I Famosi Quattro Road Trip #3 Eastern Europe

[998gsb]

Due to the overwhelming popularity of the I Famosi Quattro Road Trip and Diary Blog to WDW 2007 last year, and because we all had such a bloody good laugh on the trip, I Famosi Quattro decided we'd do an Annual Road Trip each year. (If you haven't seen the thread - do a search for WDW 2007 or I Famosi Quattro Road Trip - its worth a read!)

For 2008, we decided we'd Go East......So on July 16th we set off for Brno in Czech Republic, taking in France, Belguim, and Germany along the way taking in such sites as Rhine Valley, Nuremburg, Saxony, Prague, Colditz Castle, Mosel Valley and Trier.

If we can get access to the "net" along the way, we will be updating the blog as we go with pictures and tales of our adventures to keep you all entertained......

In the meantime - we need to note with some sadness one important missing member of IFQ for this Trip - Ollie (can we take a taxi to circuit - me wrists ache). Ollie mate, you will be sorely missed - but we'll raise a Budvaar to you in the East.

Gentleman - its now only a month away!

[legs748]

I may pass you i'll be just coming north from Serbia back to Poland that week.

[RodH]

The clock is ticking.............only a few days to go, roll on Tuesday

[998gsb]

The bike is prepped - just going through final packing list and drawing odds and ends together! - so much for travelling light!

Minor teething problems with Tom Tom - accepted Baggers as a buddy and wiped the rest of IFQ - so you need to accept me as a buddy again boys!

One final thought- just watched the Moto GP from Sachsenring which isn't a million miles from where we're going - in fact we pass it on the way to Colditz - Toby Moody just described the race as "not so much a wet race as an underwater race - brace yourselves - looks like WDW all over again!

[998gsb]

All ready now boys - bikes ready, fully packed and raring to go. Just need to wait now for the heavens to open and for it to lash down!!

Get the beers in Folkestone, and we'll see you for Dinner!! - Are we dressing for dinner ? or casual ??

[RodH]

Originally Posted by 998gsb

Get the beers in Folkestone, and we'll see you for Dinner!! - Are we dressing for dinner ? or casual ??

Probably best to, the staff may get upset if we turn up bollock naked

[998gsb]

No I meant casual or EDZ ?

[RodH]

Originally Posted by 998gsb

No I meant casual or EDZ ?

After seeing you and Baggers at dinner wearing just your EDZ suits last year ......I vote for casual

[royum]

Originally Posted by RodH

After seeing you and Baggers at dinner wearing just your EDZ suits last year ......I vote for casual

EDZ! B*gger, I've been and bought one now!

[998gsb]

Greetings all! - Hello from Moravia! We are here...!

Well, its been emotional and eventful (did you expect anything less??!!)

Heres a quick run down on progress to date - no photos as yet Im afraid but I'll add them later at some point. Here's the blog....

Tuesday 15th

Baggers and I left Crewe around 2.30pm and had a very pleasant (for once) trip down to Folkestone where we met up with RodH and Royum. The very kindly receptionist at the hotel let us park the bikes right outside the entrance in front of the CCTV as long as we promised not to start them at 7.30am!!!

Had a nice meal and off to bed.

Wednesday 16th:

Arrived at the Chunnel for 7.50am - to find that a train had broken down in the tunnel and that all trains were delayed. Finally made it in to France for about 11.00am which was a bugger as we had some ground to cover.

Tracked along the coast to Dunkirk, and down to Leper (Ypres) where stoppped to go find the Menin Gate - a very moving experience. We all agreed we'd like to come to Flanders again to look at the battlefields. Took in a quick coffee and a yummy belgium chocalate muffin and then back on the road. Sophia managed to burst yet another header tank in traffic coming out of Leper -

We made good time over the rest of the day, and travelled across France, Belgium, Holland in to Germany. The weather was kind to us and we didn't have any brushes with the law this time!

We stopped just outside Cologne in the forest at a small bike friendly hotel - which was really cool. Each of the rooms were themed - I had the Mamola room and Baggers got the Foggy Room.

