Western Europe

We flew into Sweden in high anticipation of hitting our second continent on the trip.

We met with Johan, a good friend of Rien's, and a really nice guy who let two vagabonds crash at his single-person sized university studio for well over the original planned period of time.  You see the shipping company decided to delay our bikes about two weeks....so we sat in that little studio for two weeks rotating between internet, naps, and workouts. 

Swedish stinkfish

 

Finally bussed down to Gothenburg, tried couchsurfing.org and ended up meeting this awesome chick Hanna who let us crash on her couches at the coolest artsy, underground style loft.  Way out of place in prim and proper Sweden.  Thanks Hanna.  Now get over to SF.

During the day there was a cast rehearsing for a Dostoyevsky play in our Gothenburg loft.  How cool is that.  

We met up with our babies, packed all of our junk on them, threw on as many layers of clothes as we could and started heading south.  Right off the bat navigating the city streets has been tough.  We could try to get out GPS's running....but then it feels like cheating so we kinda put them on the back burner.  Can't wait till the street signs are all in Arabic.  And Afrikai...

The ride through Sweden was mostly foggy and rainy so we didn't see much country side much to my dismay.  Turns out someone stole Rien's warm weather gloves from one of the bike boxes while the bikes were getting shipped to Sweden so the ride was really tough for him until we found some more gloves in Berlin.  So frozen fingers and toes was the new in thing.  

We were heading south and lost each other on the highway. It took a few hours to catch back up down the road, these ambulances kept rushing by so Rien was a bit worried and called a few hospitals on the way to make sure I wasn't rubber side up. Eventually we found each other on the highway right before our shipment city. We found the trucker ferry terminal in S. Sweden (Trelleborg) and were told to come back in 4 hours. After coming back and paying for the ticket we spent about half an hour scurrying around trying to find the ship that would take us to Germany.  Boarded a few wrong ships...got screamed at.  Eventually found it, tied down the bikes, headed up to the lounge and made a big old nest of sleeping bags and clothes to pass out for the 7 hour sail. It was truly a show of seamanship, that let the rookies know how to do it. We went up and fwd and found the best nest immediately. Laid our "camp" out and then took turns looking around (gloating over the spot we staked claim to as others had little benches and strong lighting to sleep under).

We bumped the dock at 0600 in Rostock and started heading for Berlin, Germany.  The countryside started clearing giving us some nice views of the farms and forests.  Small heads up to anyone planning on driving the autobahn.  If you can't drive 1000 MPH stay as FAR to the right of the right lane as possible.  We're talking ludicrous speed.  So after the long beautiful drive we rolled up to Berlin.  The city is awesome!  Sexy, dirty as Rien describes it.  Artistic, raw, vicious past, combat boots with swanky scarves.  

     Rien working on being Berlin cool.  A whole new dimension of cool.  With the Berlin Wall behind him.

                                                                      Berlin Wall art

Pretty incredible graffiti everywhere.  We cruised up to the city, got lost as is our custom and ended up in a city/suburb of berlin called Potsdam. We had a friend we were meeting who said we could crash. 15 emails later, 3 pay phone calls, and Riens eventually functioning German cell phone we were skunked. We spent all day in a mall waiting for a reply and got nothing. The "friend" totally flaked so we moved on to downtown and the 3 little pigs hostel.  Highly recommended hostel in a great location and in the end met some really cool people. Something cool about Berlin was that none of the clubs have signs... or anything indicating where they are.  You just walk through the right dirty gratified door and you're at some big party.  So you've got to walk around the streets listening for beats or little flashes of discotec neon lights and try to zero in on where they're coming from.

                                                               Hopping the Berlin Wall. 

I also got a chance to meet up and have breakfast with some old co-workers at BMW motorcycles in Berlin. That was very cool as it is kind of a small family and I'm riding a BMW motorcycle of course.  It was also fun to hang out with my old boss and his wife, and Peter was kind enough to sponsor me by giving me a pair of winter gloves....since I was riding through Germany in the middle of winter.

