I once was lost, but now im LOST forever.

Dear Diary,

We wonder if the lack of doors or curtains in the showers of the campings around Hungary is A: a long tradition of spa's or thermal waters or balneariums or B: just a clever way to make people take their showers faster… Some of these showers are collective rooms, which we explain by the fact that many campings are installed in recreation/ sport areas. Others are cabins without doors. It might make many of you fantasize with girls rubbing each other's backs and having experiences that mortal men will never understand or guys suffering to pick up their soap bars from the ground, but it happens to be a bit uncomfy. Not that we are shy here, but it just prevents us from showering together, so these philosophical conversations that usually take place under the water have to be postponed and then we try to reproduce these talks with a couple of cold beers and one thing leads to the other and we never manage to leave early. Not asking for an iron curtain, a simple cloth would do...

Leaving early is becoming important with the heat. Also with the extra 80 kms we have to do as we got a little bit confused with the location of the festival (again, lol). Because Csobanka is not the same than Csobankapusta, but our gps had no idea.We are okay, though. Enjoying a full moon on the right shore of the Danube after a mini ride on a ferry and ready to bike like crazy tomorrow as we wanna get to SUN one day earlier to mingle with the Belgian colony :)

Kelly wants to make another bonfire tonight. I told him there is no wood around and he replies he would burn an orphanage if his baby wanted a fire. I guess it is a very romantic statement, but somehow I don't manage to know whether loving it would be politically or any kind of correct or just totally immoral. Now that he sees I am writing about him, mouth full of the spiciest sausage in the whole freaking universe, he tells me to write about the fact that he is God, a God; it doesn't matter which one but he's the coolest of all of them up or down there. Which god, I wonder. Bacus probably, at this stage of the trip. Or St BEERnard. But no, all is about being Jesus Junior.
Whoever he thinks he is, he just got back from a spicy chorizo hallucination. And he is mumbling things like "I brained my damage" and "there are coyotes chasing me down the purple green highway of life" and "down is the only way to go if you want to go up". Sounds like Homer Simpson, doesn't it? Still it is a bit hard to convince him that he is not "the chosen one", that he will not "lead the path for the world's population towards salvation" and that in his footsteps there are no flowers sprouting.

We are developing a cat complex too, eating pate from aluminum containers. 

 But, once again, trying to innovate with budget meals after two months of traveling is not easy :) We usually have a nice meal for dinner, lunches are all about bread, pesto, spicy sauces, chorizo, cheese and pate. Miaow. Trying new rolling tobacco, though. Today's tastes and smells incredibly good: licorice.

Sitting by the Danube with the fort/ castle of Visegrad right in front of us. Simple luxury life here.

Just needing to party, we realized we were becoming a bit desperate last night, crossing the river just to get to the colored neon lights and the commercial background music. We expected a fantastic local party and found just a small fun ride, fair like, for children. Bummed. There was this nice little puticasa  /brothel at the other side of the road, and I'm pretty sure we could have had fine party over there, but the fact of the matter is we would have spent probably the half if not all of our budget there on a bottle of champagne and a half lap dance, just some more patience. Just two more days left :)

Aha,
Here I am, the One and Only and there are several of me.
Kelly Thomas Tabak, dj ShinChan aka the Tipsy Gypsy.
We really need to get to some kind of party soon. Maria and the rest of me's. All of us, I mean.
I'm sorry, multiple personalities, I seem to ignore all 20 of you from time to time, but that doesn't mean i don't love you, euh or me?
All this being kinda sober, bicycling and the nice environment make me go a little nuts, and a Kelly that goes a bit bonkers is inoffensive but a weird thing to see, so they say.
Singing out loud "I just want to fuck" and "I want sex and violence", while passing mothers and their offspring, and even with the little English they know, they all understand fuck, sex and violence. At least at a decent psytrance festival I can blend in, submerge in the crowd and fully enjoy my so beloved psychosis.

