That's all, folks!

After paying a modest fee of 100 NOK for the pitch I went to buy some Joika meatballs and other Norwegian delicacies that I'm sure I'm going to miss at home. Gotta find a way to buy those reindeer meatballs in Germany!

Visited the old fortress down at the southernmost tip of Langesund and spent an hour dozing in the sun trying to not get shat on by seagulls before heading to the pier. Had some fun trash-talking campervan drivers with motorcyclists. By complete coincidence among the moto crowd I spotted a MEI license plate which turned out to belong to the dad of an old childhood friend who just returned from a three weeks trip to the Kapp himself. Small world!

Boarding a ferry for one last time. This one's considerably bigger than the ones I had on those short domestic route, including the Hurtigrute.

Southbound Voyage

The crossing to Denmark went on rather painlessly but with a delay that made me panic-buy a regional train ticket to Hjorring. For most of that train ride I was on hold for the "international service" of DB to try and purchase a border-crossing bicycle reservation; ultimately I gave up after noone picked up after twenty minutes. What a lousy "service". During the series of slow trains that I took through Denmark I installed what I assumed was the Danish railway app and eventually got that reservation for the Fredericia-Flensburg segment, just a couple hours later than planned. The trick to this app is to enter not the entire route start to finish but individual segments so you can pick the connections with free bike spots; the app will not fall back on the next train in the future automatically, it seems, it just declares the entire route non-existant. What an infuriating piece of technology.

After three chilly hours in the waiting area of Fredericia st. I finally got on the border crossing train and on in direction Hamburg. No fatal delays or overcrowded trains so far; all connections have been met. In Berlin I had an elevator -- the elevator for that platform -- fail right in front of my eyes. Twenty minutes later a technician showed up to relieve the people that were stuck in it, but he also shut down the elevator with the comment "you really don't wanna use it in this state". So I had some fun carrying the bike down the stairs all the way to the second negative floor.

Nine train connections total, almost 18 h from the northernmost tip of mainland Denmark through northern Germany to Dresden. An aptly long and intense conclusion to a long and intense vacation.

gallery