Date: 02 – 03/08/2017
From/To: Helsinki – Tallinn
Distance: 5 Km
Total Distance: 14046 Km
Weather: Cloudy, Sunny
Road: Paved

In the morning the ferry arrived in Helsinki and I was happy to see that both bikes were still there without anything missing or damaged.

I had ‘Sibelius Monument’ earmarked to visit. When we had a closer look, it looked like somebody has welded old flues together and sprayed them silverJ. Actually, the pipes resemble organ pipes and the face is the face of Mr. Sibelius, a famous Finland composer.

 

From here we returned to the harbour, and after finding the right gate, the ferry was coming in with not much time to spare. The ferry was new, and the interior was impressive. Bummer that the crossing takes only 2.5 hours.

And this was our first view onto Tallinn. I felt a bit like we had our private rain cloud with us again this year.

We arrived at the prebooked flat. The host did welcome us, showed us the flat, gave us the keys and we settled in. The next day we decided to walk to the old town, it was less then 6km. On our way we came across a street fare, so we made a small detour. It was a bit early and not all stalls were open. There were some intersting art stalls where we had to buy something (small). Lucky enough

The first monument we came across was the ‘War of Independence Victory Column’ at the ‘Fredom square’. It is a pillar out of glas squares with a cross on top. It should remember all people fallen during the war of independence (1918-21 -Wiki is great). Not far from the Freedom square is an old Bastions Tower (Kik in de koek).

From here we entered the old town, it looked quite nice considering that a large part of the old town was destroyed during the second world war.

Some sovenier shops come up with unique exhibits.

Next we visited the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, it is the largest Cathedral in Estonia.

 

On our way back we passed a couple more town walls with intact guard towers.

And there are the monks, some sculputers in the Danish Kings Garden.

We discoverred a restaurant on the town wall, so we had a look. On the left you can see the first steps, after that it gets really steep, but there is a chain to hang on.

The view from the restaurant was great-the prices were as high as the view, so we gave it a miss.

This is a sculpture, representing the Danish flag falling from the sky during a battle, which encouraged the troops to win the battle.

This is a rain gutter of a church, I thought what a great idea.

And here it is, we found an Irish Pub with a happy hour J

Not far from the pub was a pedestrian path with a square plate for important historic dates. Looks like the guy putting the stones down must have been in the pub before, since he put the events for 2384 and 2418 down J

From here we walked to the other end of the old town. I like the narrow streets and the small yards.

Here we are at the entrance of the old town. The two watch toweres in the foreground.

When we walked home, we passed an art museum, with a piece of Berlin Wall and some suite cases. Sigrid tried to pinch one.

We found as well a sculpture with two boys, which sort of reminded us on the Angry boy from Oslo.

Next we will travel to Riga

Date: 01-02/08/2017
From/To: St. Petersburg – Helsinki
Distance: 0 Km
Total Distance: 14046 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

After a nice relaxing night on board of our ferry we hopped off the transfer bus at the same point as a day before, the ‘Issac’s Catherdral’. This time we decided to have a closer look and climb the tower and have a look inside the cathedral. So we purchased the tickets and off we went.

As you can see, Sigrid is fitter then I am, I needed a rest on the handrail J

Here we are, finally we made it.

The view was great. Here a view onto the ‘Isaaks place’. Looking around we could see plenty of palaces and golden church towers, some we could identify, some we couldn’t. The turquise and green church towers of the ‘The Savior on Spilled Blood’ looked interesting, so we earmarked it for a later visit.

After we came down from the tower, we had a look inside the cathedrale. Lucky that we took a guided tour otherwise we would have missed quite a bit of information. The first stop showed us how the cathedrale was constructed. There was a huge wodden frame build to errect each of the giants columns before the walls were build, which was the first time that this appoach was used. On the right hand side you can see the model of the dome.

Below a model to scale, made by the architect.

Here you can see the pillar and the dome.

The huge door is covered in reliefs, we had to get closer to appreciate it.

Here a view onto the altar and a close up some sculptures. The heads on the sculpture are acutally paintings.

After so much information we went out and had a look at park just behind the cathedral. There were multiple sculptures and Sigrid couldn’t resist sitting on the camel J

From here we went to the ‘Hermitage Museum’. We decided no to visit it, since that would take us more then the rest of the day to get through it. Since we had to be back at the boat at 17:00, we opted to have a look at other places. But on the ‘Palace Square’, just in front of t the Hermitage museum, Sigrid spotted a ‘Cinderella’ cart, so we had a look at it. Below are some picuters from the ‘Palace Square’ and the surrounding buildings.