But let stay on track. After all this is a travel blog and a blog for professional bicycle enthusiasts.
I think that we are in one of the nicest areas we have been to for the moment, next to the Donau.
Lots of bicycle travelers here, it seems this is a very famous route. There are whole families on bikes, couples… coming from all over the flat earth to enjoy the Donau.

This morning we met amongst others a couple from Germany  that was wondering why in big letters it said LOST THEORY on our tent. Because we were speaking Spanish they thought we were part of the Indignados, the 1% movement as you all would know, and that we were traveling around to spread the word, bringing consciousness to the people...
Well, in a way they are right

We bring you the word
You're fucked
We are all fucked
but who doesn't know that, right?

But no, we are not part of any movement except the Anti bikers. We antibikers travel in cheap bicycles and carry no message at all, except bike and party till you drop and then keep biking to the next party. We anti bikers pedal cause we don't have a a reason to grow roots. We carry bread and pesto and wine and talk to everybody and play games before going to bed and enjoy looking at other people while they live their lives and sometimes we allow ourselves to dream of our own dreams, which never go beyond a next trip or tomorrow's destination. And we love being dramatic because life is a pantomime and we all can play roles and dance and sing ballads with made up lyrics.

So yes, fans, followers, and friends, this is what we do. The pure sadness and evil happiness on the road. Mile after mile, meter after meter. There is a full moon going on right now, right here.

Maria said we should procreate, I have no clue what she means, but it doesn't sound bad, I hope it has something to do with dinner or a video game or illicit chemicals. She says she is just gonna read her book. Gonna check the dictionary tomorrow, maybe I am missing something good? Or sleeping outside the tent to procreate on my own?

 SUN, there we go!!! Tonight or early tomorrow morning, depending on the amount of mountains we have to conquer :)

Two months and Hung(a)ry/ Hung(over)y for more :)

It is really cool when you bump into a lake on top of the mountain, with a couple of simple restaurants and a lot of space for free camping. And in Slovakia you can still make bonfires! So we got to this place and we stayed, had dinner and beer with the fishermen and their wives (yeah, you could somehow see them under their make up) and went to our tent and decided to start a fire just to be able to look at it before going to sleep. There were a pair of broken chairs behind a tree and we sat down there in search of the ghosts that manifest themselves in the flames. We only saw the Devil. There were shooting stars and a couple of drunkards that broke the otherwise too nice silent night by singing their lungs out.

 The Devil and meeeee...

It has been a good two months now on the road and it starts to feel like home and we start to wonder how home will feel like when we are back. Maybe we shouldn't go back at all, fabricate some kind of trailer- caravan to our bikes and just pedal the rest of the world happily ever after.
The only problem would be the money, we guess. I was thinking about some fraud or pyramid scheme that we could do along the way, but not speaking the local languages makes that idea a bit hard.
Maybe we should work, euh, brrrr, hell no!
I think i would prefer to adjust my systems to eating grass and leaves, like that guy from Into the Wild. I know it didn't end very well for him, but I guess he had a good time for a while and anyways Maria is not pedaling with me through Alaska, she says, so we would always have a doctor to heal us closer by than that poor guy…

People in Hungary seem to be more friendly for the moment, but we are in quite touristic areas next to the Danube, so you are never really sure how sincere it is.
The only way to go to the heart of a country is going deep into the wastelands of despair, where people don't see tourists yet, and they need to wake up @ 6 in the morning for their morning shot of vodka and then start to work the fields, construction sites or the streets in the case of some.
The friendliest people that we have met these last weeks were gipsies, in Slovakia. Marginalized,  crazy and spontaneous. They lived above the reception of what once maybe was a camping (we camped there) and shared the place with other men that lived there because they found no wives, as they said. We shared beers, cigarettes and a good laugh with the only help of a girl who spoke very basic English and the strong will to understand each other. One of the girls screamed in our ears and all of us had to explain her that we were not deaf, that speaking louder does not turn unknown languages into common ones. She made us believe she was pregnant and we were a bit shocked by the amount of beer and smoke she was swallowing down. It took her two hours to say that it was not true. Then she asked us if we fucked in the tent and other personal details that were considered just too much by her sister, who made her shut her mouth with the same killing glance she dedicated to her boyfriend when he tried to sell us the worse looking weed in the world. Nice people. Wishing them a lot of luck in their trip for work to Germany.

