Franeker – Wide Ie

So I happen to have a boat that goes by the name of Balkonia. It needed to be transported from Franeker, in the Friesland province of the Netherlands, to Bremen, Germany. Since both places are located at some kind of waterway the obvious mode of transport is to cruise her along the Dutch and German canals and rivers. The total distance is about 300 km, and the top speed will be 6 km/h.

The day of departure had been delayed by some technical problems but today everything was solved and fixed and I finally set sail left Franeker at 2pm, short-handed (on my own).

The route goes mostly in an eastish direction, first following the Van Harinxmakanaal to Leeuwarden. On an earlier attempt last week we had moored in the city for one night, but today I sped past with still a few hours of sunlight left.

A few kilometers after joining the Prinses Margrietkanaal I decided to anchor in the Wide Ie, a lake-like extension on the canal, near the shore and well away from the navigation channel of the canal. Earlier in the afternoon I had seen another ship anchor in the middle of a lake so I figured doing so would be ok.

The cruising had been easy today. All bridges were high enough for my little boat and there were no locks. That is going to change tomorrow.
I was still a bit stressed over those problems that delayed my departure, but that is slowly fading away.


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Hiking in Andorra

I happen to be in the French Pyrenees for some hiking with friends. Due to some knee trouble I decided to chicken out and let the others finish the hike on our planned route. I, on the other hand, took train and bus to Andorra yesterday, that tiny landlocked country between Spain and France, to have a look at it and try my luck with a day hike without backpack.

So today I left Pas de la Casa to the north to follow the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne (HRP), a hiking trail along the entire length of the Pyrenees, for a few hours. It took me an hour to climb out of the valley and leave the noise of the city behind. ‘City’ is a bit of a euphemism here. There are three things prevalent in Pas de la Casa: hotels, duty-free shops, and ski resorts.

Anyway, from then on it was beautiful walking over grassy slopes and the occasional scaling of a hill’s summit (e.g. Pic de Maià, 2615m). The HRP was joined by La Volta a Andorra, a circular trail around Andorra, and I followed both for a while, not without coming across the occasional marmot. Before the trails separated again they led me into a most beautiful valley, that of the Riu Siscaro. I can’t describe it in words, and the photos won’t do it justice either. The same goes for the following traverse, to the valley of the Riu de Juclar. They looked almost wild and unspoilt, except that the nearest road and settlement was never more than 1 or 2 kilometers away, of course.

Near the latter river’s source (?) is a refugi at an artificial lake, Estany Primer de Juclar, that I briefly visited before heading down along the Riu de Juclar towards Andorra’s main road.

Though impoverished until the 1950s, from what is left of old architecture and roads, Andorra must have been an amazing-looking country. Tourism brought money but spoiled the beauty. Quite a catch 22, eh?

Walked: 18.5km or so

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The End

I’m taking trains through Denmark today and I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight.

A pretty cool trip, if pretty expensive. Trains in western Europe are not exactly cheap, especially if not pre-booked. It is also slightly annoying to be limited by few connections per day, or even weekly or no connections at all, like in the Baltics and Belarus. Of course, buses to the rescue, if you’re into that mode of transport (I’m not, and they’re not necessarily cheaper).
I don’t think I’ll travel like this again.

The robbery in Minsk and yesterday’s experience in Sweden make for good stories to laugh about.

However, taking the bike – best decision ever. It adds so much mobility that’d simply be impossible to be had otherwise. Yes, it made things more difficult sometimes, but it was well worth the hassle.

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“Don’t argue with me, I’m a female!” (Stockholm – Göteborg – Frederikshavn)

The nice thing about traveling by ferry with a bike is that usually I am the first to board and the first to leave.

So I had solid Swedish soil under my tyres and sped to the train station. I got a ticket for the last available seat on the X2000 to Malmö, took the bike apart (Hello Belarus!), and left Stockholm less than an hour after arriving there.

