Europe 2013: The Introducening

July 23, 2013

Welcome to my little project. I'm taking a trip through Europe this summer, and you've expressed interest, so you're getting this email.

It all started (you may imagine a grandpa voice, if you like) back in the early spring of '13. I realized I was going to hit my 15 year anniversary at my workplace, and with each 5 year anniversary they give us a sabbatical to reflect/repent on our time spent there. The sabbatical program was overhauled after my 10 year sabbatical, and now the 15 year break is 6 weeks.

Well, thought I, what will I do with 6 weeks off? I had just been eyeballing the new Ninja 300, and had even taken a test ride, so my mind was kind of on motorcycles anyway. For my 10 year break, I'd seriously plotted out what it would take to get a motorcycle to New Zealand and ride around for a month, but eventually gave up when I realized it was impractical/hideously expensive.

These two ideas rolled around in my head, and I realized there was an alternate, even better plan: why not buy a new Ninja 300 in Germany (where I have some friends to visit), tour around Europe for a bit, then ship the bike back to the US? Then I'd have a new bike, plus it would be the very bike I toured around Europe on! Voila, the plan was hatched.

Some research on things like importing motor vehicles, shipping rates and suchlike convinced me that this wasn't a workable plan. It would make a $5000 bike into a $10,000 bike, and that was a bit too much of a premium to pay on top of all the costs of rolling around Europe for weeks. I changed my plan to this: I would buy a motorcycle via a guy in Ireland who's done this a few times for other US friends, and ride my Irish bike around Europe.

Although I would have been really happy to find a Ninja 250 (my current street bike, and quite adequate to my needs), they're apparently considered high-tone bikes in Ireland, so the costs were prohibitive. So I did the next best thing, and found a Suzuki SV650. I bought it (including a humorous and very expensive phone call trying to convince the Polish seller that he needed to update his Paypal account to accept Euros before I could send him the money), and Martin, my bike agent in Ireland, picked it up.

A bit of fixing up, and it is (as far as I know, fingers crossed!) ready to go. I got my plane ticket sorted out, and my two major purchases (unless you count gasoline, oy!) were out of the way. The plan is to visit friends in Wales, Hamburg, Ingolstadt (near Munich, and also where Dr. Frankenstein did his creation act), Vienna, Switzerland and Paris. In between, I want to ride the Nurburgring (a historical and very cool race track in western Germany), re-visit Scotland, and hit the village of Mace, France, where ee cummings was imprisoned during WWI (he wrote about it in The Enormous Room, a book which is available on Project Gutenberg for free, and is well worth the read). I'll also pass through a number of countries, and I hope to include Luxembourg and Leichtenstein on that list before I'm done, because why would I not?

I'll take a tent and sleeping bag, and hit campgrounds when I'm not visiting friends. The plan is to avoid freeways like the plague, and stick to country roads. It won't be fast, but it should be *real* pretty. 6 weeks is just barely enough time for the route I have roughly in mind.

I'll take a camera and the smallest computer I could work out: a 7" Android tablet and a folding keyboard. I'll have a GPS to keep me from getting too lost. I'll have a couple changes of clothes. It's gonna be a real, true adventure.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.