Holland

Lots and lots of canals, if you don't have a bike you have a boat to get around in and chances are you have both. This canal was in the center of the village of Bolsward.

At last, sunny skies. The sail boats are liking the sun but are lacking a little wind.

At a local college you don't see parking lots for the students, you see bike racks, and lots of them!

The statue of Lely, the man whose dream was to build the 33km dyke between the Ijsselmeer(now a lake and Waddensee on the northwest coast of Holland. Unfortunately, he died just short of seeing his dream completed.

Churches take on a whole new look in Holland, this one has much more intricate work on the steeple.




Wow, 5 days without a drop of rain and not a hill in sight for a cloud to hide behind. This country is flat! Lots of peddle bikes...and riders on vacation with more roads only for bikes than there are for cars, canals and boats run a close second. Our first night in Holland we stayed in a nice campground at a farm, really clean but as we are finding out Hollands campsites have great facilities but you pay for everything extra, hotwater, the tent, people, electricity to charge the ipad and the bike, they also don't have kitchens like Scandinavia. Oh well, I guess we'll have to eat out more often, there goes the budget.

Amsterdam, here we come! We camped just south of the city and visited it for two days we walked and walked and walked! What a cool city. It's big, it has some beautiful old buildings, it has great beer, millions of bikes and as many canals as Venice! There is no way you can get bored in Amsterdam. I could just sit in a sidewalk cafe, DRINK COFFEE and watch the people go by for hours. It was great!

An older neighbourhood in Amsterdam has had a nice facelift.

I stopped to look at the flowers, hydrangeas love it here, and Ken looks at a couple of bikes parked on the sidewalk.

Pipes for smoking marjauana are sold in all kinds of stores. In some cafes you can order a joint and/or a coffee while you relax in a comfy seat line the streets, I don't think I saw a starbucks in Amsterdam.

Ken might have a hard time wedging himself into this little guy. It is even smaller than the smart car.

If you look closely you can see the prostitutes in the windows trying to attract a sale or two. They stand in windows lining the alleys and many on the main streets in the red light district, wearing not too much more than their birthday suits(and some on them are not all that nice). If you don't find what you want in a window there are lots on shows and shops with adult toys around. Crazy!

Ken was happy to help me drink the Heinkein beer we got when we took the tour of the brewery. I actually drank one whole beer! It'll be a while until I drink my next.

Pork Schniztel

This is good recipe to take out your frustrations on!

Ingredients:

Pork fillets
dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste
flour
egg
bread crumbs


Place fillets between 2 pieces on paper towel and flatten with fists or a rolling pin. Season with salt and pepper and a thin covering of dijon mustard on both sides. Fry in butter for approximately 2-3 minutes on each side remove to a hot plate and keep warm in the oven until ready to serve.

Sauce:

2 small diced onions
1 lb sliced mushrooms
olive oil
500 ml light cream

Sautes onions and mushrooms in olive oil in a hot frying pan until cooked through. Add cream and simmer until thickened. Season with vegie-salt if desired.

Serving suggestion; serve sauce over cutlets and potatoes, along side a tomato salad and a green butter lettuce salad.

Sorry the pictures are not in order but the new way of publishing the pictures on the ipad will not let me place pictures in a desired order.

Good bye Scandinavia

A typical Danish farm on the west coast of Denmark, a bunch of buildings, home, barn and out building sit nestled in trees and shrubs(to break the wind)and surrounded by vast fields of crops.

Just a little more rain!

A tram is pulled by a tractor out to the point where the North Sea meets the Baltic Sea at the very tip of Denmark.

We walked the 1 1/2km or so out to the point(and back)with "a whole lot" of other people to see the waters meet, not and easy thing to do in bike gear fighting a head wind. Another pilgramage of sorts.

It is a paragliders paradise along the west coast because the wind is always good. Many windmills for power are located in this area.

More beautiful countryside, it is very picturesque when the weather is good.


We made our way all the way north to Skanan, the tip of Denmark, to see the meeting of the seas. With a day of good weather mixed into every 3 or so of rain we managed to enjoy the countryside and the awesome views over the water. We couldn't decide if this area of Denmark or Norcap had the most tourists in Scandinavia, ribbons of cars line the roads leading to the tip. In Scandinavia they actually close factories for a month at time for vacation(yeh, like I could see that happening in B.C.)so all the tourist areas are very busy. From the tip we headed south along the coast and lucky for us, and the paragliders, the skies opened we were able to catch sight of dozens of kites hitting the sky. In this area the kiters take-off from the beach when the wind currents rise quickly as they hit the sand dunes the kiters are lifted without any effort at all. I took dozens of pictures with colourful kites against blue(ish) skies, my project now will be to get the numbers down to a reasonable amount. We stayed and watched the kites a little too long and the clouds closed in and chased us into a campsite where we decided to stay for two days before heading south instead of fighting the torrents of rain. It was here that we discovered the electric petal bikes at a bike store, their battery packs were so small you wouldn't even know they were there, no wonder they ride bikes here until they are very old. It's great, and fun too! After two days in the rain we said the heck with it, threw caution to the wind and headed out in rain showers but determined to get back to Germany and our friends "Family Detering" to do a little work of the bike and set off on the next leg of our trip to the Baltic countries and Turkey. Ken has requested a new rear spring and after 11000 km he is also considering a new rear tire. Once again, we are thankful for our mechanic Heinz!

Ken and Heinz installed the new rear shock, evaluated the tire situation and also bought new bront brake pads which will be installed at a little later date. It's great to have Heinz's shop to work in!

