DAY 1: EDAM - WURZBURG: A pint of heaven

There's no better time to set off for a 7000 km trip to Romania than during a massive heatwave. Or so I must have led myself to believe at one point. There's no other reasonable explanation why I would be sitting here cooking away in 40 degrees Celsius, in a three-piece motorcycle suit, on a piping hot motorcycle swiveling over molten tarmac. Right? Right.

When I'd left home, the weather had still been reasonably mild. There were some thunderstorms predicted over southern Germany, but I had a cunning plan. I wouldn't take the usual route over Frankfurt, instead I would stay on my way east to Kassel, and then swiftly drop down south to Wurzburg. A few 100 extra kilometers, not worth making a fuzz about.

And here's me, somewhere south of Kassel, riding through the scenic hills of Hessen, burning my skin off. Well, somewhat. I'd forgotten that thunderstorms tend to push hot air out in front of them. Since Kassel I'd definitely remembered. I'd also remembered that it would have been useful to get my cooling vest out about a 100 km's ago, at the last stop. No use now. I decided to hold out for a few km's more. That thunderstorm would surely show up at one point

It took another 100 km's of sweating and swearing, and then it did. The rain came down like a waterfalll and I couldn't see a thing. No mind. The ice-cold raindrops running down my back were a blessing, at least this once. The thunder and lightning were a bit less comforting. But I managed to escape the worst of it, by hiding under the roof of an abandoned gas station. The roads smoked, as the rain turned to steam on the hot asphalt. When the rain lessened and I rode off again, the mist took a while to clear.

Final relief came in the form of a 400 year old inn called Gasthof Zum Schwan. Located in Franconia near the Bavarian border, in a small village near Wurzburg, the Swan has all the features that make the best German inns so fabulous: a cosy old room, a great menu (go for the impeccable Pfifferlingen steak) and last but not least, a freshly drawn pint of Weizen. Which is, for all matters, about as close to heaven as you can get after a day like this. Sitting out in front and sipping at another Weizen, I watched the next thunderstorm coming in. Let it roll.

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