So, what else can you find in the world, since the Berlin wall came down?

They say you can island hop from Greece to Turkey. So I caught the ferry from Mykonos to Samos, a Greek island, just 3k from Turkey. The Greeks have virtual ocean liners for ferries, most ‘70′s relics, from days before $50 international flights. I was grateful to be 4 stories up, and not on the foredeck of a yacht, as the winds that hammered the Med where beyond ferocious. It was enough wind to blow you off your feet, a gale bordering on a sunny cyclone. And it wouldn’t let up for days. Anything not pegged down, was gone.

Having run a shipping line ina previous life, or so I am told, I found myself pacing around  the many decks of the ferry, as though I was keeping an eye on the business. Mind you, my only business was buying the odd toasted sandwich, but that didn’t stop my incessant watch of docking precision, heal angles, and route planning. I should have just relaxed, like the hundreds of bodies strewn around the Borat decorated lounges and cafeterias, throughout the 5 ferry crossing that I made from Italy to Greece.

Ferrying punters just aint what is used to be,  before Ryan Air. Mind you, the Greeks have no shortage of tonnage, nor any lack of expert captains who can back 100,000 tonnes in 45 knot crosswinds, as though they were parking a Smart car. I was impressed. Reversing, spinning turns, in tight harbours, car ramps down and ready, all without a tug boats in sight. It would give any Australian harbour master’s health and safety officer, an epileptic seizure.

Ever since Onassis scored the US half the US’s WW2 Liberty ships for a dime, in a dirty deal with JKF’s dad Jack, (in exchange for funding sonny boy John into the presidency), the Greeks have ruled the waves. They also ruled US politics for a while, but got shitty with JFK, for welching on the deal, by leaving the mafia’s gambling thugs to get mashed in the Bay of Pigs?/ Castro fiasco,  such that when JKF would  not save their arse, so Onassis/CIA had John shot (with one bullet that did 3 U turns in flight), and then, in traditional mafia protocol,  Onassis stole the missus Jackie. Os so the famous Gemstone files revealed. And the ship is named in memory of the sibling.

But back to getting to Turkey. Trains were uncool ever since Midnight Express.

So ferry it had to be. I arrived at Samos on dusk , on a Saturday evening.

There I was told , the next ferry to Turkey, was on the following Friday. My self-sic sense of humour took over, as it was either cry, or more fun, laugh. And have a beer. I was then told there was no camping site on Samos, so , as  twilight became dark, I had to find a beach somewhere bike-able, and crash.

Banging pegs into rocky Greek beaches, at night, is only possible after several beers.

The next morning, below a quaint whitewashed Greek church kinda thing, I set to sea a fluffy turd, ate some muesli, and went ferry hunting. By 9.30, I was on yet another steel block of flats, heading to Chios, an island famous for not much, other that growing and making the gum in chewing gum. The Turks had routinely massacred Greeks, but because the Turks warring leader fancied chewing gum, the Chios mob had been spared the massacre bestowed on their neighbours, getting themselves out of an otherwise sticky situation. In Chios, for $100, you could catch a shitty ferry to Turkey just 5 k away,  compared to 250k, for half that price,  for intra Greek run. It seems Greeks and Turks have ferry protocol issues.

Turkey ain’t a part of the EU, and like Thailand, is one of the few countries on earth,  that has never have been overrun by foreigners, including Brussels based bureaucrats. So on arrival, they made me pay a $30 visa fee.

I thought Turks now liked Australians, now that we realised that massacring each other at Gallipoli was all a big mistake, and we really didn’t mean it. Meanwhile, idiot patriots revere crazed mass murderer , Winston Churchill, who’s stupid, arm chair idea, Gallipoli was in the first place.

I tried to declare the bike papers to one of the hoards of officers at the dockside customs and immigration,  and in the end, gave up and just rode down the line of trucks awaiting inspection, and was on the streets of Cesme, bugger the customs, by just gliding through the border gates like royalty.

Cesme was seemingly the Turk’s Costa del Sol , a cheap , packages, Spanish equivalent, complete with endless ice cream sales, miles of tacky town house developments, and  nowhere to camp. On the directions of locals,  I was sent to chaos beach, where it seemed anyone was allowed anywhere to camp, and along with piles or rubbish, and a few hundred late Sunday afternoon beach goers, I picked a pitch. My protocol leaves actually erecting the tent at dusk, not before hand, and as my tent erects itself like a 13 year old boys wet dream, its not big deal making home in seconds. I ate a meal on the tables set up on the beach, and marvelled at the fact that the Aussie dollar has now sunk to the level of being of rough par with Turkey. To everywhere else in Western Europe, we have the spending power of Mexicans.

The guys with the AK47s seemed to think it was OK to camp. The dog walker was a bit alarmed that anyone dared to camp in thieving Turkey, but spared me a friendly hour of Turkish route suggestions. I’m kinda glad to be a silverback, as camping at any other age or by any other sexuality here, might be unwise.

But it wasn’t unwise, it was fun, and  good nights sleep on the edge of the sea, for free. I thought to myself, after years of sleeping in a house, that the fear of the sleeping boogie man, is a load of shit. The sleep bogie man, creates housing, the world around, as we know it. We should all just sleep on the nearest beach more often.

Mu first full day in Turkey was a laugh. And not being on an island, and being free to ride, I made like the dance song, to , ‘ride, ride…keep on riding, ride”.

It was a new experience to have no road map, no GPS, no Lonely Planet, nothing. Just a vague tourist map. Turkish signs , written it what might as well be yiddish, added spice. So fuck it, loosen up, get ready to get lost, and just ride. The GPS , sans maps, told me which was  north, and what was water, and what was land. That was ample. All I needed to know, was where the wet bit was.

So the first round-about threw me onto an expressway through 70k of country that would challenge the hardiest, dirt eating goat.  Wind turbines made up for agricultural handicap, and in no time, i was in a modern, multistorey city called Isnir, drinking chi, and eating some kinda Turkish sweet thing, of unknown make and model, like the dozens of new Turkish  foods, where I had no idea what they were made off. Little kinda roll things with peppers erect from each end, and weird hot drinks, which seemed to me like simple tea. Turkey is clearly the intertidal zone between the west, and middle east.  If a bloke called Constantine could re-dit the Jesus/Jewish gig, and modify ‘pagan’ sun worship into a religion that has held the world in a ‘Christian’ mind prison for 2000 years, all outta Istanbul, well, he’s a master bullshiter, in fact, he’s a master ‘Ist’-and-bullshitter’…. so Turks aint stupid. Unlike me. The Turks have a Machu Pichu kinda’ place, where Zeus and the rest of the stella gods were worshipped, just like in Machu PIchu, for 3000 plus years, through Hellenic, Turk and Roman regimes, and by fluke I found myself there, near Bergama, giving some Rod tips to the gods, ancestors and a bunch of incarnate ‘hang arounds’, as I’m want to do. My message is pretty simple, it simply says, ‘ Spirits,get ya shit together, get ready to party, its almost 2012, cycle shift time again.”  It’s hardly a detailed message,  but hey, it’s enough. After paying regards to Zeus, I pondered the 3000 years of Draco rule, where one mob after another ruled half the civilised world from this Bergama hill,  deploying the usual tricks, of hiding the real cosmic truths, enslaving the masses below, and guarding  the palace and their inner core mates, with fortress positioning and deadly armoury. Nothing changes.

Retuning from the mount like Moses with flat tire, I found a gas station to add 20psi to the rear knobbly. I  ordered a meal with me macho Muslim, all male mates, and indulged in my first  real Turkish barber experience, for one of those neo throat cutting shaves, in full traditional glory.  Now, given the gods, the back tire, and the facial hair where all in alignment, it was time to hit the coast again. This time, camp was to be  a beachside restaurant, where the deal was simple: eat here, and camping is free. Some  amused locals, one an economics grad with no job,( like most 2009 graduates), bought me a beer, as we sat in the dried sea weed, and discussed the basic similarities of all human plight,  despite the tower of Babel hurdles, whilst getting mildly pissed. The sun went down, along with another goat’s cheese salad, and it was another mad day on the road, to a place, where even now, as I write. here on location, I can’t remember the name. The Beatles are right… we are everywhere and nowhere baby.

