Life is nothing but a bike ride
Back in summer 2014, I got struck by a crazy idea: Go from Paris to Saint Petersburg… by bike. I wrote down my adventures in some journal after the fact, only to bury it somewhere. I stumbled onto it recently, and decided it was about time to share it here.
"Somewhere at the beginning of July, I learned I was admitted in Saint-Cyr, French army’s officer school. Suddenly I realized that if I wanted to take that big bike trip I had been thinking and talking about for the last two years, it was now or never.
Planning started immediately: I had found a summer university in Saint Petersburg which would provide me with both visa and accommodation. If I wanted to make it in time though, I had to hit the road ten days later, which would give me ten more days to get there (I was being slightly optimistic to say the least).
I studied the maps and found a bike road — the Europaradweg R1 — that I could follow for most of my trip. The only thing was I didn’t have any time left to order the map, as it would have arrived after I was gone. So I went with Google Maps printed screenshots. I was off to a great start…
Then I gathered some much needed equipment.
And I also went through the trouble of making my own bike (I was volunteering at Velorution at the time, a Parisian bicycle cooperative. It’s a great way to save perfectly good bikes from the trash bin and give them a second life or to repair yours for free).
Anyway, I was ready.
On the night before, I decided it was time for a final review. I sat on my bike to ride around the neighborhood, in order to check how my bike was doing.
500 hundred meters away from home, a minivan cut me off. I crashed into the car.
At 45 Km/h, that’s what was left of the bike.
I got lucky enough and was not injured whatsoever: The bike completely absorbed the shock.
Obviously, I took it as some kind of sign it was not meant to be. I like to give meaning to everything that happens to me as much as the next guy, even if there isn’t.
As I woke up the next day, I decided to try finding a new frame. Who knows? Maybe I will, maybe I won’t… But I did, went to the bike shop the next day, and assembled a new bike.
And so my journey started 48 hours late, on July 22nd, which also happens to be my birthday. Maybe it was meant to be after all?
As I was just getting out of Paris — 30 kilometres away from home — I lost a screw from the luggage rack because of the road vibrations.
I almost called my mother for her to pick me up. I was angry. But, after I cooled off and with a bit of thinking (I unscrewed a less important screw to replace the one I had lost), I was back on the road.
On the first evening, as I was approaching Tournai, my luggage got stuck in the back wheel and got torn apart. I gathered my stuff, which was lying around all over the road, too tired to get angry, and made it to downtown.
Exhausted, I had decided to give up and to sit on a train back home the next day. In the meantime, I found a hotel room and blacked out to sleep.
The next morning, I looked at myself in the mirror like they do in the movies, and somehow decided I wasn’t going to give up so easily. Maybe tomorrow, but not today.
I found a bike shop. Thing is, I was already in Flanders, which is the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. I don’t speak Dutch. Actually, I can’t even pronounce Dutch words.
It was a big shop, so I had to shop around for the parts I needed to replace by myself. Found everything. So far so good.
But then, as I needed some work done on my back wheel (it didn’t enjoy the luggage-shredding part so much), I headed towards the workshop. There too, nobody even remotely spoke any English, French, Russian or even German, which is all I had in stock at the time. After I unsuccessfully tried to explain my problem with gestures and lamentably failed, I just went for it: I stormed into the workshop, grabbed the tools I needed and repaired it by myself in less than five minutes. To my surprise, the guy sitting there didn’t even mind me, while I was already picturing myself being kicked out of the shop.
Anyway, I fixed my bike. It took me forever to get out of the city (cities are a nightmare from a traveling standpoint, it takes forever to get through them). By the evening, I had made it to Bruges, that I had been craving to see for a while (They call it the Venice of the North for a reason).
It was as advertised, but I was way too tired to enjoy it as much as I wish I had. I just biked around the city for a while.
I spent the night there and moved on.
The next day I made it to the Netherlands.
In my enthusiasm I stopped riding too late to be able to find a spot where I could hang my hammock, only to realize I was lost in complete darkness having no idea where I was, and finally fell asleep right on spot, which was on the ground (I had a sleeping bag with me, thank god).
Until that guy woke me up.
I assume he had something to do with that boat, but I’m not sure how.
The one thing that I clearly recall, though, is the feeling I had in this very early morning: I didn’t even care anymore that I was lost. I somehow got used to the bumps on the road. I was just happy to be there, not even doubting there was a way out, and that I just had to put in the elbow grease in order to find it.
It was, in a sense, my point of no return.
On the same evening, I ended up in some Dutch city (which name I couldn’t even pronounce at the time and can’t even remember now…). As I was asking around for directions, some guy offered to let me stay at his place for the night… I was already picturing myself having a shower (to stay clean I had been relying on lakes and rivers until now) while he was talking to somebody over the phone.
Turns out, the guy over the phone was his roommate, who apparently strongly disagreed with the idea. So much for the shower.
I found some park and waited until dark, hung my hammock and fell asleep almost instantly.
As I wasn’t so sure if I was allowed to do that or not, I was expecting to be woken up by the police or something. But the rain did, and I woke up to that:
Better than coffee. I was up in a matter of seconds, and a few moments later, I was back on tracks.
I finally crossed the border to enter Germany. It’s the worst country for people traveling by bike: Even though I bought a bike map there, even though they have bike roads… Those end as you get out of the city.
Basically what happened is this: I went on that road out of the city for a few kilometres only to stumble upon a sign indicating it was the end of the bike road. Frustrated but unaware of the German ways, I kept going on, and actually ended up on the highway.
Never in my life have I pedaled so fast. I was on the lookout for the first exit, which came after a few kilometres of near-death experience with German people barely avoiding me not to scratch their cars. (Not something I would recommend).
