Czech Points.

Hello from Zatec!!

The aliens have landed and they brought bicycles and they speak in a language you don't understand and they are soaking wet and seem not to care about it... but don't worry, we don't understand you either:)

Just 35 kms away to our next parrrrty!!
Did we say that the location of the festival changed and this meant 90 extra kilometers for us? Well, we are making it on time and even too early as the first part of the route was luckily quite flat and our legs stopped suffering weeks ago. Really in the mood to dance and dance and dance...

General impressions: this country is just beautiful. 50 shades of green, should be the name of this post. Except for the gray road, the sky and some occasional yellow fields, all we see is green. Nice hills, awesome silhouettes of mountains in the horizon, little colorful villages with bars where locals smoke their cigarettes and speak loud while drinking their beers or tasty coffees. Great!

Last night we camped almost for free in a small spot of grass among the bungalows of a strange camping that was closed or going under reparation or something. It was a very hobo camping, with everything sort of falling apart and three sheep that seemed to enjoy our company as they replied when one of us talked. There were also millions of mini frogs camouflaged in the grass and jumping in all directions, pretty weird as their movement made the ground look unsteady, wouldn't want to be on acid here.

It seems that the sun made a bet with the rain and the rain won- we have really been hit hard today. We were close to calling the fireguards for help so they could pump the water out of our shoes.
The temperature dropped like 20 degrees in the last two days, but we didn't really care as we were too busy cursing these damned beautiful fucking mountains we are trying to cross, or conquer, as our dear friend couchsurfer Frank would say :)

Now, what can I say more about this country? I feel at home. If ever I was bipolar, this country is too, changing from good roads to holes with a little asphalt around them, going to tourist information points where they have never heard of English to buying cigarettes and getting a full reply in clean standard English, from sun to rain and rain to sun, from thinking that Czechs don't know how to smile to seeing one so big that I feared he was going to stay in a perpetual smile.

Yeah yeah, promises promises... I went in and they didn't want to sell me any drugs and there were no tits neither... It reminds me of the time I went to a coffee shop in Rotterdam and asked for a coffee and instead they gave me a tea :)

 YES

 AH yes!!  Maybe some of you already know that we are making a bit of promotion for LOST THEORY FESTIVAL (14-19 AUGUST, DERINGAJ, CROATIA: wicked line up, more than beautiful location and great people). But what some of you may not know is that when you decide to accompany us you can get a discount on your ticket at the gate, depending on the kms you have biked with us!! There is also a little contest going on where we can give away one free ticket to whoever finds us @ VIBE and SUN festivals!!! Good luck!! (we won't accept bribes unless they are drinkable or smokable and preferably in large amounts ;) Just kidding... euh, or not, this is confusing... Anyway, you know what we are getting at here, just be the first one finding us). ONE ticket per festival, so practice on your Where is Waldo books and come find us!

That's about it for the moment. I am sure that you want to hear more exciting stories from these tipsy gipsies and their crazy adventures, but at the end we are just plain boring humans and we need to sleep except when full power partying, crazy bicycling in the rain with big freaking trucks passing us by and f...ing a lot (farting, of course, what were you guys thinking?!)

Buenas noches, good night, sleep well...

Mountains (real size mountains, not what Belgians call mountains) and a Dutch colony in Czech Republic.

Yeah, we crossed the border! A new country that welcomes us with a young tourist who asked us permission to take a photo because he liked our style; which is everything but professional cyclist like apparently. So it was flat, with some nice not very hard hills until the real fun started some kms after tasting the local beer…

Traffic signs and about everything else has become complete nonsense for us now, one of the only things we still can read is w.c, which is quite handy off course.

Due to our pre trip fear to check the geography of our route, we had some nice nasty surprises. Eleven extra kms to reach a camping is not a good idea now we entered the mountains!! On exchange of pushing the bicycles uphill for looooong time, we got amazing views, charming villages, little roads and a refreshing speeding way down to the other side of the mountain afterwards.

And that is when we bumped into the Dutch colony of the camping we are at now. It used to be a farm and it was bought and renovated by two Dutch couples and everybody but us comes from Holland, although a lady told us yesterday that there was a group of Belgian hippies somewhere (he thought Kelly was part of that of pierced and tattooed crew and told him not to be sad about leaving tomorrow). Other than that, here we are. Maybe staying an extra day to enjoy the swimming pool and recover from yesterday's mountain crossing.

