It's the first proper day of my vacation. I get off the ferry and, after a bit of confusion with the eternal construction and forest of flyovers surrounding Västrahamnen, I get on the E18. Oddly enough, this is very nearly my first time on a proper autobahn on the VFR; on last year's trip I took a car-train all the way from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, and came back via ferry from Umea to Vaasa, so I spent most highway miles on untrafficked far northern roads. The E-roads around Greater Stockholm are my first dip into serious urban combat with the VFR since that one time I took it to Riga.

I had a few options with getting across Scandinavia. The obvious one was the E4 down to Copenhagen, taking in the magnificent Öresund bridge-and-tunnel; but it's an expensive toll, and it puts me right in the middle of Copenhagen for the night. It's an excellent destination for a city break, but it's not what I am doing right now. I could also get off the E4 earlier, and take the cheap shuttle ferry to Helsingor - an option I can recommend to others, as it lets you check out the magnificent Kronborg castle, which is both architecturally impressive and historically significant, even if it was never really the seat of Hamlet.

There really was a Prince Hamlet of Denmark, but he lived long before Kronborg was built, and was neither a particularly terrible nor a particularly great ruler. The mythical hero in the basement of Kronborg is Holger Danske, also mentioned in the Song of Ronald, and like Estonia's own Kalevipoeg, he is said to be resting and would come alive when the country needs him most.

But I've seen Kronborg before, and I really don't fancy making this an extra-long riding day to get all the way down to Rodby and the German ferry shuttle. Instead I am taking the northerly route due west, turning off the E18 before it heads towards Oslo, onto the E20 towards Gothenburg. First, I am meeting a friend for a late lunch, a girl from my home town who moved to central Sweden to have a baby and an idyllic village life somewhere outside Skara.

It's a genuine pleasure to catch up with an old friend, but now I'm a little strapped for time: I have a late-afternoon ferry to catch out of Gothenburg. This is where the VFR truly comes into its element: covering a lot of distance very quickly on intermediate-level roads. At high speeds, it settles down and provides massive confidence. Swedish E-roads outside the major cities tend to be straight and flat, but not autobahn-grade: they are built in three lanes, alternating with passing lanes in each direction every few kilometers. I know from previous trips out to Norway that Swedish drivers have an excellent culture of respect for motorcycles, and it certainly doesn't hurt that my VFR - big, bright red, with huge double headlights illuminated even in lowbeam - is an intimidating sight to have in a rearview mirror. Most vehicles move over to the right, expressly letting me filter between them and the barrier, or shoot up the passing lane ahead of every other little Peugeot hoping to overtake an articulated lorry. I know I am being antisocial, but the cars seem to have a genuine spirit of "if he feels he really needs to, it's best to just let him", and I'm only here for a few hours. I'll take advantage of the hospitality, and hope my karma balance can stand the hit.



I roll into the Stena Line terminal with ten minutes to spare on the check-in clock, and pull in behind a pack of Norwegian Harley-Davidsons on their way to a friendly clubhouse in Frederikshavn for the weekend; among the Nordics, Denmark is the land of cheap (and freely sold) . I park in the hull and go up on deck to check out the views of Gothenburg, a city I'm only slightly sad about missing. From what I've heard, it's mostly industrial and recent, but I am charmed by the islands rising out of the sounds, covered by cottages and their gardens. I think I'd like to live riiight up there, at the top of the hill.



There's an overnight ferry from here all the way down to Kiel, but I'm only taking the cross-sound shuttle. My two remaining missions for tonight are to find a gas station in Frederikshavn, since my bike is now on fumes; and to find the Couchsurfing place I have booked. It's a farmhouse down some gravel tracks, which is not the VFR's preferred environment, but it deals with them. My host is an old Danish lady who uses her farm's proximity to tourist attractions as a way to bring a social life to her, instead of her going down to the town for it - one of the better type of couchsurfing personality, for sure. The farmhouse may not have hot water in the shower, but it does have a 250cc Jinlong cruiser in the living room, which my host apparently bought at a bankruptcy auction for cheap, on a whim, just because she'd never ridden a motorcycle in her life and was looking forward to giving it a try!



