Flashes of lightning light up the inside of my tent while I work on a couple of cans of Weissen brew. The rain is once again coming down like a tropical downpour reminding me as always of my trips to Thailand and the little family I have there.

Thai voices ring inside my head drowning the steady patter of rain on top of my tent. I`m slowly getting into phylosofical mood brought about no doubt by the alcohol and several weeks of wild camping in German woods, living it rough, shunning human contact as much as possible, living a solitary life of cycling all day on a bare excistence, my only luxury of the day my runny eggs and stale bread served with luke-warm watery dish water that qualifies as hot coffee in these lonely Eastern German villages.

The rain is slowly subsiding and the sounds erupting outside my little one-person tent in this dark and mysterious forest are at the same time fascinating and scary bringing my farang mind back to the here and now from the far away Land of the Thais, from the sociable and always smiling Thais to my self chosen life of solitary.

I`ve spent all day cycling through the beautifull Nossentiner-Schwinzer Heide National Park with groups of sparrows and wood pigeons in the Fields, deer running away ahead of me, dozens of swans in a Field. An owl sitting on a barbed wire pole looking at me cycling by, a big brown buzzard sat only a few short yards away from me in the grass. I had no idea what he/she was doing there and when I stopped to investigate the bird flew away loudly shrieking his/her protestations.

Today I also reached the river Elbe which means I`m slowly leaving the former East German Replublik behind and am back on track to Amsterdam.

written by  heraclio on March 23, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
tagged BerlinCycleNossentimmerHeideNationalParkGermanyAmsterdam
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A brave but still weak sun greets me when I wake up and stick my head out of my tent.

I`m surrounded by literally thousands upon thousands of tiny mayflies buzzing around my head while I break down my tent, bury the five half liter cans of Kranenborger Beer I consumed last night in front of my tent and prepare myself for yet another day on my bicycle.

A real birth explosion of these tiny one-day creatures that are rumoured to live only one day. One single day of life during which they have to go through the whole process of creeping out of there eggs, find a partner and reproduce and then die.

Pushing my bicycle through the forest in the direction of the road I`ve to frequently navigate through huge spiderwebs that are hanging between the trees full with the early morning dew and unfortunate magflies trapped in the web`s sticky threats. For these unfortunates life was already over before it even started!!!

The masters of these webs, cross-spiders whose hairy backs proudly sport colorfull crucifixes, look fat and big though they too can only have been born recently.

I presume a diet of careless magflies must be good to a young spider`s physical development.

Not that I really care about magflies buzzing around my head or sticky spiderwebs blocking my way....I too have the early sun of spring in my head feeling happy at the prospect of cycling during what will obviously be a sunny day, with probably many yet to come.

Cycling under a german early spring sun during the day and sipping cans of Kranenborger beer in front of my tent at night, getting philosophical while keeping a small campfire going and eating german bratwurst bought in the Lidl supermarket.

No more nordic god Thor causing big thunderstorms while his magic hammer Mjölnir will light up the night sky with rowdy flashes of lighning forcing me to hide in my tent, smiling down on me with malicious content in the morning while I pull down my tent in pouring rain.

From now on these last five days of cycling back to Amsterdam will be absolute delight!!!

written by  heraclio on March 24, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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Having my breakfast in a small McDonalds roadside restaurant I realise that my time of cycling through these dark-green and mysterious Eastern German forests has come to a definite end. Long and solitary days on the bike cycling under overcast skies that never promised anything positive, endless showers of sleet and rain, thunderstorms at night with flashes of lightning lighting up the inside of my tent at night.

Ancient small nearly deserted villages where time seemed to have come to some weird sudden end, devoid of young people, where old people looked like they were under a strange and mystical spell, live energy gone from dull old rumy eyes.

The sounds of animals at night adding to the overall feeling I was in some sort of fairy land cunjured up by the brothers Grimm.

So now I sit here in this German version of the American born McDonalds, an unruly week old beard covering my face, disheveled hair that could use a serious visit to a hair salon, smelly old clothes, drinking inky black strong McDonalds coffee and eating greasy omelettes contemplating this confined world of an american fast food joint on German soil.

People hurriedly entering and impaciently queueing up while dragging nervously from Marlboro sigarettes, no time to sit down and relax while having a bite...instead they hastily eat their hamburger on the way to the exit, unsure of sipping from a cup of hot coffee or having another drag from their still burning Marlboro provided cancer stick, preparing themselves for slave driven life at the office.

Shappy dressed teenager girls gossiping about the hottest looking hunk at school, giggling while they sip their strawberry flavoured milk shakes with bright red lipsticked mouths.

Two young women at the other table eye me with disgust and when I give them my warmest smile look away with hauthy faces. I have no doubt that my bodily odour has a serious say in this matter.

Yes I`m back in the real world of mankind.

written by  heraclio on March 25, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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Ever since I left Eastern Germany`s dark-green forests behind me, goodbye to the weird fairy tale land of the brothers Grimm, things have turned for the better.