PS We have just seen that our next festival has changed location (one week before it starts, just crazy) and this means 80 more kms... Staying by the pool anyway :)

Wind tunnel, fire ants and camping preppers.

Moving on slowly and fast after the second big stop of the trip and the party, in this strange way of treasuring memories while pedaling.

We are good, readjusting to the heat and the stickiness of the sunscreen-sweat cocktail. The ants seemed to enjoy it when we camped three nights ago as they basically ate the two of us alive and the bites are still itchy sometimes. It sucks.

Biking in the rain or the heat can't be avoided at some point and, once again, when you travel basic you also get to appreciate the basic better = tunnels and bridges provide shelter! And what a bridge we found, man! Under the road, part of the bicycle lane and perfectly positioned for it to be the closest to a wind tunnel we've ever been to! Sweat dried immediately and we stayed one hour just enjoying the hoboshade there...

 

A couple of days ago we arrived to a camping by a lake where you can actually swim. We waited for people to leave the beach area and by the time we got in the water, almost round moon was above our heads. The water was warm and the bath was really enjoyable, with violins in the background and swans racing us with their little fluffy babies behind.

The neighbors in the camping area were again old people in motorhomes who looked at us with mixed feelings of pity and admiration. At some point they started to put everything inside and a woman came to warn us from the coming storm (hail, lightnings, possible flooding, heavy rain and crazy wind) expected for the night. We thanked them politely but assumed she exaggerated. Well, she did not. But we had some fun time all throughout the storm, lol, so no stress for us :)

Sunny morning and clean air after the rain. Here we are, 130 kms and 6 days away from the location of our second festival, planning to go for another swim and even a shower while all the things that got wet inside the tent last night get dried up.

Happiness is a warm gun, Kelly sings.

One month and more than 1000 kms later...

Hello, hello, dear followers,

Such a long time ago that we had some contact. By now you all must think we have finally been kidnapped by these hungry hippies we were talking about earlier in this blog.
Or maybe that we have been washed away by this great German flood, but non of that happened .
Here we are alive and well, dry and happy, with our tent in the shadow of an old castle, where we are camping in the garden of our two new friends Mick and Annete and their dog.

Lots of things have happened since our last entry in the blog i guess, although i cannot remember them that well :)

We did decide to ditch the bicycle trailer in the pension we stayed at in Wurzen and I must say that it was a good decision. I feel a little naked now while biking, but it feels, oh, so good and light, no more paranoia that something will break or at least that it will be the fault of keeping the trailer.
We gave it as a present to our somewhat baffled non English speaking pension host, together with some other stuff.
He would use it for doing his shopping and so on…
Happy we didn't need to throw it in the trash
When we left he wanted to give us some money and we of course, slightly offended, didn't accept the money ,
I mean, doesn't he see that we are two happy hippies here, that we spit on the color of money and all that goes with it?
Motherfucker, that was all I was thinking when I saw these euro bills in his hands. The rest of the day I spent cursing myself for not accepting it, as paying food is actually nice, having money for spoiling yourself is not a sin and having 40 euros in the pocket doesn't necessarily makes you a capitalist :)

Hope he enjoys it :)

The sun finally came thru for us. All this water our friends in the sky have poured upon poor Germany and his neighbors is starting to evaporate. Maybe Baby Jesus was sad, maybe Mother God had a crisis or God the Father had a little problem himself. Little do they now that when they cry in heaven we all start to drown down here. Happy they solved it up there before we needed to send for Noah.

The way from Wurzen to here was really cool as our dear gps made us follow these asphalted roads that go through never-ending pine forests and where only bicycles and people are allowed and the smell of the trees fills your nose while pedaling nicely in the shade… And suddenly, after 10 kms around a massive new artificial lake built by refilling an old open air mine, we got to Göritz, our second objective in the trip!!! This is where the Goa Gill party is happening tonight and that is all about it as there are 4 registered inhabitants in the village. But this is where we bumped into Annete and Mick that is how we ended camping in the gardens of the castle :) They truly are nice people! We go with them to the party tonight.

Party? What's that? We haven't partied in a month, babes. Let's see if we remember how to do it. It cannot all be about pedaling and playing Scrabble before falling asleep in the arms of Mother Nature...

Are there wolves in Germany, by the way? Got to hear the strangest animal noises while free camping a few days ago. Whatever it was seemed to move around the other side of the forest incredibly fast. Maybe a wild ravenous dog? We concluded it was a Bigfoot, but don't tell anybody we believe such things. By the way, we've passed a lot of amazing places for UFO spotting, too, but no luck so far.