14 years, can you believe it? We celebrated our anniversary in Bremmen, having a little dinner and drinks, with Heinz and Martina at a Bavarian restuarant on the river.

Swedish Meatballs

Swedish Meatballs, you can't visit Sweden without trying them and we had the chance to help make them!

Ingredients

new potatoes
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
2 small boiled potatoes, finely grated
1 egg
1 small onion, finely minced
1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste

Clean and boil enough new potatoes to serve with dinner, plus 2 extra for meat mixture, reserving 1 cup potato water for making gravy. Mix together all ingredients except cream until well mixed, but still loose(add a little water if the mixture is too dry). Roll meat mixture into small balls wetting hands to stop mixture from sticking. Fry balls until brown and cooked through. Remove balls from pan and add 2 tablespoons flour, reserved potato water and heavy cream to drippings, cook to thicken. Serve meatballs with boiled potatoes and gravy with a bit of cranberry jelly on the side and cucumber salad.

Agnetta making the perfect sized meatball.

She fryed the meatballs in a cast iron frying pan passed down to her from her mother.

Ken waits with a glass of wine, licking his lips!

Dinner is ready and so are we!

Cuccmber Salad

Slice cucumber thinly into a bowl and sprinkle with salt, let rest for 30 minutes then rise off salt. Mix a white vinegar and sugar mixture together, it should taste strongly of the vinegar but with a little hint of sweetness. Mix dressing into cucumbers and top with chopped parsley to serve.

Husqvarna

Early sewing machines were a huge success, not only motorcycles were made.

A 175 Silver Bullet mid 1960's, it put Huquvarna on the off-road map.

A huge selection of mopeds were produced, I bet you would love to have one of these, eh Ted?

1920's 350cc, look out Harley Davidson!

300 year anniversary.

800cc prototype twin two stroke, built for Dakar. Those damn Italians couldn't come through at Aprilla during the merging years.

1910 bicycle with wooden rims and fenders.

Big Bore two stroke late 70's desert racer.

Lindstrom off-road signature bike derived from the Silver Bullet in the mid 60's.

An early musket pistel, as Husqvarna only made munitions for 200 years until 1887.

Late 70's to the mid 80's. My era of racing against Husqvarnas.

1972 cr250. One of Huskies best and just like yours, Ted!


The town of Huskvarna is the original home of the Husqvarna company with its beginnings dating back to the late 1600's when the King of Sweden wanted a company to build munitions. The site was selected because of the constant flowing water supply to run its water mills. In the late 1800 they couldn't survive just making munitions so they branched off and started building products for many other uses, heating stoves and sewing machines were the biggest success and later on motorcycles, chainsaws and garden equipment became the best in the world. To this very day they are still the worlds leader in chainsaws and lawn mowers. Other specialties were meat grinders and some of the worlds first microwave ovens. Husqvarna lost their success in motorcycles when merging with Aprilla in the mid 1980's, however they are once again producing great off-road motorcycles with some world championship riders.

A busy end in Sweden

Old town Stockholm.

On Oland Island,Sweden Over 12000 standing stones mark tombs from the past, along with windmills from yester year that are no longer in use but still stand as a reminder.

Deer in a field are the only wildlife we have seen a while.

Our friend, Agnetta's back yard to her home that she has restored beautifully.

We had a gret dinner with Agnetta, her son Fred and wife Jenny and their kids. It was a meal of some typical Swedish food; an appetizer of anchovies, served with egg lettuce and dill on rye bread(I guess I do like anchovies!) and from dinner wild boar burgers.

Filip Jers on the harmonica and his quartet.

Skyline of Stockholm.

Flowers in Agnetta's garden, the weather was a little wet to be enjoying sitting out in it but beautiful all the same.

Ken picks strawberries at a farm along the road. When in season berries are everywhere.

A fishermans cabin made a great stop for a free night of camping.

Old Stockholm had many small streets and I dragged Ken down most of them!

Farm after beautiful roadside farm.


What a busy week we have spent as we wrapped up our visit in Sweden. Stockholm was beautiful and we walked for hours wandering the old narrow streets and admiring the architecture. We stayed just outside the city and took the subway into town one evening and then again the next day. We found it easier to take the subway because the traffic can be a little trying as the city is located on 14 islands so there are a lot of bridges and if you make one wrong turn you can end up a long way from where you intended to go. We had dinner in town and enjoyed a coffee and cake at a little cafe while we watched the people walk by. Our little taste of urban culture.

After Stockholm we made our way down south to Huskvarna to see the motorcyle museum, as it turned out Husqvarna made hundreds of products so we both enjoyed the tour. Ken will follow up with a little more info on the museum. Then it was off further south to Oland Island, an island about 100km long joined to the mainland by a 6km long bridge. The weather held out for us and we had an amazing ride around the southern tip of the island but decided to head back to the mainland and the city of Kelmar to camp for the night. This was possibly the bussiest campsite we have have seen, does the word sardines mean anything to you when you try to visualize it? It was only for the night, though, and we were off the next day to visit our friend Agnetta at her home in Hoor. What a place, what a lady and what a great weekend! Agnetta showed us around her village as well as her sons place(which he and his wife are renavating), cooked us great Swedish delicacies and one night took us to an outside concert in a nearby town(which due to train connections we didn't get home from until after 2:30 in the morning-the latest I've been up for a long time. Those commuter trains fly...the speed got up to 165kmh at one time!). The concert was great, it featured her neighbour, Filip Jers who has won the world harmonica championships twice. Boy he was good and he was kind enough to give us one of his cds. After three days of being spoiled we didn't want to wear out our welcome so we once again we were off...to the Helsingborg ferry and Denmark.