Having been inspired by the Horizons Unlimited website, as well as the ARR podcast and Graham Field's books, I decided to make my big holiday for 2016 a motorcycle trip. I didn't have the time or budget for an around-the-world endeavor, but I would do what I could, with the time and the bike I had. The bike in question being a 2002 Honda VFR800 VTEC - something that definitely loves solid asphalt!

This would not be my first adventure. In my very first season of solo riding, I'd taken my first bike - a Suzuki Gladius - up to Nordkapp, which was a relatively easy undertaking, given that I was starting from Tartu, Estonia - just one country over! Since then, I'd done a long bike trip almost every season: took the Gladius to Trollstigen and the Atlantic Road, and then the VFR to the Lofoten islands. Only in 2014 did I miss out, because I'd sold the Gladius in the early spring, and didn't get around to buying the VFR until mid-July, meaning that I only had the time for a long weekend out in the Estonian islands. But my previous trips had taught me something: on a road-focused bike, what you really want is mountains.

The choice of destination - or rather direction - was driven by two things. One, I'd learned about a benefit of the Louis.de loyal customer card - you can book a berth on any of their lines and have your bike travel with you for free! (The same card also has discounts on other Baltic carriers, but none quite so huge.) So on New Year's Eve, 2015, I spent 39 euros to book myself and the VFR from Tallinn to Stockholm. I now knew when I was leaving - June 1st - and I knew when I had to be back: Midsummer is a major holiday in this part of the world, and for many years I've spent the 23rd and 24th of June with a particular group of friends that gathers in Latvia. So I had to be back in the Baltics by then. I also knew for a fact that I did not want to ride all the way across Poland: I'd done it a few times by bus and relatively recently by car (on a mad non-stop 30-hour drive from Tartu to Florence in an Audi Allroad with two drivers and two 14-year-olds in the back seat), and very little of it would be enjoyable. I have a subjective dislike of doubling back on my trips, so retracing my route through Sweden was out; the solution was in the German-Baltic ferries. Unfortunately the one going directly to Riga is not running these days, so my choices were Rostock to Ventspils or Liepaja, or Kiel to Klaipeda; the latter one fitted my dates.

So I knew the start point and the end point, and I knew that I wanted mountains. I also knew that this would not just be a ride for the ride's sake: it's my big holiday for the year, and I wanted to do stuff and see friends. Fortunately, I had a few standing invitations from a few places around Europe, so I contacted the people involved and cashed them in. Couches were waiting for me in Bremen and Berlin, and s were waiting in Saarbrücken and Prague. From there, it was a matter of tracing a rough circle.

There were a few points that I needed to check off my list - random curiosities I'd heard or read about, along with more obvious motorcycle attractions. My friend in Saarbrücken had mentioned that his town has a tram service that goes all the way into France, which sounded wonderfully kooky to me. Then I remembered another oddity: Wuppertal, a town with an upside-down tram, suspended from an overhead rail. Choosing overnight stops led me to Aachen - I'd heard great things about it from a tourist perspective, and it was certainly a better choice than Cologne. I'd been to Cologne once before and seen the Dom; and once you've seen the Dom, you've seen everything worth seeing in that city. Tracing south, there was an obvious stop: the Nürburgring.

Beyond Saarbrücken, I knew I would head further south, into the Alps and towards the great famous passes of Switzerland and Austria. A friend from far away randomly shared a video from an alpine slide in the Swiss countryside, and I figured that was as good a place to aim for as any. The Grimsel and Furka passes were a must, and they would take me to Liechtenstein - somewhere I had to visit just because who the hell has been to Liechtenstein?

From there I would head south to the Stelvio Pass, and back north to the Grossglockner; then north into Munich for a few days, including maybe a daytrip to Castle Neuschwannstein, before continuing to Prague - a famed tourist destination that I'd never gotten around to. Then it was on to Berlin, which I'd visited only very briefly, and north to Kiel for the ferry up to Lithuania. Klaipeda was further away from Riga than I'd have liked, but it would give me a chance to see the Kuronian Spit. After the Midsummer party, I had a few choices: hang out with friends in Latvia for the weekend, head down to a festival in Lithuania which I'd auditioned to host, or go north to the Estonian border where there was a triathlon being covered by the moto marshal team where I volunteer.

Of course, no adventure plan fully survives contact with reality.

