But at least I could generate the route maps, one pixel is roughly 1.5km (in the large version), color shows altitude.

Route on Landsat pseudocolor (click for larger):

Route on normal map (country borders can be better seen in the larger version):

The long straight lines are by ship, unfortunately the return ferry line overlaps slightly with the land route in Finland that we took from our home to Hanko harbour (for a ferry to Germany) when we started this trip.

Ride kilometer count is around 5.2k, give or take some. In general it was a very nice trip, could have rained less (the rain increased our expenses greatly as we had to spend a lot more time in Hotels than was originally planned, but better that than being cold, wet and miserable almost all the time), but this time rain was not the defining factor of the trip (like it was last year).

Also for next trip I need to make sure I haven't loaned my Kenwood to anyone: coordination (what direction ? is it this intersection or the next ? let's take a break, etc) and pointing out (look at that castle on 11 o clock, etc) interesting features is so much simpler and easier when you can just talk to the other person(s), it saves time and more interesting stuff gets noticed by everyone.

Tomorrow we'll be hanging out in Gamla Stan before we need to be in the harbour for the ferry at 16:00, anyways this is the last entry from the actual trip. Friday I'll get the track logs downloaded from the eTrex and merged I'll create a map with the route overlaid.

We skipped Roskilde due to the weather (and we didn't have anything specific we'd like to see there), and went to see the Kronborg castle in stead, for now the sun was shining and I put my jacket over my helmet to protect it from heat, halfway trough the castle I realized that it would have been better spent over my backpack protecting it from the rain that came in as heavy showers, by the time we got back to our bikes it had lessened to a light drizzle.

Wet we continued to the harbor to cross on to Sweden, again murderous looks from the cars as the harbor was quite full (but not nearly as so as in Puttgarden) as we're guided in first, past all the queues. In Sweden it wasn't raining much, but the roads were soaked and soon were we too with the mist raised by cars and ourselves. So we decided to look for somewhere to spend the night and get our gear dried, and found Hotel Milano in Åstorp (56N08'19.7'', 12E56'52.3''), the "rooms" are cabins with after-added shower/toilet but on the other hand it's not overly expensive and at least there are no misbehaving spawn of someone next door banging on the wall.

Once we got on Danish soil we started loooking for accommodation, even in smaller towns average hotels are more expensive than anything we've paid so far, luckily we found a hostel (54N45'58.7'', 11E30'47.1'': Not too cheap for one either, but they accept credit cards [which is nice, given we don't have any danish crowns as cash, and would like to keep it that way, changing them back to EUR is always a pain]).

When lodgings was cleared we went to look for food, we reached a local shopping mall 2 minutes before the shop closes but they didn't accept credit cards and there was no ATM near enough, so we got some frozen chicken/mushroom pie from a gas station for dinner.

We arrived here yesterday and since the weather was good we decided to cut our costs by camping, after finding a camping place (52N06'34.8'', 9E20'49.4'') and setting up the tent we took out bikes and went to the shop the get some food supplies, the Sigg multifuel stove finally got some use on this trip.

Today we walked to the old town, not much to see there especially as the clockwork figure thingy (you can guess which story) was broken (we even happened to stumble upon it at almost the correct time), in general we have just rested for today.

Tomorrow we'll continue heading home.

The day went around the dinner table talking and socializing with their dogs, around 18 we finally had to leave so that we could reach our hotel (54km away) at some sane hour. We managed to drive right past the hotel without even noticing it at first then 3km later we decided that we must have missed a turn and I decided to dig out the laptop and recalculate the route at viamichelin.com which showed us our error, coming back it's difficult to understand just how we managed to miss it but we did.

The hotel (51N10'44.8'', 7E11'53.8'') has reasonably fast internet connection, but the wifi hotspot is in a bad place for me and I get quite poor link to it (at times next to nonexistent), it also has the habit of logging my computer out at random so I can't get the 260MB photos upload package still to go transferred, annoying.

The ringen homepage is rather confusing in many ways, best way to get to ride is just to show up there (it's good idea to be at least 30min early) with your bike and a full protective suit (armored two-piece "Gore Tex" [= not leather] with army boots and gloves [and naturally a helmet] is considered enough), I would not try my luck with a non-CE approved helmet, don't know what kind of armoring they require for example from leather pants, since in general those there that had leather had either two-piece or one-piece racing suits with full armor which certainly was enough.

