Europe 2013: Tschuess, Hamburg

August 29, 2013

After a wonderful breakfast, and more conversation, I bade Guenther and Monika farewell, and was on the road shortly before 10. Guenther drove lead to get me headed in the right direction: Autobahn to Bremen, then highways to Muenster or further. It was nice to have the way shown, the GPS would have certainly aimed me straight for the autobahn entrance that was closed for construction.

The autobahn was much like freeways everwhere else, although the Germans are very good about keeping to the correct lane: right lane for heavy trucks and slow traffic, middle lane for passing, left lane for going like a bat out of hell. I stuck almost exclusively to the slow and middle lane. The bike is perfectly willing to go 100 MPH if I so desired, but it'll destroy my fuel efficiency, and I don't really care. I took one brief moment up to about 150 km/h, which is just shy of 100 MPH, but it was to get around a heavy batch of semis and slow traffic: I was in the uber-fast lane, and there was traffic behind me, so I didn't feel safe trying to pass at my more-sedate 110 km/h (~70 MPH).

Riding on the autobahn reminded me of when my friends Nick and Christian came to visit from Hamburg, after I returned home to Oregon. Christian in particular was livid at the quality of Highway 26, a major thoroghfare in the Portland area, with two lanes in each direction. He made it clear that such road conditions would *never* be allowed in Germany (he was wrong, but I got his meaning). The autobahn section between Hamburg and Bremen is apparently pretty new, and it was smooth as glass. Between that and finally having a smooth, working chain, the day started out very nicely.

Dropping off onto the landstrassen, equivalent to state highways, was a pleasant change from the autobahn. Much as in England, they would have relatively fast, 100 km/h sections, frequently broken up by small towns and villages, where the speed limit is 50 km/h (or about 35 MPH). There were a lot of tractors to pass, since pretty much as soon as you're outside the city, Germany is covered in farms. Interestingly, any time there's an intersection on these landstrassen, the speed limit goes down to 70. It's a good idea, although it makes travel along them a bit slower.

The first remarkable thing that occurred was as I headed for Osnabrueck: I saw my first hill. That was really cool, and I suddenly realized how much I'd been missing the hills and mountains of Scotland and Wales (and home). I'm hardly in the mountains even now (I'm camped at a campsite just south of Dortmund), it's still really nice to have a bit of up and down.

Ralf strongly recommended Muenster as a lovely city to visit, and he was right. I circled around a few times, and found a magic toll-free parking area full of bikes and motorcycle, and went through the ten minute gear-locking procedure. Upon reflection, it's probably not all that secure, but it gives the impression of being well-protected, and is better than nothing. I probably have nothing to fear from parking in Muesnter, but I would feel very silly if I had to replace all my gear due to laziness or naievete.

Most of what I saw was the grand old church in the middle of the old-town section of town, and a bunch of shopping. And, of course, all the bikes. I mean, *all* the bikes. There were bicycles everywhere, parked in a prickly black cloud, being ridden around, leaning up against things -- it was amazing. I'd love to live in a town that was so bike-friendly. Once again, there were bike paths everywhere you went (this was true in Hamburg as well, where every sidewalk had a brick section which was the bike path). It was lovely to behold.

However, I got bored quickly, since I wasn't interested in shopping, and there are only so many pictures you can take of an old church before it starts to feel repetitive. I returned to the bike, and decided to find a place to stay.

This is the thing I love about having this GPS. Without any kind of internet access, I can shove the pointer to a random place on the map, and ask it to show me a list of nearby campgrounds. The list isn't perfect, but it hasn't actually steered me wrong yet. I wish there were phone numbers also included, but we can't have everything. So I picked a likely-looking campground southeast of Cologne, and orientated myself. It was about 5, and the GPS said I'd get there at 7:19. Perfect.

Once again underway, I realized that I was starting to get tired, and wanted to hit the fast-forward button if possible. I unchecked the "avoid freeways" box again, and let fly with an autobahn-based route. It hacked 20 minutes off the projected arrival time, so why not. A few minutes later, I was on the A1, headed for Cologne.

Then I was in traffic. All the traffic. I passed a sign that said it went on for 7 km. It's a lot of traffic. So I hastily re-checked the "avoid freeways" box, and took the next exit. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one with this idea, and the GPS had me going along a very popular route.

It was at this point that I was strongly reminded of The Coffee Table: I chose The Escape Hatch. (Go watch it if you haven't seen it yet: thecoffeetable.tv.) I hit the proverbial big red button. In the midst of traffic, I pulled up the list of nearby campgrounds again, and literally picked the first (and thus closest) off the list. I was still more than an hour from my previously-chosen campground, but with this traffic, it was clear that it was going to take me *far* more than an hour to get there. I just wanted to find a place and call it good.

And, to my delight, it worked. I missed one of the turns, but soon I found myself here, sitting at a lovely table, waiting for my laundry to dry, writing a trip report. I set up camp next to an English couple at the proprietor's instruction, ate my dinner (a hand-prepared sandwich from Glinde, of course), and did my evening chores (in case you're interested: that means setting up the tent, blowing up the mattress, laying out the sleeping bag, writing down the day's distance, highlighting the day's route on the map, planning the route and goal for tomorrow, and writing whatever journal-y stuff I feel like writing). Tonight that also included dropping two euro coins into the washing machine, and another two into the dryer, for which I am now waiting.

An interesting thing I noticed when I got to Germany, was that I had many choices when I got to the gas pump. In most of the countries so far, it was diesel or unleaded. Sometimes there was high-octane unleaded. In Germany, the typical selection includes the following:

* Truck diesel * Diesel * E10 Super (95 octane with 10% ethanol) * Super (straight 95 octane) * Super+ (97 octane) * Auto LPG * Occasionally something with 100+ octane, but not often

The E10 Super is typically 3-5 cents cheaper (which adds up quickly: my tank, for instance, holds 16 liters, and a car's tank would hold in the region of 40-80 liters), but particularly in my case, I know my fuel efficiency would go perceptibly down, so I believe it's a wash between E10 and regular unleaded. In the US, you can occasionally find non-E10 gasoline, but the vast, overwhelming majority is E10. The idea of having every gas station offer the choice is pretty cool.

Today is the half-way point in my trip. I'm now half-finished. I'm roughly on track with where I expected to be, although I think in my first wild-ass-guess estimates, I had put myself more towards Vienna by this time. I definitely underestimated how much time would be consumed in getting from place to place, but I'm getting it done, and despite the initial shock yesterday, when I looked at how much further I have to go, it's actually a shorter distance than I did in the first half of the trip. I'm about where I need to be.

There are certainly things I wish I'd done, which are now behind me -- for instance, I forgot to visit Braak, which was the town where I last lived in Germany -- but overall, I feel like I'm getting the trip that I expected to have.

Tomorrow, I have a short distance to go (a mere 144 km), and then the Nuerburgring is open from 5:15 to 7:30 for "Tourist rides." I'll do a lap and call it good, although I suppose there's the possibility both that they'll kick me off for being too loud, and that I'll love it and have to do more than one lap. It gets expensive quickly though, at 26 euros a lap. (There's a noise regulation, and I honestly have no idea if my silly "race exhaust" exceeds it or not.) So, early to the campsite, then off to Nuerburg to get my track-day nerdery in. I'm ready.

(Aaaaand it would appear I completely misunderstood how to set the dryer -- every one of my socks is quite damp. Time to find out if laying them out in my tent's little mesh "attic" shelf overnight will actually allow any appreciable drying, since I'm out of 1-euro coins.)

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