2008

2008 takes me from Tromso down the incredibly beautiful Norwegian coast. In the city of Bergen I board a ferry to Newcastle in England. Up the green and rainy east coast to Edinburgh in Scotland and all the way to the north shore. In Ullapool I set over to the Outer Hebridies, a group of islands in the north west with old stone monuments and beaches as white as in the Caribean!
Then I decend via Skye to Glasgow and to the capital of Northern Ireland. Down the east coast to Dublin and into the hills of Wales. In Birmingham I visit old friends that I know from the time that I had spent in China. After a while of rest I continue towards Portsmouth and set over to St. Malo in France. The Bretagne and Normandie treat me well. I follow the coast and enjoy the good food and the rough landscape.
Belgium becomes a daytrip because it proves to be a concrete nightmare - whoever is responsible for raping the Belgian coast with cheap cement roads and lame multi-story buildings that pile up one after the other shall burn in hell (cyclists, avoid the Belgian coast!!!).
Happy to be in the Netherlands I find my way to Amsterdam to visit the headquarters of Medecins Sans Frontieres, a relief organisation that I have been working with since 2004. Faster than I know I find myself boarding an airplane direction India where a flood disaster had just happened in one of the poorest regions (Biahr - in the North).
I return after 2 hard months of work, then cycle from Amsterdam to the Black Forest in the south of Germany. It is now November and the way over the Swiss Alps is blocked with snow.
So I decide to spend Christmas and New Years once more on my brother's Huskyfarm in northern Norway.