For weeks have we been silent: No time to write in these hurried last days of the trip, no ideas what to write after having returned home. Yes, we are back: Nelson in Małopolska and I in Westfalen. This trip has been harder than the one we did from Münster to Kraków in 2015: Physically […]
Author: Leon Friederichs
Ad break – Visit France! Visit Switzerland!
We’re awfully sorry for writing less and less; this affliction comes naturally with having just too much to cycle and to look at and too many people to talk to and drinks to down. You people keep asking us about precisely the spots we haven’t covered in detail, so here’s a quick recap of what […]
Ascent and Fuga
High atop Genova there is a grand statue of the virgin Mary, nigh as tall as the Christ of Świebodzin, looming over the faraway sea … nearly as high we had to climb to our Genovese couchsurfer, but, all of a sudden, without any effort: we are still suspicious whether it’s just been something we’ve […]
How to visit cities and alienate hosts
Travel styles differ so vastly. I remember well how I went to Lisboa for the first time: Several people, including but not limited to two different couchsurfing hosts, told me right away that the six days I had planned to stay were way too much. I’d get bored, the city would be too small, even […]
Long-term record broken – reckless cyclists cycle on
Summer 2015: Nelson and I cycle to Kraków and argue about every city except for two. We do agree on which was the most beautiful and on which was the weirdest one, the latter having been Bückeburg (the older amongst our readers may remember it as the ancient capital of the county of Schaumburg), Bückeburg, […]
Notes from behind the counter
“Le pontissalien” is the local hipster café: sterile atmosphere, furniture in a poisonous green, one popular offer consisting of lukewarm water with a separately served teabag. Featured on farfromready today: its barkeeper. 2nd of August, 14:00 Three men on three bikes are walking to and fro in front of the café. Finally one comes in and […]
Missive from the midway
Fancy lunch – tuna and wiener sausages on, for lack of baguette, crumbly biscuits – in the vast emptiness between Châtillon and Dijon. Appropriately, the closest village is named “Salives”. Nothing says “bike trip” like absurd last meals before insurmountable climbs of (censored, so as not to frighten my companions) metres. Imagine, a landslide would […]
Enter Cyclist No. 3
Paris is a dream to cycle in. As a Münster native I’m used to rude cyclists and tough laws – here you don’t have the tough laws, so you’re free to race through one-way roads in the wrong direction, cutting off some motorbike’s way, going over red and getting some pedestrian bloke to do a […]
Preparing to leave Bikeland
32 °C of savage heat and I’m not even in France yet. Accordingly, today’s trip wasn’t done exclusively by bike. I wish so! Instead, I had to spend three hours in the S75 bus from Münster to Bocholt, where they keep the one rack that seems suitable for my bike. My bike’s a beautiful oldtimer […]
The Plan that we are going to disregard
Once upon a time there were three guys who wanted to cycle somewhere. Nay, better: Let’s start a year earlier. Once upon a time, there were two guys who wanted to cycle somewhere. I – living in cyclist’s Eden, the Münsterland region – would have taken any destination; alas, I lacked a bike-affine travelmate for […]