was one of my highlights on my trip! The nature is stunning and once I got used to the RVs, cycling on the little country roads was fabulous. The majority of nights I camped on campsites, and many of them were great! While Google and Komoot were great starting points for finding places to stay, I found that many reviews were written by people with camper vans. That motivated me, to review the campsites I stayed on from the perspective of a cyclist ..read more

Once I got my Surly Disc Trucker, it was time to think about the bags that I would take on my bike trip. The first instinct were Ortlieb bicycle panniers, but it came differently. I got all major panniers from Brooks England, which proved to be a great choice. Durable, almost all of them are fully waterproof and great looking ..read more

The night before I started my bike trip, it dawned on me, that the days of knowing exactly where to sleep were gone. At least for the time of the trip. Every night I listen to True Crime to snooze away. That might not be a good idea on the trip. Looking back on the six months I spent on the road I can say, that I managed to find every single night a safe, though not always dry, place to get a good night's sleep. Here is how I approached one of the most important tasks on my tour ..read more

I'm not a paper maps person. I love to look at them, but I think we progressed and have tools that make it a lot easier to navigate. I had some discussions about that, but I'm not convinced that paper maps are the way to go. For this trip, I got myself a Garmin and a komoot account. This combination worked really well for me and in the following I describe how I used it ..read more

I love trains. You can usually get very easy to the train station, you don't need to check in. You can slowly ease into your destination and see the landscape outside changing. It is my absolute preferred way to travel. Sometimes, at least in Germany, there are downsides as well. Trains are late, connecting trains can't be made and restaurants are not functioning. And the worst thing. Dirty windows. So you can't see the landscape properly. If I'd be the CEO of any train company, this would be my absolute priority. No kidding ..read more

I returned safely from my first long-distance bike tour in late Summer 2023. You probably know this, as this site talks about nothing else. Right now I'm sitting in cold and dark Winter and I really want to get going again. In 2024 I won't be able to do such a long trip, or rather I decided not to do one, as I have another project planned, setting up a garden. That means I can be away for a month, max. This makes the planning quite a bit different than for this year, I have time constraints ..read more

When I was meeting people on , they had two questions. The first one, are you not scared? The second one, why? No, I was not scared. Very easy answer. But, the why question got me. Because I had only one answer. Because I can. And honestly, that was true. I never had the dream to go on such a long-distance bike trip. I simply wanted to have a significant break and a challenge that seemed worthwhile. I had money saved, and I had time. Good enough ..read more