So we left Lubeck in a bit more comfort than we entered it.
Considering the expansive urban hinterlands and unceasing autobahns between us
and Hamburg we elected to take a short train ride instead of a days riding. The
beautifully engineered German trains quite amazed Iain and I, especially
considering that our last experience of railways had involved rickety old
ex-soviet machines, but these were finely tuned double decker affairs with
special ramps and lower entrances just for bikes. Meaning an infirmed elderly
pygmy could have gotten our gigantic laden touring bikes onboard.
We were deposited in the city centre. There was an instant
sense of being somewhere Urban, note the capital ‘U’. Hamburg is a dirty, lively metropolis. Full
of life, full of the contrasting stories of the wealthy and the poor, it is
thoroughly alive and positively humming with rhythms of the moving masses. We crossed
a road and checked into the Generator Hostel (for those unfamiliar with the
chain this is the Ryan-Air) of the hostel world. Cheap digs but with an
industrial cold capitalist soul and a marked contrast from the friendly small
place we had stayed in Lubeck.
Entering our room lugging our obscene amount of luggage (as
a tourer you carry more than an ordinary back-packer, what with camping gear
and tools etc…) we tried to quietly unpack and not disturb the slumbering girl
who was ensconced in the pod like arrangements that are essentially sup’d up
bunk beds. We were probably still smelling a little bit still like the wet dogs
and Englishmen that Saskia (remember her? …the junior surgeon we had met in
Lubeck, so this is a medical term, and was largely an unfortunate consequence
of being soaked through, sweaty and never quite being able to dry out our
clothes) had called us.
Despite
aforementioned smelly funk and rousing said girl from her slumber she did not
seem too irate and was keen to befriend us. The girl, Jacqueline, was of
Mexican origin from L.A. and had been studying in Galway for a year and was now
doing a mini euro-tour before her visa expired. She was enthusiastic company
and dragooned us into going off with our fellow roommates, a posse of friendly
Bavarians in pursuit of a place to sell us some cheap eats. After some legally
dubious free use of public transport we reached the Bavarian boy’s friend who
had been exploring for a restaurant, he had reached the fancy end of town which
and Iain, Jacqueline and I decided we should go somewhere scummier to eat, we
feel something is beyond our budget when there are wine glasses already on the
table.
After much debate amongst the Bavarians we eventually ended
up in the Reeperbahn (red light district) as we emphasised that cheapest food
will be found in the dodgiest part of town. The Reeperbahn, is everything you
would expect from a red light district; a scummy mix of glamour and grime with
fluorescent lights adding a noir-esque atmosphere to the thick fog rising up
from the Elbe. Everything though, no matter how expensive, seems cheap here,
and in a sense (without sounding too much like a Christian missionary bursting
into a brothel) I suppose ultimately that anything money can buy is cheap.
After some fine greasy Chinese food Jacqueline led the
charge to a karaoke bar. It rapidly came apparent that this was a gay karoke
bar (or the clientele were all very affectionate well groomed men with an
affinity for showtunes at any rate, but I don’t want to deal in clichés…) and
was ran by some exceptionally bored Thai staff. The punters were actually by
and large superb singers and I was told that this was a favourite haunt of performers
from the stage shows and musicals, which could explain that…amongst
corroborating the gay bar theory (again I’m sorry for making clichéd assumptions…but…). At any rate my favourite performance of the
evening was the most German rendition of ‘My way’ I have ever heard…use your imagination
to create a stereotypical German man with a dry deep accent singing Sinatra out
of key and you’re about there. I was pressured into going up and singing
American pie and up I strode like the giant Don McLean of Hamburg (all the
photos of this make look very angry, which I can only assume is the result of
having to concentrate…karoke is actually rather hard) and I had to admit I got
rather into it, I was told I was a good showman as I got the crowd singing along
with me.
Iain and I left the party at about 3am, and decided to walk
home, only about 4km we thought, pfff we thought, we’re seasoned adventurers
and strode off with nary a map between us and only my finely tuned internal
compass and four years training as an academic geographer to keep us on track.
Hamburg proved eerie in the thick fog, looking every inch the mysterious grimy
port city. We noticed as we walked back the startling number of homeless
people, there must have been hundreds in doorways and on benches, which is odd
for a country which looks as prosperous as Germany does.
I got us back to the hostel with ease, because frankly I am
brilliant at using gut sense to navigate cities and I easily memorise maps. We
slept soundly in our pod like bed arrangements. Well Iain did, I was too
fucking hot, yes that deserves a swear word, because little did I know that
there was a radiator hidden behind my head on full blast, which in combination
with the clammy spring weather ensured I sweated if I covered slightly more
than one leg with a blanket. I later (just yesterday, in Amsterdam) discovered that Iain had in-fact turned the radiator
The following day we wandered about as tourists taking in
the sights of Hamburg’s old docklands and empty canals, which have an almost
yuppified feel of something like London’s docklands, before Iain started to
become extraordinarily sullen. ‘Do you want something to eat, Iain?’ Iain made
a zombie like noise, ‘you need something to eat’ said I. I have realised over
this trip that Iain must be a borderline diabetic as he ceases to
intellectually function if not constantly fed. His brother has likened him to a
hummingbird that is always a meal away from death.