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The bike: 2002 Honda VFR800, the first year of the 6th gen (VTEC). Purchased with about 35,000 km on the clock as an import from Italy, equipped with a Givi top rack and factory bubble screen, and pretty much nothing else.

Stuff added by me: MRA XSCA Sport spoiler on top of the windscreen (liked it because it did not require drilling), Givi Simply III large topbox, Givi tankring and 3D603 semi-rigid tankbag, set of Kappa K33N panniers (cheap equivalent to the Givi V35-s, on curved racks), R&G frame sliders, USB power out.

Moto Detail 30-liter drybag bungied to the pillion, containing a tent, sleeping bag, and thermorest. Spoiler: never needed it during the entire trip, could have left the pillion free and saved weight, gas and bother - but it was encouraging to always have the option!

Gear: Shoei NXR helmet with Sena 3S-W Bluetooth system, Modeka multilayer textile jacket and trousers (the trousers' rain layer got messed up in my washing machine, so they were functionally single-layer - I had a pair of longjohns for cold weather!), Falco touring boots, Modeka winter gloves and Rukka Goretex summer gloves. Sony Z3 Compact for navigation & entertainment. Three pairs of synthetic T-shirts - absolutely crucial. Foam earplugs! Enough socks and underwear for a week. Pair of comfortable slip-on shoes, synthetic quick-dry cargo pants that can unzip into shorts, and a single fairly presentable button-up shirt so I'd be let into museums.

June 1st: I go to work, spend half a day in meetings, then get on the bike, fill up the tank, and mark the clock for adventure!

Adventure stance engage!


I take the main highway from Tartu up to Tallinn and the ferry terminal. With more time, I would not bother - there are at least two alternative paths, each of them more interesting and with less traffic - but right now I just need to make time, and I do not want to mess up before my adventure has even started. Not quite comfortable with the bike's new weight and width (I'd only done a single day-long shakedown run with the panniers), I take it easy and make good time, and so as I fill up at the last Statoil before the harbour, I get the lowest fuel consumption I've ever seen from this bike: about 5.7L/100km. On a really spirited ride, it can go up to 8/100!

The bike's panniers are full, but the topbox will usually be empty. This is intentional: I can put my helmet, gloves and tankbag inside during stops, and lock the box. The drybag, which anyway contains items I would be the least inconvenienced by losing, has a helmet cable lock wound through the opening and around the pannier rack. It's a code lock, but it's enough to keep bored kids from messing about with the bag; if someone decides to slash it, I guess I can't do much about that.

Right now, though, the topbox has a bag of food and booze in it. My ferry berth is the cheapest possible option: a bunk in a shared 4-person cabin. I check in and am rushed to the front of the queue, as usual; there is a single other bike waiting there. It's a well-worn KTM enduro, with a well-worn rider. He's from Valga, right down on the southern border of the country, and he's heading back to his workplace in Sweden after spending the weekend home. He was actually booked on the previous night's ferry, but on the way up to Tallinn he got a puncture, and had to stop, wait for a tow-truck to carry him back to Tartu, and buy a new tire there. Unfortunate.

Personally, I'm watching my tires very carefully: I've already had to buy two rear tires in the wilds of Norway on previous trips - one in Lakselv, just south of Nordkapp, and one in Lofoten. The VFR now has a Michelin PR4 on the front (replaced just before the Lofoten trip) and a Dunlop Roadsmart II on the back. I'm not carrying a patch kit because I couldn't find a good one at my local shop, and I know that within a few days I will be within range of the mighty Louis Megashop network. In the meantime, my backup is Europe-wide roadside assistance coverage, which the local Green Wave affiliate sold me for a ridiculously reasonable price of 38 euros (per year, per vehicle).

The overnight ferry from Tallinn to Stockholm is a grand affair, with something like ten decks, four of them devoted to various kinds of shopping and entertainment. It follows an odd path, calling at Mariehamn in the Ahvenamaa/Aland Islands in the middle of the night, I think mostly because the islands' autonomous not-quite-EU status means the ferry gets to sell tax-free alcohol. I'm not going to eat enough to get reasonable value out of the buffet dinner, and the onboard prices are still high compared to landside ones in Estonia, but at least I get to go watch the shows in the onboard theater - which on this trip are surprisingly good. Still, I've spent a lot of time on this ferry, and it's not very exciting any more.