You have some good days, and some fucking hardcore days,  especially when you a  fulltime traveller. Today , or the last 24 hours was rough. Turkey deserves all the shit it wears, from the nightmare tale told to the world in the cult film, Midnight Express. My tale gets a bit darker here. The twee Turk, who tried to practice his Borat English on me, on my first night, complained of the ‘undeserved’ reputation that the horror on film that  Midnight Express brought to Turkey. Fuck it… the truth hurts?

The day for me had a saddening and tough interlude. For a person like me, with maybe a deeper insight into what some call ‘conspiratorial”, the whole Gallipoli gig, is nothing more than a sickening piece of history, so badly understood, that grieving relatives have grave stones erected, stating, here lies a guy who was glad to die for his country. Glad to die? Yeah right, sure dad. I’m lying here, half my leg blown off, in the blazing sun, lead flying everywhere, in excruciating agony, as death approaches where medics fear to tread, I’m just 20 years old, and you fuckas, after I die in this miserable field of thorns , reckon I’m ‘glad’ to die for my country?

There is a plaque quoting the arch Iluminati tool Churchill, where he says the Turks will fall apart with a good army of 50,000 men and a few ships. One million men fought each other at Gallipoli. 250,000 of them died there. Churchill, you mate, are an evil, agent of hell, in there with arch Satanists, Kissinger and Hitler.

ANZAC cove, like many who visited it, with any degree of historical understanding, are almost brought to tears. It’s a good thing, about Australians, that masses of us   , make bus load trips to Gallipoli, every single day. They are not there for the trinkets and ice creams. There are none. ANZAC cove is a small beach, with a small headland. There are beaches just 900 m north or south, without imposing cliffs behind. If you were to make a beach assault, and had any sense of practicality about it, you would not do it at ANZAC cove. Curse you, may your souls rot in karmic demise, you British officers who had the stupidity to slaughter ANZACs with you insane geographical planning.

The chill sets in against the background of any typical summers day at ANZAC cove, as the beach is serene, coloured into the typical Mediterranean azure of the water…its a pretty little beach. The Gallipoli penninsular, is a gentle place, with charmed and lush farming, back from the beaches. They grow sunflowers there these days. My timing saw the sunflowers in wilt, with thousands of flower heads drooped as in prayer, as they shed there colour, petals, and life… as some sort, to me at least, of reminder of what happened there. Dozens of memorials, tributes and graveyards line the shores of Churchill’s little Turkish adventure.

What is it with the world, that sees millions of Australians relieved and sickened by the long overdue apology to the Aboriginals, yet no one, not a soul, even thinks to have the Australian and British Government apologise for massacring so many young Australian men, in pursuit of British Imperialism, to satisfy  Churchill’s lust for power and ownership of the Ottoman Empire. War history is a disgrace. Lest we forget? Lest we forget the truth…and the truth is, Australians should never have been at Gallippoli, no more than we should NOT be in Afganistan now, fighting a war, I can guarantee, on a wager of my right arm, that we will leave in defeat, as all before, after, as in the Golden Triangle precedent,, facilitating the world’s biggest and most blatent export of heroin, in world history. Stupidity beyond imagination? No, just more of the same, and whilst we never learn from history, we condemn more to needless death. Assault after assault was simply mown down by machine gun fire, and not to die instantly, but to be left, between the lines, with no morphine, no one to hold that fading hand, just a pitiful, agonising death, sometimes over days, in  a welter of dying mates.

I left Gallipoli, saddened and upset.

I was heading for Istanbul, 13 million Turks. Turkey is a fucking mess. It’s run by fundamentalist right wing Muslims. Making women wear neck to knee, with headdress, just to take a summers’ holiday. New money ( for some) is manifest in state, not local government  planning (  Turkish local government is a bureaucracy) ( like Melchert running Douglas?)…and the urban landscape of Turkey is a pile of rubble and rubbish interspersed with 4 to 5 storey , block housing, and for the ‘soma’ fed rich, the same thing in 3 storey, beachside town house developments. 80 million Turks means houses are no more, just mile after agonising mile of new developments.

I say it sucks, and Turks, wake up.

As for the natural beauty of Turkey, well, I ain’t seen anything worse in  Europe, put it that way.

So late in the afternoon, after taking a turnoff to Istanbul, i just said, fuck it, and as soon as I found a gap in the expressway guard rails, I did a U turn, and headed east back to Greece. I was not going to put up with life threatening drivers, and 13 million more Turks showing me how to ruin a great heritage with new found, debt driven money, simply because they too were succours for Greenspan’s  arch evil plan, to bury the world in debt so his immediate predecessors could get control, via weakened banks and governments, of world finance. Sorry Turkey, you are too ugly, too stupid, and I am too aware and awake, to sympathise with your noveau money stupidity. I’m leaving now. Or so I thought.

At the border, I was detained for nearly 24 hours. Why? Because the idiot customs, 3 days before at Cesme, had waved me through their gates without stamping my bike customs bit on the passport. Bad luck for me, as the omission had nothing to do with me, but was a failure of the Turkish bureaucracy. I arrived at the Greek border at dusk, and was shafted from one officer to another, I was stamped in, stamped out, and stamped in again. This went on as in true Midnight Express style,  where no one actually gave a shit about the dozens of detention rights they were ignoring, as all that mattered for the greasy Muslim career officers, was insuring they kept their noses clean.

I was forced back into the bleak, dry nowhere-ville of Turkey hinterland,(Ipsala) to a hotel designed and run by Borat, where,  I was ripped off, and fucked over. When i turned up for ‘breakfast’ the Borat clones showed me into a empty, purple decorated restaurant, with 400 seats but just one client,  me, and  then smiled as they proudly waved their hands over the lone table with today’s breakfast buffet, comprising some tomatoes, olives and goat fuckers cheese. So I took out my own Muesli, and asked for a bowl, by showing the stupid fuckas, the picture on the front on the pack, where this thing called a bowl was needed. It was as though I had asked for a space ship. The idiots had no idea what a bowl was, despite the picture, until I marched them into the kitchen, found a bowl amongst the rubble, and gave them a demonstration, of how, incredible as it may seem, you actually put this stuff called cereal in a bowl , and eat it. Without adding fucking olives.

The 300 room ‘hotel’ must have had 20 guests at max. Its lift only went 1 floor, despite being 5 stories high, built in the middle of fucking nowhere. The architects had a few mistakes, like beams below head high on main stairs, and power points all located behind joinery. TV was Turkish game show sing-a-longs, interspersed with ads for toxic household chemicals. Get me fucking out of here!!!

But again, no such luck.

By late afternoon, back at  Turkish border post,  hammered by thousands Turks in Mercs, heading back to Deutschland, I finally lost it. After being fucked around by one blame shifting officer after another,  the time had come to forget the obliging smile, and walk straight into the commanding officer’s grand office, demanding , as I held my wrists together as if cuffed, that they either arrest me here and now, as I was calling my embassy, or, let me fucking free, now!

The big hissy, after 24 hours of shit, was a big gamble. I had seen Midnight Express.

But fuck it, as least a bed in jail was free. My commotion set in train a  chook slaughter yard of headless blood spurting, as one officer after another started yelling at each other, until finally, they realised it was their problem, not mine, and if they detained me any longer, their problem will be a lot bigger.

‘Good bye Mr Davis’, was their parting words as my passport and papers were handed back.  Twisting the throttle to max, 10m out of the Turkish gates, I yelled a few Turkish bye byes and fuc offs, that they could have heard in Istanbul. My advise?… fuck going to Turkey, there are plenty of other places with goat fucking topography and shit food to choose from aside of Turkey. Whoever named the place Turkey, got it in one.

