I do a little part on the highway, but this “swish swish” of these fast German cars is very tiring, so I turn on to the B-roads again. The bus feels at home here..
Tomtom says I should be home at 22:30, so I hope I will make it before midnight.
(It doesn’t count the time I stop to have coffee or food…)

Around 17:00 I am in Gluckstadt again, to cross the Elbe. I do something stupid, and pass all the cars, and then have to play the stupid Englishman, that doesn’t understand German.
(Almost nobody recognizes the number plates, and I carry an English (not Great Britain) flag on the back on the car.)
But they all like the “Bulli” and I have a hard time not to answer directly, while I do understand exactly what they are saying. Anyway I get away with it, and am first on the ferry….

At Westersteden I turn on to the Highway. It’s starts raining. It seems like it is always raining in Northern Germany when I pass.
It’s getting dark.
At Leer it’s becoming a cloud-burst and my windshield wiper stops…..
So I stop too, have coffee, a little sleep, and then repair the windshield wiper…

On the highway there is “Bauarbeiten”, 1-lane only, so for 12 km I go 50 in this terrible rain and gain a lot of followers….

But I make it, at 23:45 I am home.

I started this trip at 45.591 and ended it at 52.685. So 7.094 km, been to the North Cape, seen 12.000 American cars, met a lot of nice people, seen sun and rain.
Drove most the Inlandsvagen and never going to do it again…

I hope you all enjoyed the little stories and the pictures.

All the picture albums

I have lunch at a Caltex station. Really! Like using a time machine. Wonderful!

I pass Bjuvs Kommun, which reminds me, that back home Buuv is waiting to become a SambaBusBabe…

Then to Lund, I go to the address, but nobody is home, so I take a picture and then wonder what to do?
I decide to go and see how far I can get.
And I end up in Koge. On a camping near the beach, and have a nice evening with 5 youngsters from the Czech Republic. Oh, the energy of the young!
1 car, 2 girls, 2 motorbikes and 3 boys in 2 very small tents…

Pictures of the last 3 days

I continue to Halmstadt and end up on the same camping as I stayed on the first night in Sweden.
And the girl at the reception, remember, the blonde one with the green eyes that made me by the Scandinavian Carnet, remembers me, or my hat, or the car.

I left today at 09:30 and arrived at 18:00 and did a 311 km.

Pictures will be in tomorrow’s album…

Saturday morning I say goodbye to all the Dutch people, with the promise of a ride in an American car when we are back home in Peize.

I set the Tomtom to a max speed of 60km, and it decides that is too slow for highway’s, so along B-roads, I go down south. And after about 170 km I end up in Motala. Which is on the coast of the Vatten lake.

I am trying to upload all the pictures of the last days to Picasa, but it’s so slow.
I decide to wake up in the middle of the night to try again, but to no avail.
So I take the computer into the tent, and let it upload while I am asleep….

No pictures today..

But already on wednesday the old Amercan cars were cruising the streets.
And the event hadn’t started yet!

In the mean time some more Dutch people had arrived on the camping.
People that Willem and Trijntje had met the year before.
And, 2 of them, Johan and Ineke, from my own village….!
Amazing that I have lived there for 20 years or so, and never met these people.
They both own 3 American cars, and I never noticed…. So it was very nice to meet these people and I am sure we will meet again, when we are home.
Ineke promised me a ride in her Pontiac…
And there was another coupple, Jan en Marijke, and Jan had bought himself a split window beetle when he was 16…
And no one else but our famous Bill Nieboer, had helped hem to gain some missing parts….
Probably it was the PK-66-68.

A little and weird world it is.
To meet some people from your own village some 1200 km away from home, and find one of the previous owners of what is now one of the most beautiful cars of the LVWCN.

On wednesday we went with 7 people in the Cadillac to have dinner, and see the first burn-outs.
And in the evening we ended at a company called Autotech.
There was this beautiful Ford Mustand with 320 HP.
I tried to trade in my Samba, but he didn’t want to give a price without seeing it.
The Mustang was 60K Euro’s, so if he had wanted to swap….., who knows I now might have been driving a Mustang home.
But he didn’t and afterwards Willem convinced me that I am not a Ford man…., I am more of a Chevrolet man…

Some pictures..

After that I started south in the direction of Ulvkalla, but somewhere I took a wrong turn, and ended up going to Borlange instead.
I tried to find a campsite, but either they had no internet, or they were not for me…..