Day two: ~540 km on land, ~100km on water

I wake up early in the morning and have breakfast with the hosts and another couchsurfer, a young French guy who has been studying in Sweden and is now travelling around Denmark before returning home. It's a very typical Danish breakfast and the hosts encourage me to make sandwiches to go, but I don't dare to put any perishable food in my panniers in this weather. It is incredibly hot, and even with all the vents unzipped, my black textile gear is still a poor option. The French kid is heading for the same landmark as me, but he's taking the train later in the day; I can't wait. For me, it's going to be a very long day.



I get back on the road and head north, through the town of Skagen to the very tip of the Jutland peninsula. This is a bit of a bucket-list point for me, something I've always wanted to see even if there isn't much to see there: the point where the North Sea and the Baltic Sea meet, with different salinities sometimes creating a visible color difference. (The Baltic only connects to the ocean in this tiny corridor between Denmark and Sweden, but it has a lot of freshwater rivers emptying into it.) I'd need a helicopter to tell if there really is a color difference today, but I do witness something almost as fascinating: waves coming from two different directions to meet in the middle.



The beach at Grenen is littered with dried-out jellyfish to discourage foolish bathers, and bunkers to discourage foolish invaders. Today, the horizon is full of merchant shipping. I loop back around through the dunes, where an airfield used to stand at the foot of a fancy hotel for early-20th-century tourists - even for Danes the trek out to Grenen was long and arduous before the days of commercial flight. Today, this part of rural Denmark is charming to a fault: I have not seen countryside this manicured anywhere in the world, not even in Japan.



I look in the gift shop for a Danebrog sticker to put on my panniers, but unsuccessfully. (According to legend, the Danish flag fell from heaven during a battle in Estonia, so it would have been my own little act of reclamation.) It's time to head south.

The E45 freeway runs through pretty much all of mainland Denmark, the main north-south artery, and here my stereotype of law-abiding Scandinavians breaks down. The official speed limit is 130 km/h, but it everybody seems to think that if it looks like an autobahn and feels like an autobahn, then it must be unrestricted. It's an odd feeling to be sitting there on your sportbike in an empty right lane doing 150 (a comfortable "too minor to bother fining" margin in most of the world), and be passed by a series of VW Ups in the left lane. To each their own.

Around noon I reach Aarhus and leave the freeway in search of lunch. The familiar sight of a Statoil reminds me to fill up, and then reminds me again of the chain's unfortunate recent pivot to upselling at the auto-pumps. (No, I don't want to buy a bunch of firewood or a five-liter jug of washer fluid.) Because I use Telia as my phone carrier at home, I am still on free roaming until the border, so I look up nice lunch spots in the city. I head into the pedestrianized Old Town and park, then follow the GPS to Mefisto, a highly rated gourmet cafe, plopping down at a corner table in the back of the patio to spare other patrons the smells of a man who has spent two days under the sun in black textiles.



The chalkboard on the pavement mentioned soup, but the very blond, very Danish waiter reads me like a Kindle and dismisses the daily specials menu altogether. Am I a fan of fish? Why yes, I am, especially in a coastal city of a nation renowned for its innovative cuisine; back home I'm starved of genuinely good seafood, as there isn't much to be caught in the inner Baltic that you would want to put in your body. I am rapidly sold on the cafe's multi-way fish special. It is genuinely excellent, and after I convert kroner into euros, I decide it's simply best not to think about it: I've saved a few nights' accommodation costs already, and ultimately I'm on my one big holiday. Damn the savings; full speed ahead.