Note that now in 2005 they have introduced noise regulations, ask the safety personnel to measure your bike before buying tickets (they do spot-checks and tickets are not refunded if your bike gets banned). The measurement process is simple: they stand with a handheld device one meter behind the bike, measuring in 45 degree angle from exhaust, then rev up slowly to half of redline and hold until they give a sign. The official limit is 95dB (average), but anything below 100 will pass (it's not like the few vehicles with few dB higher average sound can be identified from the noise the the track in general)

Due to the measurement etc I was not among the first to hit the track and true enough after few first turns the safety car speeds past me and turns lights on (=no-overtaking), following the safety car (these guys drive fast, considering the safety cars is an "farmer" model) to the accident spot there are two cars by the curb, one looked ok on a glance, the other was slightly curled as it had hit the barrier, the safety guy waved me pass and I could concentrate on the driving. The track is scary (but what an adrenaline rush!), just about all of the curves are blind, the tarmac is not uniform everywhere, slopes etc. Needles to say given the track was totally unknown to me I wasn't getting very good lap time (not that the Multistrada can ever get as good a lap time as a capable rider on 999 [saw a couple of those, passing by fast...] for example), though the corners of my boots are slightly lessened by some of the turns where they hit the tarmac (If I'm to do more of this I need to invest into proper racing boots).

Due to time constraints (we had a hotel to reach) and approaching rain combined with being already tired from the long ride there I decided to leave the one lap at that and return some other day with more time. We took a scenery route (3 biker cafes/bars in 30km stretch) to Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler where Hotel Ahrbella Garni (50N32'46.3'', 7E08'38.7'') awaited, after quick refreshing we walked to the nearby by greek restaurant (Poseidon, not nearly as good as the previous one but ok) for dinner, when we got back I bought a pass to the hotel Wifi hotspot, trying to get photos uploaded but seems I'm getting throttled for that, maybe during the night things will get sorted out.

After these operations we hit the jam again, lane-splitting untill it became all but impossible (4 way merging can get ugly), luckily we noticed a van with Freiburg license plates taking a turn to back-alleys and decided to follow, this lead us trough an interesting side-route past the jam and to the Autobahn.

From Autobahn we took the Baden-Baden exit and headed on B-roads to Wissembourg (almost getting lost on the way), crossing the Rhein and French border in between, once in Wissembourg finding the Hotel D'Alsace (49N02'14.9'', 07E56'45.1'') was rather easy. After settling in we went to look for food but once we found the centre it was getting so late we decided just to go back to our room and eat some of the peanuts and fruits we had for snacks.

While eating the dinner and channel surfing we ran into this truly psychedelic game show on TVE (Spain), it seems this is a competition between two cities, in the first event we saw members of the two teams ran in a treadmill on penguin suits (with ankles chained together) trying to collect fishes hanging on lines, not many reached the end of the treadmill. Next event was carrying giant ice-cream cones in swimwear (with a inflated ring-toy-thin around waist) across a swimming pool over giant life-rings, total three people managed this. Next in chicken/egg suit running trough an obstacle course (again treadmill), this was done in pairs, winner got to stand on green platform, loser on red one, when all platforms were filled on the arena comes a 175kg young bull to push people of these platforms and generally harass them. It doesn't end here but I can't write it all down.

Especially the penguin part had that something in it, words cannot adequately explain this. Also incredibly weird were the song and dance numbers that introduced each event. I hope this won't haunt my dreams (I've been having really weird dreams lately even without this).

If someone has TVE (the show started at around 22 Spanish time) and some sort of digitizing equipment please get one episode as DivX and post the location so that the folks back in Finland won't think I'm on a particularly bad trip and imagining things.

We have been riding by the Bodensee east and north banks, and due to rather oppressive heat (which later turned into short thunderous showers) only rode 124km to Uhldingen-Mühlhofen where we took room in hotel Seerose (75EUR for double room, 47N43'08.7'', 09E13'56.1'') with Bodensee just across a small road we decided to go swimming, the water was surprisingly cold given the very shallow water at the rocky beach, after the swim as we were changing back to clothes the showers mentioned before started so we walked back to the hotel in swimwear (no point in getting the clothes all wet).