I cycle all day under a nice spring sun. No more rain and sleet slashing into my face all day. No more cold wind whipping against my frame trying to slow down my hard work on my bike, instead I experience a nice but easy breeze in my back gliding me along all the way back to my beloved Amsterdam.

Gone are the nearly abandoned ancient German villages where the aged left-over population looked downtrotten with dull eyes that betrayed no hope for the future, whose clothes where moth eaten, old people sipping Schnapps while waiting for eternity`s bony fingers to come and get them. Instead I cycle through small cities that are full with life, , the hustle and bustle of a hard working population, where people hurry to and fro, where the stinking exhaust fumes of passing cars invade my nostrils making me cough.

I cycle through countryside dotted with farms where locals are busily plowing the earth with massive tractors, fields with grain and maize glide by while my legs do the work....up and down they go on the pedals of my bicycle.

Small little roadside cafes and bars provide me with the occasional cup of strong coffee and disapproving looks from the other clietêle. I`m a drifter and these are frowned upon by the highly organised culture of the economic powerhouse called The German Republic.

Ordnung soll es geben and Befehl ist BeFehl.

Their obvious but quiet disapproval does not bother me...in mere days I`ll be back home, back in my own appartment where I can shower and shave off my bushy beard, where I can step out of these smelly cycle clothes, visit a hair salon and get my disheveled hair cropped....but then I mere days I`ll be like them again...a working stiff having to slave away for a dominant boss to pay my rent, my bills and my taxes.

written by  heraclio on March 27, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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I make camp in a small forest of birch trees just before sunset. There are several farms nearby but I don`t expect any problems wild camping like this. Not like the inhabitants of the nearby farms will phone the police and I`ll end up sleeping on the hard wooden bench of a German police office holding cell on charges of vagrancy.

One of these farms is actually so nearby that I can hear the clatter of storches that live on a nest overhead the farm. I have heard that storches are soundless, that their throats can`t produce sounds so instead they clapper their beaks together.

They fly to and fro their nest carrying half a forest for nest building purposes and in the last of the day`s light I see them mating, a quick and rowdy affair with feathers flying around and the male repeatedly slipping off the female`s back due to his long legs.

The farmer`s children watch the whole proceedings with just as much interest as me if not even more. Even the farm dog is looking up with keen interest in his canine eyes

When it is all over the storch couple rearrange their feathers and continue working on their nest. Small and bigger pieces of wood, branches and boughs are moved from side of the nest to the other. the nest itself is on top of a man made construction on top of a twenty-five meter tall wooden pole.

Slowly working on my cans of Weissen brew my mind wanders back to my childhood in the south of Holland, to a time when storches where still plentyfull with every farm having a similar storch nest construction, each farm having its own storch couple - sometimes even two storch couples. People used to believe that having storches inhabiting these nests would bring them luck, People used to believe they would bring fertility to the farmer`s wife.

Even today it is custom in Holland to put a wooden storch in the garden when a baby has been born.

Human superstition which served the storch clans well but eventually the storches stopped coming to Holland and became extinct in our country due to extensive hunting during their winter migration routes.

Like always mankind can be a blessing or a curse to the world around him/her!!!

written by  heraclio on March 28, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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I`m cycling...cycling...and even more cycling, I`m on a mad and crazy hunt for envelopes and packages, ordners and photo albums, the portophone that hangs with a leather string from my neck is cackling away in dutch - a strange and gutteral language that I seem incapable to understand though it is my native tonque.... but then I tune in....

"Shiva, hoor je mij? we hebben een spoedje bij Lettergrafica voor de rechtbank".

It`s Bart from the planning, from the Fietsdienst - the bicycle messenger company I work for in my beloved Amsterdam telling me about this Hurry-Hurry deliverance I have to make. Thirty minutes I`ve to pick up an envelop in the heart of the city and bring it to the court of justice building in Amsterdam South.

"Wel door fietsen, Shiva, het heeft super haast!!!", my phortophone keeps cackling.

With a sudden start I wake up, not in my own bed in Amsterdam as I believe for a short moment, not somewhere in a cheap hotel room at the other end of the world, a third world place where the locals always love to hear my travel stories, see the drawings in my sketch books, can only dream of the crazy and free life I live...no, nothing like that at all...I wake up inside a dirty sleeping bag, the smell of stale sweat all around me produced by unwashed cycle clothes haphazardly strewn around in my little one-man`s tent, my bicycle bags under my head being used as a impromptu pillow, several empty cans of Deutsch Weissen beer within easy reach, my last clean pair of underwear wrapped around my farang hips and already several days in need of a washing machine job.

Outside my tent I hear strange growling noices..am I still in the brothers Grimm fairy tale land of dark-green forests where the thunder God Thor throws his magic hammer Mölnir around just to make the cycling difficult for me? Is there a pack of wolves outside my tent ready to devour me, rip me to bloody pieces and thereby bringing my cycle trip in this land of the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst people to a sudden end and with it my very life???

