Way Home through northern Germany
An epilogue
From Travemünde to Lübeck it is less than 20 kilometers.
I take a day off, have the first beer for more than a month and have a look
at the historical centre of the city. The beer, the well-known Budweiser,
is too sweet for me and nearly ruins my good relation towards beer.
The next day I pass by Hamburg in the east (Friedrichsruhe) and
spend the night in the youth hostel of Undeloh. I cross the
Lüneburger Heide where I have to push my bike for the second
time on this trip as the roads are too sandy for cycling.
From here on I have to suffer of straight head winds until the end. But
now I can see my destination not too far away: Bonn. On the way I visit
my aunt at Arnsberg where I eat as much of a plum cake as possible and
empty many bottles of beer. Next day I cross my hometown Radevormwald
and spend the last evening with my parents in Wuppertal.
Skandinavia - looking back
After 4600 km through Sweden, Norway and Finland I recall the most impressive journey of my life, unsurpassed even 40 years later. I had many lovely days, very few but hard rainy days and great scenery all day long.I was deeply impressed by merely every part of Sweden. Rolling hills, neat houses, parks and farms and lovely wild camping sites at beautiful lakes.
Norway, the most expensive country on my way, did impress me most. There is scenery and colors and a vast country side and going by Hurtigruten through the fjords is something very, very special. The North Cape itself is just a name although even the last miles are very beautiful.
Finland could not keep pace with that, even more, I was rather disappointed. There is always a space of woods between the road and the lakes, so that you don't see much of them. To me Finland was the country of the «1000 invisible lakes». On the other side Finland has the best camping sites I have ever seen. There are hot showers, camp fires and a lot of every day equipement. Helsinki is not that interesting either.
The sensuous peak of the journey was the arrival in Mo I Rana. Once before and never again I have been so happy when getting to a day's destination. And even the spectacular arrival at the North Cape was not that tremendous.
I adapted my food to the small budget, milk, müsli, raisins, apples and bananas, some mushrooms, bread, cheese and sausages. However, all this is of much better quality than on the british isles. So I didn't starve.
It was a very long trip with a lot of new experiences. The diary concludes this tour with the following sentence:
«5863 km - sometimes I think, that was really enough!»