The other people in my shared cabin are a predictable bunch: Russian-speaking locals who work construction somewhere in Scandinavia. (On a previous trip, I ended up in a cabin with two such guys from Latvia. I asked them why they took the Tallinn ferry, not the equally nightly one from Riga. Their response: Latvians have no chance getting on the Riga ferry, all the tickets for that are bought out by Lithuanians!) We share our packed food, and they share the whisky they got from the onboard tax-free, although I limit myself to only a couple of shots: I need to be functional tomorrow. As expected, drunk guys snore; but that's why I carry my foam earplugs.

Day 1 total: Just under 200 km on land, 400-odd km on sea.

It's the first proper day of my vacation. I get off the ferry and, after a bit of confusion with the eternal construction and forest of flyovers surrounding Västrahamnen, I get on the E18. Oddly enough, this is very nearly my first time on a proper autobahn on the VFR; on last year's trip I took a car-train all the way from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, and came back via ferry from Umea to Vaasa, so I spent most highway miles on untrafficked far northern roads. The E-roads around Greater Stockholm are my first dip into serious urban combat with the VFR since that one time I took it to Riga.

I had a few options with getting across Scandinavia. The obvious one was the E4 down to Copenhagen, taking in the magnificent Öresund bridge-and-tunnel; but it's an expensive toll, and it puts me right in the middle of Copenhagen for the night. It's an excellent destination for a city break, but it's not what I am doing right now. I could also get off the E4 earlier, and take the cheap shuttle ferry to Helsingor - an option I can recommend to others, as it lets you check out the magnificent Kronborg castle, which is both architecturally impressive and historically significant, even if it was never really the seat of Hamlet.

There really was a Prince Hamlet of Denmark, but he lived long before Kronborg was built, and was neither a particularly terrible nor a particularly great ruler. The mythical hero in the basement of Kronborg is Holger Danske, also mentioned in the Song of Ronald, and like Estonia's own Kalevipoeg, he is said to be resting and would come alive when the country needs him most.

But I've seen Kronborg before, and I really don't fancy making this an extra-long riding day to get all the way down to Rodby and the German ferry shuttle. Instead I am taking the northerly route due west, turning off the E18 before it heads towards Oslo, onto the E20 towards Gothenburg. First, I am meeting a friend for a late lunch, a girl from my home town who moved to central Sweden to have a baby and an idyllic village life somewhere outside Skara.

It's a genuine pleasure to catch up with an old friend, but now I'm a little strapped for time: I have a late-afternoon ferry to catch out of Gothenburg. This is where the VFR truly comes into its element: covering a lot of distance very quickly on intermediate-level roads. At high speeds, it settles down and provides massive confidence. Swedish E-roads outside the major cities tend to be straight and flat, but not autobahn-grade: they are built in three lanes, alternating with passing lanes in each direction every few kilometers. I know from previous trips out to Norway that Swedish drivers have an excellent culture of respect for motorcycles, and it certainly doesn't hurt that my VFR - big, bright red, with huge double headlights illuminated even in lowbeam - is an intimidating sight to have in a rearview mirror. Most vehicles move over to the right, expressly letting me filter between them and the barrier, or shoot up the passing lane ahead of every other little Peugeot hoping to overtake an articulated lorry. I know I am being antisocial, but the cars seem to have a genuine spirit of "if he feels he really needs to, it's best to just let him", and I'm only here for a few hours. I'll take advantage of the hospitality, and hope my karma balance can stand the hit.



I roll into the Stena Line terminal with ten minutes to spare on the check-in clock, and pull in behind a pack of Norwegian Harley-Davidsons on their way to a friendly clubhouse in Frederikshavn for the weekend; among the Nordics, Denmark is the land of cheap (and freely sold) . I park in the hull and go up on deck to check out the views of Gothenburg, a city I'm only slightly sad about missing. From what I've heard, it's mostly industrial and recent, but I am charmed by the islands rising out of the sounds, covered by cottages and their gardens. I think I'd like to live riiight up there, at the top of the hill.



There's an overnight ferry from here all the way down to Kiel, but I'm only taking the cross-sound shuttle. My two remaining missions for tonight are to find a gas station in Frederikshavn, since my bike is now on fumes; and to find the Couchsurfing place I have booked. It's a farmhouse down some gravel tracks, which is not the VFR's preferred environment, but it deals with them. My host is an old Danish lady who uses her farm's proximity to tourist attractions as a way to bring a social life to her, instead of her going down to the town for it - one of the better type of couchsurfing personality, for sure. The farmhouse may not have hot water in the shower, but it does have a 250cc Jinlong cruiser in the living room, which my host apparently bought at a bankruptcy auction for cheap, on a whim, just because she'd never ridden a motorcycle in her life and was looking forward to giving it a try!