Hungary since yesterday. We crossed the border in a town called Komarno, which is divided by the Danube and each shore belongs to a country.

The Slovakian side was quite depressing. The Hungarian one was definitely more cheerful, had English speakers and bicycle lanes for a while. The river looked beautiful and we followed it directly to our nice camping spot. It was nice to wake up in front of it this morning. And we washed our clothes, which was a while ago now. One could say even a bit too long, I couldn't take my t-shirt off anymore without Maria''s help and mosquitos and flies don't even bother anymore to come to us. Maybe they are a bit confused as we smelled rotten but weren't quite dead yet.

Wondering what to do until SUN, still four days to go and just 55 kms. Maybe staying in this camping to be a bit lazy or pedaling 30 kms to see Ezstergom, which apparently was the former capital city in Hungary and it does not even look pretty in the postcards, but people talk quite a lot about it :)

Maybe we should add some fun facts about our trip, some figures like the things we have lost or given away or thrown away:

LOST THINGS: one sweater, money, a pump, ten kilos of body fat, morals, my passport, Maria's underwear, Maria's flip flops, Maria's shoes, Maria's earring (one), hopes, dreams, expectations, a knife and all the spoons...
GIVEN AWAY THINGS: the bicycle trailer, camping lamp, some spare tires, a book, Dafalgan, Atarax, money...
THROWN AWAY THINGS: lots of torn apart clothes, teapot for making coffee, cutlery, campinggas thing, money, rain ponchos, Kim's soup bowls (sorry, Kim)...
GAINED THINGS:muscles, stamina, fluorescent vests, friends all over this part of the world, pocket lamp, headlamp...

We crossed 6 borders (2 more to cross, really looking forward to Bosnia), went to 3 festivals (still 2 more to go to, not counting the unexpected ones), had 3 flat tires until now, 2 new gearboxes, 2 new rear axles, 3 weeks of rain in Belgium, Holland and Germany (including floods), never got lost anywhere (ok, we did, even with a gps), had 1 terrible accident, crossed uncountable mountainranges, survived starvation, beeing sucked dry by mosquitos, terriefied by lots of trucks and spoiled by extremely kind people: THANKS Annett and Mich, Frank the couchsurfer, the man that lives in Buggenhout and let us sleep in his garage, gipsy friends, Celine and boyfriend, the vikings, Ramed, Mad Max Zukh, God, Baby Jesus who hangs around everywhere by the roads, opened arms and looking quite uncomfy in his cross and their counterpart the Devil...

Thanks to all of you for the shared moments.
Hey, we are just a bit emotional here, this is not a farewell. More blog to come :)

Psycycle Express, the soundtrack ... by DJ Duende.

https://soundcloud.com/duende/fade-to-after-a-psycicle

Thanks to David aka DJ Duende aka my brother who lightens up the road for us and illuminates the sky with rainbows, lollypops and fluffly pink clouds to rest our heads on :)
Thanks!

Paradise Lost!

Here we are again! We know, we know, it has been a while... We were too busy drinking mojitos by the lake while recovering from a too close encounter with Czech asphalt.

It was kind of exciting, with blood and broken bones, guts splashing everywhere, cars topped over  and the vultures gathering to pick up what was left of Maria from the floor. I chased them away and put the pieces in a plastic Lidl bag, went to the camping and puzzled her back together. And here she is, sitting next to me with an arm for a leg and her head backwards on her shoulders (I was never good in puzzles, you know), but she as pretty as always and when you point at her knee she jumps 2 meters high.

