OFFICIAL WORLD WANDER STATIONARY

August 16, 1995

Harwich England to Budapest Hungary

Today is Day 168 on the road. We've covered 6464 miles now. We've really slowed down since leaving the states. Average down to 32.5 miles/day. Since leaving the US we've done a bit more than 1800 miles. About 400 in England, the rest in Holland, Germany, Czech., Austria and Hungary. In Budapest now. Arrived "right on schedule," August 15, 1995. The route has been a straight line to Berlin, then to Prague (PRAHA), then here to Budapest, Hungary. (going around Vienna) Spent 5 days lost on the bike paths in Holland, 25 days in Germany--both the former west(10 days) and east (15 days). Five days in Czech, 3 days in Austria, and this is the fifth day in Hungary.

Been traveling with Louise, who we met back up with in Holland, Regina and Ole. A simple foursome. Ole's friend, Steve, joined us on his recumbent bicycle for our trip through Holland and a couple of days in Germany, then went off on his own. Charles and Lisa on their tandem went direct to Dresden, Germany. Michele went with them, Regina and Ole had told Michele they thought she was too interested in riding fast to be comfortable with us. They also thought she was a bit immature. Charles and Lisa went off cause they had friends to meet in S. Germany and were more interested in all the sights in S. Germany. Our route to Berlin would take us through N. Germany, mostly farmlands and industry. Not much for tourists who want to see "The Sights."

Helen had split from the "C" team to join us then was going to meet back with her team in Brussels when she did, she found they had decided to go their separate ways. Liz on her own. John and Cynthia on their own. So Helen joined with Charles and Lisa. Jim and Sally had already split off from the 'C' team with Sally's friend Elma who spoke French. They went from DC directly to France. Sally's husband, Chuck joined them. We were supposed to meet Charles and Lisa in Dresden but were a week behind our meeting time, and they didn't want to wait.

Still seems like the riding part of this trip has been pretty easy...It's all the other stuff that is wearing me out. Our smaller group has improved things immensely but we still have long days which tire me. My equipment is wearing too. I'm on my third chain and I can feel it is going bad. It's getting slow to shift. I put all new gears on in DC, they seem to be good still. I've worn holes in the seat of two pairs of shorts. Had to replace my tennis shoes (the ones I started with were rotting away). Two shirts have disintegrated from being worn in the sun.....But I'm getting a great tan. My red panniers continue to fade.

We've camped wild about half the time. Got "caught" twice more. Sometimes we've been able to ask Farmers if we can camp in their fields. We've had good luck with that. We've been lucky to be invited in to peoples homes a couple of times too....So it's all working out.

Impressions along the way vary. Holland very densely populated, impossible to find low profile wild camping. Campgrounds were noisy and crowded. There are an endless maize of bike paths which is great if you know which one goes where, but we made slow progress and asked lots of questions. Finally got inland a ways, found roadways next to canals and beautifully kept homes with colorful gardens. Only saw a few windmills, and of those only a couple still working. Lots of people on bikes, lots of old English style three speeds, and new high tech 5 speeds. Straight handle bars for upright riding that people lean over, overlap their hands, and rest their elbows on the handle bars to get in a lower position when riding in head winds. Saw lots of bike racks everywhere. Some entirely covered from the weather. Some just a little flip down seat cover that keep the seat dry in a rain.

The existence of a network of bike paths seemed to disappear as we got close to and entered Germany. We're back out on the roads with traffic but making better time. In Holland stopped at the ARNHEIM AIR MUSEUM and learned about all the things that went wrong in the Allied failed attempt to take the area in W.W.II.

Entered the Muenster area of Germany and allowed ourselves a tour of a castle. It was much different from my expectation. Not like the fortification type of castles along the Rhine River. This had fortifications, but it wasn't in a strategic spot on a hill top. There was a moat and a wall around, but there was also quiet gardens and peaceful settings. Apparently the family still lived in some of the upper floors, the bottom floor was set up for tourists, even a restaurant on a side patio area and a gift shop in the Dungeon (Basement). It was here, at lunch, Ole discovered his new avocet cross tires were being cut at the bead, just like every other tire he has tried. We napped in the shade as he sewed up the damaged side wall, then sewed extra stitches around the rest of the tire bead to save the $25.00 tire. He then put rim tape over the edge of the wheel to soften the sharp bend in the hook bead of the wheel.......A good idea I thought.....but then it was I that suggested it.