Now it's just a long blast down the highway. I cross the border and soon marvel at the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal below me as I cross the massive bridge, with traffic in the other direction pretty much stopped. I'm running out of gas again, and stop at an Aral. Here I encounter the good and the bad of German service stations. The good: you can almost always get superior-quality fuel. My bike is from the early 2000s and will happily run on 95, but I make a point to always use the best gas I can. The price difference is not so great, but it seems to increase the range per tank, which is something I've learned to care about when touring in the far north of Scandinavia. Besides, regular 95-octane in Europe usually contains a decent percentage of ethanol, while the 103 stuff is guaranteed to be entirely dead dinosaur.

The bad is the 70-cent turnstile on the entrance to the toilets. I'm later told by locals that you can cash in your receipt towards the fuel purchase, but this is not universal, and I'm still philosophically opposed to the concept. Charging people to use the bathroom is giving them moral license to pee on the wall.

With a full tank and a cup of coffee in me, I feel ready to brave the Hamburg bypass, and then it's on to another "Achievement Unlocked" moment: left lane on Autobahn 1, seeing the number two at the front of my speedometer, all quite legally (if possibly unwisely, given all the luggage). Tucked behind my split-level windscreen, I finally make it to Bremen and park up outside my friends' house. Time to take off the panniers and drybag, grab a sorely needed shower, and head out to the banks of the Weser for a few s at the Paulaner tent and a view of a lovely sunset.



Day 3: ~730 kilometers, close but not quite a personal best.

It's Saturday, no riding today, but I do wake up to see the locals have warmed up to the idea of having a biker in the house:



The weather is beautiful, with not a cloud in the sky. Back on the Stockholm ferry, I was worried about the news of flooding in northern France and southwestern Germany - these would be more or less the parts I'm going through; but for now the sunshine is holding up beautifully. I'm happy to be out of my textiles, and my hosts are giving me a nice walking tour of the city. We follow the banks of the river through a flea market, and they tell me how they tried going there as sellers a couple of times - most of the stuff on offer looks useless to me, but apparently it can be quite lucrative. Still, for most people it's more about the social aspect of the weekly fair than about making money.



From a tourist's perspective, Bremen follows the pattern of many big German cities: a small core of the Old Town in the center, with most of its surroundings destroyed in WWII and rebuilt since then. There are definitely a few impressive churches and public buildings, but to me it's of limited excitement: I grew up in Tallinn, which architecturally was also in the German sphere of influence, but has one of the best-preserved Old Towns in Europe. Still, there are a few things that do make visiting Bremen a pleasure! My friend's husband is a rookie sommelier, so we stop by the famous wine cellar in the basement of the Town Hall.



A feature the wine cellar's decor is a quartet of giant, intricately carved barrels. Back in the Hanseatic days, this was part of the salary of the city's senators: three liters of wine per day from the giant barrels! There is also a barrel of extra-old wine in a safe room in the back; only the most esteemed (or most well-paying) visitors are ever allowed to taste even a thimbleful of its contents.

I propose a toast to Ordnung.

We are at a table, and my hosts explain that the enclosed booths on the opposite side of the hall are subject to a rule: you are not allowed to close the door unless there are at least four people occupying the booth - something to do with the days of rowdy sailors. Later on in the conversation, my friend's husband does a double take. After a flurry of hushed German, my friend explains that apparently the lady in one of the booths just lifted up her shirt and flashed her companion!

I shrug and propose a toast to Freiheit.



There is a particular thing that I wanted to see in this city: the statue of the Bremen Musicians. It refers to a Grimm fairy tale that was turned into a beloved Soviet-era cartoon, and there is a copy of this statue in the Old Town of Riga. As always, rubbing the statue brings good luck - and the higher on the statue you reach, the more luck you get!