During our walk, we did find plenty of larger and smaller channels which I didn’t expect.

And then we came to the ‘The Savior on Spilled Blood’ church. This church was built on the place where ‘Emperor Alexander II‘in 1881 was fatally wounded.

And here is the place where Alexander II was wounded. This was a foot path bordering a channel. To get this place covered by the church, the channel was narrowed and the foodpath closed.

On our way back we saw multiple fountains and scluptures, but we were headding back to the bus.

With just enough time to spare before we had to be at the bus, we found an Irish pub, so we had to try the food and certainly the beer (might taste different in St. Petersburg) J

The ferry left on a beautiful sunny evening and looking from the ferry you could see multiple historic buildings on side with some modern alterations J,

The sunset on the ferry was just nice.

Tomorrow we are back in Helsinki, we will get on our bikes (if they are still there) and hop onto another Ferry to Tallinn.

Date: 30 – 31/08/2017
From/To: Helsinki – St. Petersburg
Distance: 0 Km
Total Distance: 14046 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

We packed our gear, this time we parked the bikes in front of the house and one person was always there, so we can’t get another parking ticket. We had some time before the ferry to St. Petersburg goes, so we went to a bank to pay our speeding fine. Better to have it done and forget about it. Inside the bank Sigrid is sitting on the ‘Straffbank’ J. German joke, it means is the penalty bench, where the word bench means as well bank.

And he was standing on the side of the car park and on the right is our ferry.

So we parked the bikes on the long term car park, got everything we needed from the bikes, put the cover over and left. Everybody was saying the bikes will be ok in Helsinki. We hope that they are rigth.

We settled in our cabine and not long after the ferry left the harbour. We were not sure about sea sickness, but the Baltic sea was extremly flat, so we didn’t notice that we were on a boat.

The next morning we arrived in St. Petersburg. The building must have been fantastic when it was build, but at the moment it looked very neglected.

So we had some coffee and waited until we could disembark and waited even a bit longer to let the first wave go. Well…Still at the passport control was a long queue, and it took us two hours before we were finally in Russia. That is not too bad, we had worse in central America J, As soon we left the building, we hopped onto the shuttle and got off at the ‘Issac’s Catherdral’

We didn’t have any plan of St. Petersburg, so we looked for a tourist information. When passing a hotel we ask the porter, he mentioned that they had very capable Concierge and we should go inside and ask them. I wasn’t sure, since this hotel looked very expensive. When we entered the hotel, a woman was approaching us and we told here that we were looking for some information but we are not staying in the hotel. She nodded and ask us to follow her, then she offered us two seat on the Concierge desk. Was that a trick? Would they charge us after the service? Well, even if, it would be worth. The Concierge put a two day visit together, considering the weather, the current time and our budge constrains, unbelievable. He had the prices, the schedule and place where the hydrofoil would leave in his head, amazing. So we said thank you, and left. No charge, just very friendly people. So we walked to the place he described and boarded the hydrofoil to go to the Peterhof Palace.

The trip booked from the ferry would have costed each of us 120Euro, the ticket for hydrofoil and entrance fee was around 30Euro. On our way we saw the old sailboat replica and we earmarked it for later. Wepassed as well some fancy buildings,

Some of them reminded me of Dubai J

45 minutes laterwe arrived in Peterhof castle. First we had a look at the main path leading to the castle. The path was lined with plenty of water foutains and golden sculputer.

This is a view from the castle to the sea, where the boat was.

We had a tour through the castle, but is was forbidden to take pictures. There was no chance not to obey, since there was at least one guard per room. It was really impressive. How much work was in there to build rooms like this, with all the preccious stones, wood and gold. Next we had a look at the rest of the garden. There were multiple founains, each different from the other one. First we had a look at the Dragon Cascade or The Chessboard Hill. The dragons looked really cute.

Next we passed the ‘Roman Foutain’ and the ‘Pyramid Fountain’

the ‘Sun Fountain’

the ‘Umbrella Fountain’. This is fun for kids, since the water stops and you can step under the umbrella and then the fountain starts again. The time you have to go under the fountain varies, for the enjoyments of the kids. Well, all of the sudden the big kidSigrid was under the umbrellaJ

Then there was the ‘Firs Fountain’, which looked like trees spraying water,

And the ‘Great Orangery’ fountain. I guess, in the old times they didn’t have any water restrictions J

Then we hopped onto the hydrofoil and on our way back we passed our ferry.

The boat dropped us off in the center of St. Petersburg from where we walked to the ‘Peter and Paul Fortress’. On our way we passed plenty of building which we would like to visit, but two days are not really enough to see them all.