Its’ been a few days now, since I left Turkey, and I feel kinda bad about dumping on the poor Turks as much as I did. I hadn’t yet seen Albania. In Turkey, when I told a guy I was going to Albania next, he looked at me sideways, and said, “Are you sure?”.

The Turks, well, the people themselves are kinda cool, even the dicwits at the border were at least friendly, they even got me tea. Its the governments, as always, that ruin societies. Drive anywhere in Turkey, and you will see statue after statue, to some bayonet wielding mob, hacking into another. This is a bad sign, when it comes to a society. The border post had a quote on the wall, from the legendary, but duplicitous and evil tyrant Ataturk, ‘Peace at home, Peace in the world’…yeah, right mate, this from the super warring Turkish leader, with his own cruel little empire, once called Ottoman. At-a-boy, At-a-Turk. What a hypocrite. Gallipoli proved how good Turks are at war, remember?…they won.

I had a two night interlude camping on the nice beaches in northern Greece, SE of Thessalonica on the peninsular around Sithonia, where Greek retirees had built themselves a new, tacky, community along some sheltered bays and beaches. With increasingly arsey knack, with my new, don’t pay approach to accommodation, I just pitched my tent on the pine needles just back from the best beach location in the area, and, as it always true, the best things in life, and real estate, are free.

It was a big ride to Albania, not well helped by little sleep, after reading Ickes gob smacking recent additions to the already massive revelations about the grand lie known as 911.

It is beyond belief, the extent of the 911 lie,  it’s contradictions and outright bullshit .

What amazes me, is that most of the Western world swallowed the bullshit, and continue to believe the 911 by Bin Laden myth.

It will one day, go down in history, as the greatest ever fraud committed in the 20^th century. If you still believe Muslim terrorists where behind 911, after all has since been revealed, you are sadly, in a bit of information stupor, and I suggest you take 30 minutes out, to read the net, watch a DVD, or glance one of a dozen books on the subject. If you still believe all FOX has to say, just stick with games shows and eat ya fluoride tablets. There’s fading hope for you.

The EU must have dumped a massive, build now, pay ( the toll) later deal on Greece, and in a country where the roads are falling apart, they have built an expressway from east to west that has to be ridden to be believed, as never, anywhere on earth, have I seen such a, who-gives-a-shit attitude to civil engineering cost. Where maybe cut and fill might have breeched some of the valleys, the new EU road has mile after mile of staggeringly high bridges, and enough tunnels to outdo 50 years of Italian digging effort.  At 130k/h  across sweeping bridges, 400m up in the air, or roaring down mile after mile of through mountain tunnels, on a road almost to myself, for almost 300k, was something else.

The toll booths were still under construction. Some infrastructure bankers must have lit a few cigars, and popped a few corks when the ink dried in this deal. How absurd, to leave community roads in squalor, whilst building unused ‘roads to nowhere’ like the A2 in Greece. No wonder the EU is crushing so many in taxation.

But 911 and Greek autostradas, aside, I was, later in the day, in for yet a another shock,  on arriving in Albania.

The line up of cars on the Greek side of the border post , to clear police and customs was 4 hours long, in the hot sun. So much for the seem-less EU border idea.

With sly tactics, I was through the mile long cue in 30 minutes, simply by weaving the Beemer to the head of the car cue, and then de-helmuting, and sitting in the gutter looking destitute, whilst making  jokes with the drivers of the very front cars, such that they insisted I go first.

The Greeks side of the border was a mess. The Albanian side was a pigsty. Lonely Planet described the southern most town of Albania, Sarande, as Albania’s cutest seaside town. If Sarande is their cutest, then I would hate to see their ugliest: Beirut after a good shelling looks tidier than Sarande.  Lonely Planet, in there forever attempt, to be upbeat, have at times, lost it. When the travel hippies who founded Lonely Planet, sold out for $180million dollars, there was a message in there, for us the readers.

The first thing you notice when driving into Albania, are hundreds of concrete dome shaped things in paddocks everywhere. On closer inspection, they are bunkers,  bunkers that an atomic bomb wouldn’t worry.  700 thousands of them. For 3.5M Albanians. What kind of fucked up, paranoid society could have lived in such fear, that they built these gun shoot bunkers literally everywhere? The 50 million killed in the name of a sharing caring idea called communism, is clearly something I am yet to come to terms with. I’m told the communist leader insisted the enginner who designed the things, sit inside one, as a series of tanks shelled and attacked him. He walked out fine, just a bit shell shocked for the rest of his life.

Many Albanians, without no such thing as a car, lost their virginity in one of these bunkers.

The roads and environment leading to the Albania coast have to be seen to be believed. I thought Bolivian infrastructure was on the edge of rabid. Albania, or my first impression at least, made me think of Bolivia instantly. But it’s a different gig. Developers have been given a shit load of money here, and not an ounce of social conscious, and they have fucked the place overnight.  I had hoped for some old, real Europe, with donkeys and stone cottages. There still are cows and rancid horses grazing the garbage bins on the roads, but the stone cottages are now mere developer’s rubble, here in Sarande.  The Rubble from the building boom lines the road into the tourist ‘mecca’, that these idiots are trying to create, in mile after mile of truck dumps, interspersed with the odd bit of putrid garbage. Half built 6 storey ghettos, surrounded their neighbours in dust and rubbish,   and make up every third building, all frozen in half built states, now the Greenspan trap has snapped across the world’s fingers. The territory is mountainous and bleak to start with, a sort of biologically challenged area at the best of times, but after the addition of an influx of unconstrained earth moving savages, the environment has gone from bleak to depressing. It took centuries of previous conquerors to largely ruin dry Europe, but in the last 20 years, with bulldozers and excavators, the current generation has done more damage than a millennia of Romans and Ottomans. It’s an environmental catastrophe of massive proportions.

But all through this, there are dozens of new Mercs and Range Rovers, limping through the pot holes and rubble. I almost jumped of my bike in yet another log jammed, mud and rubble traffic jam and went up to the dickhead in the new black Ranger Rover in front of me, to say, ‘mate, why the fuck would you both buying and expensive  limo like this Ranger Rover, when you are living in a cack hole of this proportion?’ What is the point of such blatant luxury, if no one gives a shit about the ‘us’ part of living, to the point where the place is a pigsty full of faeces besmeared pearls? I obviously had some lessons to learn about the post commo, community consciousness.

I rode into the sunset through mile after mile of dry rocky, beachless coastline until I finally found a single beach, that is again, looked like a rock pile, meets quarry, with its beach decorated  with up-ended bunkers, makeshift discos , and a million holiday makers, and an odd camper. I found a spot under some olive trees, bought a beer, pitched my tent, and when I look out my torch, I noticed that what I thought was a large rag hanging in the tree behind my tent, was in fact a rancid, drying goat skin carcass. Turkey is all of a sudden looking quite civilised.

It wasn’t till my second day in Albania, that I started to understand what was going on.

I had decided to just ride on through the shit heap, and whilst there was an odd spectacular mountain pass, overall, the place was disgusting. It was everything I hate. I looked and looked, but not a trace of old, heritage was to be seen. There was shit everywhere, no town planning, and everything was an unfinished junk yard, covered in dust.

The Albanian idea of a beachside holiday town, are a sprawl of shitty apartment blocks, surrounded in rubble and garbage. Local cuisine?…dead sheep.

Let me give some advise of driving in Albania… Don’t.

These idiots, 10-15 years ago, didn’t have cars.  Back then, traffic cops controlled the traffic well…there was none. Roads then were fine, for donkeys.  But then, Albanians figured out how to get cars. They stole them. I’m told 95% of Albanian all cars, 10 years ago, were stolen from places like Germany. Today, every 5^th car is Mercedes. Today, I’m told, its only every second Merc that is ‘hot’. You can buy a Merc in Albania for chips.  So, in summary,  we have idiots behind the wheel of new 4 litre power packs, who have only just learnt to drive, on roads where donkeys now fear to tread, where are absolutely no road rules. It’s fucking dangerous shit, especially on a bike.

