Mid 20's. One Monster, two idiots. Germany to Denmark.

[CETME]

A few of you guys might remember my previous trips, If not, here you go: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=295462

Well, The characters are about the same this time as the Grand Canyon/Nighthawk trip. Although this time the Nighthawk couldn't come along, he's in my shed..... Hanging out with the aprilia, who knows what the hell those two are up to.

Nevertheless, My mom lives in Denmark, and I go visit her every year. Every year I drive her old Toyota Starlet around and just die when I see the empty curvy roads and I swear that I need to bring a motorcycle. I never end up doing it of course.......... until now!

So I found a guy who ships bikes from Orlando to Heidelberg, Germany for little money $1000 but it includes customs fees and European insurance for three months in case I decide to ram into an Opel Kadett or what have you.

Germany isn't so far away from Denmark is it? I squinted my face as I guessed at the European map and decided to roll the dice that I was correct. So I gave him my bike

This brought about the most important question of all, who to take with me?! Who would be willing to endure my constant barrage of bad luck and bad jokes? Who can deal with inevitable disaster? Well, I couldn't think of anyone, so I just told Kelsey that I wanted her to come with me to Denmark to enjoy some good sun and fun at the beach. With nothing more stressful than lifting some beer up to her lips and told her I would even light all of her cigarettes and shower her with compliments.

Well, here is the bike!





Here are the hobos:





So I bought two tickets to fly from Copenhagen, to Frankfurt. Then we would take the train to Heidelberg, pick up the bike, and ride it home. This at at total of just over a thousand kilometers.



Follow along as the plot thickens.

[Fox]

Very cool. I look forward to hearing about your adventure.

[CETME]

Remember when I said that I bought Flights from Copenhagen to Frankfurt? Well, after haggling over the phone with various airlines to no avail, I finally found Air Berlin who told me they would give me two tickets for a price far below the others. They didn't demand a liver, testicle and the foreskin of my first born son. There was a catch though: A four hour lay over in Berlin.

I know my last Ride Report, some guys complained about me putting too many pictures up of myself, rather than pictures of the girls. I sat and thought about it for a while and decided that NO WAY. I would be doing you guys a HUGE disservice if I didn't put pictures of my mug on here.

We got early to Copenhagen, we waited around for two hours, and entertained ourselves with bad jokes and marlboros:





The flight to Berlin was as uneventful as could be. The oxygen masks stayed in their place and I had no need for the life vest. Although between you and me, we all wish the plane would crash in the water. That way you can reach under your seat and pull out the life vest for yourself. You'd raise it in the air with one hand as if you just won a giant trophy.... All for the joy to be able to pull the two strings on the life vest to have it spontaneously fill up. If it happens to me, I'll video tape it for you guys, I demand the same if it happens to you guys.

Nevertheless, we sat around the airport. We couldn't help but indulge our American sides. Sometimes the sweet siren song is too beautiful to turn down.


Here I am huffing the bag remnants:



Well, The Berlin airport is about the most unexciting airport i've ever been to. The chairs are made of razor blades, barbedwire and puppy teeth. So we resorted to lying on the floor. Here Kelsey found a small sliver of floor to sleep on:



Well, again, nothing happened on the flight. We arrived in Frankfurt at 10:30pm. At 11 pm there was a bus leaving Frankfurt to Heidelburg that we had to get on. As soon as we got off the plane, we ran to the bus terminal. We made it there at 10:55 huffing and puffing. Hooray we made it! So we waited. 11pm came around and no bus. WTF? so I looked at the timesheet, and it said 10:30pm was the last bus to Heidelberg! NOOOO!!! I could have sworn it as 11:00, their website lied to me!!

Well. Now all I had to do was tell Kelsey. This posed a few problems. First of all, how could I have gotten the times wrong? Their website clearly was wrong, but she wouldn't believe me. On top of that, I had promised to feed her grapes while she lounged on the beach. Now she was in Frankfurt breathing jet exhaust and hanging out with someone who couldn't get bus times correct. How was he going to get her 1000km home?

