the right direction but when you realise that none of the road signs ANYWHERE say Liege and you think you are going in the wrong direction... its because "Sorry Miseour, sometimes we spell it Liuk it is this confusing language system we have!"