600 km. to Berlin

tree trunk in the forest
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In the forest near Emmeloort,

02-04-2000.

I@m besieged by heavy wind in the face, a cyclist@s nighmare

Five months sice my last trip cycling all winter as a bicycle messenger in the Amsterdam city centre. Unusual for me to winter in cold and rainy Amsterdam, most winters I spend in Southeast Asia hating the dutch cold.

my trip on the first day
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But then most of my friends consider me crazy leaving Amsterdam on a bicycle trip for Berlin while it is still cold and miserable weather.

Not that my time in Amsterdam these last five months was all that bad dating a whole bunch of weird and strange women.

Each and all of them a good case for a physciatrist. No big surprise there I met them all at my job but Miss Zelda Sabayo but she was only being of surinam descent and an illegal imigrant who was after me for the dutch papers, get married and run away after five years with a dutch pasport.

two small owls in the forest
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A bit like the thai ladies who ply their trade on fat bellied farang males with lonely hearts and who have heard all these stories about beautifull and husband-devoted young asian ladies.

So I leave Amsterdam early in the morning carrying my tour bike, my tent,

my sleeping bag and the rest of my gear down the steep staircase of my house dressed in my old cycle gear, putting on my gloves and cycling out of the city leaving the hustle and bustle that comprised the centre of any big city the world over, behind.

Soon enough I'm in the middle of farm land, dutch farms and small old villages, entering the Flevo Polder which is full with birds, mostly water fowl, following the coast of the Ysselmeer which used to be an inland sea being connected to the dutch Waddenzee but has been turned into a huge sweet water lake since the construction of the Afsluitdijk, protection against the wild and unpredictable North Sea.

With the huge flat fastness of the Ysselmeer - the Lake of Yssel - I'm besieged by heavy wind in the face, a cyclist's nightmare but I enjoy the challenge pushing it hard.

Just outside Emmeloord, a dutch city just outside the Flevo Polder - Polder is the dutch word for land we won from the sea - I find myself a quiet wild camping place in a small patch of forest realising wild camping will have to

be my destiny all the way to Berlin and beyond due to my limited funds and the early time of the year, most campings still being closed.