So in the end I drove up to Vasterass. I arrived and toke a spot with electric and internet.
Hmm, this spot had the wrong electric, so I needed to drive the bus very near to the electric thing.
Tried the internet from within the bus, didn’t work of course, and besides that I had forgotten to pull the hand brake.
So it started rolling down the hill…… For an old man from 57, I was rather quick, jumping out of the bus, running around it, and jump in on the driver seat, pulling the break…..
But then I had had it. It was around 20:00, all my muscles were aching, my stomach was aching, my head was aching..
I went to sleep.
When I checked on tuesday morning, I was having a fever, so the rest of the day I slept, and I didn’t eat nor take insuline for 18 hours.
I must have eaten or drank something wrong I guess.

Anyway, my friends Willem and Trijntje arrived in their Cadillac, and I was glad to see them.
They took me out to dinner, and that was the first food of the day…

I changed to another place on the camping, and now the electrics and internet were working and  I was near the tent places. Which was lots more fun than the place I was before.

In Svenstavik they have build a new railway station and honor the old stuff by exhibiting a steam engine.
In one of the axes there is a home for some bee like animals. They make a very strange sound when entering into their home, and when I try to poke them out, they get very angry, so I run away…..
The engine on display seems to have been in working order until they put it there.
Everything is still there, all the tools etc. Too bad that some of the windows have been smashed.

And I thought I had finally figured out how the signaling system on the railroad switches works.
But helas, it seems I was wrong…

In Asarna I came across the “mother of all Pick-Up’s”. What a great car.
They were doing some work on the gearbox I guess, but I surely hope they get it driving again.

In Sveg is the biggest bear in the world. This area here is known to have the most bears in Sweden still living in the woods.

I have tried to take some pictures of the grounds. What is beneath all these woods, when they chop all the trees.
I t must be hard to make this land otherwise useful. And it must be hard to get these trees out of the woods anyway with all the rocks.

The Orsa camping…
I tell the lady behind the desk I really need internet.
But after fighting with it for more than an hour, trying to get in touch with the helpdesk, which is not helping, cause the automatic lady is only speaking Swedish, I am getting rather frustrated.
So I give up, and with  a stern grim on my face I am going for a refund and find somewhere else to stay.
Again there is a big line of people waiting at the reception, this is not helping for my mood…..

Anyway I get my money back and end up in the Orsa Stadhotell, which is next to the station.
Which I don’t mind goes it’s time to take care of my stoma anyway. (I am smelling it now..)
I have a wonderful meal, have a nice chat with the waiter, and turn in early.
During the night I go for my smoke and add some pictures and text to my blog.

I was planning to go wander around time on monday and go check some of the train stations nearby.
But my legs are starting to hurt, especially my knees, so I need to slow down a bit.
This holiday is consuming all my resources slowly. So after Vasterass I will need to go home.

Pictures of sunday, july 3

Anyway, I tried to find as much stations as possible today.
And finally ended up in Ostersund.
Where there was a marathon going on in the centre of town, so I had some trouble finding my way around there…

I finally stayed on a terrible camping, without Internet..

Pictures of saturday, july 2

Today was a rather uneventful day. I only had a nice encounter with the owner of a beautiful dog. I enjoyed the changing scenery and in Lycksele I found the railway station. It is still an Inlandsbanan station, and they were even busy upgrading the tracks.

Who knows what beautiful future lies ahead for this railway?

I ended the day in Asele, where it started raining again.
But the weather forecast is promising, so I hope tomorrow I will enjoy the sun again.

I took a wrong turn and missed a piece of the Inlandsbanan, tomorrow in Dorotea I will pick the line up again.
So I missed some stations, nice for someone after me…

Some pictures of today

I tried to stop at all the train stations and when I got to Moskosel there was a museum there. Ha, my first museum…. It showed how the “Inlandsbanan” had been laid. My goodness that must have been some tough guys. And I learned that they heave been using many different types of tracks over the years. Depending on the soils, and the kind of trains that would run there. Never knew that.

I will try to create a “Railway Only Picasa Web Album” when I get a good internet connection again.

But not only was this a very educational stop, the train itself would arrive in half an hour. Well that time I had, so I got some coffee in the station and waited.

And waited, and then a musician showed up, and a photographer.

Apparently as part of the tourist attraction, there is money available from some sort of cultural origin to keep the tourists amused at each station where the train stops.

I spent the night in Arvidsjaur on a very big camping, with a lousy internet connection..

Pictures of today