Breakfast with a twist

I`m cycling...cycling...and even more cycling, I`m on a mad and crazy hunt for envelopes and packages, ordners and photo albums, the portophone that hangs with a leather string from my neck is cackling away in dutch - a strange and gutteral language that I seem incapable to understand though it is my native tonque.... but then I tune in....

"Shiva, hoor je mij? we hebben een spoedje bij Lettergrafica voor de rechtbank".

It`s Bart from the planning, from the Fietsdienst - the bicycle messenger company I work for in my beloved Amsterdam telling me about this Hurry-Hurry deliverance I have to make. Thirty minutes I`ve to pick up an envelop in the heart of the city and bring it to the court of justice building in Amsterdam South.

"Wel door fietsen, Shiva, het heeft super haast!!!", my phortophone keeps cackling.

With a sudden start I wake up, not in my own bed in Amsterdam as I believe for a short moment, not somewhere in a cheap hotel room at the other end of the world, a third world place where the locals always love to hear my travel stories, see the drawings in my sketch books, can only dream of the crazy and free life I live...no, nothing like that at all...I wake up inside a dirty sleeping bag, the smell of stale sweat all around me produced by unwashed cycle clothes haphazardly strewn around in my little one-man`s tent, my bicycle bags under my head being used as a impromptu pillow, several empty cans of Deutsch Weissen beer within easy reach, my last clean pair of underwear wrapped around my farang hips and already several days in need of a washing machine job.

Outside my tent I hear strange growling noices..am I still in the brothers Grimm fairy tale land of dark-green forests where the thunder God Thor throws his magic hammer Mölnir around just to make the cycling difficult for me? Is there a pack of wolves outside my tent ready to devour me, rip me to bloody pieces and thereby bringing my cycle trip in this land of the Sauerkraut and Bratwurst people to a sudden end and with it my very life???

With s certain tripadation caused both by mortal fair and a Weissen brew induced hangover I stick my still sleepy head out of my tent, knife in hand, you never know.

No wolves outside but the farm dog from last night greets me his tongue trying to lap my face in a friedly but very wed way. A few meters away I see the farm children, open and curious faces I remember from last night watching that storch couple mating.

"Mutter fragt ob Sie vielleicht Früchstück haben wollen", the oldest and bravest of them, a maybe 15 year old boy wants to know looking a bit rough around the edges but then we are talking about a farmer`s boy.

Hot coffee, fresh bread, omelettes and beacon and the kids hovering around me while I stow it all away sitting at the farm`s kitchen table and uncomfortably aware of the stench of stale urine hanging around me produced by the aforementioned since several days unwashed underwear, the puking smell of dirty laundry while I show the kids the drawings in my sketch book, tell them about my trips around the globe, their Mum filling my cup with yet more inky black strong coffee.

When I leave "Mum" puts a plastic container in my hands telling me "Hier haben Sie noch Ihr Abendessen Sauerkraut mit Bratwurst für wenn Sie Heute Nacht wieder im Wald pennen, können Sie es aufwärmen mit dem Microwave", heating it up with my microwave when I wild camp in the forest tonight. Like I carry a microwave on the back of my bicycle??? Not really sure wether to be amused or bemused but the offer is positive in its very nature I presume.

Only when the Farm of Hospitable Locals is far behind me and the Dutch border in my sight do I realise this friendly "Mum" actually gave me a Sauerkraut and Bratwurst meal, the very nick name I always give the German people when travelling in their country.

written by  heraclio on March 29, 2009 from Berlin, Germany
from the travel blog: 600 km. to Berlin
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