At my arrival in Vlissingen it was already maybe 8 o’clock in the evening. I still had to find Wim’s home and the town was much bigger than I had expected!
But luckily two young boys helped me to get into the area and then I could use the detailed Google Maps map I had printed at Edwin’s place in Belgium just a few hours before.
With Wim and his lovely wife Marjan I’ve had a really nice time, talking a lot about many things and he even agreed to go for a ride after work with me the following day in really bad, rainy weather, the one where most people prefer to stay under the warm and protecting roof of their home.
And when I left on the 13th of December for Amsterdam, he had already organized a place to stay for me, the coming night and taken a day off from work to join me for a part of the ride northwards.
He took me to the M5 recumbent bicycle workshop where I got to see the elite of Dutch recumbent builders, where some of the fastest, world record breaking bicycled in the world originated!
(German holiday houses at the Dutch coast with windmills in the background)
Unfortunately I didn’t get to see or go for a ride with his beautiful daughters Rea and Jes which have left for half a year to explore Australia and only send him back reports in Dutch from time to time which the father has to translate into English - what a service!
So I want to thank Wim and his wife Marjan a lot for hosting me and making me feel really warm and comfortable in their wooden house in Vlissingen! You are great and Wim, I definitely have to see your cured Quest one day when you’ll have it back again 
By the way: Check out Wim’s really nice and charming posting about my visit.
And the next wonderful thing I saw were the cycling paths in Holland - it’s so much safer and pleasant to ride their compared to any other country I’ve cycled so far. Really amazing and even though I’m riding really slow these days because of all the luggage and ‘unaerodynamic’ addons to my recumbent I could progress much faster than what would have been possible back home in Germany (with exception of the stunning work of Ulrich Lamm over at radweit.de of course).
So I reached the harbour, Europort, in the south-west of Rotterdam by dusk and I still had to cycle quite a way to get to Bram a bit north of Rotterdam - that would have been a lot harder to almost impossible without this level of cycling infrastructure.
And Bram greeted me with open arms, even though I arrived pretty late, totoally exhausted. He told me interesting stories from his cycling life and pointed me towards the computer to update my website before I went to bed - without him the last posting would have been the present one!
The following morning after equipping me with a map and instructions he cycled a while with me towards Amstedam in his shining new red Quest velomobile. He even showed me how he’ll have it painted these days and promised to send me a picture of the result - really funny and creative in my eyes! I’ll keep you updated on that.
Arriving at the borders of Amsterdam in the early afternoon I got picked up by this RBOB (Real Beauty On a Bike), named Sjoukje. I followed her all the way to the center of the city, getting more and more amazed by the unbelieveable masses of cyclists in the streets and this chaos they create that fascinated me a lot and made me smile all the time, sometimes laughing about funny maneuvres in the streets or just about these immense masses of humans on bikes!
I had only little time left, maybe 3 hours in total, and it cost a me quite an effort to take out the camera in these freezing cold temperatures to get at least a touch of the spirit of Amsterdam, a wonderful city for cyclists in my opinion.
A meeting with other velomobile riders from Almere didn’t happen because the riding conditions in the evening and night were just too cold for my feet and I couldn’t continue even if I wanted so much. So I had to pitch the tent close to a golf club and some new condos close to the bridge to Almere and just beside this funny sign where 80% of the condos had already been “verkocht”, which ist the translation of the German word “verkauft” but at the same time could be a German word meaning something like “miscooked”
So now I headed straight towards the German border, sometimes cycling one to three hours into the night and only stopping when the feet had already gotten way too cold.
I had the first rotation of my 20″ front wheel on German ground at a village called “Waldfeucht” north of Aachen near Jülich.
And it really felt strange to be back. The number of cars on the road increased immediately and at the same time the number of cyclist fell to almost zero! I felt lonely on the road. And I didn’t see any beautiful girls on bikes any more which could eventually change my direction and make me forget about the path I wanted to cycle before but only got to smell the congestion clouds of the ugly cars of (maybe some) beautiful girls inside the cars - oh, poor me! I felt miserable, I even thought about making a 180° turn, but this time I simply couldn’t.
And to not mention only the bad things about getting back home, I went to a bakery the very next morning and bought some fresh brezels and 750 g of the tastiest sunflower bread I have had in over a year, the only sunflower bread I have actually had in over a year
Combined with some (cheap) apple juice bought from a big German supermarket chain I had found a good energy supply for the cold temperatures and sometimes even rain.
And two days ago the temperatures were below zero in the evening and suddenly rain set in, creating a unrideable road surface. I was lucky to find a nice even surface behind a farm shed and pitched up the tent.
I had a cold, cold night with almost no sleep and everything felt wet or cold, really uncomfortable. And additionally the night was sooooo long. So I was really happy to know that Jürgen Eick in Rüsselsheim would provide me with a warm and dry bed the following night.
Not only the bed but much more the hours long conversations with Jürgen about all topics cycling, renewable energies, sustainability and even more inspired me to go fast along the Rhine river cycling path. But soon I realized it would be impossible for me to reach Rüsselsheim before midnight and the weather got worse and worse with frightening clouds getting darker the further I cycled south.
So to not break my word I decided to jump on the train. Not an easy decision of course but definitely the right one, as I arrived at about 6 o’clock in the evening, just right for dinner together with Jürgen.
He already held a few books ready for me and with every new topic we discussed he put at least a new ‘must read’ book out from his big book shelf onto the table. I could try his new trekking-bike and he demonstrated his etrex VISTA HCx Garming GPS device. I was really happy to visit him the second time on this tour after cycling together with Jürgen and Carl Georg, inventor and builder of the Leitra velomobile, in April 2007 at the very beginning of the journey. Thank you very much, Jürgen!
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