8/2/10  Germany to Finland and into Russia
8/2   When we got up, Holger was already gone.   Karin made us breakfast and helped us make a few calls, mail some packages and go to the drugstore.   I bought  a bunch of candy and put it in the box I was sending home.   (fastforward to September:  apparently the guys at customs decided to have a little snack because only one small package of candy made it home.  There was originally probably 10 bags of candy in there.)

So, we said goodbye to Karin.   She got a little teary eyed and suggested we go shopping at the motorcycle clothing store and then come spend another night.   I think it must have been a little dusty that day, because there was definitely something in my eyes causing them to water a little.  Joe, too.

We made it to the Polo shop, which is a great German motorcycle gear store, without much of a problem.  The GPS got us to within a block, which is of course unusual.   We each bought new pants.   I will say that I when we started this adventure, Joe wore a pants size smaller than me, but to his chagrin, he had grown a pants size larger.  Well, he is a growing boy.   Hehe    A growing boy with big pants.  

We ordered the spigots for my boxes and some hardware to mount on top for straps.  They said they would have them mailed to their Lubeck store and delivered by the next day.  We wanted to catch a ferry the next night  in Lubeck anyway, so we hoped it would all workout.   We still needed risers for our handle bars, and  with Karin’s help, we found a KTM dealer that was not far away.   So, we put the address in the GPS and took off on the autobahn.   At some point, the GPS warned of a traffic jam and gave us an alternate route.   We rode through multiple traffic circles, taking different turns, through a downtown area, and through neighborhoods.  Finally, we found the store about 10 minutes before closing.  And guess what…. Only one set of risers.   What?!  Are you $@#& -ing kidding me?!   All this damn riding and we still need a set of risers.   I was pissed.   I tried not to take it out on Joe but I was none too happy.   That’s the difficulty with Europe….it’s crowded and fairly tough to get around, especially during holiday.   I don’t do traffic very well, which should be obvious by now.  

We headed for our motel, which was on a list of hotels that cater to motorcyclists.  Holger had a book that had all these places to stay when on motorcycle trips.   We hit heavy rain several times.  The whole time we were in Germany, there were scattered rain clouds.  They usually blew by fairly quickly, but there was rain most days.  

The hotel was pretty nice and fairly expensive, with good WiFi.   So, we  unpacked and headed to dinner.  They had a nice buffet.   As usual, we looked like we hadn’t bathed in days, and everyone was wearing nice clothes and suits.   Of course, any time we could find a good meal, we really didn’t care what we looked like.

Both of us were chomping at the bit at this time to get to Russia and get going.   We decided we would ferry to Sweden, ride to Stockholm, and then ferry to Helsinki, Finland.   We were very concerned about all of the fires in Russia.   From the news, it seems the whole country is on fire.  Of course, being Russia, we couldn’t get any real specific information about where the fires are.   So, we just planned to keep checking the internet the best we could.   We still needed another map, but we hoped to get that in Finland. 

8/3    We rode on the autobahn all day.   It’s was fairly tiring because we were riding  fast, which means lots of concentration and getting whipped around by the wind.   The cars that flew by us in the fast lane were always fun.  There’s nothing like a car zipping by at 40 miles an hour faster than you and only being a few feet from you.   And also, it was raining periodically, which makes high speed autobahn travel, by motorcycle, all the more exciting.

We made it to Lubeck and to the Polo store.  Of course, they didn’t have the parts.  They said to check back the next day. We had planned to take the ferry that night, but now we would have to spend the night in Lubeck and take the ferry the next night.  We rode to downtown , which was fairly spectacular, with all kinds of old building and cathedrals.   There is so much history to be learned in Lubeck, but unfortunately, we don’t read German, and didn’t have much time.   It is my understanding that Lubeck was where most of the German submarines were launched in WWII.  

We found a Ramada Inn that was not crazy expensive and got a room.   It was on a canal/river.   We walked over and got dinner and both passed out from exhaustion. 

8/4  After a good night’s sleep, with good A/C, a welcome change from most of Europe, we had a good breakfast.  That is one thing about hotels in Germany: good breakfast buffets.  So, as we looked at the internet for a ferry to Sweden, Joe had a great idea:   why not just take a ferry all the way to Finland.   We had planned to get to Finland by ferrying to Sweden, riding to Stockholm and then ferrying to Finland.  But, we checked and it was possible to ferry straight to Helsinki.  We were getting more anxious by the day to get to Russia, so we rode out to the Ferry Station and bought our ticket to Finland, which was only $298 each, which included a private cabin. 

We rode back to the hotel, ate lunch, packed and set out to see a little of downtown  Lubeck before we took off.  It rained hard while we walked around, so we ducked into a coffee shop for a little while until it passed. 