Then I had the chance to re-rank both Sweden and Belarus in terms of bike-friendliness and conductress-friendliness: The conductress, upon entering the car to check the tickets, got quite upset about the bike.

She said bikes were forbidden to be taken on board, unless taken apart and wrapped. I had asked in Stockholm when buying the ticket and had received an OK. She said that by buying a ticket I had agreed to SJ’s (the train company) terms of service, which state the wrapping is required. That is not entirely correct, because nobody had even shown me their terms of service, of course. She cut me off mid-sentence. She said that the bike was a safety hazard in case we had an accident. I pointed out that neither did I want to be hit by any of my fellow travelers’ hard-top cases. Tucking the bike in some corner or locking it to a spare table (for wheelchair users; none aboard) wasn’t an option for her either.

Conductress: “My highest priority is safety, safety, safety, safety. Next is that the train is on time. Service is very very low.”
Her words.

“Yes, I noticed.”

Then the discussion took a most unpleasant turn:

Conductress: “Would you argue with somebody else?”
“Err, yes, of course.”
“Would you argue with a police officer?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Or are you arguing with me because I am a female?”

Dafuq???

“Are you making it more difficult for me because I’m a foreigner?” Unfortunately, I didn’t say this.

To make it clear again, I was ‘arguing’ because I had paid 750 Swedish kronor (~80 Euros) for a valid ticket, and I had checked in Stockholm whether taking the bike like this was ok. Now she tells me I have to leave the train and buy a new ticket if I manage to wrap the bike and take the next train. So I am losing both time and money. Instead of killing the conversation with such a ridiculous kill-all question she could have offered a solution. Because, is that really the standard we have reached in society? Do I have to obey every female now simply because they’re a female? This is a stupid and dangerous development.

Well, I had to leave the train at Norrköping, somewhere between the middle of nowhere and the end of the world (i.e., not far from Stockholm). When I was about to disembark, people came forward and apologized for the hassle. One suggested I throw the bike away to be able to continue traveling. Yes, thank you, I see you fully understood the problem.

What is wrong with this country? There are numerous cycle tourists traveling in Sweden every year, and it is impossible to quickly take a bike on a train??? Even a proper folding bicycle has to be wrapped in a ‘protective case’, whatever that is and whoever or whatever it is supposed to protect. And what’s with the weird attitude?

I was unable to find a suitable cardboard box in the sleepy town of Norrköping at 8.30 in the morning. It is also impossible to take bikes on SJ’s regional trains. So the only option was the bus. This is how I got to Göteborg, fortunately a port city with frequent ferry connections to Denmark. The original plan had been to be home tonight. I scratched that.

Well, I apologize to Belarus and all Belarusians for previously calling their country the most bike-unfriendly one. Sweden just took over that title with flying colors. And it is also the first country where I have been confronted with this new social mis-development of weirdly misguided feminism, even though I am sure society is just as f*cked up in other places as well.

I did get a full refund of the train ticket in Göteborg thanks to SJ’s unfriendly but fair José. However, that still leaves me with an additional ferry crossing and hotel to pay for, an additional day of traveling, and a lot of annoyance.

I feel like avoiding Sweden in the future, I am so fed up. But I guess that will go away after a good night’s sleep. I’ll avoid SJ for sure, though.

Göteborg is nice nonetheless.

I’ve crossed the Kattegat already and am in Frederikshavn, northern Denmark, now.

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Helsinki – Turku (- Stockholm)

Sunday morning in Helsinki… let me just say that Sunday morning coffee/café culture leaves a lot to be desired. :)

I went bouldering at Kiipeilyareena. They claim to have the highest rope climbing walls in Scandinavia, and indeed do they have some high walls! There are multiple storeys/levels, kind of stacked on top of each other, and there is one sector with a number of routes which cover the entire height. They also have some fancy auto-belay system installed on some routes that lets you climb without a partner. The bouldering area is not very big and almost all walls have overhangs, something I’m not too fond of. Also, there were quite a few children and beginners there who didn’t pay much attention to the simplest of rules: don’t walk under other climbers, and share the routes. Overall the experience was mixed.