With a few hours left until everything closes, my hosts ask me if there is anything else in Bremen that I wanted to see or do. I quickly check my phone (hooray for cheap EU roaming!) and suggest we have a quick stop-over at the city's Louis Megashop. I'm using my time in Bremen to resupply: I'd previously ordered a rain suit delivered to my hosts' address, taking advantage of Modeka's cheap shipping within Germany, and now I want to fundamentally resolve my tire worries. As I walk around the megashop and drool at the racks of Rukka gear (and scoff dismissively at the house brands), my friend starts up a fast friendship with a little girl sitting at the drawing table; she's here waiting for her grandparents to get their moto gear shopping done!



I leave the shop with a full tire string repair set, including a handful of CO2 cartridges, and a bottle of Slime for backup. We head back into town for food and great at the ancient Schüttinger brewery/guesthouse, and walk back to my hosts' place, stopping off for the ingredients required for fresh mojitos. I'm also shown the husband's pride and joy - an old Ford Probe with a ridiculous body kit, which he's free to modify in any way he wants, because they live quite centrally in a town with great public transport. It's not a means of transportation, it's definitely a toy!

Day 4: 0 km, many units of alcohol!

I wake up early, pack up and do some basic chain maintenance. For this trip I always expect to be within range of civilization, and chain spray is available at any big gas station, so I decided to try something I found in my moto shop - chain paste! It comes in a squeeze tube with its own brush nozzle. The quick conclusion over this trip is: yes, it cuts down on overspray mess, but ultimately it's just not as convenient as spray lube.

I say goodbye to my hungover friends, and circle around Bremen a few times cursing the voice navigation in my ears until I find the autobahn entrance. Overall for the trip, I used a combination of Google Navigation and Waze. Both had weaknesses; Waze had more stable voice guidance, but occasionally made very odd routing choices, and could be a bit unstable as an app. Google Nav has improved since the end of my trip, because now it allows multiple waypoints within the app. But in any case, the combination of voice guidance in my Sena and the phone in the transparent pocket of my tankbag was enough to keep me from getting lost (unless I wanted to!).

On the autobahn, I experience another somewhat unexpected advantage of touring on a motorcycle. Although my panniers make me wider than I'm used to, I'm still quite a bit narrower than most cars. On the sections of the autobahn that are being repaired - which is a lot of them - I often get the left lane of the contraflowing path to myself. It's narrower than the usual lanes, and cars tend to not like being in it, so I can escape most of the unpleasant congestion by going just slightly faster than the rest of traffic.

There's also something odd going on in Germany this weekend, because the entire way from Bremen to Aachen, I keep seeing police vans going in the opposite direction. Sometimes there's a convoy of five or ten vans, sometimes there are just individual ones. Some new, some old, different paint schemes, etc. Some kind of mass buildup of police forces in anticipation of a protest? Or is it because of the Euro Cup? I have no idea.



A tank and a half later I am in Wuppertal, a hilly town that is pretty but unremarkable, except for one amazing thing: the Schwebebahn. This upside-down tram was constructed at the beginning of the 20th century, and it is pretty damn amazing. It's not just a tourist attraction (although there is a fancy Kaiserwagen with restaurant tables and an audio tour) - it is still a practical and commonly used method of public transport in the city! The central stretch goes above the river, which is too shallow and rocky for boats, but flat space for roads is very scarce - so they constructed a series of A-frames above the river and hung a tram from them.



The tram is designed with a transparent driver's cabin, so I quickly grab the front seat and take pictures as the whole car tilts when taking a corner at speed. I go from the central station as far as the end of the line, where the tracks veer away from the river and travel over a street, then turn around and grab the next tram back to the center. This was a bit of a silly diversion, but I enjoyed it a lot, especially because the river section is incredibly scenic!



I get back on the autobahn and this time I mount my GoPro: I want to get some supercruising video, because I don't intend to spend much time on unrestricted roads until the very end of my trip. From here on out, the idea is to stick to interesting, twisty, less-traveled roads as much as I possibly can.



