Prologue :
I have for years thought about driving along one / some of Europaeus
rivers, because it's normally where societies / civilisations / cities
are founded. They used to be major traffic lines (some still are), and
therefor one can normally expect to find beautifully old houses, castles
and churches along them. I'm also a big fan of the Earths Children series
by Jean M. Auel ("The clan of the cave bear", "The valley of the horses",
"The mammoth hunters", "The passage of the plains" and hopefully 2 more
books in the near future). In "The passage of the plains" Ayla and Jondolar
travels from Ukraine to the Dordogne valley in France, they follow the
Donau (Mother) river for most of the way. I figured that doing their whole
trip would take too long and fans of the books are planing a summer meeting
in the Dordogne valley in 1999. So it would be logical to do the last part
of the trip from Schwarz Wald (the Black Forest) to the Dordogne valley
as a part of the transit part of my holiday in 1999. Likewise I didn't
feel like going to Ukraine on a legal "Road Racer", I felt that Rumania
would be bad enough (it would be much worse than I imagined). The best
thing would be to buy an Off-roader for the trip but I didn't feel like
selling my current bike, the best I ever had, an Suzuki GSX-R 1100 H. It
has lots of low end Grunt, top end Oomphhh, low weight, fantastic brakes
and handling, as Street fighter magazine said : The 1986, 87 and 88 GSX-R
1100 are possible the best bikes ever made, you can go anywhere on one
(I suppose they meant on tarmac). A major reason for buying that bike in
the first place was a nasty traffic accident on April 1st 1994,
"a very bad April fool", after witch I have limited movement and strength
in my left arm (+ damaged short term memory). I wanted a light motorcycle
for that reason (not more than 200 Kg. ~ 441 Lbs, dry), and preferably
with a big engine. Any jerk can drive straight on a heavy bike, but parking
manoeuvres with a stopped engine or (God forbid) a "tilted" bike, is also
something that one should be able to handle. The damaged memory enables
me to write this story ! Say what ?.... well in order not to forget what
happened "yesterday", I decided to keep a dairy, I dislikes to write but
I haven't got any better ideas which enables me to "remember" my holiday.
During my planing I discovered that there was two places called Dolní Vestonice, one in the Slovak Repl. and one in the Czech Repl., I wanted to see the right one and there was other places that I couldn't find on the maps. To my luck I stumbled on some maps made by Don Hitchcock from Australia on his home page, they are of a very high quality. I wrote an Email to Don asking for other geographical info regarding places from the books, I would like to thank Don for his outstanding help to a complete stranger, thanks mate.
Don's maps + info about Stone age places & weapons
Get visa to the Serbian Republic (if I had applied more than a month
before I needed it I would have gotten it for free), the visa to Rumania
was cheaper to buy at the border than here in Denmark !
Packing Friday, home to mother for dinner, I would start my trip from
them, because they live in the south end of the city, so I wouldn't have
to start with going through the city first. I planed to avoid the motorway
in the beginning too, because of repair work. Later I drove home to collect
the details that I forgot in the first place ( isn't that the way it always
goes ?). The odometer says 75968 Km.
Saturday the 4 of July.
Ready to go, drizzle and to much luggage.
Rise at seven O'clock Saturday morning, take a shower, breakfast and
pack the bike. Ready for departure at 0848, press the button,
puf puf.... damned etc. until I discovered that I haven't engaged the choke
completely. Pull it all the way out, press the button again, phew that
helped. Mum was almost crying, she probably felt the same way as I did
when they where going round the world or on their trip to Egypt. The bike
feels a bit weird with all that luggage on board, but runs fine. No traffic
on "gl. Horsens landevej" (Old Horsens country road), a lot from Vejle
to Kolding, but otherwise free all the way to the border (German) and until
the autobahn from Kiel merges with No. 7 to Hamburg. Dew on the visor (weather
= drizzle) until 50 Km. before Hannover, wonderful that it stopped. First
tank stop was Hüttner Berge (as usual), the next stop, a lovely truck
stop in Peine (20 Km. from Hannover), ate my sandwiches in the ice kiosk
! (no it wasn't open because of the weather, it starts to drizzle again).
