Free Riga!

We reached the our first host in the latvian capital shortly before midnight after our hardcore cycling day. It was the Kreicbike-workshop. A place where loads of crazy custom- and freakbikes are built. Also motorized ones. It was an impressive place with tons of tools and equipment. They were also related to Radi Vidi Pats, the other freakbike-workshop we were visiting earlier in Liepaja. Unfortunately, here we didn’t feel as well as we did there. It was not a very comfy place to sleep and to hang out. And we were facing sexist and macho behaiviour by the guys using…

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2 days, 180 km, 3 punctures, 1 thunderstorm

After having survived the hippie-festival the biketour was heading Riga. We had 2 days to make the ~170km. Quiet tough, regarding that normally, we do normally between 40 and 80 kilometers per day… But we had a good road and not really any questions about the way. Just all the time along the coast. Never ending pinewoods on both sides of the road, every now and then a tiny village. Just cycling and cycling and cycling, meeting others having their break aside the road or on the beach, passing them, meeting someone else pulling a trailer, having a break and…

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Biketour-Inventary

On the long cycling days… you might find yourself talking about anything and everything with your companions for the day. One topic that came up was STUFF. some people seemed to have just 2 bike bags and nothing else, some people have entire trailers for their pet (see past posts with the dog!) whilst some people seemed to be balancing half a dozen stuff sacks on their racks (ahem.. me). A few of us made comparive lists of our personal equipment and decided to publish them – this could either be read as a packing list guide (or, what not…

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between Tartu and Tallinn for loans

  Here some late impressions from the last bit:     In Estonia some people build houses and boats with local material and traditional knowledge for get a 300 dollar loan online right now.   … use small and big rocket stoves…          … and transform trash to art.   We cycled under wild skies …   … drove past buildings from different ages that are still in use …   and found our “Kôo” on a open field or a gym hall to pass the night.       Yes. Sometimes it felt like a “donquixotery” fighting omnipresent…

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Hippiefestival with strange views

Hello dear reader! Lukas is reporting from Latvia: A festival was recommended to us, a gathering of different eco-communities in Mazirbe at the seaside. Sounds not bad, we thought at spontaneaosly rearranged our schedule. This detour fitted very well, because we anyways wanted to cycle more. We were on a biketour after all! We arrived thursday evening. All of us were very happy to meet again Stas from Radi Vidi Pats. He helped out to organize this festival. Then 2 men arrived, of whose one of us welcomed us effusivly with “Hello brothers and sisters!” and intimate hugs without being…

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Tartu-City of apples -> How to do apple-recycling and more dumpsterdive

As we really enjoyed our time visiting lots of interesting places around Tartu, we decided to leave a new post to share some stuff we really considered to be worth mentioned here. We came to visit an selforganized garden-project, called “Vaksali kogukonna aed”. They are located at a nice spot next to the mainrailwaystation. The place is surrounded by an old building which was once used as police station and now works like kind of temporary use. Basicly they started growing and constructing the garden just at the beginning of this year but there´s already quite a lot to discover.…

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Mud, rain and some bins full of food

After Kurava, we had a really crazy cycling day. As it was already raining for the last several days, we were quiet happy that only little drops are falling from the sky. It almost felt like good wheather! (Actually our last host told us something that it would be the most rainy summer in latvia since 15 years…) But it was not cold, so who cares. At some point there where some contruction-works on the road. Only one lane was free and cars where stopped by a traffic light. The one lane didn’t have concrete anymore and it was super…

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