Being home for Christmas had invigorated me a great deal. After cycling through (parts of!) France, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium, I felt a fair bit burnt out. I used Christmas to kick back, spend time with my family and friends, and come up with several new ideas for websites which I could write once I was back on the road.
By the time New Year had come and gone, though, I was itching to get back on the road again, so on 6th January I set off for the second phase of my unplanned odyssey - once again overland. I travelled by train to London, calling on an old university friend to catch up, and then took the bus from Liverpool Street to Harwich International Terminal - a rather grand name for a seaside shack, if you ask me - to board the overnight Stenaline ferry to Holland.
I was too exhausted to explore the ferry's bar and cinema, choosing instead to go directly to the cabin I was forced to purchase a night's stay in (the ferry didn't have any lounges with sleep seats unlike my ferry to St Malo). Still, I didn't begrudge it when I saw it, as it was immaculate; I had a bunk, a sofa seat and a small en-suite with toilet and bath. The ferry was obviously very new and had yet to be destroyed by British tourists.
And so at 7:30am the next morning I emerged as a foot passenger from the Stenaline ferry into The Netherlands once more. There was something distinctly exciting about being in a port in another country before dawn. I felt that crackle of excitement and freedom that travelling sometimes brings, and grabbed a ticket to Rotterdam.
Rotterdam was supposed to have a crackle all of its own, but I can't say I felt it whilst I was there. It was destroyed during the Second World War, and so had been rebuilt in a hotch-potch of styles, many of them functional and ugly, but also many of them pleasingly experimental and architectural. I didn't get up to much during my time there, preferring to work on the ideas I had developed over Christmas, and so moved on, somehow having obtained a large, framed canvas print of an old map of the United Kingdom (well, it was only 40 euros... I couldn't say no!)... for the house I didn't have.
I decided the next day to head up to Utrecht, with framed picture in tow. Apparently it was one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands. Once I had fought my way out of the shopping centre encasing the station, I emerged into more shops, at which I bought a protective case for my new laptop. I had accidentally broken my last laptop from it getting a knock whilst being in my bag, and so I didn't want to make the same mistake with this one.
Further on from the shops, I hit the canals. Utrecht was like a mini Amsterdam, with ancient waterways running through the city. The streets were built up higher, with the waterways down below, alongside which outdoor cafes, bars and restaurants were situated, although sparsely populated in the Winter.
The rest of the pubs, however, seemed packed. Tuesday was student night, and the town had a really youthful vibe thanks to the tens of thousands of students who lived here and occasionally attended the university. The place reminded me of Heidelberg - it had the same kind of enjoyable buzz.
I like to travel light, preferring a 40 litre carry-on rucksack as my backpacking luggage, so I needed to ditch my new-found framed art companion immediately. I considered sending it back home, but it was very heavy and would no doubt cost a packet to send, with the likelihood of it getting damaged on the way. So it was lucky that I had another option only forty minutes down the railway track.
On my last RTW trip I had met a Dutch traveller on a slow boat to Laos and we had ended up travelling nigh-on three months together. We had kept in touch regularly via email and messenger, even seeing each other maybe once every six months or so, and had developed a sort-of Free Trade Agreement between us. What this Agreement consisted of was me sending her Topshop (a UK High Street clothes shop) goods that she had ordered online to my address. Since I had never called my side of the Agreement in, I figure she owed me a favour.
So I travelled to Tilburg to meet up with her. We had an enjoyable day, catching up in the cafe by the train station and heading on to take her out for a Thai meal, by way of a thank-you for her looking after my framed picture for an indeterminate period of time whilst I travelled further eastwards.
The next day I headed on out of the Netherlands by way of a six hour train journey to Hamburg. It allowed me to catch up on a lot of work on the way, and as the sky was darkening I emerged from the station and made my way to my accommodation of choice.
I had read about a Rock'n'Roll pub near the water which offered cheap, colourful themed rooms, and it seemed right up my street. Luckily, they had a room available, so I checked in, being assigned the "St Pauli" room (seafaring district with the symbol of the skull and crossbones). The music was excellent, and it didn't matter that I could hear it from my room until the wee hours, as they also kindly provided fresh earplugs :)
Hamburg was Germany's richest city, apparently, but it didn't do much for me. As Germany's second largest, it's always going to be compared to Berlin, and sadly it just didn't live up to the electrifying capital. Nevertheless, Hamburg had its quirks, and that evening I wandered the port and the "notorious" Red Light District known as the Reeperbahn. It was pretty tame by all accounts, at least when compared with that of Amsterdam.
The Schanzenviertel area of Hamburg was a bit more full of character, consisting of little independent shops, cafes, restaurants and bars that were a little bit off the mainstream. The youthful vibe recalled Friedrichshain or Kreuzberg in Berlin a little. But I hadn't warmed to Hamburg greatly, and so I moved on south at the weekend.
German trains are fabulous, but you pay for such impeccable service. However, several years ago, in order to persuade people to use trains at the weekend more, Deutsche Bahn introduced a ticket that allowed you to travel all over Germany on regional (non-high speed) trains with up to four people for only a few Marks each. I had used this ticket with my mates extensively when I studied in Mainz, seeing most corners of Germany with it, and was glad to see it still in existence. Although much more expensive (and priced now in Euros of course), it allowed me to get to Frankfurt - via three trains and six to seven hours of travel - by the evening.
Frankfurt, which I always remembered as exceedingly dull and doesn't seem to have evolved a great deal, was just a waypoint for my destination of Ulm, where I had passed through before Christmas. More importantly, this time a friend of mine - who I had met in a hostel in New Zealand - was around, and she put me up for a night, making me feel right at home with a home-cooked meal. I might have only been on the road for a week, but home comforts are always gratefully appreciated whenever you can get them.