Some of the overtaking tactics, and driver stupidity, had to be seen to be believed. They may be maniacs in Naples, but at least Italians are world champion riders and drivers.

I was a nervous mess by the time I made it to a massive seaside shithole called Durres. I was under duress. I saw a internet cafe, and being outta touch for a week, just had to race in get my news, as the sun set, and i had nowhere to stay, in mile after mile of 8 storey abyss. So I just got on the bike, and said, spirits, save my arse, find me some recluse. I rode through mile after mile of ugly traffic jam, until the apartments turned into container depots. It was looking grim, but I had already conceded defeat, and was ready to sleep in sewerage. But I had an inkling, when i got a glimpse down the coast. So I rode, till the road turned to dirt, from dirt to rubble, and there infront of me, was a ram shackle kinda off, one-day-will- be marina… literally at the end of the road.

To my surprise, out popped an totally eccentric nutter called Wolfgang, who raided his arms ina wide sweep, proclaiming himself king off all i could see, and asked what I wanted. I wanted a place to camp.

I got more than a place to camp, I got fed, entertained, and informed. Wolfgang, as it turned out, was a former skipper, a writer, and marina manager, and more interestingly, he was a political shit stirrer, who had even the Albanian cabinet and mafia under his toe. Wolfgang had arrived here, 15 years ago, established a beach head ( literally) and fended of mafia, gun toting maniacs, corrupt governments, and had built himself the embryo of what will no doubt one day be Albania’s first marina.

In the process of doing this, Wolfgang had become the blog equivalent of Mike Moore, and had exposed, and undermined many corrupt mafia deal, and evil western corrupter. I had no idea how corrupt, how mafia impacted, and how desperate the situation was in Albania, until Wolfgang took me for a drive, for Sunday coffee, pointing out which evil fucka owned what, and who had been murdered to get it built.

The day I arrived, they mafia had just shot and murdered 4 cops, including the leader of the anti mafia police, which in itself is an oxymoronic concept, as the cops are so bent, there really is no such thing as anti mafia cops, they are just dealers in sentences. The guys who planned the sting,  where already in jail anyway, but not out of power. No one is safe, in Albania. You can just wheel in ya bulldozers, and build a block of flats in Albania, regardless of whether you own the land. It how dangerous and corrupt you are, that counts. I’m told much of the mafia expertise come from the centuries old alliance with the original and best mafia, the Italians.

The stolen Mercs still have the German plates. That way, they don’t pay rego.

My social conclusion, is the society in Albania is a rape victim in perpetuity. First it was raped by the communist government. Now, in counter swing, it is being raped by the mafia, the grand cleptocracy. No wonder the EU won’t let the Albanian in…they want their cars back first.

Drugs, false identities, laundering, black handed deals with equally black handed western governments and corporations, who are fully complicit in corruption process, regardless if you name in Vodaphone or Siemens…..this is the reason Albania now is a squalor of rubble and Mercs. It’s a disgrace. But hey Rod, welcome to the former communist world. Maybe all  I had to do, was accept it. I’m told Durres had prospered by being the port for the NATO transformation and aid, into the ideal NATO result: another mafia state, where the West could do all the dirty work that it finds hard to do in its own backyard. We, seemingly, in the West, are as much to blame for the corrupting  the once communist Europe, as the inhabitants themselves. We are the one, at government, and at corporate levels, shaking the black hands.

Looking at the dual headed, eagle-meets-serpent headed flag of Albania, on a blood red background, it’s clear, who and what the agenda is here, as the symbology, Iluminati-eque, or Sum-Aryan message, says it all in one.

Don’t kid yourself that the quaint ying-yang sign is about tadpoles, they are snakes in original form, and the mythology and symbology permeates every culture, religion, and politburo on earth, for those with a deeper understanding of history. But yes, there is dark and a light side to all the twisted  serpentine symbology, but it’s he who holds the knowledge, he who is ‘Iluminated’ , that controls the game, for either good, or evil. Unfortunately, for the last few thousand years, the guys at the top have favoured the dark use of the knowledge. It will be interesting to see if indeed, it turns out that the twisted helix of the DNA,  is infact  the real message being implied in the twisting serpents, as DNA is a whole new game.

I was told Montenegro, to the north, was also a mafia hole, just Russian mafia, not Italian mafia. So I rode right on through, in mile after mile of log jammed Mercs on never ending potholes, where it was impossible to figure where the potholes ended, and where the roadworks  began. It was seemless. It was high summer here, and every fourth car was part of a Sunday wedding, I would have passed at least 30 or 40 wedding cavalcades, today. Who the fuck would get married in Albania? I’d run.

The final bridge, feeding from a half built highways to a one lane, rusted out bridge,( to get into Montenegro), had a  traffic jam at the bridge alone (if you could call it a bridge) that was a 30 minute wait…just for 150 yards progress.

As soon as I was out of the shithole Albania, the farm land smiled, nature took a deep breath, and there was community intact, informed, and seemingly quite fun.

And it was still cheap, so for 10 Euro, I got my first room in months, and got to washing clothes, jet blasting the bike, and changing oil. I was in Ulcinj, where a million kinda fun Russians, do high density bikinis at the beach. But it’s almost civilised.

One of the first things you must do when you leave Albania, is shit out the toxic waste dump you were exposed to there. Fish, Fish for example…why did i eat fish in Durres, if I had just read the water was so polluted, it made swimmers rash up? I looked into Wolfgangs quaint Adriatic harbour, which he declared clean, but I noticed bubbles everywhere. Gas exploration has gone a bit too far in Albania…now the mud oozes Methane.

I was totally surprised, after the heritage destruction of Albania, to come across a seaside town in Montenegro, old Yugoslavia, where there is port of heritage excellence, its almost a world beater..it’s called Kotor as in rotor.

There is a fiord harbour there, flanked by massive mountains, along who’s shores is mile after mile of ancient stone seawall, with Devon-meets-Adriatic, little stone warehouses lining the foothills, all fully intact, and largely not ruined by Hilton, Vodaphone and the rest of  the usual suspects. The anchorage, from a boaties perspective, was magnificent. Even the once mega glam Christina O was moored here.

I’m staying here to explore.

And it seems Kotor, like its venetian influenced nearby Dubrovnik, was once, and particularly cultured, and seemingly prosperous waterfront town, or towns.

When regular homes and warehouses, cop ornate stone carved details, it’s obvious that there owners were not dirt poor. Ah, the riches of the once great Med. Now not a fish in sight, so reeling in Russian holiday makers will have to suffice.

This was Montenegro, another conspirator, I add, in shelling what Lord Byron once righty described as ‘the pearl of the Adriatic”. The Serbs once had the third best equipped army in Europe. In Croatia, at the receiving end of this all powerful army, they had partisan guts. I had coffee in Croatia today, with toughen looking kinda character, on a KTM 690, the real deal in adventure bikes. He had served 5 years in war, very recent war. War where the Catholic west met the intertidal zone of the Muslim east. A pal of his, with some anti tank gear he bought himself, crept up to the Serbian army, and one by one, he personally destroyed 40 Serbian tanks. Now that’s gutsy. Its a disgrace of monumental proportions, to think the world stood by as the animals at war, shelled Dubrovnik old city, as quite frankly, its architectural splendour out does anything in Paris or Rome.

The residue of Tito’s brutality, the massacres after and during WW2, added to the disgrace that was the most recent war in European history, have left a lot of older, uglier men, holding hearts of stone. The most cruel and savage of wars, is war with one neighbours, civil war.  I have had to really work at forgiving and improving my attitude to the Slavic mob, having had some very ugly experiences with them in the 80′s, when at 29, I had employed dozens of them building 30 storeys of just another thing, and my attitude was battling to improve, after i came across one evil old shit after another, all with the manners of Stalin, the happiness of a dead baby, and the appearance of a toxic waste dump. Unfortunately, these old bastards seemed to proliferate in the business of running what they call Auto Kamps, in Mein Kamp style. If it wasn’t for the cooler, younger generation in the former Yugoslavia, the place would be unbearable.

