Circumgermania June 2016
 

Hi all,

Just completed a 450km shakedown run this Sunday with full luggage, and getting excited about my summer trip. :) It's not quite Mongolia or Patagonia, but should still be fun!

So, my overall route plans:

Leave on June 1st, overnight ferry Tallinn-Stockholm
June 2nd - Sthlm via Skara (lunch with a friend) to Gothenburg, ferry to Frederikshavn, couchsurfing there.
June 3rd - Grensen (place where the North and Baltic seas meet), blasting down to Bremen. Two nights and a full day in Bremen with friends.
Then it gets tentative, but for now:

Bremen-Wuppertal (want to ride the upside down tram!) - Aachen - Nürburgring - Luxembourg - Saarbrücken (a friend there) - probably Ballons des Vosges national park? - Geneva (hopefully doing the CERN tour) - via Interlaken to Grimsel Pass - Liechtenstein (because who the hell has ever been to Liechtenstein?) - Stelvio/the Dolomites - Grossglockner - Munich with a detour/daytrip to Castle Neuschwannstein - Prague - Berlin, and an evening ferry from Kiel on the 21st, taking me to Klaipeda with hopefully an overnight somewhere in Nida before meeting friends just east of Riga for Midsummer.

My projections of reasonable daily distances (based on prior trips, mostly to upper Norway) tell me this is 2 weeks' worth of riding, but I have 3 weeks between the hard start and end points. Some of the route is freeway-oriented, sure, but it's about both fun riding and seeing places I've wanted to see, meeting people I wanted to meet.

One idea I've been mulling over was that after Geneva, I could do the Route des Grandes Alpes... having a swim in the Mediterranean would certainly be a cool checkpoint (and I can probably get away without the overpriced Swiss vignette!), but it makes me miss Liechtenstein unless I want to go back up across Northern Italy, and I've done that before in a car, not fond of the traffic on the plains around Turin/Milan at all.

Bike in full loadout. As you can see, not really an offroad machine. :) Plan is to stick to hostels/couchsurfing/friends' couches, but the drybag is there for camping gear. Have done very little camping before, though.

Route advice and advice in general very welcome! :)