Nevertheless, I found the exit.
Somewhere later in Germany I met a Dutch couple that was biking the same road I was. After riding at some distance away from each other for an hour or so, we stopped to chat. Just like me, they were going to Berlin and had the map I hadn’t purchased (which is kind of a big deal, since there was virtually none of the advertised markings on the road).
Even though joining them meant slowing down a tad, I thought that not getting lost and sticking with the map was the safest bet. Plus I didn’t mind the company, I hadn’t talked to anyone in a while.
But the law of inevitability worked the same way it always does: We got lost in the middle of nowhere, which is here.
Rain was pouring, we were in the middle of nowhere and had no clue what to do.
So, putting our pride aside for a moment, we went hitchhiking.
Turns out we were not so far from Berlin. Two German girls with minivans finally stopped and took us a few kilometres closer to our goal.
It was pitch black by the time we arrived. Fortunately, we stumbled onto a campsite. With no one at the reception, we hesitated for a while… But the tiredness got the best of us, and we sneaked onto the campsite and set camp nearby a lake.
We were awoken by kids playing on the the so-called ‘beach’ the next morning.
We broke camp and sneaked out, heading towards Berlin, which was now only 40 kilometres away.
Once there, we rode together for a while, until I decided it was time for me to part with them: Remembering the whole Dutch park thing (it took me ages to find my way out of the city in the morning), I was eager to get out of Berlin before the night.
After that, things started to get easier.
I devised a simple trick that saved me lots of time and headaches: Instead of insisting on getting to the next city each and every evening (which I perceived as “checkpoints” during my progression), I started to stop after them and to study the map for the next day.
Because waking up not knowing where to go is a practical nightmare.
By doing that, I was waking up already knowing where to go, being able to ride 50 kilometres or so before having to even worry about the map or asking directions, and by that time I would be much more alert than when I woke up.
And so I crossed the polish border, allowing myself to take a break in Gorzów Wielkopolski.
On the very first night in Poland, in some remote village, I started looking for something to hang my hammock on. I did find a place, only to realize it was some Polish guy’s field.
So I went to him and asked him in all the languages I know if I could possibly hang my hammock in his field for the night.
To what he answered: “Wait”. Or, to be more accurate, “Vait”.
I tried to ask more questions, only to get the same answer: “Vait”.
So I waited. I offered to help him out with what he was doing. The answer was… Well, you guessed it.
After a while, his wife, his son and his daughter-in-law arrived by car. Turns out they were archaeologists, the mother spoke excellent Russian while the children could speak fluent English.
They invited me into their house, made me dinner and offered me a bed. It felt like heaven.
But the most impressive thing happened as we were parting the next morning. Aside from making me some sandwiches for the road, they once more told me: “Vait”.
They wanted to know where I was planning to be in the evening. And they called a friend, who became my host that evening in Bydgoszcz. Then another friend. And it went on for all the time I was in Poland.
(It’s amazing how, when you’re going somewhere, some people instinctively want to help you get there to feel part of the big thing.)
After Poland came Lithuania, where I started to feel a bit concerned about the dead animals on the roads, which were starting to be just as big as me.
But I kept going on. A few more near-death experiences later (due to some truck drivers that were polite enough to horn me from three meters away, resulting in me having a choice between falling on the side of the road and ending up under the truck’s wheels), I ended up in Riga, Latvia.
I took some time to chill out in some park.
But, as I was trying to exit the city, I started to realize that it was impossible to go any further. The bike road I was following was nowhere to be found, and the only roads coming in and out of the city were huge highways, which I wasn’t ready to try again.
It was a humility raincheck to acknowledge that, after 12 days on the road, I had to stop there. But it was still better than not getting to Saint Petersburg or dying, so I found a bus line to take me to my final destination.
It took some money under the table for the driver to accept me with my bike, but I did get on that bus, and I did get to Saint Petersburg. We arrived in the early morning on August the 6th. The streets were almost empty and the city was magnificent.
It was one of those cathartic moments, where I was feeling slightly drunk on a sense of fulfillment.
I had been repeating myself that I could do it everyday, but it was feeling more like a desperate mantra than something real. And now, just like that, I was there.
I stayed in Saint Petersburg for about a month, attending that summer university I had signed up for.
I haven’t much to say about Saint Petersburg itself. Cities are cities, they’re not as different from each other as we like to think sometimes.
Of course it was beautiful, breathtaking and everything. Of course I enjoyed it. But not nearly as much as the road itself, even though I wasn’t realizing it while I was getting there…
Church of Our Savior on Spilled Blood, Saint Petersburg
Now that I’m home, I’m starting to see this incredible journey of mine in a new light.
Overall, the main thing that got me through was refusing to listen to the voice in my head constantly repeating me that “it wasn’t meant to be”, “it won’t work”, “it can’t be done”, “you’re lost” or “give up” and to answer it each and every time: “Not now, not today”.
Because getting lost actually is the way to find the road (pun intended).
Having the curiosity to go forward, not knowing what the road may have in store for us or what people we will cross paths with is the single best gift we can make to ourselves…
Who knows? Maybe this will work out, or maybe it won’t. But let’s find out."
Flash forward to today: I’m living in Moscow because, in a sense, I never really came back home from that big journey.
I wish I could live my life a bit more as a bike trip sometimes though. To acknowledge that the worst thing we can do to ourselves is not trying to find out if something works or not, because even learning that it doesn’t still takes us one step closer to our goal.
To remember that the road is not always straightforward and that it might take a bit more time to reach our destination than we initially planned, but that as long as we keep going, we’re gonna get there.
And most importantly, that the travel is not about the destination, but about the trip itself.
In the end, life is nothing but a bike ride…