Train to Turku in the afternoon, which is a pretty town.

I’m on the ferry to Stockholm now. The trip is almost over.

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Ivalo – Rovaniemi (- Helsinki)

The past week I spent at my friends’ place near Ivalo. All the grand plans of going on long skiing tours on Lake Inari and camping somewhere on the ice were drowned by the warmth and coziness of their place. Short trips had to suffice.

The weather was mild, just a few degrees Celsius below zero.
Interestingly, between the top-most layer of snow and the frozen lake, a layer of unfrozen water develops. This makes things very interesting when taking the snowmobile off of the established tracks, where ice and snow are very compacted. It also makes walking difficult, skiing is the best mode of transport. Cycling (with narrow tyres) didn’t work at all. Surprise, surprise.

And I saw my first northern lights. Amazing. Photographing them was a bit of a challenge and I’m not overly happy with the results.

Today I took the bus to Rovaniemi and am now on the beloved night train to Helsinki.

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Tallinn – Helsinki (- Ivalo)

Taro, owner of the hostel I stayed at in Tallinn, had the grand idea to send a letter to his 94-year old grandmother not by ordinary mail, but by other people. I am happy to be The First Bearer Of The Book, as it were, a notebook that contains the letter to his grandma, and into which every future Bearer can add their own page full of greetings, stories, or whatever, before passing it on to the next person who will hopefully carry it closer towards Japan.
It is made of a recycled book, see below, maybe you come across it one day. The title aptly translates to “Affections. Scenes of Time and People”.

Interestingly, I also started to draw after an interesting discussion which raised the question whether everybody could be an artist.

After the ferry to Helsinki today, I am now on the night train to Rovaniemi – the first on this trip that was supposed to be about bouldering and night trains.
I’ll be in Ivalo tomorrow, where I’ll stay with my friends for a few days.

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Tallinn’s Paljassaare & the Ministry of Climbing

Spent the day out in the ‘countryside’, on Paljassaare peninsula at the northeastern end of Tallinn’s Bay. There are some old military structures there, and some can be accessed, but those I found/looked at weren’t very spectacular. There is a lot of snow there but cycling went well on footpaths with somewhat compacted snow and ice. It was a lot of fun actually.

In the evening I went to the Ministry of Climbing, one of the climbing gyms in Tallinn. It’s been more than a week that I last went bouldering (Minsk!). Ronimisministeerium is pretty cool. It’s not very big but the space is used well and the walls are laid out in quite an interesting fashion. The site is some kind of old factory (my wild guess).

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Tallinn

Ok, last night’s hostel was another failure. No storage space for stuff, noisy people at night, half the stuff is not working (shower head is off the pipe, bathroom door can’t be locked, half the lights in the bathroom not working – I have no clue whether my hair is looking proper today!), and who the f*ck allowed rummaging through plastic bags in a dorm room in the middle of the night???

Speaking of which, did you know that Rwanda has banned plastic bags completely since 2008? That’s the way to go. Not these half-assed announcements to maybe ban them 2025 or whenever.

Anyway, new hostel, and it’s great. Got stuck there chattin’ away and finally fixin’ my bike’s sneakin’ flat (hopefully for good) until it was too late to get far out of the city center. Also, it’s quite cold (-3°C or so).

Tallinn’s old town is very pretty, in many ways. Pretty beautiful, pretty expensive, pretty touristy.

And I got a bit annoyed by them many tourists that flash their expensive cameras but don’t pay attention to what they’re actually photographing – kind of walk ‘n click. The same goes for those who take pictures with their mobiles. So, in protest, very few and very carefully taken photos from me today. ;)

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Rīga – Tallinn

Was in bed late; early start once again. I had only 2 hours of sleep.