As planned we passed the sailboat replica, which houses multiple shops, a fitness center and a restaurant. The small canon was just in front of the replica.

Before we entered the frotress, we passed a place where people were throwing sticks at some piles of smaller wood. As it turns out it is a sport here. Well, there was a description, all in russian, but it looks like that there are different formations of small wood pices that has to be washed away with the thrown stick (I guess)

Here a closer look at the fortress wall.

In the fortress there were plenty of art exhibited.

Unfortunatelly the history exhibition was closed when we arrived there, so we just took a picture of the figuriens in front.

Here is Sigrid holding the chathedral tower J and the cathedral in full view.

Here Sigrid found some more art J

Below is a scematic of the whole fortress, which is quite big.

And at night we had a clear sky with a beautiful moon, I couldn’t resist to take a picture of it.

Below are multiple pictures from St. Petersburg at sunset.

At our way home, we passed the ‘Palace Square’ and we noticed as well that St.Petersburg has plenty of small channels lining the city.

And we passed the Hermitage museum.Well, either we do that tomorrow and nothing else or we have to skip it.

Arround 10PM we hopped on the transfer to the ferry and got on board without any problems. What a beautful day.

Date: 17 – 20/08/2017
From/To: Bodo – Tromso
Distance: 580 Km
Total Distance: 11965 Km
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Rain
Road: Paved

From our accommodation it was not far to the ferry, so we arrived on a gorgeous day at the ferry. We meet some other motorcycle riders, one from France who travels to Iraq beginning next year. The ferry crossing was easy. Arriving at the Lofoten I understood why people were raving about the Mountain Ranges.

Here are the French motorcycle riders, they were on a tighter schedule then we were J

From the ferry it was a short ride to the southern point of the Lofoten. Unfortunately the clouds started to come in, so the picture isn’t as impressive as it would be in sunshine.

On the other hand, some clouds got caught in the mountains and created some spectacular views.

At night we arrived at a campground and they had a free hot tab. It was the first time that I saw such a construct. It is a big tab (enough for six people) with an oven in the water, and you start the fire in the oven which heats the water.

The next day was earmarked for the wiking museum in Borg in Lofoten. They reconstructed the largest long house found in Scandinavia. The picture below show the visitor center, with Sigrid using the free wifi for updating the blog J. At the end of the hall was a huge wood oven that would look even more impressive when the fire is lit.

Below is a picture of the long house. On the left the reconstruction, on the right the poles from the original one. The house is divided into multiple rooms, and in the days were lots of people and animals in it, particular during the winter.

These are two wood carvings, one is from Thor the other is from Odin

This is a typcial way to dry the fish and to store it. On the right hand, Sigrid is thinking about remodeling the kitchen at home J

On the left, the reason why Sigrid is always right, on the right, me pretending to be tough

Part of the ticked was a free sail boat ride on a viking ship. It was a replica of a viking boat, just a bit smaller then the original. We were quite surprised how fast the boat was even without too much wind. We spend the whole day in the museum, so the next day we leave the lofoten and visit the Islands of Andoya and Senja

On our way to the next ferry, we did ride the ‘Kleivodden’ scenic route. Below ae some pictures from it.

When we were waiting for the ferry, we walked arround and visited an old light house. The view with the clouds was just great.

 

Here the ferry just arrived and we are ready for boarding. Good thing in Norway, bikes first J

When the ferry left, we could see the clouds coming in but when we arrived on the other side, there was sunshine without any clouds.

Here we did the Senja tourist route. We stopped on a nice overhanging view point.

Some more landscape shots

The bikes waiting for the last ferry of the day J

On the ferry we had to make our way to the pay station, and to encourage the people to be honest, we found the following poster.

On the ferry we saw some nice cloud fomations. The right one looked like a dragon head, well at least for me.

At night we arrived in Tromso, which had an amazing tunnel labyrint. We counted 12 roads and at least 3 round abouts. Needless to say that the GPS wasn’t of any help here. At the end we manage to find the right exit and arrived happy at the camp ground.

 

Date: 22-29/05/2017
From/To: Berlin – Sippersfeld
Distance: 785Km
Total Distance: 1800Km
Road: High Way

In the morning we went swimming with Gabi and had breakfast at the pool. The weather was just great. We went home, packed up and left, with a shot detour to Klaus & Conni. We left on Friday the luggage there since we had to change the tires. At Klaus we packed the rest and we are ready to go.