Day two: ~540 km on land, ~100km on water

I wake up early in the morning and have breakfast with the hosts and another couchsurfer, a young French guy who has been studying in Sweden and is now travelling around Denmark before returning home. It's a very typical Danish breakfast and the hosts encourage me to make sandwiches to go, but I don't dare to put any perishable food in my panniers in this weather. It is incredibly hot, and even with all the vents unzipped, my black textile gear is still a poor option. The French kid is heading for the same landmark as me, but he's taking the train later in the day; I can't wait. For me, it's going to be a very long day.



I get back on the road and head north, through the town of Skagen to the very tip of the Jutland peninsula. This is a bit of a bucket-list point for me, something I've always wanted to see even if there isn't much to see there: the point where the North Sea and the Baltic Sea meet, with different salinities sometimes creating a visible color difference. (The Baltic only connects to the ocean in this tiny corridor between Denmark and Sweden, but it has a lot of freshwater rivers emptying into it.) I'd need a helicopter to tell if there really is a color difference today, but I do witness something almost as fascinating: waves coming from two different directions to meet in the middle.



The beach at Grenen is littered with dried-out jellyfish to discourage foolish bathers, and bunkers to discourage foolish invaders. Today, the horizon is full of merchant shipping. I loop back around through the dunes, where an airfield used to stand at the foot of a fancy hotel for early-20th-century tourists - even for Danes the trek out to Grenen was long and arduous before the days of commercial flight. Today, this part of rural Denmark is charming to a fault: I have not seen countryside this manicured anywhere in the world, not even in Japan.



I look in the gift shop for a Danebrog sticker to put on my panniers, but unsuccessfully. (According to legend, the Danish flag fell from heaven during a battle in Estonia, so it would have been my own little act of reclamation.) It's time to head south.

The E45 freeway runs through pretty much all of mainland Denmark, the main north-south artery, and here my stereotype of law-abiding Scandinavians breaks down. The official speed limit is 130 km/h, but it everybody seems to think that if it looks like an autobahn and feels like an autobahn, then it must be unrestricted. It's an odd feeling to be sitting there on your sportbike in an empty right lane doing 150 (a comfortable "too minor to bother fining" margin in most of the world), and be passed by a series of VW Ups in the left lane. To each their own.

Around noon I reach Aarhus and leave the freeway in search of lunch. The familiar sight of a Statoil reminds me to fill up, and then reminds me again of the chain's unfortunate recent pivot to upselling at the auto-pumps. (No, I don't want to buy a bunch of firewood or a five-liter jug of washer fluid.) Because I use Telia as my phone carrier at home, I am still on free roaming until the border, so I look up nice lunch spots in the city. I head into the pedestrianized Old Town and park, then follow the GPS to Mefisto, a highly rated gourmet cafe, plopping down at a corner table in the back of the patio to spare other patrons the smells of a man who has spent two days under the sun in black textiles.



The chalkboard on the pavement mentioned soup, but the very blond, very Danish waiter reads me like a Kindle and dismisses the daily specials menu altogether. Am I a fan of fish? Why yes, I am, especially in a coastal city of a nation renowned for its innovative cuisine; back home I'm starved of genuinely good seafood, as there isn't much to be caught in the inner Baltic that you would want to put in your body. I am rapidly sold on the cafe's multi-way fish special. It is genuinely excellent, and after I convert kroner into euros, I decide it's simply best not to think about it: I've saved a few nights' accommodation costs already, and ultimately I'm on my one big holiday. Damn the savings; full speed ahead.



Now it's just a long blast down the highway. I cross the border and soon marvel at the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal below me as I cross the massive bridge, with traffic in the other direction pretty much stopped. I'm running out of gas again, and stop at an Aral. Here I encounter the good and the bad of German service stations. The good: you can almost always get superior-quality fuel. My bike is from the early 2000s and will happily run on 95, but I make a point to always use the best gas I can. The price difference is not so great, but it seems to increase the range per tank, which is something I've learned to care about when touring in the far north of Scandinavia. Besides, regular 95-octane in Europe usually contains a decent percentage of ethanol, while the 103 stuff is guaranteed to be entirely dead dinosaur.

