Schlagwort: Preparation

Only a few days left…

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Thuesday the tour finally starts. I’m so excited! First we ride by train to Lübeck and in the night we continue our trip on the ferry to Helsinki.

What you can expect on our website?

I bought a Prepaid Tarif with Internet for the whole of Europe. So I hope I can upload some of the best pictures every day and write a short summary on this blog. I think the biggest challenges in doing this are time and my motivation. But I don’t know how long my battery will last on the trip.

Tomorrow I will pack my bike and on Monday I have bought the last things for the trip. Hopefully I make another article about the things I take with me.

I hope to produce a video or some videos from the trip about the nature and our experience. Let’s see what happens!

Jonas

 

 

A lifelogging camera – The Narrative Clip 2

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I bought the Narrative Clip 2, a life logging or wearable camera last month. It can take a photo every 30 seconds and is also able to capture videos. I brought it not especially for the tour, but on a bike I think its the perfect camera. I want to capture the special moments on our tour from my perspective. So its able to take pictures hands-free and easily.

The company

The Narrative Clip manufactures by Memoto, a Swedish startup founded in 2012. I bought the second version of its „most wearable camera“. The company have a massive delay between ordering the clip and delivering it, hopefully because so many people want this camera. Perhaps the delivery time of the clip 2 is now better, check out http://getnarrative.com/orderlookup for that info.

Specifications

The clip is very small in his demission, very light and also fits perfect in every pocket. It is designed to pin it at our shirt with a mount. The camera can capture with 8 MP and 1080p videos. The clip has WLAN for uploading the captured pictures directly to the narrative cloud and bluetooth to control the clip with our phone. So you can change the interval auf photo taking or the double or tripple tap gesture.

Opinion

Until now the experience with the clip is fascinating. The pictures are realy different and maybe the best thing is, that people don’t make a photo face or a special pose on the photos. Is is just like it happed. It took a while to understand all options, the app and the webapp, but now its easier to find the best photos. The clip has less configuration options and setting, this make the clip easy to use but sometimes it is a bit frustrating.

Jonas

Booking the ferry

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In April we booked the ferry from Travemünde to Helsinki. The start date of our trip is now fixed. We start August 17, 2016. First we ride by train to Travemünde and enter the ferry at 3 o’clock in the morning. After 30 hours on the ship we arrive in Helsinki. This is the plan for the first days.

The booking process on finnlines.com was a bit scary, because the system looks very old. But in the end we have a ticket for two person, two bikes, dinner, breakfast and a cabin for 550€. Not cheap but necessary for our trip.

We also looked for other options like riding by bus. But in the end we thought the ferry is the best option to transport the bikes.

The tour in detail

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The facts of the tour:

  • kilometers: 1800 km
  • planned time: 30 days
  • planned kilometers pro day: 100 km/d
  • cities on the tour: Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Kaunas, Warszawa, Łódź, Kalisz, Bolesławiec, Bautzen, Dresden

To find the best way for cyclists we use the navigation service „komoot“. The services is available as App for iPhone, Android and in the web komoot.de. You can see our tour here.

We want to stay over night in tent and in cities we go to hostels. More information coming soon. Stay tuned!

Which direction is better?

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Our tour takes us through Helsinki Tallinn, Riga, Warszawa and Lodz. But where to start, Helsinki or Saxony? There are some advantages for starting in Helsinki and ride back to Saxony by bike. We know the start date of our trip better as the date when we are in Helsinki. So we are able to book the ferry and the train earlier to get a better price. Another reason is the possibility of a better planning the trip. We can book the hostels in Helsinki and Tallinn, because we can evaluate the date of arrival better.

But on the other hand I love more to ride far away as come home again. Also the main wind direction is in middle Europe from West to East. We have to dicide between this two options but at this time we are not sure.

Design a shirt for your dreams

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We decided to design our own T-shirt for our trip. On the front with the headline „Poland-Baltics Bike Ride 2016“ and a map with our route through half of Europe. On the back you can get more information with a link and a QR-Code to this website. We ordered the shirt on www.spreadshirt.de. The quality is perfect, but it wasn’t cheap. We will wear this shirts on our trip as an advertisement for our blog and as a sign of our brotherhood.

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Welcome

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Welcome on our blog! A blog about our bike tour from Germany via Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia in summer 2016. We are brothers from Saxony in Germany. Here you can read all about our plans and experiences on the tour. Stay tuned!