The Croatian coast is the best I have seen in the Med. I have seen a shitload of coast now, all France’s Riviera, the Italian coast down to the gorgeous Amalfi coast, and add in most of the Greek coast, many of its islands, and all of Turkey’s northern coast. That is a lot of coastline. So saying Croatia has the most blessed coast, is not an unqualified comment.

I add, however, that the Croatia coast in August is absurdly packed, fast becoming overdeveloped, and is a seasonal rippoff. But the blessings bestowed by nature, cant be beaten, as the mountain range that runs north south, forms spectacular backdrops, and with the same, parallel mountain range 10k offshore, almost the full length of the 600k coast, it’s a sailors heaven.

I am suffering coastal holiday saturation, after weeks and weeks riding along the beach ball, triteness of millions of Europeans soaking their sun starved bodies on every square inch of swimmable Med coastline. After a while, I’m left thinking, what’s the fucking point. Pay too much. Go to beach. Lie there till crisp. Do it again the next day. If ya young and cute, maybe get laid in the gaps. That’s about it. Oh, and if you get bored, do circles on a jet ski mindlessly, get pulled behind a boat on a parachute, like an idiot, or drink more beer. That’s maybe someone’s idea of a holiday, but it sure aint what travel is all about. Its soma in the Orwellian meets Brave New World. I’m a bit over it, and am heading to the alps, the urban, anything please, just no more stupid shops selling bright blow up things, or other colourful crap that gets thrown out as soon as the grey home life sets back in. What is it about holiday makers, that makes them want to buy silly, kindergarten coloured crap, as soon as they pull on a swimming costume? They do it the world over. I’m over it. Work all year, day in day out, just to go lick an ice cream? The world has lost all meaning, in its social purpose. Bring on the apocalypse, at least it could be a bit exciting. Oh, and not wanting to sound too racist, if there is going to be some devastating earthquake and tsunami somewhere, I recommend Albania. Woops.

As I pulled out of Montenegro headed to Dubrovnik, a black cat darted across my path, just as I hit the road.  I’m not superstitious, but when you are a 100km meat carcass, on a highway, sans airbags, you can’t just dismiss signs as impossibilities.

So I did my daily, ‘save my arse oh great spirits’ prayer, ending with the usual tribute the pagan sun god Amon, modified to what Christians have no idea what the say, when they say,’Amen’.

I didn’t get creamed by shit did happen. I heard a jerk and flutter at high speed, and once again , I looked down to see the self erecting tent gone. Recalling my M1 drama, I did an instant U turn, and floored it, back up to road, to retrieve the critter before it was pulped by a truck. But it was nowhere to be found. Not good. But on pulling up, I found it, jammed under the panniers, having been dragged at high speed for 1000m.

I had severed the frame in 4 locations, so the pop up, was now a flacid rag. I was within a few weeks of departure, heading back into rain territory, and was without a home, where room rates were 70% of my daily budget. Not good.

I stashed the ruins back alongside the bike, and in foul mood, headed north, expecting to quickly find a campsite, in which i could unfold my misery, and contemplate my demise. But , as the garage attendant informed me, it was 50 k to the next campsite, called ‘Rio’ something, and sure enough, it was a depressing , overpriced shithole.

The next day unfolded to a sensational sweeping drive along perfect road, up the Croatian coast to a funky homestead waterfront, where every room in the house, and every square inch of garden was rented to one of the zillion holiday makers doing the Croatian thing.

The next day, I got busy with splints, tubes and tapes, and somehow, put humpty dumpty back together again, recalling the greater misery of having sails shredded when at sea. Brian, or that was his Aussie nickname, was the manager, on the piss,and entertaining everyone, kids, mums, and madmen alike. Accordingly, he took a liking to me, and gave me some of his beer. The site was sort of half built, but it had a funky roasting fire, a stove, and an open air shower, a luxury, to boot. Adriatic azure lapped at the stome landing platforms, draped in windsurfers. I’d that afternoon, purchased a mile of orange adhesive tape, and proceeded to repair my shreaded tents in true Christo style. A few beers lead to some unusual splint materials for the 4 broken tent ribs. Australian etiquette required fencing wire to become one splint, strapped by cable ties, and wrapped in plastic, orange style. Brian, or Branco-something, came up with a novel spilt for one of the trickier corners, and now, a complete windscreen wiper, again cable lied and wrapped in plastic, orange style, keeps one part of the tent rigid.

Holes in the tent itself are now a mass of orange tape, tastefully offset by the moss green of the main tent body. The whole effect is quite cute. I wake in the morning to two orange eyes looking at me, like stain glass windows in a green array.

Now to matters motor cycle.

There is no question now, despite my reservations, that I have become a fullblown, fully qualified motorcyclist.

Months now, riding day after day, make all those weekend warriors on bike, look like true amateurs. I qualify my expertise on one basic fact> I’m still alive.

Biking is not exactly safe, especially in rock strewn Andean hairpins, and Albania intersections. Even  circling the Arc de Triumph is a challenge.

So I pat myself on the back, and get into the idea, the culture and the people. For some odd reason, these days, nearly all serious tourers, are over 45, many over 60, especially out of Germany, and good on em. One German rider i met, met was heading to the States for 6 months, looking as fit as a forty year old, with the blessing, I add of his cute wife, 20 years the younger. It only cost him $700 to ship his bike to the US, door to door, return included.

Now guys, any bike riders reading, there is, believe it of not, a place where you can get seriously fast and funky on bike, and still end up both alive, and with license.

There is Croatian coast road. First built by the Romans, then upgraded by Tito, and recently repaved and made redundant by a mega autoban just inland, from Zadar, ( without the cops radar) to Senj, on the northern coast of Croatia. You could roller blade it in comfort. But each bend is an immaculate conception of view, camber, and grace, and there are hundreds of uninterrupted miles of the fuca.

Hot modern bikes have tyres stickier than golden syrup, frames tighter than the 911 lie, and power packs that make the Norton Commando or Kawasaki Z1 look like prams.

I rode this road in amazed thrill. Even with shitful knobby tyres, now almost slicks, I was hanging it out. My removalist truck panniers, even with the height of GS, were almost an endangered species. To the left, was the azure of the Adriatic, ducking and weaving its way through inlets and coves, and flooded as a mountain range met its Atlantis farewell: a view of uninterrupted majesty. To the right and above me, was an outrage of the unsunken mountains, bursting up 1000m, garnished with a salad of hardly vegetation at the lower levels, and strictly hardcore rock at height. Spectacular.

Lefthanders were tight and terrific: these were the bends at the head of each bay. Right handers wrapped the headlands, with the view spetac, but with the need for the concentration spiced, as loosing it here, and it was rocky and wet ending.

They used to say the Italian Riviera was the grand ride. Not any more. Not at 50k, with every bend concealing an idiot doing a U turn to slide his Smart into a vacant parking slot. I met some German guys on deadly street racers, who, like me agreed, that the sexiest road in Europe, is the one above, to which I refer. They come here annually, just to leave  some rubber behind. They keep it simple, with full leathers, a credit card, and a sleeping bag.

Just before Senj, in Northern Croatia, we all ended up in wild side camping ground deep in a beachside ravine, where clumsy campervans and cars could not enter, and where a dozen or so tents  enjoyed a truly spectacular Adriatic beach, below 4 or 5 old stone fishing cottages.

The guys with credit cards and no tents, had done well that night, as when after midnight, the neo cyclonic winds set it, even though we were in the lee of the mountain, the wind flattened nearly every tent, and if was not for the old fig to which my tent was tied, it would be half way across the Adriatic with my  towel. Towels sink.

The water was clear to 40m. I swam and swam the next morning, but never found my towel.  120km/hr, within an hours build up, we get the wind risk that is the Adriatic. As my tent flatten into my face at 3 in the morning, all  Icould think was, thank Christ this is a tent, not a boat.