The bad is the 70-cent turnstile on the entrance to the toilets. I'm later told by locals that you can cash in your receipt towards the fuel purchase, but this is not universal, and I'm still philosophically opposed to the concept. Charging people to use the bathroom is giving them moral license to pee on the wall.

With a full tank and a cup of coffee in me, I feel ready to brave the Hamburg bypass, and then it's on to another "Achievement Unlocked" moment: left lane on Autobahn 1, seeing the number two at the front of my speedometer, all quite legally (if possibly unwisely, given all the luggage). Tucked behind my split-level windscreen, I finally make it to Bremen and park up outside my friends' house. Time to take off the panniers and drybag, grab a sorely needed shower, and head out to the banks of the Weser for a few s at the Paulaner tent and a view of a lovely sunset.



Day 3: ~730 kilometers, close but not quite a personal best.

It's Saturday, no riding today, but I do wake up to see the locals have warmed up to the idea of having a biker in the house:



The weather is beautiful, with not a cloud in the sky. Back on the Stockholm ferry, I was worried about the news of flooding in northern France and southwestern Germany - these would be more or less the parts I'm going through; but for now the sunshine is holding up beautifully. I'm happy to be out of my textiles, and my hosts are giving me a nice walking tour of the city. We follow the banks of the river through a flea market, and they tell me how they tried going there as sellers a couple of times - most of the stuff on offer looks useless to me, but apparently it can be quite lucrative. Still, for most people it's more about the social aspect of the weekly fair than about making money.



From a tourist's perspective, Bremen follows the pattern of many big German cities: a small core of the Old Town in the center, with most of its surroundings destroyed in WWII and rebuilt since then. There are definitely a few impressive churches and public buildings, but to me it's of limited excitement: I grew up in Tallinn, which architecturally was also in the German sphere of influence, but has one of the best-preserved Old Towns in Europe. Still, there are a few things that do make visiting Bremen a pleasure! My friend's husband is a rookie sommelier, so we stop by the famous wine cellar in the basement of the Town Hall.



A feature the wine cellar's decor is a quartet of giant, intricately carved barrels. Back in the Hanseatic days, this was part of the salary of the city's senators: three liters of wine per day from the giant barrels! There is also a barrel of extra-old wine in a safe room in the back; only the most esteemed (or most well-paying) visitors are ever allowed to taste even a thimbleful of its contents.

I propose a toast to Ordnung.

We are at a table, and my hosts explain that the enclosed booths on the opposite side of the hall are subject to a rule: you are not allowed to close the door unless there are at least four people occupying the booth - something to do with the days of rowdy sailors. Later on in the conversation, my friend's husband does a double take. After a flurry of hushed German, my friend explains that apparently the lady in one of the booths just lifted up her shirt and flashed her companion!

I shrug and propose a toast to Freiheit.



There is a particular thing that I wanted to see in this city: the statue of the Bremen Musicians. It refers to a Grimm fairy tale that was turned into a beloved Soviet-era cartoon, and there is a copy of this statue in the Old Town of Riga. As always, rubbing the statue brings good luck - and the higher on the statue you reach, the more luck you get!



With a few hours left until everything closes, my hosts ask me if there is anything else in Bremen that I wanted to see or do. I quickly check my phone (hooray for cheap EU roaming!) and suggest we have a quick stop-over at the city's Louis Megashop. I'm using my time in Bremen to resupply: I'd previously ordered a rain suit delivered to my hosts' address, taking advantage of Modeka's cheap shipping within Germany, and now I want to fundamentally resolve my tire worries. As I walk around the megashop and drool at the racks of Rukka gear (and scoff dismissively at the house brands), my friend starts up a fast friendship with a little girl sitting at the drawing table; she's here waiting for her grandparents to get their moto gear shopping done!



I leave the shop with a full tire string repair set, including a handful of CO2 cartridges, and a bottle of Slime for backup. We head back into town for food and great at the ancient Schüttinger brewery/guesthouse, and walk back to my hosts' place, stopping off for the ingredients required for fresh mojitos. I'm also shown the husband's pride and joy - an old Ford Probe with a ridiculous body kit, which he's free to modify in any way he wants, because they live quite centrally in a town with great public transport. It's not a means of transportation, it's definitely a toy!

Day 4: 0 km, many units of alcohol!