My new rear Hugi hub was making noise....too bad, it's not really serviceable. Stopped at a high end bike shop, they checked the alignment of the rear drop outs. It was off a little, they bent it to correct and it cut down the noise some but not completely. I decided that perhaps the sealed bearings were faulty and found that the sealed bearings were of a common size. In fact, there was an application for my size in vacuum cleaners. I didn't get the vacuum cleaner bearings because they had steel sealing wall instead of plastic like the current bearings. The plastic won't rust and corrode.

In Hamlen, Germany, famous for the story of the Pied Piper, saw the building in the town square that has a mechanical scene of the Pied Piper leading rats out of the city, the whole things pops out of the side of a building while wall mounted bells chime to an automated tune. .... A real touristy thing to see.

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Stopped in a mining museum in the town of CLAUSTER-ZELLERFIELD in the HARZ mountains. Toured an "exhibition mine", a mine for tourists. Learned the area had been mined since the 1200's. There was a water drainage tunnel that took over 100 years to dig by hand. The inclined shafts of the mine were so deep it took the miners two hours to climb out at the end of their shift. The development of the "MAN Engine" sped things up. It used a water wheel to move two parallel posts up and down the inclined shaft, each moved vertically about six feet. Each had properly placed steps six vertical feet apart so the miner just moved from step on one to a step on the other to back and forth to be lifted out of the mine. Cut down the time to get out to 20 minutes, and older miners could work in the deep mines. The water wheels necessitated that DAMS be built so the mines could be run year around. The result....lots of water shed destruction.

That night we were caught camping. We were off in the woods. There were some fresh cut saplings around. We thought well nobody would work on Saturday, today was Friday so it would be okay. In the morning we were greeted by a man with a thick leather apron, logging boots, and a pop down plexiglas face shield with built in ear muffs. He spoke no English and said something in German. We made motions of leaving. He nodded his head so we packed up and left in a hurry. Later Ole, who speaks a little German said that he had said "I must work here." Ole thought it best to play dumb like he didn't understand the German being said. We'd all miscalculated, it was actually Friday morning...you lose track of days. Later as a joke Louise borrowed Ole's German dictionary and wrote out in German a phrase Ole could use in case this happens again. Her phrase was "that's a nice chain saw you have there".

In the former eastern Germany, the condition of the roads and houses deteriorated rapidly. We rode on many cobblestone roads. Found some dirt roads on our map that made great short cuts and were easier to ride than cobble stones. One road through a mountain pass turned into a creek bed on the way down. Good think we brought mountain bikes, eh? Moving into the former Eastern Germany things were really depressed. Dilapidated building and entire factories idle and abandon. Things get better as we approached Berlin.

Ran out of kerosene for our stoves. The German/English Dictionary had no listing for a German word for kerosene so we looked up paraffin which is what the Brits call it. The dictionary said German word for paraffin is petroleum. We found some at a hardware store and bought a sealed one liter container for 6 Deutch Marks ($4.50). It turned out to smell just like paint thinner but burned just fine in our MSR international whisperlite stoves with the white gas jet (not like the kerosene jet).

In Berlin, besides touring the town, seeing the wall, and all the construction now happening in the former East Berlin., I found an upscale bike shop which sent me to a bearing shop where I was able to get new bearings for my rear hub. The bike shop was too busy to put the bearings in and told me it had to be done by a shop cause you need this special tool. I described the tool to Ole and he had an idea of how to fabricate it out of a plain old 10 mm Nut. I bought a file and hack saw, a 10 mm Nut and was able to make a tool. Then with the aid of Ole's 6" vice grips changed the bearings in a field of wild ferns where we were camped. Pretty cool, I thought!

Berlin was impressive. An old bombed out Church stood in the middle of town to serve as a monument and a reminder of the destruction of war. The west side bustled with shops and businesses. The east side bustled with construction. Land along the wall had become worthless cause of the wall. Now it's gold, and it's being all rebuilt and newly built. You'd think every boom crane in the world were there. I'm becoming an expert on big city public transportation. We visit cities by camping on the outskirts then taking the bus/train/tram or whatever into town. It's an experience in itself.