A little after 8 pm, we took off to the port and could see a large cloud rolling in.   We hadn’t been parked in the line for the ferry more than a few minutes when it started raining.   I headed into the duty free shop to look for supplies while Joe stood around entertaining some other motorcyclists.   There was a guy riding a Harley, that he wrecked in Spain,  and another couple of guys on cruisers.   The duty free shop had lots of alcohol and candy.  The only problem is that everything was in giant quantities.   I bought us some pistachios and a handful of airplane sized bottles of different liquors.   I bought several that I had never head of.    I headed back down in the rain and we stood in the rain for about 30 minutes trading war stories with the other bikers.   Everyone was donning their rain gear but we still seemed to be getting wet.   Suddenly, we were signaled that it was time to ride on the ferry.   As always seems to be the case with ferries, it seems there is no advance warning.   Someone just runs out and starts motioning for you to go.    So there we went, riding up the wet ramps and onto the slick concrete.   This ferry had an archaic tie down system, unlike the one at the English channel, and it took us probably 20 minutes to get the bikes secured.  It was really hot in the car garage, and with our rain gear on, we were soaked by the time we finished.   We headed to our cabin, which had paper keys, and it was quite small.   I started to feel a little anxious about the whole thing.  The thought of being stuck in a little cabin on a boat for 2 days didn’t exactly excite me.  Joe and I went up the bar and got a table by a window.  I drank a couple of beers and watched the workers load the ferry.  We talked about the rest of the trip and discussed the possibility of having to take a cargo ship from Magadan to Vladivostok, which is what others had done before us.  In fact,  one rider had taken a coal ship and it was a 7 day ride.   Did I say it was on a commercial cargo ship?   I told Joe there was no way I was riding on a cargo ship for 7 days.   Joe was a little less adamant about it than me, but I think he agreed.  We decided to just wait to see how things go. 

8/5  We basically just ate and slept on the ferry.  Occasionally, I would ease up to the bar, have a drink and look out on the water….and there was a motorcycle racing game I played a few times, but there were some pesky kids that got in my way.  

It was really this time on the ferry when we started to reflect on where all we had been and what all we had done on our journey.   We figured Helsinki was about the midway point on our trip, at least on a straight line.  Joe said it best, “we’ll never look at a map of the world the same way.” 

8/6  We got up early and had breakfast.  The ferry docked at 7:30 and we rode off the ship through a maze of containers.   There was no customs or any inspections, which was somewhat surprising.  The last time we had been inspected was when we landed in London.

We stopped for gas and found WiFi at the station, where I was able to locate the KTM dealer.    We entered it into GPS and made it to the dealership before they opened.  When we finally got inside to the service desk, we discovered the service guy spoke perfect English.   We had tried to call the dealership ahead of time from Europe to order all of the parts we needed so they would be there when we arrived in Helsinki, but we kept talking to a guy that spoke little English, and who told us we would need to be there to order.  Well, when the new guy told us it would be 4 or 5 days before he could get all the parts, we were none too pleased…. But what could we do.    So, we headed out and found a Holiday Inn in Helsinki and unpacked.   We then rode back to the dealership and dropped off the bikes.

8/7- 8/13  We spent the next week in Helsinki, waiting on the bikes.  The hotel was nice but it didn’t have individual A/C controls in the rooms, and as you can imagine, whoever was controlling the thermostat didn’t like it as cold as I do.  

I must say that I liked Helsinki very much.   The women are gorgeous and everyone is very nice.  The city is clean and there is little crime.  You can basically walk around the worst areas of town at any time without much risk.   Most people speak English, which is good, because Finnish is a crazy language…. All the words are really long with double a’s and I’s  and it sounds very mechanical, without much change in inflection.   We joked that we thought many of the people must be robots based on how good they looked and their monotone language. 

The good thing is we were able to find English channels on the TV and we were even able to go to the Movie theater a couple of times.  Speaking of the theater, it was unbelievable.   First, it was assigned seating…. You picked your ticket on a little screen at the window, like buying tickets to a concert or football game.  So you could buy a ticket ahead of time and show up at the last minute.   The other really cool thing, is that the concession was self serve.  You poured your own coke and the candy was in bins for self serve.  The popcorn was already bagged and put in these glass door warmers that look like beverage coolers at a convenience store, except they are warm.

We also explored the city a little; shopping; sightseeing, etc.   One night we went to Molly’s Pub and had numerous pints with a guy from Canada.  Once again, a Canadian proved to be one of the nicest people   We also met a guy named Felix who said who was from Italy, but was originally from Africa, and had been an Olympic wrestler.  I think he said he won a silver medal.   He spoke very little English but was really nice and had arms as big as Joe’s head. 

The funny thing is that Joe now had a full, grey beard.   Several people asked us if he was my dad.   Shortly thereafter, Joe no longer had a beard. 

We met up with a friend of a friend, Laura, one night and she took us on a little tour and to a traditional Finnish style restaurant.   I had one of the traditional dishes, reindeer.  Sorry, Santa!    It was pretty good, but not as good as the Salmon, which is also one of the very popular dishes there.  There are many pizza restaurants there, where they serve pizza and sliced lamb, like that in a gyro sandwich.  It seemed most of the people working in these pizza restaurants were Turkish.   Another interesting thing was that all the cabs were Mercedes and BMW. 

We were able to get many of the supplies in Finland we needed, like maps.  I bought a good one of Mongolia and a book of maps for Russia.   We spent a great deal of time looking on the Internet for information on the fires in Russia.  They seemed to be getting worse, and there was still little detailed information on their location.  Also, we heard on the news that 6 Russian spies had been arrested in the US.   So, we were starting to get more and more concerned about Russia.

After a few days, Joe and I were getting stir crazy.  We had seen much of the city and taken the #9 train downtown as much as we cared to.  We had eaten as much pizza as we could stand, and we had started to worry somewhat about conditions in Russia.   Would they even let us in, considering all the fires?

 

 

 


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