Buuuuutt annyywaaaayyy... Here we are again, hitting the roads, better then ever, faster then before!
See you later Lance Armstrong, hasta la vista Eddy Merckx and please join us Pantani in the sky :)
You can even bring your doping and professional bikes, you will never beat team Maria+Kelly shortly to be nicknamed team MK ULTRA.
Next year on our way to Lost Theory we'll enter the Tour de France and probably will finish two days before the rest of the cyclists make it on the top of the first coll.
HA!

The recovery took place in parts because we are not used to stay in the same place longer than two nights and so we left a hostel to move to a camping nearby, which is where the mojito adventure took place... And then we kept going, with enough time and speed (velocity, i mean) to drive by the Austrian village where Paradise Festival took place right on the last day, being passed in the road by tired happy hippies in their vans... Quite frustrating, wishing I had fallen down a couple of days earlier or not fallen at all, natuurlijk, but okay...

On exchange for not letting us in, God sent us to a wine making region of Austria and we ended up in a camping where the receptionist giggled in a way that was very familiar to us (sort of psychotic laugh of somebody who drinks slow but consistently). We told him we'd love to buy some wine as we saw we were in a wine region and he switched himself on: like a wizard, he produced two glasses and four bottles out of the fridge behind the counter...
So it is a funny thing: you want to buy a bottle, but he will not sell it to you unless you have some full glasses of tasters (i mean FULL, nothing of that sissyshit drop of wine for the connoisseurs). Full glasses man, we had probably a bottle of tasting. Then we bought one and then he just gave one for free for the sake of...?? What the hell, just because he is the freaking boss and he can do whatever he feels like :)
And, anyway ... we are still too young to go to paradise.

We should of course describe some nice scenery and events from the beautiful places we pass buy
so here they are: trees, roads, lakes, animals, castles, roads, sun, rain, euh , toothless bums, some more nice trees, roads then some more lakes, scary looking teenagers trying parcour in an oxidated power tower, an old man in underwear trying to grab Maria's ass and another old alcoholic one hitting her on the head with a newspaper and that's about it. Nothing new under the sun.

We are really enjoying these countries where you can still smoke in bars and people start to drink @ 8 in the morning on a Sunday and have no problems in sharing their lives with us, in their language and  not giving a fuck if we understand them and if we just drink our coffees, nodding from time to time so they think we understand and empathize. Also it is supercool to be finally in a place where you can order a shot of strong spirits along your coffee, beer or water just to start the day and nobody looks at you like its something excessive to do...

In a couple of days it will be two months since we left Belgium. We have done around 2000 kms now and it feels good to know you only need a good reason, one or another, to keep going... There was a Turkish couple last night in our camping, biking from Berlin to Venice in order to get married there, another valid excuse to get up every morning to pedal like mad with the feeling of getting nowhere and being as lost and exhausted as always. Having an aim helps. There we go, SUN Festival!! :)

FEAR AND LOATHING IN CZECH REPUBLIC!

Here we are, and euh …We really start to wonder Tsjechie whats up with you? You guys seem to have parties all over the place, give a tired traveller a rest , please , i think I'm going mad :)
So there we were, going down hill enchanted by the view of the destination town there in the valley after spending one hour under the freaking tarp under the freaking rain under the freaking trees when we got thrilled at the sight of the camping sign… It even had a pool, wow!!! and it was cheap, and clean and had a bunch of people having fun and listening to music while bbqing and we had our cold beers and sandwiches and it was all perfect until now, 23h, and the drum and base party making us feel as crazy as if we were in a damn festival.Maybe they will finish the party soon as there are two party overdosed people here :) Or only one, Kelly says. But he had the privilege of finishing off my beer (the one i had not ordered, by the way). They are even playing the European national anthem. Crap, Kelly says, is there an European anthem? I thought that was a Carnival song. And we laugh, cause we are well humored people
 