New component in our food basket: meerrettich. It is a white spicy paste made out of pickles. Pickles seem to be the local delicatessen in the Spreewälder area and they prepare them in many ways. This meerrettich brings a touch of fun as we are a bit tired of our usual three sorts of pesto with cheese. We manage to eat more or less different at dinner, but lunches get a bit monotone after almost a month :)

Hmmm… Toying around with the idea of having a camping one day. Dream, my little dreamer, dream. Our dreamt camping will make life much more agreeable for travelers like us, who have nothing but a tent and must pack it next day no matter what. Simple things we would have loved to find in a camping, especially when it was raining so much: a roofed area for tents, so they don't get wet at night, and some sort of dry sitting room to read or check emails or do whatever until bed time as not everybody travels in a comfy motorhome. We would also have a party area, but that's another story :)

These two transition days between the biking and the partying are being definitely enjoyed with out hosts and the sun and the reading and the walks in the gardens of the castle or around the lake and with yesterdays' sightseeing by car and all the easy talking and beer drinking. We also met a big heavy metal follower last night too. It was really cool when he began howling and addressing someone from AC/DC who is apparently dead as he was waving his arms in the air while saying "RIP, friend, RIP". He made us promise a visit this morning. We are wondering if he will remember us, we'll see as we'll go over there in a while :)

German does not sound so much like Chinese anymore.
And did you know that kebab is a German invention, and that billig doesn't only mean cheap but also bad quality and it's better to say gunstig?

Ah, and a little story from our host that I find hard to believe: he claims that GoaGill, who is known for making 24 hrs long dj set, sometimes puts a mechanical puppet after the decks when he wants to go and rest or eat or so. I've burst into laughter, couldn't believe what i was hearing :)
He said it is the truth, because Gill is getting a day older…
What can I say, I think Gill will have two freaks staring at him, all night long, staring, staring, staring … until the truth is revealed!!!

For the rest nothing much has happened. I think i finally cracked the Da Vinci code, advanced in my space time machine blueprints and constructed a model for world peace which i need to hand over to right people, of course. The usual stuff…

To all of our friends and family, we miss you. To our followers, we don't follow you back but your attention is deeply appreciated.
And to all the rest of you out there, fuck you
Ah no, sorry, i mean

PLUR :)

 

                

by by .... bicycle?

Hello from Wurzen!

We had no choice but making a longer stop here as yesterday morning, after only 8 kms, Kelly's ride just died and by the time we got to the bicycle store it was closed… So here we are waiting for the shop to open tomorrow and crossing fingers for a more or less quick and not too expensive solution…
It is a beautiful town which has also been affected by the flood, we tried to go to the swimming pool yesterday afternoon and it seems it will be closed a few more days due to its location near the river… We caught up with The Walking Dead season 3 last night, the good side of being stuck :)

Horrible accident yesterday. We were stopping in front of a traffic light when we saw someone flying in the air and crashing a road sign panel down before falling on the ground. It happened in a flash and people in the crossroads were so surprised and shocked that for a few seconds all went slow motion… We biked away feeling that other side of tragedy which makes us feel glad to still be around…

The past days we have been camping and not able to go online. Luckily we have not been evacuated from anywhere and we have only seen a lot of police keeping and eye on the river when pedaling across the city of Halle (Saale), where some tram lines were stopped and curious people stopped to take pictures of the flooded areas. So there were we! We had already found our first choice camping closed when we discovered that the second one would also be impossible to reach because of the water flooding the road... Sooooo... going on with the flow and leaving the city on the way to a potential sleeping place :)

Enjoying the attentions of some nice generous people we keep meeting on the way: an old man filled our bottle of water and gave us a beer together with directions, the people from the bicycle store gave Kelly new hand things for the handle, the mother and daughter who allowed us to leave our stuff in the garden yesterday and those who just wish us a good trip with a strange face when they get to know we are going all the way to Croatia :)

Counting down to Goa Gill, our first party, next weekend. Three weeks of sport and 9 hours sleep per night. Time to change that :)

Oh, almost forgot: from tomorrow on we are traveling a bit lighter as our dear trailer must stay behind because the weight is damaging Kelly' bike. This means there will be no light in the tent at night and we'll be changing clothes a bit less often and we will have to buy and drink the beers in the moment instead of carrying them around happily…

Another video with some pics :)