Fontainebleua

Well, had a nice day yesterday after all that. I went to Bastille and St Germain but all the galleries are shut during August for the annual hoidays. I was gonna go to Rock en Seine for the last day but the line up was crap except for Bjork.
Train to Fontainebleau today. The Germans don't get in til Thursday night, so it'll be fun exporing by mysef for a few days.
Booked the Dream Hostel in Barcelona for my first few nights on Cam's recommendation.

Shitty Day

Man!
I left Bad Bergzabern for Paris today on the train; Had to transfer at Widden. As I was loading my bike on the train, on of my bags ...the one zith my passport etc in it? fell off onto the platform and then the doors shut before I could get it. I pulled the emergency brake!!! cool! but nothing hqppened. I had a one and a half hour return trip back to the same station. Luckily some maintenance workers were looking after the bag and I got on the next train to start over. But this one was a local and stopped at every stop instead of just straight to bumsville whereever the fuck it was I had to be. Long story short I got to Paris hours later than I wanted, lived thru hell thinking I;d lost my passport and 400bucks worth of gear, got in a fight zith the french conductoron the tgv cos of my hopelessly invalid tickets; mqnqged to slate a lot of it home to die bahn the german train ppl. and got my fine reduced from 45 to 20 euro after a heated trilingual fight in front of a bunch of commuters all thinking when is this arrgant tourist fucker gonna shut the fuck up and pay soMe money.

so i got to paris and the key is not where lolita said it would be so im buying 500ml heinekins from the corner store and sitting in the grimiest internet cafe in paris. sunset over sacre cour looked nice on the way here even if the keyboard is black and sticky.

tool finishes rocking the seine qbout midnight so ill go knock on lols door again about 1am.

Rock en Seine

Man, the line up tomorrow rocks! I'm gonna miss it by A DAY!!! Why!!!!
http://www.rockenseine.com/index_va.php#programmation

Castles Forest and Rocks

...usually all three at once. I climbed a cliff yesterday where you handjam to a cave which you crawl into, and it becomes a chimney. Then you walk up about 10 steps that have been there for 800 years and which used to be the only access to the castle that sat on top of that particular outcrop. Then you layback a corner to the top. I've never done a climb like that before! There was another one on that cliff where you have to climb through a medieval window then up another staircase. Cool!

Apart from climbing, I took Rudi's topos and did some mountainbiking - some single tracks and trails. Stopped and did some bouldering too.

Visited to castles. Saw some torture devices, catapults (which used to hurl 100 and 200kg cannonballs 200 metres, as well as diseased rotting animal carcasses and human cadavers), went down into the dungeon. Heard about the inevitable ghost of the 'white woman' who committed suicide by jumping off the top for some reason.

I'm here till the weekend then making tracks for Fontainebleau! Can't wait. I've also booked Ryanair tickets to Barcelona and back to Paris travelling 05.09 and 20.09. Climbing at Montserrat just north of Barcelona and up to the north coast - Bilbao and San Sebastian. That reminds me, Ziggy Libucha is gonna be in Spain about that time...

pfalz

wow, whistlestop tour of hamburg where i went to the rappabahn and a 30th birthday party where the theme was "who wants to be a millionaire". i didn't understand a thing, but there was impressive sound effects, a powerpoint presentation for the questions, a german equivalent to eddie (the b'day boy's best friend) and copious booze and trashy german pop.

five days cycling. i thought i'd need a map but i just followed the rhine south. if i got lost i just headed east til i hit water and then turned right and kept going. at one stage, 1.30am friday night, i was riding down a donkey track, lit by my headtorch, with cornfields on one side and cars whizzing past on the autobahn at 160km-h about 10m on the left. no map. i took a detour, which was then closed and ended up totally lost! i got acosted by two security guards that night. one looking after a chuch and the other looking after a waste water plant.
the rhine is a mix of beautiful country, winelands, castles, beautiful 2000 yr old towns, crappy industrial sites, lots of cyclists (mean age - 62...which at least made me one of the fastest most hardcore of this elite group of athletes).

now i'm in bad bergzabern, climbing in the pfalz with rudi and wolfi.

dreams and asperations: leading "gross verschneidung" clean; getting my hands on an east german army tracksuit at a suplus store - think brown gotcha/adidas with the german flag colors running up the seams on the arms and legs. awesome.

Bochum and Hamburg

Spent a few days in Utrecht. Pretty cool. I ticked off RKB´s recommended sights - uni architecture, grift park, lombok, and some others. I had a chat with the aussie girl who runs the local crumpler store. that brand is huge here. good to see. Took the train to Ede and rode out to the Kroller Muller Museum in the national park. Awesome ride through purple wildflowers and pine forests. Saw some van goghs and some other great paintings, mostly by dutchies.

Drove with Tim to Ochum - hit the autobahn and he eased it up to 160km/h. I was shit scared!
his brother and his girlfriend are also staying for the weekend. we went to a bbq at tim´s uni and i met some of his mates, watched a game of soccer on the big screen and had free beers and sausages. welcome to germany! going to a mate´s 30th birtday in hamburg tonight.

latest in shopping technology

i''ve been staying with d. the lest few days. i had not seen her for 11 years so we had some catching up to do. staying at her parents place (they're in a caribbean).
went to a supermarket today with a diy check out where you scan your groceries yourself and put them through a conveyor belt and pay by credit card. no checkout operator - i've never seen that before!
utrecht tomorrow. T is in Germany til Tuesday so I'll camp or something then stay with him. He works in U four days a week and spends Friday and the weekend at Bochum so most likely I'll drive there for the weekend with him before heading for the Pfalz by bike.
In the next few days I want to try to get the rest of my itinery sorted - Berlin, London and Istanbul? We'll see.

on the road again

amsterdam was cool fun, man! i'm gonna miss this place. we went to the red light district last night and it was kinda whacky. some of those girls have quite aggressive marketing techniques! i took a photo of the full moon above two church spires and in the foreground is a punter looking into a red neon framed doorway. i think it looks better in my minds eye than in the photo itself, because i'm pretty bumbly when it comes to f-stops and aperatures.

we also road thru the centrum which is full of tourists and had a beer on the roof of one of the highrisers (eleven floors). so that was my big touristy day. went to the rijkmuseum and looked at rembrants too. beautiful big old pictures...

apart from that we've been going to the local climbing gym with some spanish friends of the singles board at the gym; riding to different parts of town usually trying to stay away from stoned american college boys...that kinda stuf.

riding to bloemendaal (wallpaper*s guide to a'dam rates it, so it must be a swanky seaside town) thru haarlem and then onto leiden, utrecht and germany.