After the showers passed us/rained out we went to the "city" to look for dinner as the hotel restaurant (luckily as it turned out) is closed on tuesdays, after a short walk by the lakeside road we ended up to a rather full place which is in the downstairs of Hotel Seehof. Now, this place deserves some praise: wonderfull food (some serious gourmet shit as Jules Winnfield would say), reasonable prices and good size (even large) portions, nice view, good atmosphere and very friendly service, a killer combination.

I ran out of allergy medicine about four days ago (and every pharmacy we have driven by has been closed either due to mañana, sunday, time being 19:02 or because the owner decided to do something else in stead), in the mountains it was not bad but today it was getting really annoying, luckily in Meersburg there was an open pharmacy where they even found suitable stuff for me (they didn't carry the medicine I've got from Finland)

On lakes

Coming from Finland we're generally not very impressed by what is considered a large lake in these parts but Bodensee is definitely a good sized lake (as is Garda) but not huge by our standards, Iseo is smallish but very beautiful (we drove by it two days ago), in general all these lakes seem to have much clearer water than the ones in Finland.

In the morning when going for breakfast we found our clothes (2 weeks worth of them) washed, dried and ironed in a basked by our room door, this added a whole 5 swiss franks (~2.7EUR) to our room bill, not a bad deal at all. After breakfast (a real breakfast for a change, woohoo!) we set out trough Rechsenpass to Landeck and from there westwards, at this point the rain was getting heavier so we changed our plans and took the 15km tunnel system (main tunnel slightly over 13km), price 8.50/bike (same for cars & things smaller than bus/truck), since from this direction the tunnel winds down it was certainly a freaky experience riding a seemingly endless tunnel downwards for what seemed a very long time indeed (a later calculation shows it should be about 15 minutes).

When we reached Bludenz we started to look for accommodation, ending up in nearby village of Bürs and Gasthof Stern (47N09'01.7'', 9E40'14.3'', 80EUR for double room but we were too wet and tired to start looking for options that would probably have been only slightly cheaper). After setting in and putting our gear to dry we walked (the rain had stopped by then) to the nearby supermarket to shop for some dinner, while there it had started to rain again, this time heavily so we bought an umbrella as well, this didn't prevent us from getting wet but helped to reduce the amount soakage.

There were plenty of good views between here and there, but the weather was not exactly inspiring to stop for impromptu photo sessions, and water droplets on the lens tend to ruin images even more than the dull grey light so not much to offer in the photo front, I'm not sure how it turned out but I've got photos taken from the balcony of the room with clouds coming into the village, this post is written literally in the clouds.

Title of the post ? The route to and trough Rechsenpass took us from Switzerland (CH), trough Italy (I) to Ausria (A) and I could not think of anything better (since rain and related themes have already been used.

When reaching the national park of dello Stelvio less tunnels and more serpentine, though the few tunnels that were there have been dug around the roman times and are unlit, wet and narrow, here the locals were not so keen on overtaking in the middle of one. From nearly at the top of the pass the road forks and we continued onto Swiss side (towards the only hotel in the area that had free rooms) to Santa Maria im Müstertal (the writing form of this valley seems to depend on who you ask, anyways it's right next to the Italian border) trough a rather small road, so small in fact that it was not asphalted for the whole lenght of it (a major surprise), also the asphalted part was not in too good repair. Luckily there was only light rain, in heavier rain the dirt part would have been very interesting (and not in a fun way) indeed.

Once in the village finding Hotel Stelvio (46N36'03.6'', 10E25'22.3'') was very simple and since they cater for mountain bikers and also rent bikes they have a small workshop and washing facilities for bikes which they kindly allowed to use so that the the dirt deposited on our bikes would not get cemented on (there was a lot of it, filling parts of cooling the fins of the engines too, not good), they also have a laundry service which we were very happy to take advantage of (after over 2 weeks on the road we're running out of clean [for rather loose values of clean even] clothes).

There is a restaurant in the hotel as well, not horribly expensive considering we're in Switzerland, offer god food with fairly large portions. From the room I can reach a wireless network "default", which offers access to internet, I don't know who it belongs to but I'm going to use it to read my emails (downloading hundreds and hundreds of spam-messages is not a productive use of GPRS connection) etc, I hope they have flat rate so that I'm not inducing any financial burden on them but OTOH they really should not leave an open network in default configuration laying around if they have to pay extra if someone stumbles upon it.