Getting directions or asking for anything is a tough task in Germany. I barely speak a word of German. So I was pointed towards the train, and we went to see if they had a late train. Luckily at 12:30 am they had a train leaving for Heidelberg. We waited around, for another hour and a half, and got on.

Arriving in Heidelberg was a pretty sweet deal. We saw the Marlboro man, he's huge:



Now what?! It was almost 2 a.m. and I was at a train station, in a foreign country, with a foreign language, in the middle of the night. I did no research. I didn't know what hotels were around, I didn't know anything.

I saw a group of college kids walking towards us, conversation went something like this:

"Hallo, English?"
"Yes!"
"Where are we? What are we doing here?" I asked
"Is this Germany?" I asked again before they answered

They laughed.
If you can't speak the language, at least make them laugh.

The pointed me to the only hotel in town that was open within walking distance. Really? a Hotel? Warm water? Beds? German soft porn T.V.? Damn, thats so fancy.......

The price was 71 Euros for one person, and 100 Euros for two. I'll be damned if I fall for that stupidity, so I paid the 71 Euros and smuggled the broad in.

A shower and half hour of German porn later, I fell asleep. This trip was working out so well. What could POSSIBLY happen?

[eyeboy]

now you are talking about something i've been wanting to do badly... ship my bike to europe and blast about... best of luck and looking forward to following along!

good on you!

[mxwinky]

Good writeup so far, can't wait to read the rest.  Gotta say, any girl who's willing to ride pillion on a Monster for any serious distance is a genuine keeper.  I never subject my gf to that, hence the lovely two-upness of the Multistrada.  Anyhoooo, back on topic.  Where's the rest of this story?

[somegirl]

Very cool, looking forward to the next installment! [moto]

[JohnnyDucati]

Dang it!  This is more frustrating than waiting for the next episode of "Lost" !   

Good story!

[CETME]

Well, the wake up call came promptly at 10 a.m. I hadn't slept so well the night before and it was particularly hard to get up then. I really wasn't used to the 6hr time difference yet, and I oozed my way out of bed and into my clothes.

I really didn't know where I was going, but I found a small information center that had a map on the wall. I took a picture of it with my camera, and used that to get my way around.

So off we went.



Finding your way around Heidelberg is damn near impossible. They really don't believe in street signs over there and to make matters worse, women don't really allow themselves to be a part of the decision making process on where to go, or which way to turn. They do that so they don't have to be held responsible if you get lost. On top of that, they get to yell at you when you don't get it right.

"Lars, seriously, if we go around in circles one more time i'm going to punch you in the face"
"Shut up Kelsey"

Well, after enough wandering around, Kelsey fell into this hole:



Luckily it happened to be where we were supposed to meet up with the guy, so we waited. I watched as she tried to get herself out of the hole as I took pictures and video of her.

I called the guy and he said he was out and about and woudl be back in just over two hours. We made ourselves at home around his house and entertained ourselves thoroughly.

Some childish humor?





After we ran out of bad jokes, we sat down to wait:



Well, right on time, two hours later, the shipper showed up. He took us to the warehouse where the bike had been sitting for the past few months. It was nice to see it again, much in the same way you come home after a few days to see your dog, who in turn didn't chew up any of your valuables. For those of you who don't have dogs, insert wife or children in place of "dog"

I slid my hand over the seat as if I was petting his back. Then as you guessed it, I did what we all do when we see a new bike and twist the throttle and let it snap back a few times. Just to rekindle good memories.

I checked the oil and tires and topped them up, the shipper was kind enough to provide oil and air for me. He was busy and needed to get going, so we hopped on the bike and took off the first gas station.

At the gas station I noticed that we had no Tachometer. In fact I noticed that the neutral light didn't work. On top of that I had no headlights nor tailights! I checked the fuses and realized that the light fuse had blown. I thought that was a little odd and put in a new fuse.