Took the main road from Magdeburg to Dessau, a nice change to the autobahn.
Almost out off gas before Dresden, and I haven't seen any road signs informing
of any for the last 100 Km.'s so I leave the autobahn and find one in a
little town called Wermsdorf : a very sweet (and beautiful) young woman
is on duty at the moment and a lot of the young men in the village are
parked outside pretending to ignore her (I do understand them). Back on
the autobahn I discover that only 10 Km.'s after where I left it to find
gas there's a tank, oh well, better safe than sorry. Found a "Zimmer frei"
(B&B) at Pension "In der Laue" in Karsdorf outside Dresden. Nice guy
(oldest son ?) helps me carry all the luggage up, and down again the day
after. Odometer says 76887 Km. => drove 919 Km.'s (571 miles) the first
day.
Sunday the 5 of July.
Meet the father, he asks if I would like to get the bike into the garage, I say thanks but Im leaving in 15 minutes, say goodbye at 1015 and head for the Czech Border, beautiful landscape, see a lot of small gauge railroad tracks, they run a long with the road with a gradient up to 10%. 10 minutes later I suddenly meet a small Tender Locomotive with 4 wagons and a post car, cute, looks like one of the smallest Märklin railway models, I'm sorry that I didn't have time enough to stop, get the camera out and take a picture before the train disappeared again. Did by the way also see the smallest Tender Köf one can imagine yesterday (no I don't know what they are called in English, just that they are not big enough to be called a locomotive), by the railway crossing in Schora, very beautifully polished. A few Km.'s later in Schmiedeberg (if I remember correctly) something's wrong with the road signs, and I decide to follow the sign saying border for trucks and busses, bad choice as far as road surface goes (several Km.'s of cobble stone) a very pretty road....... But not very enjoyable in the rain, oh did I forget to mention that it's raining again ? Well arrived at the Slovak border, at the end of the day around 1930, I able to determine that : the tank bag isn't water proof (the sales man had warned about that) and the rain cover isn't either......... dam. Wet socks, etc. but I'm warm enough anyway. None the less, I did enjoy the landscape a lot and the pleasure was even greater in the approx. 10-15 minutes where the sun almost shone through the sky, wonderful light.
I'm cheating here ; this is 3 pictures put together. The left is towards east, then south and last towards west.
I came through a village full of tourist coaches on my way to Prague, I couldn't see that it was that interesting. I could see a very big cemetery after I rounded a corner, with a big Jewish star, aha .... next after that the citylimit sign (end) ; Terezin, oh, of cause, Teresienstadt (concentrationcamp). After Brno I had a "navigational error" again, I never saw the sign to turn of towards Uherské-Hraddiste, so I ended up in Olomovc, arrgh, (during this distance : 5 Km. where it hadn't rained....! ). Finally I arrived at the Slovak border, didn't see any "Zimmer frei", so I took a motel at 900 Kr. (Czech) 1 Km. from the border. A pretty valley, good food and some very beautiful women in the bar. I felt a bit awkward, sitting in the bar and being the only one eating (there was no one when I ordered) and suddenly there was 20-30 people looking at me in a strange way (they thought that I was German). Appro pros : the receptionist thought that my passport was phoney, she didn't believe that there existed a country called Denmark, not before I found a map where I could show her. Other than that, the biggest difference between here and the west seems to be the amount of cars parked all over with the hood open or changing tires, and no it's not always the old junk parked there. Later I happened to remember that old Skoda's had the engine in the back so maybe a lot of them where actually having a picnic, hmm..... 77480 Km. => 593 Km. (368 miles), planned 420, so I drove a detour today of approx. 173 Km. The moon's shining this night.