I reach Aachen under the boiling mid-afternoon sun and find my hostel. I have a brief debate with myself about morality, and swing around the boom blocking the parking lot behind the hostel building: it's empty, and ten euros per day for parking is taking the piss. I have a desperately needed shower, change into clean clothes, and go exploring.



I am in luck - it seems I have arrived in Aachen during the Dom Festival, and the cathedral is open to everybody on this Sunday afternoon. There is a little fairground outside that displays all of the different artisan techniques used in the repairs and maintenance of the cathedral, and a bunch of classical musicians and choirs have come to Aachen to join in the celebration, giving a free concert that afternoon! Even better, parts of the building that are normally off-limits have been opened up to the public, so I get to not only salute the coffin of Charlemagne, one of the historical inspirations for a united Europe, but also to take some incredible pictures of the surrounding houses and the grand Town Hall.



I walk around the Dom/Rathaus area and have a mixed bag of typical Aachen cookies, but there's still plenty of daylight, so I walk up the Pont - a street full of bars and restaurants - up to Lousberg, a hill overlooking much of the city. I even meet some locals!



On my way down, I stop at the Super-C, the administration building of Aachen's technical university. The entire city is the university's campus, and its buildings are wonderfully modern and interesting, a great contrast to the medieval architecture of Aachen's old town. I go back down the Pont and stop at a Vietnamese restaurant for some pho soup. It's not exactly local, but it's highly rated, and I'm somewhat tired of bread & .



I walk back through the central squares towards Elisenbrunn, enjoying and appreciating this city's public art, then past the opera theater back to my hostel. Time to put in my earplugs against the inevitable snoring, and get a good night's sleep.



Day 5: ~400 km on the bike, ~15km by foot, ~10km by Upside-Down Tram!

Time to get back to this...

I pack up and leave my Aachen hostel, along with the other three people in my room - an Asian guy and an older couple, Spanish by the look of them. Today does not involve a huge distance, but I've got stuff to do. It's Monday, and according to the Nürburgring website, the Nordschleife is open to the public after 5pm. The accommodation I have booked - a private B&B - will not be ready until about 2pm, so I have time to kill until then.

My first stop is just outside Aachen and just across the border; I have to cross into the Netherlands to reach it. This is the Dutch southeastern extreme, an unusually vertical place for that country. Aachen itself has essentially merged with the village on the other side of the border, with locals taking advantage of the different laws on opening times (the mercantile Dutch do not place Sunday restrictions on their shopkeepers). No obvious weed advertising along the border though, just alcohol and cigarettes.



I weave through residential streets, cursing Google Nav's tendency to switch from full-on voice guidance to just different tones of beep and gong for no obvious reason, and then find what I'm looking for: the Four Border Road. It takes me up a forested hillside to a park with a burger joint and a radio tower. Three countries meet here: Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The fourth border is a pre-war memory, a reference to the odd statelet that was Neutral Moresnet - a tiny shard of land separating and jointly administered by Belgium and Prussia. It seems like a silly and pointless thing, except that it lasted from 1816 to 1920 - a hundred and four years, longer than the independence of my own country so far.



I walk around and take a selfie, then look out from the top of the hill onto the Belgian plains. I won't be back to either the Netherlands or Belgium again on this trip, but I'm not entirely done with Benelux in general. However, it is time to get back on the road.

My other afternoon destination is the product of the simplest but very effective form of research: looking at Google Maps and searching for splashes of green with squiggly white lines through them. The Rursee is a mountain lake, and I head to the village of Rurberg on its coast. Much of the way there is packed with traffic, but closer to the Eiffel National Park, it opens up. I'm eager to have some fun, and overtake a local in a full leather suit on a naked Kawasaki. Then, at a roadworks stoplight, I slightly underestimate the stopping distance of my bike with all the gear on it, and roll way past the proper stop line. Mr Kawasaki clocks my gear and foreign license plate, and nods appreciatively; but he knows these roads to the last bump, so on the way down into the valley he drops a knee through corners and leaves me to enjoy the sound of his exhaust bouncing off the hillsides.