Everything worked again and we were off! We jumped on the Autobahn. With no speed limits facing me, I twisted the throttle and brought it up to a 100mph. I soon realized that it was not enough. BMW's and Benz's were flying up behind me and flying right on by.

I wish I could have kept up, considering that I was on an Italian bike with a 916cc 4v v-twin engine, but with no windshield and a full sized broad on the back, 100 was the limit. I was already straining my neck to keep my head attached.

Looking down at the guages, I noticed the Tach had gone again. Seems like I blew the fuse again. Damnit!

Off the highway to fix the problem:



Luckily there was an auto-part store across the street and I bought 4 more 15 amp fuses. Just in case. I disconnected the battery and tried to reconnect it better, as I figured the negative cable might have been loose or something. As I worked, Kelsey relaxed, lied down, smoked a cigarette and messed with the camera:



I put in a new fuse, tightened up the cables and everything came to life again! In a bout of celebration, we took another picture. Look how ecstatic we look!



Everything was working great. I set the cruise control to 100mph on my hand computer and set off towards Denmark again. 50 miles later, we lost the lights again. WTF?! what on earth was going on?!

We pulled off onto a rest stop. Kelsey rolled her eyes and decided to rid herself of a problem she didn't really allow herself to be a part of in the first place. So this is her way of helping:



As a level IV Warlock, I decided to cast a spell on her. I tried to turn her into something useful, like a warm meal, or lice.



And in case you guys were curious, this is what my bike looks like in Germany:



Functional lights followed a new fuse and away we went again. The sun started going down and I stopped at a truck-stop to regroup.

I had 15 Euros to my name. A hotel was out of the question. There were some bushes and trees 200 yards behind the truck stop. We went over to check it out and I declared that we would sleep there that night. Kelsey wasn't too pleased about it, and told me to go fetch some newspaper at least.

I went back to the truck stop and out of the garbage pulled out some newspaper. I walked back and setup shop:



I stashed the bike in some tall weeds to hide it from preying eyes. Imagine being stuck in the middle of a country with no means of transportation, or money for that matter.

As the sun went down, the temp just dropped like a waterfall. I was wearing a T-shirt, with two long sleeved shirts on top. I also had a plastic liner from my Joe Rocket jacket. I could see my breath everytime I breathed. It was so cold. We spooned together as hard as we could, but holy crap it was cold.

We had to make a fire. We were quite literally freezing:



The fire was a godsend. It was small, but allowed the blood to circulate. I knew we couldn't sleep and have the fire last long enough to keep us warm, so I went back to the truck stop and looked for some blankets. All that I could see were towels. For 15 euros. EACH!

Now I don't condone this, but I was excrutiatingly cold and I was desperate. I walked up to the guy in the counter and explained my situation. I told him I would pay him ANYWAY possible. I raised one eyebrow as I said that.

He told me he had his fill, and that I could get off lucky this time. He gave me the towels and a fleece blanket.

Next to the fire and with a blanket, I slept halfway reasonably:



Kelsey wasn't pleased with the cold and when the sun finally came up, we slept out in the sun and got a precious few hours of sleep before we would start up again. Boy was she cranky

[Smiling End]

Man, this is some tale already.  I'm hooked and jealous of the functioning parts of the Eurotrip.

You're a pretty good writer Cetme. 

[MendoDave]

Gotta Know more, gotta know more....

[CETME]

I'm glad you guys like it.

In all honesty though, It's not nearly as good as the other two i've written. If you guys have a moment and want a good chuckle, click on the top link in the first post. I promise you that you guys will get a good laugh out of it.

[Buckethead]

Pull a timmy tucker and we'll kill you. 

Less banter, more story. 

[El Matador]

Aaaarg..... Muuuuust... Haaaaave... . NEXT.... Installmeeeeeet.....

[Monsterlover]

+ 11tyb!!

[roy-nexus-6]

A few of you guys might remember my previous trips, If not, here you go: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=295462

Welcome to the Forum!

Yap, enjoyed reading your original tale when you picked up your monster. This one is looking even better. Bring on the euro punks!