Food was sensational, but we were all shattered - it had been a long day so after dinner we literally fell in to bed!!

Thursday:

We set off down the Autobahn headed for Frankfurt and the plan was to cut across country trough the edge of the black forest region across to Nurnburg and the Czech Border. Best laid plans and all that......didn't quite happen. 60kms outside Frankfurt, we made a group decision to dive in to Ducati Frankfurt. Royum needed a new tyre, I needed a header tank, and Baggers 1098 was cooking the termi system and rear cylinder which has turned biscuit brown.

Ducati Frankfurt were very good to be fair, although initially came across as a bit on the grumpy side (think it was a language thing!!). Anyway they dropped everything - changed the header tank for me, put a new Tyre on Roys bike, and checked over Baggers bike, before adjusting the CO from 2% to 4%. 3.30pm we hit the road again - oh well its only 459km to the hotel - it'll be fine.

We pull of the motorway into a village and find a garage and fill up and decide that we could still do the scenic route we'd planned...........mistake!

First of all Sat Nav sent us up ever decreasing roads that got narrower and narrower and narrower which culminated in this little lane - that just stopped - tarmac one side and grass and brambles the other. Round we turn and head back to the village and try again...this time it took us on a different route out of the village and headed us in to a national park area which was very beautiful apart from several issues.

1. Roadworks and 10 mile queue of HGVs.

2. Its now raining heavily

3. Most of it had a 30kmh speed limit.

4. Its raining even harder

5. Its now 4.00pm and oh we still have 400km to cover....

Back on the motorway......and finally arrive at Czech Border around 8.30pm - no dramas or incidents - had a bit of sport with some Alpina BMWs and AMGs on the derestricted sections of the motorway though!!!

To be continued........

[998gsb]

Continued.....

Here's a few pics from Thursday and the diary continued!


This is the Menin Gate in Ypres - a memorial built by the British Army to all those who served on the Ypres Salient and were lost in action, but who could not be found - truly humbling.....


Menin Gate



This is Haus Dumicketal in Drolshagen - 60km east of Cologne - biker friendly hotel, secure garage, fantastic food, and race themed bedrooms - recommended! Its also located in a beautiful forest location and there are some great roads around the area


Bright and early Thursday morning outside Haus Dumicketal - ready to set off towards Vohenstrauss near the Czech Border.... from left to right RodH, Baggers, Royum and 998gsb


Ducati Franfurt - Sophia on the ramp....


Baggers turn! - the exhausts were turning blue and cooking the carbon end cans, and the rear cylinder was turning biscuit coloured - CO% was discovered to be 2% and was adjusted to 4% - seemed to transform the bike!


Thursday:
So after the unplanned stop at Ducati Frankfurt and fun and games with sat nav - we decided to switch back to the Autobahn and just get over to Vohentrauss - we left Frankfurt around 3.00pm and still had 500odd kms to go to get over to the Hotel Stop.

We arrived at Vohenstraus around 8/8.30 tired and damp, although the last 30km of roads did make up for the miserable weather and delays we had suffered. Vohenstraus is around 10km from the Czech border to the NE of Nuremburg. The Hotel was basic but clean and welcoming and the food was good!

We awoke in the morning to fine rain and drizzle. Now there had been some rumours circulating that Royum had brought a johnny with him and that it was XXL one. We put this down to the flamboyant scotsman simply bragging.....but the rumours turned out to be true....



We noted with some amusement, that Royum must be a true scotsman as he used this johnny several times........eee, the Dirty Dirty B.....d!!!


Getting ready to leave Vohenstrauss.

We left in the rain, and it pretty much rained all day - all the way across Czech.

The border was unmanned but had clearly been a fairly scary place in the past. It now just seemed to be a huge truck stop complex.

The road across to Prague and Brno was mostly better than we had expected although the standard of driving in Czech bordered on the suicidal. Czech cars appear to be specially constructed with movement sensitive indicators which come on, when the steering wheel is turned by more than 5 degrees in either direction......they appear to have absolutely no regard for what may be steaming up behind them when they pull out, nor any regard for who or what they cut up when pulling back in, and mirrors appear to have been banned.

