Europe 2013: Finally into Germany

August 24, 2013

It's amazing how much better my mood is today. I re-checked the "avoid motorways" option on the GPS, and although the trip was longer, it made me oh so much happier to not be camped on a freeway the whole time.

The start of the day was not particularly auspicious. I'd deferred on sending a trip update since the internet connection seemed spotty last night, and figured I'd try again this morning. No dice. Just as bad, and worse, my email host was being finicky, and refused to actually send the message I was trying to send. Guess you'll get updates when I hit Hamburg.

My German frat boy neighbors, to my disgust, were up and playing their loud dance club music by 8 am. I don't understand the fascination with that particular type of music, outside a dance club. It makes perfect sense there, but beyond that, it just seems self-abusive. Regardless, it was good motivation to get outta town.

Of course, it's never quite that easy. At some point yesterday, a container of soap exploded inside my toiletries bag, so first I had to spend a good solid half hour trying to clean up that mess. Why I thought any kind of press-to-open bottle top was a good idea is now completely beyond me. They're getting replaced at the first opportunity, as this is the second time it's happened, and this time it emptied 50% of one of them into the bag. Failure.

Anyway, once that mess was sufficiently remedied, I was on the road. First stop was my now-favorite restaurant, a gas station. Pre-made sandwich for me, and a tank-up for the bike. Gas in Holland is considerably more expensive, at EUR1.85 typically, vs the 1.67 I was paying in Belgium, and the 1.56 it seems to be in Germany so far. This is all in liters, of course, so multiply that by 3.8 to get gallons, then again by about 1.34 to get dollars, and it's amazing anyone drives in Holland at all. Diesel is much cheaper (1.35, I vaguely recall), although it's obviously down to taxes. In Ireland, diesel was cheaper. In Northern Ireland (across an arbitary line), unleaded was cheaper. At one of my first fill-ups in Ireland, there was a sticker on the pump that said, "Don't blame the vendor, over 60% of petrol prices are tax!"

Anyway, on the road. I started out, still bleary from my frat boy musical imposition, thinking I had to take the freeway to get there. For some reason, I'd gotten it into my head that there was no other option. Silly. Fortunately for everyone, I came to my senses, and at my first stop, checked the "avoid motorways" box. (Funny side note: Garmin, in their ultimate wisdom, has actually retained the "Avoid Interstate Freeways" terminology, which makes no sense in Europe. But it works as "avoid motorways" all the same.)

The trip was scheduled to take an extra two hours (six vs. four) on side roads, which seemed like a fair trade-off to me. I headed out.

I had ridden for several hours when I got to a turn onto a short, presumably unavoidable section of freeway when I spotted the turning sails of an old-style Dutch windmill. "No way am I passing that up," sez I, inside my helmet. And pass it up I did not.

As I was pausing to take a picture of the spinning vanes, someone stopped me and said, "You can go inside, if you want," and gave me directions. Turned out that today only was a special day in this district, where working windmills were open to the public.

I spent the next half hour absolutely geeking out over massive, wooden machinery. The inside of the mill was absolutely delightful, with the main shaft coming down from the sails as a two-foot diameter wooden shaft, mating to a horizontal wheel perhaps ten feet in diameter. This had a large number of small wooden teeth around its perimeter, and various cogs and wheels could be engaged with it via different levers to run the millstones, or lift sacks of grain, or turn the grading device, which I recogized from St. Fagans in Wales.

The operator was an apprentice who, as he explained to me, was doing it as a hobby. One hell of a hobby! He was going for his mill "driver's license," as he said. Apparently this is the license you need to be able to legally run a windmill, which I'm guessing involves a lot of arcane knowledge of wooden machine mechanisms as well as weather and wheat and food safety laws and more. He said this mill wasn't allowed to produce flour for human consumption because there might be wood fiber in the flour, probably due to age. He'd spent weeks refurbishing the mill, and assuming I understood correctly, this day, today, was the first time the mill has been operated in 40 years.

I had a ridiculously good time in this mill, and couldn't wipe the grin off my face. If I had been on the motorway, I wouldn't have even come past Coevorden, never would have seen the mill running, and would have missed out on something that made me almost unreasonably happy. This is why I need to keep that box checked.

On my way out, I bought a bag of Zandkokjes, or "sand cookies" as it was translated to me. Interestingly, they are reminiscent of eating sand, in a pleasant way, if that makes any sense. Sort of crumbly and grainy. I also took some pictures of the bread on display, one of which was a loaf of mill-wheel bread, with the same curved cuts on its surface that a mill-wheel has.