HAHAHAHAHAHA :D

So it seems that when Kelly en Maria don't go to the party, the party comes to them. Babylon is chasing us and there is no rest for the wicked!!! We would love to embrace it and we would normally do that, but the extra efforts of making it all by bicycle plus the extra festival just the day before yesterday (plus the hangover day: we made it as far as 10 km, but we had to stop because the road seemed to go straight when it was very curvy and I've mistaken a red light for green more than one time ) are simply too much…
 

Oh, didn't we tell you about the extra festival we found just a few days after VIBE, called BREAKFEST?
So there we were, conquering this mountain in the hot sun, sweating, sticky and still not fully recovered from our last dancing excursion, when we heard music through the trees, right in the spot where we decided to have lunch.
And there they stood, colorfully shining in the sun: two french camper vans with matching technofreaks around it. 

 We were happy. Some company we think, we talk a bit, they ask something about breakfast. I go like "no, we are going to get lunch,  thank you , do you want some vodka, beer maybe?"
- No no if your are going to BREAKFEST ?

- What ?
- A festival. It's about 8 kilometers from here, straight and then in the next village you see signs.
Oh hell
………
Yeah, it took us two minutes to decide to make it there for one night: if you think about it a festival is just like a camping but with cool music and more people and dogs and we don't really have the obligation to party all night, right? We can just go a bit and go to sleep early, right? Sure we can do that...

A bit of talk at the gate and we entered with a nice price, so in we go... We really liked it, we didn't know anything from the djs or the music but it made us dance... We met some cool people and that is all we can remember. And now the idea of carrying vodka along the trip does not feel as appealing as before...

 

We've had GOA, a Breakcoretechno or whatever that was and now Drum and BASS mixed with local songs in a ten days period.
We are in the climax of our physical tiredness and our mental health screams for silence, just one night please!!!! Maybe its the moment to open the box of ear plugs... We need to sleep and it seems they need to party. Eh… Are we getting old or what?!

But then again, from a local BBQ to a full blown party is a cool thing to organize and to attend and the music is quite good and maybe we go to dance because after all it is never enough and... if they throw parties at you, what can one do? Maybe it is meant to be like this.

(Oh, gosh, how to write with the whole San Remo Festival repertoire as background music? HELP!)

What else? Ah, yeah, the state of our tent. Eh… Kelly took the promotion of our festival too seriously cause we run out of flyers and so he used black spray paint to write LOST THEORY in thick, capital letters in two sides of the tent. Maybe effective, but he regretted the morning after when we left the Festival and had to put the tent in a family camping.

 Until now the pesto stains made the tent look arty or just wet. Now we just look plain scary. We are slowly saying bye to our beloved tent as it will not survive this summer. It is not just about the graffiti but also about the fact the rain comes in and sleeping in a pool is not cool (nice rhyme, eh).

So to answer our own question, with which we ended the last blog entry: will we be able to do about a month without parties? Obviously not, it took us like three days to find another dance floor. Going to PARADISE Festival, too, by the way :)

Music has changed to happy hardcore now.

Some pics of the nice biking journey here!

Jesus Junior and the Master of Bukakke :)

So let's start of with a lost and found add here. To whoever has found my morals, decent behavior and what was left of my self respect @ Vibe festival, you can keep them, I haven't got much use for them anyway :)

Then the festival itself, it was just freaking great.
We arrived they day before and got some well deserved rest as the dance floor and actually the whole damned festival was on top of the mountain, and we had to use the last of our strength to get our vehicles up there. Almost fainted when the woman in the local shop said the festival was 20 ams away. Luckily she was wrong. Although we are still wondering if she did it on purpose cause she had had enough with all the crazy hippies invading the village…