With s certain tripadation caused both by mortal fair and a Weissen brew induced hangover I stick my still sleepy head out of my tent, knife in hand, you never know.

No wolves outside but the farm dog from last night greets me his tongue trying to lap my face in a friedly but very wed way. A few meters away I see the farm children, open and curious faces I remember from last night watching that storch couple mating.

"Mutter fragt ob Sie vielleicht Früchstück haben wollen", the oldest and bravest of them, a maybe 15 year old boy wants to know looking a bit rough around the edges but then we are talking about a farmer`s boy.

Hot coffee, fresh bread, omelettes and beacon and the kids hovering around me while I stow it all away sitting at the farm`s kitchen table and uncomfortably aware of the stench of stale urine hanging around me produced by the aforementioned since several days unwashed underwear, the puking smell of dirty laundry while I show the kids the drawings in my sketch book, tell them about my trips around the globe, their Mum filling my cup with yet more inky black strong coffee.

When I leave "Mum" puts a plastic container in my hands telling me "Hier haben Sie noch Ihr Abendessen Sauerkraut mit Bratwurst für wenn Sie Heute Nacht wieder im Wald pennen, können Sie es aufwärmen mit dem Microwave", heating it up with my microwave when I wild camp in the forest tonight. Like I carry a microwave on the back of my bicycle??? Not really sure wether to be amused or bemused but the offer is positive in its very nature I presume.

Only when the Farm of Hospitable Locals is far behind me and the Dutch border in my sight do I realise this friendly "Mum" actually gave me a Sauerkraut and Bratwurst meal, the very nick name I always give the German people when travelling in their country.

written by  heraclio on March 29, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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I watch the sunny Dutch countryside gliding by from the closed confinement of a Dutch train. I listen to the conversations around me, other passengers speaking Dutch, outside I read the steet and traffic sign in Dutch, the headlines of the newspaper the elder gentleman in front of me is hiding behind, scream at me in Dutch, the train conductor checking my ticket "mag ik uw kaartje zien meneer?" too in Dutch.

Goodbye to the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst People and hello to the Land of Wooden Clogs and Smelly Cheese. Hello back home, back to my job and my house in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam,
30-03-2009.

These were the last lines I found in my sketchbook. I remember I had to take the train back to Amsterdam instead of two more days of cycling which would have been fine with me.

I made the mistake of phoning the company I worked for at the time from a small bar where I had breakfast informing them of my return in two days time. They informed me I was two days late for the job but were willing to compensate the trainfare which they never did.

As for this trip....like the other trips I`ve been uploading to the internet, rereading my own stories and editing them in my house here in Amsterdam, looking at the drawings..it brought the whole trip back full circle, the rain and sleet and even more the Mystic feeling I felt surrounded by there in these dark-green forests of Eastern Germany - sh*t, I wouldn`t have been surprised if I had seen an elf or a gnome running across the road.

I still vividly remember that total despodence in the dull rumy eyes of the last inhabitants in these decayed villages.

When I left Amsterdam I set out on this trip to visit Berlin, a city I had always wanted to visit and ended up cycling through Eastern Germany enjoying it to the Max.

Thanks for reading my stories and I hope the God of Thunder Thor with his magic hammer Mjölnir will smile down on you a bit more benignly as he did on me.

written by  heraclio on March 30, 2009 from Amsterdam, Netherlands
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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Krabi is quite a busy affair these days, small budget hostels where a weary backpack traveller can rest and sleep untill the ferry to Kho Phi-Phi will depart, cozy restaurants serve sweet pancakes for breakfast while long-tail boat owners approach any Farang face looking for business.

The universal power of money even in mystical Thailand!!!

Despite the sheer number of Farang in Krabi, the place is still laid-back, no girly bars or rowdy nightlife, instead flatscreens showing the latest pirated DVD releashes in any of the many restaurants, young backpackers sitting behing computer monitors checking their e-mail.

A enormous German of indefinite age holding hands with a petite local female whose belly is even bigger as her sugar daddy`s fat gut betraying her avanced state of pregnancy. The Thai genome is enriched by literally thousends upon thousends of Leuk Kreug/half-caste babies.

Lone Farang males possessing a fat wallet and a terminal love starvation probably rule the genes of several Thai generations yet to come!!!

Souvenirs shops, ATMs and tourist travel agencies, small little dank Sois - alleys in Thai - with even more shops with their junk spilling out on the pavement, less room to stroll but more vistas for my eyes to feast on.

Krabi has definitely changed from a small laid-back fisherman`s village when I was here last in 1994 to a still laid-back but quite a bit busier small coastal Thai town.

I check in at a cockroach rich hostel where the lobby doubles as a garage for the scooters they rent out. The strong smell of benzine and machine oil heavy on the warm air.

I try to ignore the shrewd and assessing hazelnut eyes of the lady receotionist still vividly remembering the Chinese receptionist lady of the Nathon Residence on Kho Samui.

written by  heraclio on May 5, 2009 from Krabi, Thailand
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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