That night we sunk many beers in the hostel bar with our
room-mates and Saskia, who had reappeared and managed to find us in the street
somehow…we don’t know how, but she did (she had recommended the hostel to us
in-fact and is in no way a stalker). she insisted that we go and eat in a German
meat based restaurant whose name eludes me, but I seem to recall it was swine
related… here we consumed a fine German style mixed grill, knocking back beers
and made many silly faces. We awoke the next morning a tad hungover but hit the
road none-the-less. We were heading out of the city again on the train but
promptly got back on the bikes after 4 days of what was meant to be rest and
relaxation, but as ever proved rather tiring.
That night our free camping strategy of pitch first,
questions later, was finally foiled by some locked toilets and a grumpy man on
a scooter, who wasn’t buying my line that we going to go to reception in the
morning. The campsite was frankly awful and barel worth the 10 euros we paid, but
had rather epic, if not at all pretty, views of the massive container port of
Bremerhaven in the distance with the unceasing leviathans of commercialism,
container ships, plowing hither and thither in the north sea, which was our
first sight of a sea that touched our home shores.
The road proved rather uneventful plodding along until
Iain’s tire exploded. Despite my glee at him also suffering the same fate as me
and my tires (he maintains it’s because he was getting cocky and running on a
too high of a pressure, but I just feel vindicated that his jibes about me
being rotund blowing my tires were in-fact groundless), by now we old hands at
exploding tires and knew what the problem was and how to solve it. We (well, Iain
worked, I mostly lay down laughing, and going ‘ye-es, the pressure’ whenever he
tried to create excuses for his tires) switched the front and back tires over,
but as Iain is riding a craptactular old bike in imperial measurements, getting
a new tire to replace the rather damaged old one would prove tricky in
Europe…or so we thought…
In Bremerhaven town we entered the first bike shop we saw. The
chubby german owner stepped forward to talk to Iain, Iain asked if he spoke
English, he said no and turned to his friend a man who was dressed every inch
like a jazz poet and said in a thick New York accent ‘I don’t speak English,
man’. When Iain asked if they had any 27 inch tires (there is only 27inch tire
made by Schwalbe, who are the definitive touring bike tire manufacturer, so
they are not necessarily common, Iain had to order his online back home). ‘No’
came the reply, ‘No, I have just ran out and not re-ordered, about 50 metres
down the road there is another bike shop, he should have some.’ Iain entered
the next bike shop and came out almost instantly grinning holding a 27inch Schwalbe
tire. (He is making a smug face at you Ryan [Iain’s brother] right now).
The next few days were hard riding into the wind; we were
crawling along through Freisland doing about 16kph and despite the pleasant
cyclepaths and flat terrain this was hard going. It began to feel like we were
never going to make it home and the madness of being on the road for too long
began to creep in as the in-jokes began to creep up in number. We would
probably sound quite insane to anyone who would join us at this point of the
journey.
On our last night in Germany, we encountered a stroke of phenomenal
luck and good German hospitality. We had done a meagre 70km but were feeling
knackered and had been cycling all day into aforementioned awful wind. It was
the first day of June and unseasonably cold, we had taken the last ferry out of
Emden across the broad choppy waters of the river Ems to the border.
It deposited us in the small village of Diztum and the
weather was boding for a cold wet and windy night. We needed to find a campsite
sharpish. In the small villageof Ditzummer-Verlaat we followed a sign for a
mobile home park, hoping they’d take a tent. When we arrived we saw a BBQ and a
gathering of people. We asked a merry looking man in an apron (meaning he had
to be official) walking back from the toilets if this was a campsite. ‘No’ he
said ‘but you can camp here if you want’ and strode back to the grill. We
pitched up our tent in record time and despite having been initially rebuffed
from the BBQ and told it was a private party when we innocently approached
asking if the food was for sale, we were invited to join the party by an old sailor,
Ham, who said ‘you look hungry, come.’ It transpired this was a clubhouse of a
local football team and they were enjoying an annual party, they shared many
lamb chops, much potato salad and far too much beer and local strong spirits
with us. They were friendly and great fun and very kind, but did manage to
ensure we had a hangover the next day.
We pressed on the next day into the Netherlands, the wind if
anything got worse and just moving forwards was a struggle. After two days
going a fraction of the speed (15kph) at double the effort (we need to average
22kph), we took a 50km train ride (I know this seems a little like chickening
out, but it would have added about two days on if we kept going on as we were)
to Harligen where we turned south and raced with the wind over a long dyke
across the IJsselmeer. Blasting at speeds of above 30kph for over 30km we felt
morale rising again and at last and it finally felt like we were getting nearer
home.
Amsterdam was the only the city on the entire trip in which
we felt no stress whatsoever cycling into. It is probably something to do with
the fact that Holland is of course famous for being the bicycle country; the roads all have comfortable cycle paths and
we wafted past windmill after windmill and canal after canal (one of the ways of passing time on the road is playing the guessing game 'canal or river' which is as fun as it sounds) through a grassy
pleasant fertile country before reaching Amsterdam and checking into a very
trendy and happening campsite in the east of the city in Zeeburg.
We went on a brief bike tour of the city which I consider to
be amongst my most favourite places on earth, with beautiful vistas along
sweeping canals, beautiful people wafting past on leisurely comfortable bikes
and a relaxed friendly atmosphere which makes the city feel welcoming and calm
despite being a cosmopolitan thriving metropolis with more culture than Walter
Benjamin could shake a stick at. Now we head out to be tourists and let the
city that he had only previously seen as a drunken blur on a rugby tour, which
is not exactly a sight-seeing trip.
It is sunny, there is cooling northern wind, and it feels
like a relaxing summers day is coming our way.
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