I rode in Slovenia the next day, by the by ways, and not the highways. What a relief it was, to be away from the moronic mentality of beach ball Europe in summer. No more crowds. No more traffic. No more signage, crap and over development. Up and up the roads into the Alps rose, each mile getting greener, and more real. Bullshit new blocks of flats disappeared, and mile by mile, everything became more Hapsberg, more Austrian. Sure, the Hapsburgs were evil Iluminati Satanists, but hey, they make great town planners, farmers, and architects. The Hills are Alive, with the Sound Of Music.

There is Slovenia, and there is Slovakia. It’s a fine point, but they are two different countries. Slovenia, is the most forested, and allegedly greenest country in Europe. Sure, on the autobahns, you can cross Slovenia in 2 hours, but not by the hay stack route I took. They have these things called a Kozolec, that are hay drying racks under snow deflecting roofing, that use a cool  grid pattern timberwork,  and they deserve the national iconic status they have delivered, and they, like all the pretty little challet homes , are fucking everywhere.  Yo di ley hi ho.

I ended up in a alpine resort area near Postojna, where a gorgeous alpine restaurant allowed me to camp in their spectacular garden, in the prettiest woodland I have seen in years, and guys, my spinach noodles with pumpkin has just arrived at my table, so uuroo till next paragraph.

Slovenia has got to get the big rave. Pity its so tiny, you could autobahn through it in two hours. I didn’t. I had no idea what to expect. I was stunned. Its bar far the best value beauty in Europe on my trip so far. The zig zags I did, on the back roads, were beyond belief, in alpine beauty. The limestone version of the ALPS runs  through Slovenia, turning crystal clear mountain streams into turquoise jewels…. all set against mountain backdrops, that has me reconsidering the Andes, as the worlds most spectacular mountains. Unlike Western Europe’s ALPS, the Slovenia version is more about nature than ski resorts and industrial parks in the valleys. Its not cheap, but its no sheer theft, like the western ALPS. If I were I skier, I’ld be giving the French and the Austrians the finger, not the cheque, if I were insane enough to go sking in $$$$ Europe.

I’m just an outright fan of alpine areas. Comparing they types of tourist along the med beaches, to  Alpine versions, I vote Alpine every time, as the Alpine ones are sporting, healthy, and into nature. The beach ones, are vain, lazy, and are just into suntans. The guys running the camping sites, are cool and sporting too, unlike  the fat ugly arseholes cashing in on their grandad’s waterfront land around the Adriatic, running the hospitality around the Med.

Slovenians are multilingual ,well educated, and flanked by Slavs, Italians and Germans.

My border arrival was met by the village fete, were the local dads were hacking up slabs of meat on throwing them on bread for the hungry, fund raising eaters, as the stage entertained with weird local dance and Slovenian music. I checked in on the gliding guys, the rafting guys, the kayakers, and believe it of not, the world high diving guys, who throw themselves into the azure lime flavoured rivers, from great heights. With the river water colour so alluring, who wouldn’t be tempted to dive into it.

The Slovenian roads were masterpieces of biker joys, and every bike rider in Europe, pack after pack, had come to Slovenia to ride the valleys and mountain passes. Thousands of us. The speed freaks, in leather and clip-ons, must be immune to paying local speeding fines, as they sure know how to hang it out at Mach 2.

There is a great camaraderie  amongst the international bike people, and everyone, but everyone waves the spare fingers above the clutch ( there is no way anyone lets off the throttle side)…. and I , with mega spot lights on each front pannier, like landing lights, return the waves with a handsome light flash. You end up doing this almost every second minute. It’s different to the weird French and Dutch, who wave with their foot when overtaking, very odd.

There is a whole restaurant and hotel set, specifically targeting touring bikes. It would be fair the call Slovenia, the bikers world capital. Go ride it one day.

I had a dive into the Alpine gorges, and was out again almost as fast as a reversed home movie, with instant less volume in the slugos after the icy hit.

After one free nights camping at the woodland restaurant neat Skocjan caves  , I had another in the spectacular Soca  Valley,  riverside, above Bovec, and a third night  in bed of forest compost, on the edge of a Lake Bohinj where it seems the whole place was designed by the gods of nature based tourism, in some fit of creative beauty. I really like the Slovenians, they are unassuming, cool, and not full of greed like us and the western Europeans. The old commo ways didn’t wreck everything, and my dream to see Europe in an authentic, rural kinda beauty, without the evils of the cleptocracy, and post commo mafia, was happily fulfilled in Slovenia.

I give Slovenia a 9 out of 10 to. If I was to buy a cut little alpine retreat anywhere in Europe, it would be Slovenia, the best kept secret. It’s as clean and charming as Austria, without the hype, and is historically a  Hapsburg, Austrian ruled gig anyway. When a beer and a meal is affordable, it makes life a lot more fun than much of the remaining rippoff Europe.

So I was in no hurry to leave Slovenia, but had kinda run out of Alpine bits, so slipped over the border into Austria, via those lime stone Alps.

Riding around Austria feels like being a toy man, on a toy bike, in a big model train set. It’s all so perfect, so beautiful, it makes me wonder how Austrians can cope with the rest of the untidy, imperfect world. If Hitler had been a bit more cool and benevolent, the Austrians may well have made good world leaders. Arnie and Adolf eh…Austria’s 2 grand contributions to world leaders. Mmm. Weird.

I wasn’t even going to bother dealing with the campsite and restaurant food price hikes when shifting from east to west Europe, so I bought some bread and canned bean soup ( delicious I add) and headed up into the Austrain woods, just below the winter snow ski line, 150 south of Salzburg, and wound my way up some foresters trail, made a fab fire, downed half a bottle or red, and loved it, remembering why I love home so much , as in Australia, it’s not hard to find real camping sites, where there is no one around, and you can make a fire, as here in Europe, after months on the road camping, this was the very first time I could actually sit a around  a fire in the woods. Europe has one big problem…500,000,000 Europeans, and not much space.

The next day I was going to do lunch in Salzburg, where the hills are alive, with the sound of mass tourism, to then spilt the city and camp.

My bike is an amazing thing. It has a benevolence born of angelic guidance. I recall the time in Ireland, when the old Beemer was about to throw a crank sensing switch, a potentially  super expensive, get towed fuck up, and the bike somehow, in a one on a million manipulation, konked out, and rolled to the door of a BMW dealer, who directed me to a repair guy who was so kind, so cheap, and so dedicated to helping, it restored my faith in mechanics. Had it happened anywhere else, I would have been fucked.

Today was the same. As I pulled into Salzburg, 100m from my destination, I felt the front brakes go soft, so I parked in on the river at the gates to the old city, took out my tools, whipped off the front disk calliper, and discovered a shoe thrown from a brake pad. It was immaculate timing, as the internet cafe nearby, led me to a equally close dealer, who had the part in from the airport within hours, but I somehow knew, the real reason for the Beemer’s choice of  splat spot was angelic intervention. My real worry on the bike was not the brakes, it was the tyres.

I had started with knobby tyres, which are bad enough at the best of times, but when worn to the core, with slow leaks from old nails, and a grip pattern so bad, it  reduced my road contact in dangerous ways, I was really running on empty, and it was getting dangerous, but with $500 needed for new tyres, and already living on beans with bears in the forest, there was no way I was going to afford new rubber in Europe. But as I arrived at the BMW dealer in Salzburg, home of zee perfectionist Aryan mechanic, I had whispered a please please to the gods, as I knew,  and the Beemer knew, there was a reason behind this twist of mechanical  fate.

There, in the back of the BMW bike workshop, was a pile of seemingly, as new Tourag ‘used’ tyres, and sure enough, I could help myself. Within minutes, the bike was stripped of bags, brakes and wheels, and for $150, an hour or two later, I had new brakes, spare brake linings( care on the kind mechanics), and new rubber. Very sexy.

Once again, the Beemer had delivered a little pain, for a lot of gain, and in a place, more expensive than just about anywhere else in Europe. This was getting to be beyond coincidence.

It was at this point, that I decided this bike could not be sold, as it was vehicle blessed.