 

 

We had only one traffic jam, it was reasonable hot, but it took no more than 20 minutes. We arrived in Jena without any problem. We even found out how to refill my scot oiler J. As I have learned, it is not a good idea to try to fill it up using the breathing hose J. We had a nice dinner and went to bed.
Talking to the waiter, it would be worthwhile to have a look at the tower, so we did.

To our surprise, the tower is called the ‘Intershop Tower’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the top of the tower you got a good view over Jena. We had some lunch and stumbled across the ‘Cosmorama’, the unit used in the ‘Zeiss Planetarium Jena’ until it was dismantled in 1996. After lunch we started to get to Sippersfeld.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We arrived after a reasonable long day and Sigrid was happy to relax. The setup was just beautiful.

 

 

 

 

We setup the tent from Steffi and Julia. It was similar to our tent and went up in no time.

We met as well Sebastian and Sonja, the couple that sold us Sigrid’s bike. They had been travelling to Ushuaia as well, so we had lots of stories to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

At night I noticed that my air mattress was leaking, so the next morning I decided to have a look at it, Sebastian came along to help. Putting the air mattress into the lake did show the problem quickly. We applied a patch and let it dry. Then we went for a beautiful ride. In the evening we listen to multiple presenters talking about their experience during their journey. Some have travelled through Africa, others around the world. Some were very well prepared, others made it up as they went.

 

The next day we stayed at the campground and talked to some people. There were as well two interesting stalls, one was about travelling China, which might become handy on our next trip. The other was a guy who modified a motorcycle to travel from Alaska to the South Pole.

He is still in the process of modifying the bike

Previously he travelled around the world using his modified ‘Fireblade’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed the three days there; the time was over too quickly. After this weekend we are even keener to start our next long overland trip. On Sunday we said good bye to people we met.

 

 

 

We stayed for another day, just relaxing and having a swim in the pond.

Our next stop is Verdun in France.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Date: 01-24/05/2017
From/To: Adelaide
Distance:–
Road:–

Ok, here is a short update. Since we returned from our previous trip four years ago, Sigrid was bugging me that we should start traveling again. It seemed to be impossible before 2021. But talking to our financial advisor it was possible to start traveling in the not to distance future, actually now J

So Sigrid retired on the 10th February and I did it end of March. Here are the pictures of last days before my retirement.

Six Five Four

Three Two One and………..

Zero, already slacking off.

And now I’m retired J. Easy isn’t it. After we are both retired, we had a couple of days of planning and some days of frantic action, several fare well parties and now we are ready to leave for our next adventure, Iceland and Scandinavia.

Date: 17/11 – 26/11/13
City: Ulverstone / Australia
Kilometres ridden: N/A
Cumulative kilometre: 66015
Street: N/A
Weather: Hot, sunny, cloudy

After being in Airplanes for two days, we arrived in Launceston where Hugo and Ali picked us up.

We were a bit tired, so Hugo drove us to his house and we settled in. Have a look at the view from the living room window, doesn’t it look great?

We decided to have a short walk on the beach, just before sunset, here is a picture of the four of us 🙂

Hugo and Ali in working uniform, Ali had to go to work and so did Hugo, at least for a couple of days. That gave us enough time to get over the jetlag.

After two days we were all right and Hugo had time off work. He suggested that we’d have a look at Montezuma Falls, which were not too far from their house. We took the scenic route which included Waratah waterfall, a river crossing on a ferry and passing a dam.

 

When we arrived at Montezuma Falls carpark, the sun was shining deceptively. We ignored the rumbling we heard from afar and decided to leave our raingear in the car…Big Mistake.

After fifteen minutes of walking heavy clouds were coming in and thirty minutes into our three hour walk, it started to rain. It didn’t stop until we returned to the car. Anyway, it was fun and here are the pictures to proove that we really made it 😛

On the way back, Hugo tried to stay dry by holding a branch over his head. I guess he has to refine this method a bit.

Next day another excursion took us to Leven Canyon. This time the rain waited until we were back in the car 🙂

In Tasmania they have great Cheese factories. At one factory they had some cows displayed, we couldn’t resist playing with it.

Anyway, the time was flying and we had to leave again, one last breakfast and off we went to the airport.

On our flight from Launcheston to Melbourne we had a beautiful view from our window.

That was our last flight; we arrived back home after twenty month of traveling. The whole family picked us up from the airport. Silas was one month when we left, now he pulled Sigrid’s hand luggage. Things have changed while we were away!

At home we had diner together and talked a lot about our trip. It was nice to be home.

Thanks again to all people who made this trip so special!

That’s it…

… for now 🙂

Cheers, Thanks for reading, and go have an adventure!