At a crossroads, I take the path down to the village; there's a sign that says something to the effect of, "we appreciate daytripping bikers, but please don't roll in here after 11pm". Fair enough! I park on the lakeside and drape my jacket over the windshield with great satisfaction: it's a hot day. I dig through my panniers for my swimsuit and microfiber camping towel, and head over to the public beach. It's a section of the lake that sits behind a one-way vehicle bridge, with a glass tourist center/souvenier shop, which unfortunately doesn't have any good stickers. I've ridden all this way and panniers are still shamefully bare, with only the Shoei and Leatherman logos on them!



I head out onto a wooden platform floating in the middle of the public swimming section, change into my swimsuit, and dive in. Goddammit, it's cold! The sun is scorching, but even this shallow part of the Rursee is still fed by mountain springs and icemelt, and it's just barely June. No matter; I remind myself that I am not some Italian or Spanish wimp, but a true Nordic man, and my beach time is spent in the upper reaches of the Baltic Sea. I am here to represent the proud tradition of going to a sauna and then jumping into a hole cut out of a frozen lake! So I spend the requisite ten minutes in the water and climb out to dry and warm up.



I walk back to where I parked, and go up to a restaurant overlooking the lake and the little parking lot. I sit on the terrace and have lunch: cream of asparagus soup, part of Germany's all-consuming Spargel-season. This will last pretty much for my entire trip; Germans take their asparagus damn seriously.



It's time to suit up and get back on the road. I cross the bridge and head up into the Eiffel mountains; there's a bit of fun to be had on these roads, but the Monday-afternoon traffic is surprisingly heavy. I switch out Google Nav for Waze, which is at least more reliable about its voice guidance, and give my praise to the European Parliament for the drastic decrease in intra-EU roaming charges. One year later I would not have to worry about my data usage at all!



My B&B was in a tiny village in the middle of the hill country surrounding the Nürburgring, and I would have had a lot of trouble finding it without my GPS. Even with it, both in my helmet and visible in my tankbag's transparent pocket, I am initially guided down a path with a "no entry" sign, and have to circle around. I get off the main road and go through the fields, dark forested switchbacks, first to one tiny village, then through it to another. When I do find the place, though, it's wonderful; I have my own room with a bathroom and shower, the use of a kitchen, and a wonderful view of the rolling hillside from a table on the patio. I take a much-needed shower, then unmount my panniers and drybag from the bike. Where I'm going today, we don't need no luggage.

A couple of hours later I circle back around via the main road, and get down to the Nürburgring. The roads around the paddock are a bit confusing, with many competing signs, but further on I discover the turnoff for the Nordschleife entrance, which is separate from the Grand Prix track. The Green Hell is expensive, but it's just one of those things - you're already here, you've got to spend the money. I pay a little over a hundred euros and get a swipe card that's good for four laps. There is still time until the track opens to the public, and I am running on fumes; I ask the lady at the ticket sales about gas, and she says the only place to get it is the paddock of the GP track. This seems improbable to me, so I return to the road and head for the next village; sure enough, there's a gas station serving everything from diesel up to 103-octane, with Porsches and Ferraris lined up for a fill. It also sells all manner of Nürburgring memorabilia; I make a mental note to come back here for a sticker. I will absolutely get one of those tacky Nordschleife outline stickers... but only once I've actually completed a circuit of the track.