After dinner I've been digging out (with the acting up GPRS connection) as much information on what has happened as possible, just finished reading at 22:20 local time.

We're at Hotel Euro (45N33'13.2'', 10E06'46.1'') in Brescia after riding 198km of SS and SR roads (I'm not still sure what their difference is, we've been referring to them as "B" roads as well out of convenience) from Venice, we're slowly starting to head back north (Taru has to be back on 22.7 and we don't want to repeat my last return from a longer tour [blasting trough Germany [and parts of Austria] in a day, then trough sweden in half a day to catch a ferry).

Just about the only other noteworthy happening was that we happened to be at the Brescia Tangenziale at the same time with local Ducati Club (or something): about 20 bikes, one Yamaha, rest Ducatis, 90% (maybe all, I had to watch the road as well) of the Ducati riders (including passengers) had "Ducati Performance" leather gear, it was certainly an interesting sight, they however took a different direction than us at the next exit.

The weather is and is going to be unstable (we've been riding between two stormfronts for the day, other one of them passed the hotel [with quite spectacular rain & thunder] some 30min ago), how we've managed to stay dry is anyones guess, I hope the luck holds.

After breakfast we walked to the kiosk that sells tickets and from there to the bus-stop as instructed yesterday night, hte bus was quite thoroughly late but at least we got sitting places. Ride to Piazzale Roma took about 20min.

From there we started walking to the general direction of the Doges palace, thinking what other places we should visit, at one point stopping to grab sandwiches from a cafe. after some wrong turns (in addition to a good map you might want to consider a compass, the city is literally a maze.) we managed to get to Piazza San Marco, where we first visited the archeoligical/cultural history museum (it's all in one large building in addition of an art exhibit) first and then went looking for food, the only place serving warm food ("all day" something) on the piazza turned out to be not worth it, as expected it was expensive but it was also of less than medicore quality.

After the museum and chow we headed for the palace, same ticket is valid for both, before the palace a word about the flying rats (or pigeons) on the piazze, there are a lot of them and they're not afraid of anything thanks to generations after generations of them being fed by the tourists (they even eat from you hand), they can be downright aggressive if you have anything resembling food visible.

The palace is an amazing place, and the tour seemingly endless and we we're on the regular tour there is also a "secret itenaries" tour which seems to include quite a few more interesting areas of the palace (at least based on the teasers we saw), reserve plenty of time. The place is literally full of amazing frescos and paintings, unfortunately photography, even without flash, is forbidden (though you can buy postcards...). I don't know what it costs but it is possible to get a personal guide, we followed one guiding an elderly couple around for a while, they certainly have a lot of information to give so unless it's horrendously expensive I would recommend this service.

After the palace we were quite ready to stop walking and took a waterbus back to Piazzale Roma, unfortuntely we managed to choose a slow line which stopped at every stop between, the ride trough Canal Grande took almost an hour and I didn't even have a seat. From there to find the correct bus platform, this was simple and we were obviously on time for the 18:55 bus (since there were other people on the stop and time was something like 18:45), a bus came 19:30 by this point there were a lot of people on the platform and it was a small bus, no-one was left of the platform but the bus got very full (again no seat for me), I don't know what is wrong with this particular line today. Misfortune does not end here, we manage to get of one or two stops early, leading to 30min walk to correct place (at this point we're walking slowly though). While at it we decide to check the opening times of the Supermercato, arriving there just as it closes at 20:00.

On to finding dinner, the local fish speciality place (in same building with a luxury hotel) was very expensive and we were not really in the mood or gear for Very Fancy Dining. Another place we wanted to check out we couldn't find with short enough walk so we gave up on it, and ended up the the ristorante a short walk from the hotel (the other way than the trattoria), Osteria ae Porte is very reasonably priced and the portions while not large are also not small, just perfect in fact and the food was good. A very pleasant change in the cost/quality ratio.