My plan to use as many night trains as possible didn’t work out well so far. There simply weren’t any, and travel times weren’t so long most of the time anyway. Today, however, was an 11-hour trip from start to finish. This would have been nice to travel over night. Instead, trains often leave very early in the morning. Yaaawn…

Latvian Railways have a service to Valga, just across the border in Estonia. The last stop before Valga is Lugaži (really not more than the ‘station’, from the looks of it), still in Latvia and just 3km from town and border. I got off there and cycled into Estonia over icy roads. There is finally snow here.

The border runs right through the town, with Valka being the Latvian part, and Valga the Estonian. I had 3.5 hours to kill until the connecting train would leave for Tallinn. I think I have seen most everything of Valka/Valga, and had lunch as well.

The train was new, comfy, sometimes fast, and bike transport is free. That is a first.

I’m in a hostel in Tallinn’s old town. It’s a touristy beauty (the old town). Hostels, on the other hand, are not what they used to be. Nobody says ‘hello’ anymore, there is no ‘backpacker feeling’, no ‘community’. Just cheap lodging. I’m too tired for this shit.

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Rīga

Hm, a day out in Rīga. The center is a maze of right-angled streets, lined with massive stone houses and tiny wooden ones. All of them beautiful.

There is waaay too much motorized traffic here. However, the number of cyclists has steadily increased since Minsk (which is not difficult).

The old town is the usual pretty tourist trap.

Surveillance cameras are ubiquitous.

As usual I tried to find some nice spots in the suburbs and was lured along the river Daugava towards the port and industrial areas. Also as usual, it is difficult to get anywhere near the interesting bits. There are lots of decaying buildings there and all over the city.

It is still around 0°C.

The bouldering options didn’t appeal. Is it time to set up a proper bouldering gym in Riga?

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Klaipėda – Skoudas – Liepāja – Rīga

So, by bus to Skoudas. There was one other passenger (ok, it’s Sunday morning). It did have wifi.

From Skoudas the bus goes along the Lithuanian-Latvian border all the way to Mažeikiai and Naujoji Akmenė, both of which would have been good starting points for the ride north to the Liepāja-Rīga rail line. Writing this I feel a bit like in the Wild West, where people would trek towards the rail line and it wouldn’t really matter where exactly they hit it. Anyway. There isn’t much difference in the distance I’d have had to cycle, so my choice was Skoudas, hoping I’d manage to be in Liepāja in time to have a wee look around.

While temperatures were comparatively mild in Klaipėda (slightly above 0°C), further inland puddles and flooded fields were covered with thin ice.

The ride from Skoudas pretty much started with crossing the border to Latvia, which was easy enough. This is all Schengen. There was just a sign, “Latvia” (not even “Welcome to”…).

And the ride itself? Grand, gorgeous, just great! The sun was shining, there was hardly any wind, and I didn’t feel cold at all, perfect! It was also exhausting due to the backpacks. I rode mostly on compacted sand and tarmac roads of debatable quality, but the bike held up well. It has, by the way, never been this far away from home.

I arrived at Liepāja’s train station at 3pm and first of all I verified that the train was indeed going today at 5.30pm. That left me with just over 2 hours to have a look at Liepāja’s center and its suburb Karosta.

I left my luggage at the station’s kiosk and cycled – free and light! – into town. Liepāja is amazing (from the 1-hour look I had at it), especially the architecture (that’s basically all I saw). It is also a bit crumbling. Many of the old wooden houses are in desperate need of repair.

Karosta is also interesting. During the times of the Russian Empire, and after that during Soviet times as well, it was a Secret City, closed to all outsiders. After Latvia broke off of the Soviet Union, Russia withdrew its personnel and the town is now open. The population dropped from 25000 to now 7000. It is a most weird place. A mix of red brick housing blocks, houses that look more like villas, those typical Soviet concrete tower-blocks (Plattenbauten), and newer (and older as well) detached houses. And in the very center a massively impressive Orthodox cathedral.

I was back at the station at 5.20pm. Interestingly, the ticket booths there are now used to sell bus tickets. Train tickets can be bought only on board the train.

