Ventspils

Hi Folks

After a very refreshing nigth in a very basic but super clean and calm hotel (and cheap though) I slept in unintendedly. When I left I stood around a little confused to think of the best road to exit Liepaja. Then a car stopped, and Martens asked me happily about long distance skateboarding. Perfect timing through that sleeping in! He then put me on the road to Ventspils, and hooked me up with two contacts, one of them being only 60km away. I freshly started and managed to get some good progress on the road, and in the evening was allowed to camp on the property of Renars Birmanis, a skate shop owner from Riga. He and his wife took me in very cordially and showed me around his little paradise landhouse, with a big pond (swimming in the morning, yay) and a small forrest. Amazing guy, really, we talked about the ways of the world and traveling and Buddha and so on. I left with a smile on my face the next day. And was able to do some very good progress as well, as I am in Ventspils currently, where Nadia from couchsurfing opened her home for me. Ventspils so far really looks cute.
Tomorrow I will set off into the internet shadow I think and will just be online again when I reach Riga in about a week.
Ah and check out the pictures, feel the pain of my heels when rolling over such pavement. And check out the map, I updated it, I hope it worked.

Aaaaand finally I was told that the comment funtion was disabled, I enabled it now, so feel free to comment, I am looking forward to hear from you!

Cheers
Robert

Liepaja

Hi Folks
The last two days I was able to skate the full planed distance from Klaipeda to Liepaja, and hence left Lithuania and entered Latvia. Yay, one country done! The border station was completely abandoned, and the monent I entered Latvia, the pavement was chipseal again... The night before I camped in the dunes shortly before the border, and was super heavily rained on in the night, but the stormy sunset was worth it.
Now I am off to Ventspils, which I hope to reach in two or three days. There I hopefully will be able to post again, and after that there will be a long stretch without major cities.
Cheers

Neringa Peninsula

Now THATS how it should be. The Neringa peninsula had very smoth surfaced roads and beautifull landscape. I felt a little bad for cheating with the bus to Klaipeda, so I did a 50 km loop on the Neringa to compensate, south to Juokranté and back to Klaipeda. Now I am off to the Latvian border, which I hope to reach in two days. I hope somewhere in this post appear the pictures that I transferred from the camera to the mobile phone.
Cheers

Klaipeda

Hi Folks
I am already in Klaipeda, because I had to cheat and take a bus after two days skating. The reason? Heavy duty overload. My luggage was unskateable heavy, plus the cart seems to drag way more than expected (and the aluminum axle is so weak that I can not load more than 5kg without bending it...). The solution? I hit the post office as soon as I was in Klaipeda, and sent home a 7kg package, I feel a lot lighter now! Although I forgot something and will send more tomorrow.
But so far about long distance skating in Lithuania I can tell you that the pavement sucks, it's mostly chipseal, ond top of older chipseal, so you get nice little hills of super rough pavement in different levels of degradation. And holy cow there is huge amounts of traffic, almost every Lithuanian that is able to walk must be driving. They do give you a nice amount of space though when sweving around you. Besides me and the avalanche of cars, there is not many people on the streets, and most of them you see are well beyond pension age. Uh, I never imagined that I will visit a country in which people look more sour than in Switzerland, but he, the Lithuanians manage, who would have thought. But as soon as you start talking to them, they are super nice and very helpfull. Met four fishermen on the shore of the memel river, where I wanted to camp, they had a huge campfire going and invited me to some tasty Lithuanian bacon. After that I just rolled out my sleeping bag by the fire while they kept fishing the whole night.
Well that's it for now, tomorrow is one day culture in Klaipeda, before I go along the baltic shore, hopefully light enough this time.
Ah, and one last thing, I sent home the laptop and the heavy camera, so the posts will be mainly from my mobilephone (as for example this one, did you notice?) and possibly only contain mobile pictures until I can get my hands on a smaller camera. So please excuse when there are some typos because my fat thumb hits the wrong letter.
Cherio

Yay, I am in a bus again, but this time direction Lithuania, where I will arrive on Tuesday around lunchtime (Holy cow, that is a 28 hours journey). I wanted to embed a map where you can follow my progress in almost realtime, but it seems to be difficult on blogger. If anyone has a clue how to do that, send me an email.
In the meantime, I added a link to a map from maps.google on the route page, where I will list my progress. I hope it displays correctly when you access the link, otherwise let me know.

Cheers

Hi Folks

I finally managed to leave yesterday, direction Wuppertal (DE) for visiting my elderly grandmother berfore hitting the world for a few years. So far I can say: (1) Free Internet in Long-distance busses runs at glacial speed. (2) Air conditioning in a bus when it is 35°C outside is very comfortable, and you really miss it when it breaks two hours into a ten hour drive. (3) Apparently I forgot the sun in Switzerland, because rigth now there is torrential downpour in Wuppertal. Ah, and do not try to build rainflaps to screw on your longboard trucks out of heat bent acrylic glass, they will break from a mere mean look, and leave very sharp edges.

I will report back as soon as I am really hitting the road with my longboard, I expect that to be the case in not more than a week.

Cheers
Robert

OK, leaving date is approaching fast. Almost everything administrative is done, I picked up the Chinese visa today.
If someone of you plans to do something similar, here is a very short overview of the most important points;

• If you are male, make sure you get a leave from service duty, even if you are classified as not fit for service.
• Make sure you have a health insurance that is valid in your destination, some countries require a proof of this for their visa.
• Make sure your EC and credit card are enabled in your destination.
• Make sure there is a trusted person with authorization to your bank accounts in case you loose cards.
• If Swiss, go and sign out at your district.
• If Swiss, make sure you are up to date with taxes, you may not be allowed to leave before you did that.
• If Swiss, check with SVA if you have open positions and register as unemployed in Switzerland in the future.
• Get necessary vaccinations and malaria treatment if necessary.
• Check if your passport is valid long enough.
• Apply for visa well in advance, some take considerable amounts of time to get, but beware, some also have an "expiry" date.
• For some countries, you need to book flights/ train tickets /hotels in advance to get the visa.

I think that's about it, no claim of being complete.

Many thanks to the people of Rollladen in Zuerich, they hooked me up with spares, bushings, bearings, slide wheels and so on today!