I forgot to ask about the internet service when we got back, and GPRS is acting up again (I TIM), it seems to work fine for some time then suddenly no packets find their way back and it will be like this for X hours and work again later, I don't know what gives, well at least I got the previous one posted.

update: I finally got this posted as well, there seems to be something seriously wrong with I TIM GPRS service all around, when I swicthed to Vodafone the connection is a lot more reliable (1% vs 40% and up packet loss).

Inside factory photography was forbidden, due to privacy laws (we were not allowed to the Ducati Corse [racing and R&D] side at all [not that anyone else who doesn't work for them would be either] and the normal side is no secret) if you're going and are good at quick sketches feel free to take your sketchbook. Tour of the factory was brilliant, it was certainly nice to see how the bikes are built and the guide answered all the questions people had, for some question he didn't know the answer but right after the tour started calling various people to find it out, very helpful indeed (though I doubt this would be the case with the big group tours of saturdays, weekdays have tours for groups of up to 10 people, during high-season you might want to consider booking your visit more than a day in advance [we didn't have the benefit of knowing when exactly we would be in Bologna so we had to take the risk]). We also saw some Sport Classics (new bike, a beautiful cafe-racer not yet available) both being built and completed.

The museum side is also impressive, with first at the entrance some examples of stuff made before they started to make motorcycles (I have a wonderfull book about history of the company at home, ISBN: 076030663X), and in the main area exhibits of the motorcycles and engines trough times, inside the museum photography (and videoing) is allowed, encouraged even. The museum shop was quite small, and didn't carry anything we would want that we didn't already have.

After the tour we set out towards Venice, since thunderstorms were forecasted for the evening we decided to use the Autostrada again to get at our hotel (Riviera Dei Dogi: 45N26'17.8'', 12E08'15.7'') ahead of them, from Bologna to Mira (about 8km from Venice, bus every 30min) was 6.20EUR per bike.

The rooms have air conditioning but there is a trick to know, first make sure the switch at top of thermostat is set to the "Sun" position, then on the right hand side of the AC find a panel to open and make sure it's not on "Stop", if the AC makes too much noise, the same switch can be used to control the fan speed. Next to the hotel is a rather expensive trattoria with small portions, however the food is good and they speak also english, they also accept credit cards, we'll ask the reception about other places nearby tomorrow.

The hotel also supposedly has some sort of internet point or whatever, I'll try to find out more about it and if it's sufficient I'll post more photos (To Be Uploaded: 340MB and counting...)

There is something funky going on with the local GPRS service so I'm not able to post this for now (it did work earlier when I checked the URL for the sport classics, weird..

2005.07.10 Update

Added the ISBN of the Ducati book (076030663X)

After getting truly soaked (despite the rain gear: as it ages it becomes more water resistant and less water proof, not that it's exactly a dry suit [as in scuba diving] to begin with), and noticing that unlike in Finland the summer rain is not warm, we stopped to get warmer clothes underneath and decided to bite the bullet and take autostrada from here onwards, as we wouldn't we enjoying any scenery in any case. True enough soon after hitting the autostrada the sky cleared some time before we got out of the valley and sun started shining, we continued onwards and at one gas station took off the warmer underclothes but kept rain gear still on (we didn't want to put them into the same bag with all the dry clothes we had), keeping the rain gear on proved to be mistake in a later phase of this particular adventure...

We took the exit for Bologna (Rovereto [near Verona] - Bologna 10.50EUR/bike) and started looking for hotel with reasonable cost/quality ratio, this proved to be more difficult than imagined and hitting the city at 5pm rush hour didn't help, numerous difficulties and 3 hours later we ended up to Hotel Bellevue (44N23'16.3'', 11E20'17.4'': spacious double room 70EUR) utterly exhausted.

Right next to the hotel is a pizzeria (which based on menu offers also other kinds food) and a ristorante (which we didn't check out yet), the pizzas are great and not too expensive either (generally <=5EUR, one 6EUR). Tomorrow morning we'll call the Ducati factory and book a time for a visit.

We continued on the road trough the valley, in Sölden we stopped to take a gondolier to the top of Gipfel, the view was quite literally breathtaking, you could feel that the air was considerably thinner than in the valley. Plenty of photos taken but no proper internet to upload them.

From there we continued on the same road an over the Timmeljoch (toll-road, 8EUR / motorcycle, also only open from 07:00 to 20:00 [not that riding the serpentines in the dark would be sane in any case]), this was certainly time-consuming especially as this was Tarus first experience of such roads.

