So I’m in Germany again…. I will probably write a few posts about my holiday, but what I can say right now that it convinced me again of the advantages of a European Union. To be able to travel hence and forth through five countries without having search for your passport at every border, that’s really something (I know this dates me but I can remember times when things haven’t been that easy).

And there where mountains:

I like mountains.

This afternoon it wasn’t raining for a change, so I brought out the motorbike for a quick ride around the block. That proved to be so much fun that I went for a rather larger tour – which meant that I had all the wrong clothes, since it was several degrees centigrade below zero. When I came back home I was frozen blue, but it was worth it.

Brandenburg is not the best country to ride a motorbike – it can largely be described by the words “flat” (the country) and “straight” (the streets) and sometimes I find I miss the hills and small curved streets of southern Germany. But autumn in Brandenburg has it’s own kind of beauty, what whith the scarce landscape and the trees that extend their leaveless branches to the sky. And the autumn sun is fair and golden, even if it doesn’t warm you.

I suppose fun motorbiking is somewhat evil – I contribute to global warming and I do not even have the excuse that I urgently need to go somewhere. But man, do I feel alive now.

Riding my motorbike on a nice day through a nice landscape often sets my mind into a contemplative mood – after I while I start to contemplate questions like “from thousands of possible hobbies, why did I choose the one that makes my lower backside hurt like hell?”. But it has been fun of course.

Over the weekend I was away for the 30th summer camp of the motorbike club Kuhle Wampe – an association of bike clubs from all over Germany and like the name suggests a somewhat left-leaning outfit (apart from lobbying for motorbike related interets like safer streets or better fuel effiency for bikes they do for example anti-racist work). But I heard little talk about politics – instead we were discussing motobikes, riding out, drinking beer and generally doing what a (female) friend of mine insists on refering to as “doing boys stuff”.

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