I got almost 20 km down the freeway before I remembered that I'd promised the apprentice miller that I'd sign the guestbook. I decided to turn back, although it would put me noticeably later to my campground. Sign the guestbook I did.

As long as I was in town, it was time to get gas as well, so I stopped in at one of the automated stations (only 1.719, a bargain!), and tried to get gas. First card failed. Second card failed. Hrm. I moved to the next gas station. Same thing. Third gas station, same thing.

Worried now, I tried to call Andrews, the bank which issues my chip-and-PIN card. The call was abruptly cut off, either because I ran out of prepaid money, or because the signal just went away. I tried calling again, and the phone complained that I didn't have enough money to place the call, which was a bit daft, as I'd signed up for an auto-renew system to avoid precisely this problem. But it said I had EUR1.08 in my account, and I'd set it to refill at 1.00. So since I didn't have the 1.29 necessary for the first minute of the call, I couldn't place it, thus I couldn't spend it, thus it wouldn't trigger the refill. Argh. Fortunately a 0.28 call to the campground near Bremen solved that, and it auto-filled for me.

Long, stupid story short, I never got through to Andrews (apparently you need a "member number," which I didn't think to bring with me -- the VISA number won't do with the automated system I was able to reach at their European office). I filled the tank at an attended station, where the card worked perfectly. No idea what's up with those automated places, but it has worked as a PIN card other times, so I'm going to call it a freak problem and carry on.

I continued on, finally, tank full and mind somewhat at ease, at least about the credit card. The bike, on the other hand, is a different story. The final drive is making big, loud ominous noises. I don't know, now that I've had some time with it, whether it's the chain and sprockets, or whether it's the output bearing. I really, *really* hope it's the chain and sprockets. That's a easy, regular maintenance item: under 300 euros, at a guess. I knew at some point I'd be replacing the chain and sprockets.

If it's the output bearing, though... doom. Really expensive doom. I'll pay for it, and get it sorted out, but it's gonna suck, and after looking at the service manual for a bit, I've revised my estimate to between 1000 and 2000 euros for the repair (consider I paid 1900 for the bike to start with). It's worth doing, because transferring ownership as an American in Germany, far from the bike's native Ireland, is likely to be a huge pain, and involve days and days of running around playing the part of a Kafka character. I believe the bike will make it to Hamburg (only 200 km more), where I'll have a few days to get it sorted out, and where it will be Monday -- everything's closed on Sunday anyway.

I was very pleased (concerns about the bike notwithstanding) to have arrived in Germany today. Holland was fine, but I didn't understand any of the signs, not speaking Dutch. It's really nice to be in a place where I stand a chance of comprehending the signs, where I don't have to feel like a verdammte Amerikanner and speak English to everyone I meet, and where my ridiculous Lebara account will finally work like it's supposed to.

Another random subject shift: I was thinking at the start of the voyage today that I needed to focus more on the positives of the trip, both for myself, and for you, my loyal reader. You don't want to read about me grumbling to myself, you want to hear about all the awesome stuff that's happening around me. Anyway, one of the things I thought I should mention was: wind power.

Every country I've been through, from Ireland to Germany, has had big wind farms that I've passed by. In Holland and Germany, there are vast fields of them. It's completely awesome. I'm so happy to see these countries harnessing a form of power that doesn't spew evil into the air, and doesn't destroy the environment so badly as most other forms of generation. In fact, between the wind fields and the bike paths *everywhere* (alongside every road I was on today, there was a bike path, and it was a rare thing to go more than a minute or two between bicyclist sightings), I was thinking Holland looks like a pretty awesome place to live. All the pretty girls out on bikes didn't hurt either.

My landing spot tonight, Campingplatz Juliusplate, is like Nirvana after the crowded, loud experience in Haarlem last night. I'm pitched next to another gent on a motorcycle, Renee, who came down from Denmark today, if I've understood correctly. We conversed in German, which is neither of our first language, but he speaks it better than he does English, and I certainly can't keep up in Dutch. He's on a Honda Pan European, which I think is known as an ST1300 in the US. Looks like quite a nice touring bike.

And now, shaved and showered and tooth-brushed as I am, I'm going to turn out the light, shut off the tablet, and listen to the crickets and the wind in the trees until I drift off to a much happier sleep.

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