BBB's European Bike Journey 2009, now on Åland, Finland

Welcome to my travel blog

For the past 6 months i have been bicycling from germany via switzerland and back to germany following the danube river down to bratislava, then bicycling more or less northward through mountainous slovakia, also hiking in the tatras for some days, across poland, lithuania, latvia, estonia, and have arrived on the åland archipelago of finland in the middle of sept. 2009, meeting new friends has really kept me busy and engaged in positiv ways.

thisjourney once again show me how little material belongings one can really get away with. And still i seem to always carry more on the bicycle than i need, I have since May spent probably less than a thousand euros in total, because i have chosen a lifestyle of resourcefulness and improvisation, using my innate knack for creativity.

All of my bicycle's repairs have been done by me, sometimes with assistance of generous people along the way, who lent me certain tools which i had not brought along, or lost along the way,
I most often choose to repair something, than replacing the whole thing, so before the trip i replaced the steel ball bearings in the pedals, after all the bike is my ownership since 1987.
So on bikes like that you can still replace parts, rather than buying a whole new wheel when the rim and the freewheel wore out at the same time in Tallin, Estonia. I just replaced the freewheel, bought a new rim and rebuilt the wheel myself and had it professionally trued/aligned in a shop, in the end it was even cheaper than buying new one, and the time i spent doing it i didn't have to buy from anyone, i woke up with it available to me that day.

Choosing to live simply, really frees ones life from the yoke of slavery.



No loans to pay back for 30 years to the legalized crime syndicates, also known as banksters and moneylenders, know to finance wars since ages and always financing both sides of the front lines, great business, but n one that i am eager to help inflate using my freedom to be human in this world, remaining without bosses and without becoming one myself.

Now here on Åland one of my bike tires has worn out so far that i started looking for a replacement, knowning the rich/wealthy countries to have rich dumpsters, i always turn there first to look for prematurely discarded things, and it takes almost no time at all. The first bicycle shop's back side i looked at, had a huge heap of tires, mostly in bad shape, but from experience i know, there is always someone who chooses to replace both at the same time although, while one is perfectly good.

So i found one the first time. Basically good for at least 7000 km as much as i have ridden since may to get here, and i almost got here for free that way, seeing so much and meeting so many good people (not to mention the trees whose oxygen i breathed, and whose fruit i ate along the wayside, thank you too, so very generous), whose generosity, even in small ways, remains with me as shining examples of what humanity is capable of when their basic needs are met, and they are inspired to share their plenty with others, who then in their turns are led to do so to others down the road, thus upholding a whole "shining wave" or avalanche (less widely known as "pay-it-forward" principle) to use a more dramatic expression for a wave of love pushing ahead of themselves. And it just grows and grows and reaches the far corners of our planet.

Also before the trip commenced i made my bicycle's front panniers and some other bags from thrown away materials such as vinyl covered polyester cloth used for large advertisement signs briefly, and they are then thrown out instead of reusing them...., The bags then got reinforced with a thin price of plywood, found often in old drawer bottoms, discarded by the thousands in cities across germany,

I also make some of my own clothes, that I wear year round, such as pants and windbreaker jackets, the latter made from 100% cotton and reindeer leather.

The clothes that I haven't made most likely came from a second hand shop or the free store on the island in the georgia strait of western canada, or were simply given to me by people who didn't longer have any need for them and thought of me as a good new wearer of them...