It rained incessantly through Czech and at times there was around an inch of standing water on the carriageway. We stopped at several service stations to shelter from the rain, and we were pleasantly surprised by them - far superior to anything we have here in terms of motorway services.

By late afternoon, the rain had ceased and the sun had come out, and it was starting to get quite warm - we passed signs for the Autodromo Brno Grand Prix track, so we were close to Brno.

It probably sounds a strange thing to say, but we all really felt like we were in a completely foreign country as the language is so so different to western Europe both oral and written. In most western block countries, you stand half a chance of guessing what a sign might say. Due to the way the language is spelt and written in Czech - you have no chance whatsoever.

We battled with traffic jams, cobbled streets, tram lines and trams with limited stopping abilities and finally made it to the hotel and checked in.


Grand Hotel, Brno

This hotel is allegedly the best hotel in the city......personally i thought it was ok but dated and rather overpriced for what it was - 140 Euro per night, with additional charges of 33Euro for the garage.

We went out for a meal in the city that night and the hotel recommended a small restaurant in a basement in the centre of town. It was an italian - and the food was pretty good and astonishingly cheap - 3 course meal for 4 with beers - £30.

After a good meal, we retired back to the hotel for coffee and bed. The plan in the morning was to go sight seeing around the city centre, but I wasn't overly impressed by what id seen so far....

The hotel was clean but felt a bit "1970s". Baggers bless him was rather shocked to note two middle aged hookers frequenting the hotel bar everynight, sat at the bar, openly reading from cover to cover porno mags (or "bash mags" as he called them!) - I really think he was genuinely a bit shocked by this!!.

Saturday:

I was woken this morning by some muppet at 5.30am in the morning hammering the hell out a large metal gate at the tram depot just across the square from the hotel. The trams started at 6.00am so there was no chance of getting back to sleep!

Bored, I picked up the Tom Tom and started looking at the map of where we were......I realised that we were very close to the polish border - only about 160 miles......Day Trip Anyone ??

9.30am - all breakfasted and suited and booted and off we set on a day trip to Polzski........ Oscweiz to be precise. Perhaps not the most pleasant of destinations, but its not the sort of place you would fly to as a destination and it seemed daft not to go as we were so close........

Oscweiz for those that dont know, was a small Polish village which was taken over by the Nazi regime during world war II. The inhabitants were all evicted and Auschwitz was established, followed shortly after by Auschitz Berkenau camp II.

The journey over was lovely, with good roads, beautiful sunshine and pleasant scenery - including the screen wash girls at the service station we stopped at!!

The main motorway from Czech in to Poland is brand new funded by EU Money and was really good - just a shame thed didn't finish the slip roads!. Coming off the shell grip motorway, the slip road just stopped - turning from Shellgrip in to a rutted, broken concrete track --- eeeeeeek!

We were also struck once we left the motorway by just how many filling stations there were! In some villages every other building was a petrol station!!

Then we arrived at Auschwitz - I dont intend to even attempt to describe the place - but I will say that it was a deeply deeply moving experience and very eerie. There is woodland around the camp, and the trees were full of little song birds.....inside the camp there were no birds and no bird song - it was just completely silent. It was plane Weird.


The poor victims had to look at this sign every day - Arbeit Macht Frei - Work is liberating.....


This is Berkenau....the scale of this place is truly staggering.


An infamous view


Trying to take in what we were seeing

This was a truly emotional day (for me any way) and I think the others felt the same. It was a nice day, but it wasn't if you know what I mean. We were all very glad that we had decided to make the effort to come and see it.....I think we were all a bit numbed by it.

We set off back to Czech and Brno


Ducatisti stop at the Polish Border with Czech Republic.....

To be continued.....

