A long journey begins

The 9 of May was the day I left little Lundby in little Eskilstuna in Sweden. I left to the big world calling for me. With a Dawes super galaxy bicycle I bought on Ebay, Ortlieb panniers with my luggage, I left to make an adventure and to pratice my french language. In the beginning, in Sweden, I cycled to fast and hard with all that luggage, so my knee went bad. First I thought that all of this journey was over, because a bad knee is a problem. But stubborn as I am, I continued all the way to my german friends, Abel and Carlo, in Tecklenburg, Germany. There I gave my knee and myself rest for three weeks. We had so fun those weeks, we made lots of parties, played much music toghether and Jacob, one of my swedish friends, came to see me and the germans for one week. We drove with the car to Amsterdam in Holland. There someone broke up the car, and Jacob's bag was stolen. To leave the country we had to go to the Swedish embassy in Den Haag. In Haag, Jacob bought a emergency passport, and the same day we went back to Germany.

The night before going to the embassy we were on a campingsite. There I met a english hippie touringcyclist who changed my way of cycling to the better. During my journey I had always been cycling about 100km, I woke up early, and cycled to the evening. I asked this english man, who were cycling with the same kind of bicycle as mine, when he was going up tomorrow. He answered me "I don't know, when I wake up I guess". The second question I asked was how long distance he was going to cycle, "Well that depends how long I feel like cycling". He did not cycle with a cyclecomputer, he was a relaxed guy who had been young in the 60s, he told me that he lived the hippie life. This mans relaxed way of life made me change my cycling routine more relaxed.

After these three weeks, when I sat up on the bike once again, my knee was good! It was a warm summer day I left. The fields were green and all nature alive. I went trough Germany, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and finally in to France. This was the country I had been cycling so long to enter. My first meeting with the french language was in Belgium. They spoke fast and it was not easy to understand. But I learned as I continued. Entering France was a little bit weird. "Is this it, I'm already here?" I asked myself.

That first day in my final country, I met a guy loaded like me with his bike. His name was Adam, and he was from South Africa. He started in Holland and was going to Italy. He was tall, almost two meter, and very friendly. We decided to cycle toghether to Strasbourg where my girlfriend was going to meet me. Adam stayed two days with me and Sandra at the campingsite in Strasbourg. We had been searching maps the day before he left. Adam looked for a good map over Switzerland. When I bought maps over France, a map over Morocco passed in my eyes. "Morocco, maybe I will go so far this journey" I thought for myself. When we left the mapsshop I had bought those maps over France, and also Rough Guides map over Morocco! Cycle Sweden to Africa, that's a long way, but I had been thinking about it before. But just thoughts. Now was reality. "If I want to do it I can do it" I said to Sandra.