Down from the main mountain we set out to find a sleeping place, as our cameras started to be hungry for for power and we were tired from the hard ride we decided to sleep indoors this night, after some searching first in Merano and runnign only into apartments that could be rented for week minimum we continued outside the town and nearby in Lana we found Garni Raffein (46N37'18.9'', 11E08'49.0'' 59EUR a night for double room including breakfast), after shower and getting photos from cameras to computer we set out to fine dinner in the city, beforehands we had scouted a Lana brochure and noticed that half of the places are closed on mondays and half of those that aren't close kitchen at 21:00 (which was nearly the time).

Anyways we managed to get dinner, after some complexities, the town is strange in the way that it's bi-language: italian and german, the locals speak a strange mix of them and all road-names are in both languages.

After the nice frisky cool of the mountains the 28C of the italian side valley certainly feels hot, also it feels like there is a thunderstorm brewing, the clouds look ominous and the humidity in the air is oppressive.

Todays ride lenght on the road was 110km, as the bird flies we have come 56km (+/- 5km). As a side note: since getting near Füssen we've seen a ton of motorcyclist on the road, often in groups of 4 and more, once we get out of the pass I expect this number to lower as the groups disperse to/come from different directions.

Neushwanstein can only be seen inside as a guided tour which was quite a run-trough of the finished parts of the castle, what is finished is certainly impressive and very Wagnerian (as it was meant to be). We took the horse cart both up and down the hill (walking up would certainly have taken way too much time, and there were quite enough stairs in the castle itself as well).

Photography inside the castle was forbidden (even without flash, obviously related to selling postcards), though the guide allowed us to take photographs of the views out of the open windows (which are indeed quite spectacular).

After getting down we took our bikes and went for lunch to the italian place mentioned yesterday, this time no-one was singing, also the food was good.

After lunch it was time to hit the road, we headed to Reutte, which proved to be interesting as the austrians have a wholly different strategy for placenames in road signs from the germans, also some of the road numbers have been changed since the printing of our map. From Reutte we continued to Imst trough the Fernpass from there we continued to Ötztal (yes from these mountains the famous Ötzi was found) and trough Oetz (or Ötz depending on the road sign...) to Umhausen where we wen to the local camping place (Camp Krismer: 47N08'04.7'', 10E55'56.9'') after setting up the tent we decided to head for the nearby "lake" (Badeseum, ~0.5km) which proved to be a pond, also swimming time ended at 18:30 (time was 19:05)...

In the same location there is an italian restaurant, since we were already there we decided to eat dinner there, food was ok and and ice-cream desserts delicious, though not exactly cheap (main course, desserts and drinks for two, 29EUR) compared the usual prices we've been getting on the gasthofs along the way.

The camping place has sopmething called "campnet" a day pass (but with 30MB limit) is 10EUR, the day price I could have lived with if the connection was fast enough, but the 30MB limit is way too low for uploading photos (which we plenty, and they're mosly large scenery ones too...) so you'll have to wait again.

At Füssen we started looking for accommodation, in general the hotels are expensive (not really suprising given the tourist attractions) so went to check out the hostel farther away, the reception was closed untill 17:00 so at first we waited (I executed the final part of "Plan B" for uploading photos and got them uploaded) and tried to educate ourselves on how much a room would cost (and if one would be available, we're not really keen on dormitory accommodation), quick worst case scenario calculation showed that the hostel might not be that cheap afterall (neither of us are members of the international your hostel association so we would have needed to buy some sort of guest stamp).

At this point time was about 15:45, so we decided to go check out the alternatives in stead of rotting in the lobby of the hostel building, after some driving we ended up in the next town of Shwangau and by sheer luck stumbled upon Haus Wiedemann (47N34'30.7'', 10E44'07.9'') which offered double room (incl breakfast) with toilet and shower for 40EUR, we took the offer (btw the Neushwanstein castle can be seen from the window and balcony of our room ;) and changed to street clothes and went walking to Tegelbergbahn (a gondolier to a summit), after the 2.5km walk (one way) we noticed that the gondolier closes at 17:00 (we got plenty of nice photos so the walk was not in vain), also at the bottom station there are excavated remains of a roman spa, we'll probably go check out at least the remains after visiting the castle.