I had just the night before, studied and read more confirmation of the intuitive benevolence theory, the one of just surrendering to the cosmos, where the theory goes kinda like this…if ya just do what ya soul wants, and float along on ya lilo, whilst others paddle like fuck to do this, or do that, and instead just be, then the cosmos tends to look after you….. sure, it throws some little nasties at you, but nasties designed to help, long term, not hinder.

I’ve travelled now for 5 fulltime years of my 54 so far. Each time, towards the travel’s end, I get a bad case of, ‘oh shit’… ‘I got to go to work’paranoia. Even now, I go, oh shit, it’s a recession, my career type is largely unemployable, and I could be fucked real soon. But then thinking back, I have never been fucked, and always, things work out just fine, on the day, regardless of the months spent worrying about the future. So when, these days, my mind reverts  to ‘oh shit, where’s tomorrow’s money gunna came from’,  I have to whip myself back into the now, tell my egoic self to go fuck itself, and, as in today’s case, just soak in the absolute beauty and magnificence, of riding through the drop dead gorgeous Austrian countryside. If you look after the now, the rest is not an issue.

The number plate of the bike is so perfect, and so odd, I add, for British plates, as they read, “Que Sera Sera’. I couldn’t believe it, when after owning the bike for a few months, I read the plate for the first time.

A 62 year old Italian guy, also touring on a BWW, noticed the plate straight away, along with the obvious fulltime traveller look of the kit, and was instantly impressed, breaking immediately into song… “whatever will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see, que sera , sera”. The tune stuck in my head for days, quite happily.

I like the story of the old Indian grandfather, teaching his young sqaw-sters, a lesson in life. As the tale goes, the old guy explains, he has two wolves competing in his head, one wolf obsessed with fear, anger and greed, and the other wolf into peace, love and fun.

The kid asks, ‘So granddad,’ which wolf wins?’ And the old Indians replies, “The one I feed’.  So it is, it seems with Zen and the art of touring.

Just across the border from toy train-s-ville-Austria, is the place that the evil but stylish Hapsbergs had as the base of their glorious kingdom. Its a place that was well fucked over by the Hapless bergs, overt feudal masters,( unlike today’s covert feudal masters). The place to which I refer is the Czech Republic,  one of those central European hot spots, that every emperor and his sycophants want to rule.

The first world war almost got flame going here. The Nazis were appeased, between the wars, in another ‘shadow government’ deal, and took out, not only Sudetenland, but the whole fucking country. Hitler lost. So Czechs , who’d been slaughtered by the Nazis, then slaughtered the Germans, in their farewell march. Stalin had a go next, he slaughtered a good hand. Then local  liberal socialists, 40 years ago to the month, wanted to put a ‘friendly face’ on socialism, to which the Russians responded, (with no idea what a friendly face even looks like),  by wheeling the tanks into Prague, or Praha, as they call it locally, Praha .  The Russians kept up the grim face, and oppression, until , a few weeks after the Berlin wall went, the velvet revolution freed Praha ha ha, with the final joke being pulled by the EU, a ‘velvet’ takeover, is ever there was one. These days, the country is besieged by tour groups. Poor fucking Czechs. No wonder they are such a cool, cultured lot, else could you do but laugh, when the only other alternative is to cry, Praha ha ha.

I rolled through the old abandoned border posts, through forests, where once the guard towers and Cold war freeze kept the escapees’ under the thumb. Whores sitting on highway fencing, and cheap junk markets mark the first ignoble, and uncharacteristic greeting as you enter from the Austra german border. I thought I could wing it through northern Austria with no map, no GPS, and no idea. I was wrong. I got so lost, I said , fuc it, head to Germany, as at least I have the German charts on my GPS. But no doubt, like many an army before me, I tried my entry where one mother of a river, sent me back to square one, before I finally found a way, into CZ.

There was a lake district near a place called Horni Plana, and never having seen a sexy timber tool before, to Horni Plana I headed. Instantly, the toy trainset perfection of Austria faded to a real, authentic, and gorgeous, rolling rural vista. And the prices dropped by half. Beer was no longer $6, it was $1.50 for 500ml. I pitched camp lakeside with swarm of Germans, Italians and Czechs, and  unzipped the tent door the next morning at dawn, to see a lake blurred in deep, sexy fog. Just up the road from the lakes district, was a former medieval town called Ceskey Kromlov, that would have the take the cake, for Europe’s best walled town, bestowed with the coolest clock tower on earth. Moted, manicured, and packed, I was indeed impressed. But I hadn’t yet seen inside Praha.

Rolling into Prague late in the afternoon, I pulled up chair on the river, and ordered a coffee, an obvious mistake, when the Italians next to me pointed out that the beer was half the price of the coffee, and it’s the best on earth. It’s where the invented Pilsener.  And Budweiser is actually local town, not a beer logo. There is nothing special about the countryside, and the outer ring of ‘burbs’ in Prague, and I was wondering if the stories of the place’s magic were just another trick.

But then I rode a bit deeper, got a beer, and took a wander. Oh my god. What a Disney wonderland, is Prague on dusk. There aint not palace in Europe like the Prague gig. Its more a suburb than just a palace. Every dick and his Masonic obelisk has stamped his Iluminati print on this town, and they don’t even hold back on the covert bit, as the full overt third eye atop Baal’s penis, complete with winged serpents, crucfix’s and  coats or arms all blend into the most blatant statement in demonic/Babylonian symbolism in Europe, just dripping from every inch of the palaces, and their mates in the church and military ( all one gig actually).

Its maybe pagan occultism underneath, but it sure makes for magnificent architecture, and a cityscape like none I have seen. Jeesh, how much blood and plunder must have funded this place. It’s magnificent, and to the 1 in 500 tourists who actually understand the message in the statues, symbols, obelisks and gargoyles, its sure more deep end gig, than a Da Vinci Code tour. Layer after historical layer is there, from Gothic to Baroque to Bauhaus. Deco has never had it so good.  No wonder Prague ruled much of Europe for so long.

Frozen in time by a deep chill of the Cold war, Prague rocks. I camped two night in an apple orchid, in an old homestead’s riverside backyard, and dodged the falling apples, taking the odd bight out of ones that took my fancy, and hey, apples fresh from the tree sure taste better than ones that do a 6 week tour of the markets by semitrailer. If this was the Garden of Eden, I ate enough apples to commit the original sin, and twenty copies.

But the beer and the hoards of ice cream lickers took its toll, as always. So too did the pizza and the liquid chocolate waffles. I was pondering what a wipe-out it would be, if the pot tourism of Amsterdam, was overlaid with the cheap beer and Disney castles of Prague…the place would be overrun with armies of dazed, open mouthed, droollers.

You can afford to eat almost anywhere, even prime time spots, in Prague. Do the same in Paris, and your credit card with self implode.

I had an appointment in Germany on Monday, so on Sunday morning, I took a bite of my last apple, and headed to spot that sounded cool , in the few lines describing it in Lonely Planet. The Czech German border area, in sandstone, forested canyons, had the good start name of Bohemian Switzerland, and was once, I gather, the domain of woodsmen, and river boatmen, all in some log cabin meets crazed artist and royalty blur. I had been blown away by the Slovenia’s version of woodland retreat, and I thought there was nothing cuter on earth. Sure, Switzerland and Austria are the supposed log cabin capitals of the world, but to the travel wary eye, these absurdly wealthy countries have ruined their heritage, by forever perfecting it….to the point where a Swiss chalet just ain’t the real deal anymore. One the other side of that iron curtain, it’s another story altogether. EU or no EU, the true authentic character of log cabin charm, can be found in Slovenia, and, here in CZ. In Austria, the 3 level, old original chalet I have all to myself tonight, would have cost hundreds of Euros, in Switzerland, for just one room. I have all ,of the most charmed lodge, I have ever stayed in, alongside a bubbling brook, with immaculate alpine gardens, and heritage gems all around, for all of $30 night. With meals. How could I resist. Fuck camping tonight. The French charge the same for a cramped shitty campsite, and the filthy French arseholes don’t even provide toilet paper for that price,(and no, no bidet either).