[998gsb]

Sunday: Race day -

Contrary to the Beeb's weather forecast posted in the Hotel lift of heavy rain with cloudy, Race day was a perfect blue sky, with no clouds and glorious sun shine.....given we had been warned about leaving the bikes unattended anywhere over here, and given the weather, we decided best bet would be to leave the bikes safe in the garage and catch a taxi to the circuit, which was only 10km outside the city. It also meant we weren't trapsing about in leathers all day,

The tickets were a bargain at c. £18 which included a paddock entry pass......excellent value for money and we managed to get up close and personal with quite a few people - Nori Haga, Bayliss, Troy Bayliss, Troy Corser - dressed and undressed (see later!), Davide Tardozzi, Franki Chilli, Giancarlo Falappa to name but a few....along with countless pit bunnies - some of whom were seriously hot!

For the first race, we decided to go watch from an embankment on the far side of the circuit where we could see the bikes come down the hill, and then through a right, left, left, right complex (it was here Xaus fell off in Race 1). The weather was lovely and racing was excellent.

After the race, we had lunch at the Paddock Restaurant and it was excellent and not at all expensive - which goes to prove the crap we put up with in this country is just that and massively over priced - a complete rip off.

We had a stroll around the paddock admiring the sites and sounds.....we observed Haga san hammering on the Yamaha trailer door, as he'd been locked out, which was quite funny, and I overheard a conversation between a certain Mr. Corser and two brolly dollies (photo below), which was along the lines of

TC - So what are you doing tonight girls ?
G - We will be at our hotel
TC - ah right, well I've got a hotel room too.....you fancy joining me ?

I suspect Mrs C who was in a motor home in the paddock, may have been none too impresed by this, had she known...!


Here one for the boys...


And another.....


Haga San - locked out of his trailer.....funny!


It was these two young ladies who got propositioned!!

Now be calm ladies.....

Mr & Mrs Bayliss Arrive at the office....


Suited and booted.....


Another easy day at the office



Mad Max


Aw Gees, Sorry Mate, Didn't recognise ya with ya clothes on mate....



Ducati Corse Garage - being packed up!

[Rob998]

Great write up Gav! I'm seething with jealousy!

I went to Auschwitz as a teenager. I still can't get the memories of lampshades made of human skin out of my head.

[Rob998]

Sorry, can't resist as I was talking to Chris from DM on Wednesday, what is your current header tank count?

[998gsb]

MONDAY:

Today was supposed to be an easy day - 400km to do heading North through Czech Republic towards our hotel in Leipzig in former East Germany.

We met in the lobby at around 8.15 and checked out, and were at the hotel garage for 8.30 sharp.....

Went to start Sophia and the starter was very slow and struggled to turn over and within two attempts - the battery was stone dead - BUGGER.

Debated the options - breakdown recovery or find the nearest Ducati Dealer.....fortunately RodH had his dealer booklet with him and we discovered that the nearest dealer was 1.8km away from where we were - result.

Royum very kindly volunteered to go find it and try to buy a battery for me, whilst I sat on the pavement, lit a cigarette and enjoyed one of those hamlet moments - much to the amusement of RodH and Baggers.

He arrived back half an hour later with the news that they didn't have any batteries, but that they had leant him a set of broken jump leads......

Eventually we got the bike started....we were just letting it tick over on fast idle, when Czech Plod turned up. Now Czech Plod didn't speak much english, and they were insisting that we turned the bike off, as we were making too much noise - they didn't grasp that if we turned it off, it wouldn't start again......despite the valiant attempts of RodH in best johnny foreigner english to explain. It ended up in a bit of a stand off - plod withdrew to about 5m away and just sat there, in their skoda watching us and glaring at us.

We stuck the panel back on the bike - good job it was a 998 and not a 1098! and tenatively set off for the dealership to return his jump leads....I was just praying that the thing wouldn't stall!

So far so good - leads duly dropped off, and dealer thanked....we programmed the sat nav for Leipzig and off we went. We had a great ride today - the weather was kind, the roads were ok and the traffic wasn't too suicidal for once.

Just outside Leipzig is the town of Chemnitz, and close to Chemnitz is a small saxony village called Colditz, and in the centre of Colditz is Schloss Colditz - Castle Colditz.

Now I've always wanted to go to Colditz since being a small boy watching those black and white films of daring escapes from the castle....