By the time I get back to the staging area, it's open, and there are even a few bikes waiting. Among them are an older local guy on a BMW S1000XR, powerful but upright bike, and a group of Irish in leathers on a collection of supersports. They have a Gixxer, a Fireblade, a ZX10R, and an R1 - the full set; an Italian on a Ducati rolls up soon. I make friends, and tell my story about meeting Irish people in places like the hotel bar of a random Russian industrial town. They give me advice: don't go out as soon as the track opens - there will be a line of eager drivers, and it's going to be a shitshow. To be sure, the gates open and within ten minutes there is an announcement that the track is closed for evacuation. Still, I timed my trip right: it's Monday evening, and while the weekend was absolutely jam packed with tourist drivers, today the track traffic is not bad at all. A Porsche with Swiss plates starts up and spews blue smoke out of its exhaust; we rush over to help/gloat, but it quickly dissipates, and we reassure the nervous owner that it's probably the oil change he just had, overfilling the oil reservoir.

I man up and head for my first lap. I fumble with the swipe card, and the attendant tells me to head for the middle lane next time, the one reserved for motorcyclists. I've watched YouTube videos and played racing games, but it's still an entirely different experience to be on the Nordschleife yourself. Not only is it my first lap here, it's my first ever lap of any track on a motorcycle - the closest I've done is go-kart racing almost 20 years ago! I'm terrible and slow, but at least I remember to stick to the right and let the cars behind me pass safely. Once I'm on my own, I start to push ever so slightly, but I'm still committed to not being an asshole: this is my everyday bike, it's not a dedicated race machine, and I need it to get me across Europe and back home again, along with all my luggage. By the time I get to the Carousel I am terrified and physically sick, but I can't deny this is exhilarating.

I get back to the staging area and take off my helmet, wide-eyed. The Irish chuckle; they know the feeling, and it's what they're chasing - this is their summer holiday, they've been coming here for a week.


Direct YouTube link

After a breather, I go back for my second lap. As I pull out onto the main straight, the Ferrari 488 ahead of me pulls off the centerline and waits for me to pass. I accelerate as much as I dare without a good memory of what's beyond the crest of the hill, and the Italia comes whooshing past. This time I'm feeling better, even though I am still slow. Half way down the track, there's an Audi Q7 being loaded onto a towtruck; it doesn't look like he's crashed - probably engine or transmission trouble. I pass two cars - a vintage Mercedes that is just cruising, and a BMW E60 with Finnish plates that does not seem to be trying hard at all - but I don't quite have the courage to drop down into the Carousel, taking the smooth flat outside line instead.

Back in the pits, the Irish are talking about the Q7, and about the old German who totally smoked them on their supersports - that's the power of local knowledge and experience! Despite their warning, the track marshals don't seem to care one bit about the GoPro on my tank. The Irish tell me someone had been forced to remove it a few days ago; maybe it's the Monday night relaxed vibe, maybe it's me obviously taking it easy on the track, but today there's no problem with it.

My last two laps are done without pausing, as there's actually not much open time left for the day, and I don't want to get stuck in the last-minute rush. I mostly have the track to myself this time, and with a better idea of which parts are hazardous, I start taking wider lines and deeper lean angles through the corners. Now I'm genuinely enjoying this. Back in Estonia, there's only one real racing track, and it does open days, but unfortunately it's on the other side of the country and inconvenient to reach from where I live; but now I feel like I really will need to go there at some point.

Four laps are about as much as my bike and I are willing to do tonight, but I still enjoy hanging out in the staging area. As the party is winding down, I thank the German guy for looking after my detached topbox, and ask him if there's a place where I can get groceries. He offers to lead me to a supermarket; I say bye to the Irish, and follow him across local hilly roads to a Lidl that's open late, and still sells . I load up the and sandwich supplies in my topbox and head back to the village. I'd asked the landlady about the no-entry sign; with a surprisingly un-German disregard of ordnung, she assured me that it was fine, and I could take the shortcut into the village as long as I took care to avoid stray tractors.

Back at the B&B, I park the bike and thank it for its service, then set up a sandwich station on the patio table. Food, , my laptop, and the sun setting over the rolling hills. I've had worse days.



---

Day 6: ~250 km, about 50 of them really trying.