But it started off good, real good :)
When we got out of our tent @ 7 in the morning we got a warm welcome by Thomas, the first of the vikings that we've met, with a beer in the hand. We spent the rest of the day exchanging local drinks with shady backgrounds, taking a stroll around town, we made a hold up on the only liquor store, scared the local children and deconstructed society…
What a nice group of vikings they are, I must say. Feeling a bit naked, they said, because customs didn't let them bring their axes and helmets, and a little disappointed because they heard that blood offering and baby kiling is not a monthly habit  here. No problem, I replied, there are always ways… And other interesting neighbors arrived along the day, like Samy, Dejan...
A big hug for Kinga, too, who almost made us blush by complementing our blog :)

                              

And so we got up to dance floor and didn't leave until 2 in the afternoon.The music in the first night was great: zenonesque and the likes of that i figure. I really enjoyed Pspiralife (happy he is coming to Lost Theory as well). Not one boring moment.
And some great atmosphere and views from up there.
The day after the music on the main floor wasn't really my cup of tea, so we hit the yellow tent stage. No idea what the official name was but it was a tent and it was yellow and there was music and they played full on- good enough for us and some other freaks to spend some crazy time, couldn't tell you who were the artists but they were great…

 

After that we needed some other rhythms (otherwise we would have simply dissolved into The Matrix) and hit the chill out stage, where Loopus in Fabula (as we learned afterwards) made us dance and have a lot of fun. I don't know if it was a live set, a dj set or just the musical manifestation of this guy's deepest emotions. If it was the last option, it seems to me that he must be a happy guy, really great, we loved it. And he is coming to Lost Theory, too, that's good news :)

So all by all and there moreover, it was great. Love and light and happiness and flowers and fairies all over the place. People getting lovestruck on the spot, friendships were formed, names were revealed and forgotten, magic rainbow moments were shared on, after, under and next to the dance floor. I'm just so happy and i swear its not the acid I dropped :)
The Vibe team has done a good job here and the attendees have loved it.

It took us a while to get back to our senses and to start breaking up camp.
We left Valec yesterday morning and enjoyed about 42 kms of mountains, hills, old and new valleys, fluffy clouds and charming villages. At some point we were talking about how difficult it would be if we tried to make a ranking of nice roads of this trip. Only since this morning we got a beauty shock with at least three of them… Today's winner was a more or less 2 kms long zigzag road somewhere between Blutno (Blatno?) and Zihli. It was narrow and running through an oak trees forest, shadowy and going down in an almost challenging way as it was quite high at the beginning and there were some rocks making the sides more interesting at the turns. It ended in the valley, with a really nice contrast of the blackish asphalt and the yellow fields. Awesome.

Now here we are, dazed and confused in Kralovice with the constant echo of the beats still lingering on, at a camping, in a bungalow that is dated back from before the Soviet era, I guess.
We had a beer while checking in when we arrived last night and bumped into a Belgian man who lives here in the camping and might have shady businesses as he was doing something to a cellphone wearing latex gloves not to leave any fingerprint on them or so. We drank another one with him and enjoyed a bit of small talk regarding taxes/ fraud and cheap electric appliances you can get "second hand" (yeah, second hand, sure…) Then we went to our bungalow, located near this guy and his two friends, who were earlier "repairing" the cellphones with him. The rest of people (the normal looking ones, like families or professional cyclists) stay in the bungalows at the other side of the cafeteria. Interesting. They probably enjoyed a silent evening, while we were tortured by the whole collection of cassettes of the Belgian man.

Looking forward, trying to figure where to go after this. There still so much time left before SUN festival kicks off, will we be able to do a month without parties?

Only time will tell. For now i'll just eat a sandwich, or no euh, go sit in the sun a bit, or make some music, or or... euh...

Decompress.

Ow yeah and the title, well... better not to go into that, some things are better kept secret, but I'm sure it got your attention right?… right :)

VIBE is over. Mountains are still here.

Hellooo!

Leaving Valec in a while, on the way to the first camping or pension we find on the way... Many mountains here, feeling sort of lazy as we will have to go uphill probably the moment we finish the first turn...

Some pics of the festival. We had a lot of fun and met a bunch of really nice people!