After walking back from the gondoliers we were certainly ready for dinner, the italian place we had scouted earlier still had some "Di Giovanni" (I think the artist was actually Turkish) singing in italian to horrible sequencer backgrounds so we decided to go to the next place... This was the restaurant of hotel on the opposite (already forgot the name) side of the street, not the cheapest meal we've had, but not horribly expensive either, food was good and portions were large enough.

Back at the accommodation I emptied both cameras and put them on charge, so tomorrow we have full photo capability, after we're done with this place we'll be heading trough the alps via (get name, river Achen flows in it) pass to Merano in Italy, depending on how long things take here and weather in the pass we might have to spend one night in one of the villages in between.

When about 10km from Günzburg I called torben for driving directions to his place (48N27'32.6'', 10E18'30.6''), suprisingly enough I found there on first try, after changing to street clothes we went for lunch and from there to check out the horses at the stables nearby.

Essentially horses are like wolfhounds, just larger, they too have their mannerisms and crave for attention.

Back from the stables (trough supermarket to get some supplies) I noticed that the photo upload I had left running had been interrupted for whatever reason, anyways it has been restarted (along with another upload of the concert photos to my personal server).

Now we're waiting for Katharina to arrive and then we'll head for dinner, hopefully the uploads will be finished by then

Update

We had dinner at a nearby place which offers big portions of local cuisine at fair price (Landgasthof Krone in Offingen), food was very good and portions indeed large (I couldn't finish mine)

2005.07.02, morning: One upload got cancelled when browser crashed, but you can find a link to the concert photos in A night at Wuhlheide

2005.07.02, 15:55 (german time): Plan B worked, you may now enjoy first batch of photos from our trip in the gallery

Weather conditions led us to decide to use the Autobahn, the scenery and rustic towns of the side-roads are much less appealing when you can hardly see before you and everything is wet, also navigating gets harder when options are hard-to-read map trough plastic cover thingy, or soaked map, so the solution was to get some distance covered for a change.

Somewhere between Zwölnitz (where we stayed the night) and Hof (next bigger city) we stopped at an autohof to dry ourselves and grab some lunch, we ended up spending slightly more time, I read emails and sent the last post, also on IRC I agreed with Torben about meeting him and his wife at their place in Günzburg tomorrow.

We left the autohof and experienced first hand just how local weather can be in the hilly areas, one moment there is heavy rain and thunderstorm, within 30km there's road that hasn't seen rain in at least 20 hours, when we move on the A9 towards Nürenberg the weather improves for good, but since our normal clothes are packet away we decide not to change out of riding gear.

in Hilpoltstein (some 30km south of Nürenberg) we switched to B roads again, following B2 to Weissenburg (Bayern), where we first went out a gasthaus on top a steep hill (naturfreunds or something), but they were fully booked, the owner instructed us to the next place (Brandenburger Hof, 49N01'48.5'', 10E58'47.1'') where double room with bath (a real bath, bliss!) and breakfast was 70EUR, since we 1) needed to dry some gear up 2) were afraid that there would be rain in the night we decided to take it.

After quick showers and checking out the location (and entrance etc fees) of the Neuschwanstein castle (something we definetely are going to check out now that we're in the area we headed for the inner city, Weissenburg is an old city lots of old hansa buildings, multiple churches etc, walking around we ended up next to a greek restaurant Delphi (Auf der Wied 9), even though there were slight communication difficulties at first the food was nothing short of excellent, if you happen to end up here, check the place out.

Tomorrow: Günzburg and Torbens place, hopefully the weather is good so we can enjoy the ride there as well... I also hope Torbens internet woes (today when chatting he kept being disconnected) don't continue as I have plenty of photos to upload for your viewing pleasure.

Update

True to our fears it did rain during the night, and there is light rain still, we'll be riding in rain gear again this day

Today we passed parts of the rainfront coming from south, luckily there was only very light drizzle where we went, heavier rain could be seen in the distance

After all this when we finally got to Zwönitz (again, detour to get to the centre and around in centre [the main street has been dug up, what is it with these germans?]) we took the first hotel we could find, bit on the pricey side (79EUR for double room) but very comfy and a good restaurant downstairs.