My first destination on Day 7 is back to the Nürburgring compound - it's time to grab a T-shirt and a sticker. I take the shortcut out of the village and make it out fine, even if I have to dodge a tractor or two along the way. The main approach to the GP circuit's paddock is a proper entertainment complex, and I dodge the gate on the way into the multi-storey parking garage. I don't feel particularly guilty about it, because it's Tuesday morning and the place is pretty much empty, except for a handful of Mazda MX-5s - must be some kind of rally. I lube up my chain, drape my jacket over the windshield, and head inside.

I browse the massive gift shop, and eventually walk out with a T-shirt that does not make me look quite like a complete asshole, one with the circuit's original 1929 logo, plus a couple of stickers. I can't resist; a bright red circuit outline is going onto my right pannier. I know I shouldn't, but I'm still going to.

I also pop into the N-ring museum. It's interactive, but relatively light on exhibits; lots of things for kids to do, but if you're not on a family holiday, there are definitely better motorsport museums to visit in Germany (I really recommend the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart). This one does have a few interesting concept cars though.



After packing and gearing up, I'm off again on back roads. My afternoon destination is somewhat obscure, and there is no autobahn leading to it - just a series of local twisties that go over the southern Palatinate hills, until I come to a village on a crest surrounded by wind farms. This is Mörsdorf, but the thing I came for is a little bit of a walk away. In the midday heat, I park my bike at the visitor center, and leave the jacket again - at this point it's so sweat-drenched that not only is it of no interest to any thief, but the smell of it acts a force field for the rest of the gear in my panniers; not even little kids will come near. It's the best part of two kilometers to a glade and a ravine, and across it, the Geierlay Hängeseilbrücke: Germany's longest suspension bridge.



I walk across and take a rest on a conveniently provided bench, then walk back. It's early June and the middle of a weekday, but everything in the village is shut, including the visitor center; I drink huge amounts of water from the tap in its (very clean and nice) bathroom.

I try to find a different path out of the village, but there doesn't seem to be one, so I circle back to the road I came in on. The GPS in my ears is set for a southerly destination, however. As I descend from the hills, I hit the river Moselle. I would absolutely love to follow the meandering valley all the way down to where it meets with the Saar, enjoying the Riesling slopes, but I do need to be somewhere specific tonight, and at a reasonable time. So for the first time since Aachen, I intentionally head back onto the autobahn.

Once in Saarland, the weather breaks: it's my first bit of rain for this entire trip so far, and it's serious. My overalls are in the pannier, but I don't stop - too close, easier to keep going despite the raindrops actually hurting at 150+ speeds. I say a little prayer to the Michelin Man and push on.

Saarbrücken is wet, packed, and confusing. It takes me a few circuits to find my hotel - the entire building is covered in scaffolding, and the sign is invisible - but eventually I roll into the underground parking lot, radiators steaming and clutch hand protesting.



I take an incredibly necessary shower, change into my civilian clothes, and meet up with a local friend. He drives me around a bit, showing me the famous hillside that was the site of a pitched battle in every war going back to Napoleon, and mentions offhand how the stadium in the distance was where "our national team played against the Germans" - the qualifying match for the 1954 World Cup, back when Saarland was its own little separate nation. This had happened twice - after both World Wars - and both times ended in a referendum to join Germany again. But some little bit of cheeky Saarish pride remains!



We then head back to town, and walk around Saarbrücken proper. It's got all the best aspects of a university town, including a very obvious brothel (legal in Germany) across the street from an administrative building, a selection of impressive pubs including one that has been brewing onsite for centuries - only one light and one dark available, not sold anywhere except here - and a very impressive Rathaus.



It also has a couple more interesting attractions... but those will have to wait until tomorrow, when I have a full day off the bike to explore the surroundings.

Day 7: ~250km on the bike, ~10km on foot, two pints of sweat lost.

Nice report! Thx for sharing. Waiting for the rest of the trip

__________________
Only when we pause to wonder
do we go beyond the limits of our little lives.
(Rod McKuen)