The rail network seems to be well used for fright, but passenger transport is mostly done by bus. Earlier, when I arrived at Liepāja’s station the first time, people where queuing up for the bus to Rīga (and there was more than one going today). This train still has some capacity, to put it nicely.

Hm, if the other lines operate only once weekly as well, they could get by with one train, one conductor, and one train driver. Nah, fortunately, my next connection to Valga in Estonia, is served three times a day, every day!1! (That is also the only currently existing connection to any neighboring country – and Valga is literally just across the border.)

Yesterday’s hostel was a treat, but the hotel I just picked in Rīga leaves a bit to be desired. Plus I have to park the bike in the backyard, without roof. That’s a first.

Cycled: 75km

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Klaipėda

Klaipėda is becoming a bit of a dead end for me. I could probably go back to Kaunas or Vilnius and catch a bus to Riga from there that also takes my bike, but backtracking doesn’t feel right. I found out that there is a weekly train to Riga from Liepaja in Latvia, just 100km north of Klaipėda. This incidentally goes tomorrow evening! But the bus to Liepaja doesn’t run today, and tomorrow it goes too late to reach the train. So that leaves me with one option: cycling. Normally I wouldn’t hesitate, but with a heavy backpack that’s no fun. So what I’ll do is get as far as possible towards Liepaja by public transport, which seems to be as far as Skoudas, more or less directly at the Latvian border. From there it’s still ~50km, but I guess I have no choice. Brrrr, it will be cold.

Due to bad planning on my part I didn’t leave Klaipėda today. Too bad, I would have liked to have that extra day in Liepāja.

So this is an ‘office day’ today, overlooking the main bus terminal from my desk.

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Klaipėda & the Curonian Spit

It’s been my dream all my life (well…) to cycle along the entire Curonian Spit, which includes crossing into Russia’s Kaliningrad oblast. Today I managed to cycle on the Curonian Spit for a couple of hours. That’s something. It can be reached by a quick (and cheap) ferry ride from Klaipėda.

The Curonian Spit (Kurische Nehrung) is basically a long sand dune, some 5000 years old, and of course overgrown. It’s nearly 100km long and between 400m and 3.8km wide. The northern half belongs to Lithuania, the southern half to Russia.

Other than that, I explored the city and realized that my plan of going to Riga tomorrow won’t work. For some reason all rail lines between Lithuania and Latvia are severed. One line (between Kaunas/Lithuania and Jelgava/Latvia, I think) is currently being renovated to become part of a new Baltic link between Warsaw and St Petersburg. I have no idea when this is going to be finished. All other lines have been demolished years ago or don’t work for some other reason (for example Vilnius – Daugavpils, no clue what’s going on there).

Anyway, since going through Russia or Belarus again is not an option my idea was to take the bus to Riga. Today I learned that this route is served by so-called micro buses, 18-seaters (approx.), with little to no space for luggage, let alone a bike (not even with wheels taken off). I’ll have to think of something else.

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Vilnius – Hill of Crosses (Šiauliai) – Klaipėda

Tired start, by train to Šiauliai (pronounced Showlé – who would’ve thought?) a bit less than 200km northwest of Vilnius. The train was of the old, massive (Soviet?) type again, of almost truck-like appearance with the cabin high on top of the wheels; and it did have a separate bike compartment, just like Lithuanian Railways promised it would.

I parked my luggage at the station in Šiauliai and rode the 12km to a place called Kryžių kalnas, Hill of Crosses. It’s a hill… full of crosses – a Catholic pilgrimage site which also expressed Lithuanian resistance during the times of Soviet rule. And a bit crazy, see below.
Halfway through the visit it started to snow. That and the headwind made me look like a snowman when I was back in Šiauliai.

The next train, Russian-made and extremely noisy, brought me to Klaipėda, at the Baltic Sea. I like the name, and the city seems likable as well, so far.

Lithuanian drivers are really the worst. And no, neither Indians nor Bangladeshis come anywhere near.

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