We were going to skip Prague (Praha) to save some time. But Ole chipped a tooth and needed to get it fixed pronto. Praha was the closest big city where we might find an English speaking dentist. We were lucky there was a campground on an island close to the middle of town. While Ole took care of his tooth the others toured around a bit. I'm amazed at this town. It was largely untouched by W.W.II, it is said many European cities were like this before all the bombings. The number of ornate carvings on buildings and statues is incredible. Many of the buildings are refurbished to modern standards inside, but the American Embassy building which had been refurbished still left something to be desired as far as modern amenities. We went there to get a dentist referral. Lots of poor circulation areas with stale air. It must be difficult to re-do a building designed to have windows open for ventilation to have a ventilation system that works with all windows closed.

The border guard going into CZECH was young and friendly. He was, however, working in an old rundown high security area where the security had been turned off and not maintained. Big rusted bars, gates that are open that you wonder if they would close. Empty guard houses in strategic elevated positions. Got the same feeling here as I did at the Berlin Wall. It was once so hard to cross, life threatening, and now it's almost no big deal. Amazing what time does.

Through Czech into Austria, heading for Budapest where we were caught camping wild again late in the evening by a hunter who was out to do a little evening hunting after work. We were in wine and farming country camped at the edge of a harvested field of wheat well out of view of any road next to a row of trees. The hunter stepped over a ridge expecting to see an empty field and maybe a deer running across. Instead he saw four tents and bicycles and people sitting on a piece of plastic cooking dinner with a back packing stove. He came over. Ole tried Hello in German. He said, "You speak English?" "Yes" "You are English?" "No, American." He was curious about us, "what are you doing halfway around the world? I must sit down."

He's from the little village of Spaunburg, [sp?] Austria just 3 km down the road. He's the only person in town who speaks English fluently. What luck that we were found by him. We tell him about our trip, he is intrigued. He invites us to see his father's wine cellar tomorrow. "I will meet you here and show you the way." He takes a half day off work to show us around. It's an incredible gesture of friendliness. We meet the whole family. The women sample the wine (Ole and I don't do alcohol) we feel very fortunate.

For routing ourselves to get to Athens we've decided to skip Romania and Bulgaria. Not one person has had a positive thing to say about surviving in Romania. "You will be plucked like chickens" was one persons way of putting it. So we plan to go southwest from here to Treiste, then take a ferry down to Greece. There we will tour around a bit while we arrange for our flight to India.

While at the American Express office yesterday we ran into Michelle. She, Charles and Lisa and Helen have been at the Budapest hostel since the 10th waiting for an India Visa to come through. And waiting for us. Michelle talked for forty minutes filling us in on what she knows about everybody's whereabouts.

Kevin and Michael rode together in England and wanted to go to Ireland. Somewhere along the way they separated. Kevin had his bike and all his gear stolen when it was unattended. He's gone home. Nobody knows where Michael is. Ric and Spy left London a couple days before Kevin and Michael heading for Scotland. In Scotland they had stuff stolen off their locked bikes while in a grocery store. Don't know where they are now. Jim has gone off with Sally's friend, Elma, after touring France. Sally's husband flew home and Sally is on her own somewhere. Jim and Elma are places unknown.

Jodi got word by calling my Dad that we would be in Budapest and wrote a letter to Ole saying that Gene who she has been traveling with has to go home in Nov. to move his wife from Montana to Arizona. They are in Piza, Italy. She'd like us to leave a note with her friend, Bob, while in Maine as to where and when she can meet up with us. Michelle thought she saw Liz here on the streets of Budapest but having never met her wasn't sure it was really her, but her description fit. A small girl on a huge bike with aluminum boxes on the bike. Nobody has heard from Brad. And Christine and Tim never left the States.

Louise is planning to split off here in Budapest and meet with other friends, and travel on her own to finish out the rest of her leave of absence. Then she'll go back Dec. 1 to managing the Seattle youth hostel.

That about wraps up the news here. Hope to do an update again from Athens after touring Greece and Turkey before going to India.

John