I’m enjoying the couched and low ceilings of the lounge rooms, off my choice of bedrooms, and might retire for some reading now dears. Ya gotta love CZ.

Dresden is just across the border from Praha,  and Dresden is maybe better known for dying than living, so I was a bit surprised when I rolled into the part or Germany than was verboten on my last visit, as Dresden has be dressed up and rebuilt, and is all quite spiffy, considering we heroic war victors bombed the fuc out of it, slaughtering tens of thousands in a firestorm of Slaughter House 5 proportions, including the destruction of the gracious old city. Considering the West’s outrage at the bombing of Dubrovnik, we’ve obviously got a short memory.

I was in Dresden for lunch, which i had actually brought with me ex of the Czech breakfast laid on in my own personal chalet. God knows how much of Europe can shit anything other than furnace bricks, after adding meats and cheeses to bread, for breakfast each day. I’m convinced whole national psyches are a product of what and when people eat stuff. There is no myth in the concept of anal retentive, or full of shit. Toxic lower bowel means shitty attitude. But regardless of the perils, I sliced the rolls in the main square of Dresden, and set about having an indulgence of cheeses and cured meats that only a bunch of old style, ex Commo famers could produce…besides, it was cheaper than paying German restaurateurs. The jump back into Western Europe and the Euro almost doubles some prices….petrol in Germany is for example is $2.60/l….a lot more than in CZ. Albeit some things in Germany make Ireland and France looks a complete rippoff. I like Germans, they like Dutch are liberal, progressive and funky, even with strong alternate crew. Germany is the world’s most efficient machine. The machine tends to have  bad health and safety record on issues of the heart, but its head and sexuality compensate.

My first stop was Leipzig to meet Christian Machen, the worlds first man to make a hydrogen boat, and the leader lynch pin in a small group of interested partied who form the World Marine Hydrogen  crew, and as I am planning the worlds wildest hydrogen marine project, the meeting with Christian was an essential and fun bonding at first sight, which went  long into the night, and across a few days, and hopefully, many more years.

Christian is an expert, an innovator, and drummer, a fun dad, and a engineer….almost a perfectly balanced human. I camped either in the uninhabited part of his huge home reno project, or camped in its old orchard garden, whilst rolling in and out of wotif teco discussions, which almost conclusively brought an end to some overly ambitious, and multimillion dollar on board experiments on the TRYBRID project, and got the whole thing back on track. The cold hard facts about the promised land known as the Hydrogen economy, is that it remains a years away whilst we endure 40 more years in the hydrocarbon desert.

Accordingly, some of the green dreams of Trybrid needed a slap in the face, no more attempting ( with $500,000) to electrolyse H2 on board, loosing 60% of the solar energy along the way, and no more spending another half mill trying to clean up the Hydrogen to 99.999% pure, for automotive type aspirations, by way of PEM fuel cell. Dump the half mill worth of 6000psi, carbon fibre H2 storage tanks, and their oil free, high tech compressor.  Instead  let’s just look and see what we can do with natural gas or LPG, by combusting it with H2 in diesel engines, or by putting steam reformed natural gas made into H2, and feed it through a fuel cell…. all a lot simple , more practical, and millions cheaper.

So the next day i rode all the way to the south of Germany, to see WS Reformers face to face, and eyeball their gear.  Their gear makes Hydrogen rich gas outta natural gas, by mixing it with steam, and running it over a cathode. The units to do this are the size of the stainless kitchen tidy bins, but we may need many of them.

I found out all sorts of interesting stuff here at WS, including rumour of incredibly cost reduced fuel cells that may well suit the steam reformed H2 idea. Germans make cool engineers at birth, but over lunch, with the worlds very best and most progressive engineers, it’s a sheer pleasure talking engineering. Hydrogen stuff makes automotive or other mechanical engineering look dead boring…what is happening in Hydrogen, is exciting shit.

I stayed overnight near Wurzburg, then on return, stayed in the Black Forest,  near Switzerland, presumably called ‘Black’ ,after being forested into oblivion, in clear felled site of the alpine tourist towns, such that it must surely be a black listed environmental disaster zone by now. Compared to the Alps in Slovenia for example, the German part was an environmental disgrace. Germany is big on machine-able enviro issues, but not so cool on simple mother earth issues.

For example, on energy, the size and proliferation of the massive new German wind farms has to be seen to be believed, so when oil runs out, (which will be well before the climate goes weird), Germany will be ready.

I had my first intensive training in the wild west of the German autobahns, and after double strapping the tent and the kit, I soon found myself in the pack doing 130k as though we were all just  waiting in check out cue. It was here I learnt why serious tourers buy BMW’s, not Jap crap, as at speed, the purr of the boxer BMW, a design coup now over 50 year old, combined with the truck’n stability of BMW carcasses, makes the GS the only logical choice for the high speed, long distance rider. They are like mules on steroids. But farrrrk….when some guy overtakes in the outside lane at close to 200kph, it scares the shit out of ya…the lesson: never change lanes without a good look backwards first. The nice thing about German autobahns is they are both free, and the best roads on the planet.  The tolls to do the same run in France cost more than the air ticket for the same distance.

So I rode back into Leipzig to enthuse of my latest news a views with Christian, encouraging him to be the engineering director for the project, on the propulsion side, where solar, diesel, hydrogen and a bunch of weird hydrocarbon gases all come together under the control of fancy software, and lots of bright shiny machines…. orchestrated hopefully by Christian…besides, he’s done it  before.

The ride into Berlin was sure different to when i last did the trip 34 years ago. Back then, Berlin was a captured island inside the iron curtain, where the road into Berlin went through communist turf, and it seemed no communist was gunna allow West Germans to maintain the decrepit concrete highway feeding Berlin. The concrete slabs back then had become more like launching ramps, which would launch my Kombi at each join, making for an Evil Knievel  ride. These days, if you can detect a 20mm drop over 20m you are doing well….how the Germans get concrete to set to such exacting levels is beyond me…and I thought the Yanks made good roads….not by comparison to Germans.

I love Germans, but Berlin takes the cake…. I have only just arrived at this writing edition, but  just as the mayor of Berlin once quipped, ‘we may be poor, but we are sexy’…. and this sure rings true for the funky, alternate, liberal, artistic Berlin. Hey, if we too were gunna be nuked any day , for going on 40 years, I would party till debauched became an art, too.

Berlin, is my favourite grunge city in Europe. More history, has gone down here, in the last 70 years, than anywhere on earth. 10 million soldiers all had in in their Russian or Allied sights, when they stormed the place, killing a million in Berlin along the way, before hoistinga Red flag on the Reichstag.

In 1990, when the then spokesman for the besieged East German government, was hit with questions in the first international press conference of the party’s existence, he got caught on the hop, when reading from a government  press release, suggesting travel restrictions between east and west german sides, would be releases. In a hungover sweat from doing vodka shots till 4am, the night before, when asked when the border restrictions would be relaxed, he could find nothing on the A4 sheet, and began to sweat, so instead of finding a date, he just read the date on the top right hand corner of the sheet, making east to west passage effective, well, ah, immediately. 5000 east Berliners immediately confronted 3 East German border post guards. Stasi ordered they shoot. there were 5000 protesters, and only 11 bullets. The rest is history. The wall was breached and flooded, and the single biggest historical event in that last 25 years began to disassemble the evil communist states. The Nazis had 1 spy SS per 6000 people. The KGB had one internal spy per 2000 Russians. The Stasi had 1 spy per 60 Germans. 1 in 6 East Germans had done deals for the Stasi. It was the sickest, most cruel oppression of the western world.  And it breached, all because of a hangover in reading a press release.

I love it. Berlins is, as they say alive. If you are sick of Berlin, you are sick of life. If I were to live in Europe, fuck the fancy Paris, the money deadhead London, and give me Berlin, ( with amsterdam a hot second)…anyday.

Viva la revolution that is the collapse of the iron curtain. Just 19 years ago.

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