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29. April 2010 | en

Barsikow is about 100km North of Berlin. Dominik’s parents have a house there. And since preparing the bikes for the trip on the street in Berlin would have really sucked, and just to enjoy the absolutely amazing weather, we headed for the countryside. We stayed there from Tuesday until Sunday, when we set off on the trip. But before we get to that, lets talk about Barsikow and preparing for the trip.

Before going to Barsikow, Ed and I had already spent almost a week preparing for the trip in Berlin. This meant that we did lots of shopping and discussing about the trip and what to take and what not to take. See his blog for more on this.

Since my bike still needed a yearly inspection, we headed for the TUV on Monday the 28th. Everything went fine, until the guy wanted some papers for my new brake lines and the windshield I had installed. So, I had to head home to get these. Back to the TUV on Tuesday morning, before leaving for Barsikow. Showed the papers, and the guy was about to put the sticker on the license plate, when he stated that my license plate did not match my papers!!!!! Turns out I had been driving with the wrong license plate for over 3 years! They must have given me the wrong one at registration.

Unfortunately the DMV was closed already. So, we headed for Barsikow and I decided to come back early Wednesday morning to take care of the license plate. This all worked out without any problems. In fact, it was amazingly easy. I was expecting some kind of German DMV nightmare, but I got there, waited for about 30 minutes, and then the guy just gave me a stupid look and said, go get the right license plate made and I will put the stickers and registration on there. So this is what I did. 10 minutes later, I was on my way back to Barsikow. 3 hours of driving and hassle for 10 minutes of stuff. But all the same, well worthwhile. We wouldnt have wanted to be standing at the Albanian border, with some post-soviet border guard telling me that my bike must be stolen and not letting us pass or even leave!

Ok, enough about that. Back to Barsikow. As already mentioned, and as you can see in the pictures, the weather was absolutely amazing. We spend every day working on the bikes. This meant that we worked on the luggage systems, the water carriers, the aluminium luggage boxes, and all kinds of small stuff. Ed changed his muffler. The new one was almost worse than the old one. Turns out you shouldnt buy used stuff on Ebay!

In addition to working on the bikes, we did some offroading. We even ventured into a small motocross track. Unbelievable, but the bikes were able to handle it. We also crossed some very very large puddles. The bikes did great. Water up to the footrests!! In fact, they were so deep, that Nepomuk –
(Nepomuk is my bike, named after a town in Czech Republic, and after a dragon from Jim Knopf – a childrens story – who looks pretty scary and wild, but is actually friendly and tame and cant spit fire. Sort of like my bike!)
- got totally stuck and Ed had to help me get the bike out. The bike was spitting mud like crazy, but we got him out. Turns out, as you will read in later posts, that this wasnt the last time that Nepomuk would have trouble getting stuck in things like mud or sand. Unlike other peoples bikes though, (I dont want to name any names!), my bike seems to get stuck but it doesnt just fall over several times in a day. Read Ed’s logs for more info on this.

So, in Barsikow, we worked, bought last minute stuff, and rode the bikes. But we also had the company of an excellent chef, Chef Dominik! He cooked amazing meals and we all BBQd together a couple of times. He was there with us, working a bit on his thesis but mostly in the garden. He even planted some banana plants that I gave him a year ago. They can handle up to -15 celcius and should grow up to three meters per year! However, they then die off in the winter and start over new from the trunk. In any case, Dominik was great as usual. The three of us (initially with Dominiks dad Octavo) had a really nice time.

We were joined by my friends Henriette, Johanna Sophie and Rene on Saturday. All of us had a big hamburger dinner and then hung out drinking and talking and laughing. JohannaSophie had brought along a hot air baloon that we set off at night. Beatiful! See the pictures for this.

Sunday morning it was finally time. The bikes were packed, everything fit (incredibly!) and we were ready to go. After a bit of a teary goodbye, we set off around noon.