I'm not sure if it is because German drivers expect me to carry an extremely contagious infection that will jump straight through their windows if they pass me within two meters, or if they genuinely care about me (and their no-claim car insurance payments), but I can't help to get nervous when I'm driving on the shoulder of a two lane road and a car slows down and keeps driving behind me slowly for half a kilometre because he's not able to see if a car might be coming from the other direction in the next kilometre. The slow roar of the car is enough for me to imagine the cocking of a semi-automatic so favoured by the Balkan freelancers well known in the Dutch underworld since the late nineties. So far the burst of gunfire never came, but the suspense has been unbearable. Since I crossed the border I have experienced the Polish road use, and I definitely prefer the Polish method of honestly offing cyclists by means of 10-ton wood trucks thundering past within centimetres.
All around in Poland, budget supermarkets are taking over the scene, like they already dominate the German landscape. The funniest looking one is Biedronka, which translates into ‘lady bug’, and has a smiling specimen as its logo. In small towns the chain is fervently building and opening and on my way from Szczecin to Gdansk I met several stores in varying stages of construction. Hiding from an approaching massive thunderstorm I sat down under the overhang at a Biedronka that had not opened yet, but was busy being stocked. As I inconspicuously ate my sandwiched while the rain was thundering down around me I was the witness of the following scene. A car approached, laden with what seemed a family, and two people sprinted out through the rain, leaving the grandparents in the car. As they stood in front of the doors, water glistening on their bald skulls, I gestured to no avail that it was closed, but they still expected the sliding doors to open sesame, ignoring the weirdly dressed up bike enthusiast sitting on the floor and focusing hopefully on the visible personnel filling the racks. Then one looked closer at a note displayed near the entrance, spat out the word “Kurova!” and ushered the others back out through the rain into the car. As I continued eating my sandwiches, the same amusing and relatively absurd scene repeated itself three times over, only the protagonists and words of disappointment changed.
Even though the weather has kept balancing between unbearable and unpleasant, the people welcoming me through Couchsurfing have been fantastic, the glacier made landscape phenomenal and the food has been amazing. Strawberries and cherries have been in season and are offered in large, rectangular shaped baskets. In the last week and a half, I must have eaten 6 or 7 pigs. Its been a great week and a half.
Friday, 29 June 2012
Sunday, 10 June 2012
Bremen on a rainy date
To my horror, I notice that by logging in into the new Blogger while in Germany, my domain name has been changed to .de. And wherever I seek to change the error, Google does not allow.
As I speed through the peat bogs, another shower hammers down on my back, the big drops bouncing off my jacket, but finding their way into the running leggings I'm wearing on top of my bike shorts. They give off a cool sensation on impact, but lose their chilling potential as the wetsuit-like material protects me from the raging wind. I feel like eating, sitting down, or having a look at the surprisingly frequently appearing megaliths, but I pedal on. I have a date in Bremen.
I've had better weather during my cycling tours before, but this time I have brought what it takes to battle the cold and rainy weather. I agree, it is shitty to be packing your gloves and beany on a legit summer trip, but I'll pack whatever is necessary to keep the elements at bay. Just pretend it's autumn in Turkey.
Or summer in South Africa. My thoughts go back to another trip, two years ago, when I was in a similar hurry to keep a time. The occasion was eerily similar, it had snowed that night on the wet plateau we were crossing in the direction of Port Elisabeth. I was in a car with Jono and Jonty, two soon-to-be friends who later both visited me in the Netherlands, and we sped to the next town to be on time. When we hurried into the local Steers (a SA steak chain with the worst kind of native American theme), we found ourselves lucky enough to catch the Fifa World Cup's Dutch opener Netherlands-Denmark on the big screen.
The last football tournament I experienced in the Netherlands has been the 2006 World Cup, after that I've spent my even-year summers elsewhere. But whether it was in the Southern hemisphere winters of Oz or SA, or this year in the German summer: the weather has failed to impress.
Once again seated among strangers in nippy circumstances, the Dutch love for their team amped up to a alienating high in the last few weeks in a display of orange in simply everything imaginable, is put in perspective by group B's first matches. Even though I have seen German households also sporting flags and other paraphernalia in the local tri-colore along the road from the border til Bremen, a short look at the score today shows that they do have a striker in their team. As the crowd of blanket-clad Bremeners roars when Gomez finishes an opportunity beautifully, I consider sailing on under a different flag. No better place to be on group B's opening day then in cloudy Teutonia; and I have a feeling that the same might count for Wednesday to come.
Maybe changing into reinierkicking.blogspot.de isn't such a bad move after all.
As I speed through the peat bogs, another shower hammers down on my back, the big drops bouncing off my jacket, but finding their way into the running leggings I'm wearing on top of my bike shorts. They give off a cool sensation on impact, but lose their chilling potential as the wetsuit-like material protects me from the raging wind. I feel like eating, sitting down, or having a look at the surprisingly frequently appearing megaliths, but I pedal on. I have a date in Bremen.
I've had better weather during my cycling tours before, but this time I have brought what it takes to battle the cold and rainy weather. I agree, it is shitty to be packing your gloves and beany on a legit summer trip, but I'll pack whatever is necessary to keep the elements at bay. Just pretend it's autumn in Turkey.
Or summer in South Africa. My thoughts go back to another trip, two years ago, when I was in a similar hurry to keep a time. The occasion was eerily similar, it had snowed that night on the wet plateau we were crossing in the direction of Port Elisabeth. I was in a car with Jono and Jonty, two soon-to-be friends who later both visited me in the Netherlands, and we sped to the next town to be on time. When we hurried into the local Steers (a SA steak chain with the worst kind of native American theme), we found ourselves lucky enough to catch the Fifa World Cup's Dutch opener Netherlands-Denmark on the big screen.
The last football tournament I experienced in the Netherlands has been the 2006 World Cup, after that I've spent my even-year summers elsewhere. But whether it was in the Southern hemisphere winters of Oz or SA, or this year in the German summer: the weather has failed to impress.
Once again seated among strangers in nippy circumstances, the Dutch love for their team amped up to a alienating high in the last few weeks in a display of orange in simply everything imaginable, is put in perspective by group B's first matches. Even though I have seen German households also sporting flags and other paraphernalia in the local tri-colore along the road from the border til Bremen, a short look at the score today shows that they do have a striker in their team. As the crowd of blanket-clad Bremeners roars when Gomez finishes an opportunity beautifully, I consider sailing on under a different flag. No better place to be on group B's opening day then in cloudy Teutonia; and I have a feeling that the same might count for Wednesday to come.
Maybe changing into reinierkicking.blogspot.de isn't such a bad move after all.
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