After a few days in Berlin we cut across Germany to Aachen to do some work on the bikes. As I (Rien) havent seen my very good friends I met while studying there it was great to catch up with all. I wont name everyone cause there are so many good friends, but big shout out to philip and Jenni for letting us crash and spread our junk all over the place. Here is where we got the stickers done of the world and our trip that will now often see on the side luggage boxes of the motorcycle. The sticker turned out very cool thanks to the savy sticker girl and her ability to put up with our nonchalant exactness. 

Ho Ho Ho.  While you guys are sipping eggnog and sprinkling Christmas cheer everywhere we'll be crossing the Turkish mountains into Syria.  Getting dumped on by torrential downpour I'm sure (front of sticker store).


  

Some important monument or something.  So I'm used to seeing the Eiffel tower replica in Vegas.  When We pulled into Paris late at night, and of course roamed the streets lost for an hour cus that's what we do, I caught a glimpse of this big monstrosity and thought to myself "Eh, not a bad replica but I've seen better in Vegas...wait...we're in Paris.... I guess that would make that the real thing.".

 

Rien also cleaned up for a casual job interview. as you can see it was def. ever so slightly.

 Lester, Ophelie, and Rien.  Shout out to Lester for all the great cheese, bomb wine, and crazy home made Alpine brew. Wish you were riding with us again brother!!!




Lester with us and the girls about to leave Paris.

We took a pretty heavy downpour heading to Munich. It seemed like every place we stopped for a break they'd start putting up "beware of slip hazards" in a circle around us. Maybe it was the wringing out of our socks and the puddles that ensued...not really sure. We ended up staying with my old roomate Till's brother in lovely Heidelberg. We were soaking wet, tired, and a bit beat down. They fed us, dried us, and gave some seriously good German hospitality with no notice and all kindness (great cookies to). They took us for a walk the next day and then we were off to munich.

Heading aimlessly into town, but what did Uncle Nate spy with his little eye.....

                                                         Wirts Garten....Need I say more.
  

Ladies and Gentleman.  First lesson in adventure touring:  Don't let your chain look like this.









Getting ready for a tire change in Munich, Germany.

                                          




This is what Nate and I like to call the Beirut shuffle, which we invented in Lebanon, but works very well with tire changes as well.  

  
We have been migrating very quickly to living a 3rd world traveler lifestyle, except we are still going through the 1st world. Needless to say we got quite a few looks and were asked if we lived in the area when we set up our tire changing shop in front of an apartment complex. We should make a cartoon!
             

Sadly I have no photos of Munich this time around.

Here is a photo of me putting the stickers on the boxes. It doesnt show how gracious Till and Alexa were to let us take over there house for a couple days. we had a lot of work on the bikes and organizational things to do and we let off a motorcycle gear grenade in their quaint / gemutlich apartment. Thanks guys. Also great to see my old roomies Wolfmeister, platz hirsch Patricia and Tina.

I also met up with my old bosses at BMW cars who I did my masters with which was nice to catch up. While I was doing that Nate was getting some work done on the bikes. Nate had found an oil leak on the engine head awhile back. They said it was a known problem and since we were really rocking the travel thing they put us to the front of the line and did it for free in about an hour. 

 Finally Nate found a picture of the German autobahn he wanted, even though  it was in Austria. I have some friends that wont agree...but practically the same thing.

So here we are, a big hurdle for us was crossing the alps in the middle of December. What kinda of idiots would think of such a thing. That's right baby 50% stupid and 50% crazy. I have to say damm are we lucky. They said it was the least amount of snow/rain in known German history.

 We had a beautiful ride through the alps and are happy to have made it through.



















So right now we're in Istanbul getting ready to ride out for Syria.  We have a whole Eastern European section to write about but this section already took us a whole day so we'll put that off for next week.  We'll be making a few more revisions on the Western Europe section too so keep up with us.