In more recent years the castle was used as a sanitorium hospital in the Eastern Block, but since repatriation with Germany, a trust has been set up and the castle is being restored....there is now a visitor centre and museum at the castle - and whilst only small, it is pretty impressive. The thing I found most fascinating, is that the Germans didn't find all of the escape plans - as the castle is being renovated, new things are constantly being found - new tunnels, a complete radio transmitter hidden in the roof, etc. The ingenuity of the prisoners was astounding - there is a home made sewing machine on display fashioned from wood, with tin lids for drive pulleys!


Outside the gates of Colditz


I Famosi Quattro - escaping from Schloss Colditz!! - Colditz is the big white building behind us...

We left Colditz around 4.45pm and arrived in Leipzig around 6.00pm. The hotel was a modern business traveller hotel, on the outskirts of the city, close to a BMW Factory and Porsche Factory (and I thought they were all built in Stuttgart!). The hotel was nice and the food was good, but its not the most picturesque of places! - It was tacked on to the side of a small shopping centre, and our rooms looked across the flat roofs of the attached supermarket!

Tuesday:
Raining -

We set off in light showers and these got progressively heavier, before drying up as we got further west. We were heading for Koblenz to pick up the top of the Mosel Valley and ride down the Mosel to Trier.

We made good progress across Germany and had some fun on the derestricted sections of the Autobahn

We got to Koblenz at around 3.30pm and headed off on to the twisties of the Mosel - OH MY GOD - the roads are sensational........

These roads down in to the valley were awesome - just switch back after switchback...but they were bloomin' tight on a superbike - I think a Motard would have been the weapon of choice ideally. However, in the valley bottom the roads open out in to fast sweepers - totally totally awesome....




Check this picture of the Sat Nav....

Miles of smiles!

After picking up the main road through the Mosel, we made good progress in stunning weather and light traffic.....We passed through any number of picture post card chocolate box villages on the side of the river.

We were headed for Trier along the Mosel - we'd got to within 40kms of Trier, when we happended on a road closure for road works. There was no diversion, and Sat Nav didn't offer any sugestions either. We back tracked to the last junction and turned right to clmb up the side of the valley - I figured if we could find another road off this, we could cut along the top of the ridge for a few clicks, and then drop back down and pick the road up again.

I got stuck behind a bus and it wasn't safe to overtake it, and stuck between 1st and 2nd, the bike was getting hotter and hotter. We pulled over at a lay by near the crest of the hill, and header tank let go again..... - this one had lasted all of 750 miles - Not happy - bike covered in coolant yet again, as was I this time.

We decided to sacrifice the rest of the twisties and head for the Autobahn down to Trier - it was getting late and we were hot, tired and hungry.

Arrived at Eurener Hof Hotel in Trier and tucked the bikes up in the garage. This is a great hotel - bike friendly, and the food and local brew is out of this world - would definitely go back there.

Wednesday:

In the morning we headed for the local Ducati Dealer in Trier. They didn't have a header tank, but they were very helpful nonetheless and picked out dealers in the service booklet who were along the route back to Calais.

We had a ring round but all of the dealers didn't have tanks in stock - all on back order from italy it seems.


Ducati Trier

We decided that as you no longer get your passport stamped in Europe that we'd go for dealer stamps instead!

So we decided to set off for Calais and in fairness Sophia was fine on the motorways she just got a bit hot and bothered when we met traffic. The battery was fully charged again by now and seemed to be behaving itself and we made good time across the continent back to Calais, and we arrived around 3.30pm.

Back in to the UK and it seemed agonisingly slow after Germany! but we settled in to a pace and survived the M25 and M1 at rush hour.

So we all got back home safe between 8pm and 9pm that evening. We had covered 3000 miles in a week, crossed France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Germany, Czech Republic and Poland. The trip hadn't quite gone according to plan, and we had to improvise in places to make up lost time from delays, and the weather wasn't as kind as it could have been. But overall we had a fantastic time and seen some amazing places and things - and I couldn't have wished for better company. Thanks for a great trip guys and to everyone else, I hope you enjoyed the Road Trip #3 Diary!

998gsb