Bjoern and Sigrid

Date: 15/10/2013
City: Wilhelmshaven, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 190
Cumulative kilometre: 64067
Street: Single lane highway
Weather: Cloudy, cold

It was time to leave our lovely hosts, Anita and Bernd and make our way up north. But first we would say “g’day” to Julia’s parents, as we were just around the corner. Bernd recommended a more interesting drive to us from Hamburg to Wilhelmshaven including a ferry ride. That sounded great.

Upon arrival on the other side, we were surprised by the following picture; have a look at the left pollard. Apparently this is a high water warning….. when the captain sees the ducks swimming then the river Elbe has high water J

We arrived at Silvia and Bernds house, and not long after Julia arrived. She’d just returned from visiting Simon in Australia that hour! Ouch, we had gotten our dates mixed up. We were under the impression that she would arrive a day earlier. Anyway, Julia was still in good spirits, so we all went to dinner in an all you can eat restaurant. The food was amazing, unfortunately my stomach was not big enough… It was a lovely evening.

Date: 16/10/2013
City: Copenhagen, Denmark
Kilometres ridden: 541
Cumulative kilometre: 64609
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, cold

Today we will try to make it to Copenhagen which shouldn’t be a problem if everything goes well. Kuh Elsa has been reliable since Italy, so we hope it won’t show any problems in this last part. We started around 9:30 and were heading towards Fehmarn. From there we took the ferry to Denmark. Upon arriving in Copenhagen we found it difficult to find a reasonable hotel; most hotels were either booked out or overpriced. We had earmarked a hotel in trip advisor that was value for money, unfortunately our GPS map stopped just before Copenhagen and we could not find it. So we did our South America thing: driving around and asking people on the street for directions and recommendations. All of them were very helpful and understood and spoke English, what a relief! In the end we found a hotel and happily moved in.

Date: 17/10/2013
City: Guestro, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 308
Cumulative kilometre: 64917
Street: Highway
Weather: Cloudy, rain, cold

Today was the day; we would ride over the Oresund bridge – the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe. That we would land in Sweden on the way was a bonus! But before that, we checked out the Copenhagen icon, the little mermaid.

It started to drizzle a bit and it was cloudy. Maybe we are too late in the season, again? J Anyway we took a couple of pictures and continued to the Oresund Bridge. On the way I did – purposely – a sightseeing tour around the town. Did I mention that the GPS map ended just before Copenhagen?

Eventually we found the road to the bridge, but to my surprise the bridge did not start on mainland Denmark, it started in the middle of the Øresund straight on an artificial island called Peberholm. So it was first through a tunnel and then onto the bridge. Not how I’d envisioned it. I was after the effect that when you ride on the bridge, it looks as though it ends in the middle of the straight… So change of plans, in Sweden we turned around and rode back. Even though it was cloudy it worthwhile for us.

Now we were on our way to Gedser to catch the ferry to Rostock. The clouds got darker and darker, I was optimistic as usual, Sigrid…. not so much.
So Sigrid got her rain gear on and I didn’t. Well after a while it started to bucket down and I got drenched. Stoically I continued for nearly 100km, then I gave up and at the next petrol station finally got my raingear on.  It even fit over my pride now 😛

The rain didn’t let off so I was happy to have my rain gear on. When we arrived in Gedser, the lady on the ferry told us that there was no room for the motorbike on the next ferry, bummer. So we tried to find accommodation, but there was only one hotel, expensive and run down and the tourist information was closed as well. So we thought we get back to the lady at the ferry terminal and ask for some other hotels around. When we arrived she told us that all of the sudden there was space on the ferry after all! We were happy.  Wet, but happy 🙂

We arrived in Rostock a couple of hours later. The rain had eased; we started to ride towards Berlin. Not long after the clouds caught up with us, so we turned off the highway and looked for accommodation nearby. Tomorrow we will be back in Berlin and catch up with Ria and Freya.

We organized with Simon that we can use his bike for the ride to the AGM before we put our bikes into consignment. On Tuesday we had the last few frantic preparation before we left to the Ulysses club AGM in Mildura. We have to clean out the last bits from our study (somebody must put more stuff in all the drawers, I can’t have accumulated so much rubbish!!) and bed room. As usual, it took longer than anticipated.
We left late, so we arrived at night.

The house Wombat and Val organized is great, enough space for all of us and most important free wireless internet access, so we could test our blog (it worked if you can read this 😀 ). Below are some pictures of our hard life in Mildura.

Oh, and Sigrid used the free time to make her hair easier to maintain, she got her hair cut short.