For some reason the GPRS connection is finicky here so I hope I can still post this, I tried to do some minor corrections to the mornings post but they might be lost as well

Luckily we barely touched, front corner of the car and the brake saddle of my front tire, Brembos are made of tougher stuff and barely got a scratch, the car got more scratches to the paintwork

Cue in waiting for the police, for ages, and then explaining this to officers who don't really know english... All in all this minor incident cost us some 2h of ride time

While there we decided to check out the electronics store for a PMR radio (in the winter during a temporary lapse I had borrowed my trusty Kenwood to someone and forgot to write down to whom, this was not a pleasant thing to notice when you have no time left to get a replacement), they had to options, P.O.S and even more P.O.S, I was ready to lower my standards but these ones would not have cut it at all

For the night we first planned on going to a camping place near Hoyerswerda, but finding the entrance proved impossible (we found a [supposedly] back-gate but no-one would open or answer then gate phone thingy), so we moved on: then in a small medieval town of Bautzen (Coordinates 51N10'53.6'', 14E25'11.2'') we found this biergarten on the front yard of an old factory, in the backyard they had a place for caravans, tent for the night (and free use of the facilities, clean toilets [incl. paper], shower, etc) was 5EUR.

Now I'm looking at the weather satellite feed from weather.com trying to figure out the best way to south without getting wet, we can't stay here either since this is the way the storms are moving to...

The actual Checkpoint Charlie / Berlin Wall museum we passed mainly due to sudden invasion of two busloads of American tourists, as expected lots of "soviet" trinkets were sold in the streets, less expected was that a lot of it seemed fake, one would think it would be cheaper to get the real thing.

As for other museums, it seems they're either being renovated or closed on mondays, or both, anyways we got to walk plenty.

Dinner we had in Mexican restaurant slash coctail bar "Dos Amigos" right next to the hotel we've been staying in (Berolina Airport, Radickestrasse 76: 52N26'06.3'', 13E32'44,6''), food was excellent and there was plenty of it, also the coctails were great. The place is open when it happens to be open (though generally in evenings it is)

Now we're packing our stuff and next well be heading southwardish, probably to Check Republic, there are still storms in the south so we'll have to figure out whether we'll head to some other direction next or just brave trough the storms and hope weather is better on the other side of the Alps, in general we were planning on visiting the Ducati factory in Bologna late this week or early in the next but nothing is set to stone...

Tips for travellers

Get a good sized (so that you can actually read it without squinting) colored diagram of the public transportation routes, especially the S- and U-Bahn routes, these trains are a good way to get around

Pay your ticket, the "inspection fee" (or "missing ticket fee", whatever it may be called) is 600EUR and we were checked twice by plainclothes officials, a day pass for AB zones (there is also zone C for the true outskirts of the network) is 5.60EUR and is valid untill 03:00 next day, if you're staying longer there are tourist cards for various periods available.

If travelling by car/bike, and your destination is not right next to some major landmark a street map of the city is a good idea, it also helps you to plan on how to drive to certain places (one-ways, no turn lefts etc are commonplace)

Even though this was the third gig in a row this weekend for them they didn't let that get to them and gave an excellent show, also a new song was heard (the name could be "Benzin" if the chorus is anything to deduce by.)

The weather was just about perfect, not too hot and quite dry, and in Germany (unlike in Finland this time of year) it gets dark in the evenings so the pyrotechnics could be seen nicely.

Tomorrow we'll do some tourist stuff in the city for the day and pack in the evening, tuesday morning we'll be heading somewhere else

Update

Got me some hotspot time to check out my mails, so here are two photos that turned out to be ok (only scaled versions of now)

2005.07.02: One upload from Torbens place completed (other crashed...) check out concert photos at my personal gallery.

The song was not Seeman but Stripped...

On the ferry we saw promising (but as it turned out inaccurate) weather forecast showing light cloud and +30 celcius for Berlin, however once we got within 100km it started to rain lightly one look at the clouds ahead and we stopped to change into rain gear, this was a good idea.

In Berlin ring we managed to take a wrong turn twice and ended up driving trough near the center when looking for our hotel (near Schönefeld airport.), arriving two hours later than predicted quite wet indeed.

Sunday (==today) morning we slept late and then went walking to the city centre, now we're back for shower and short rest before the nights main event: Rammstein