Howdy, Folks. Got back from my tour of the Netherlands, Germany, and a bit of Poland and Sweden last week. Touring Europe by bike is certainly different from touring in North America, from the absence of toilet paper in Dutch campgrounds to the ubiquity of really rough cobblestones in "former" east German village streets! But the biggest difference, not unexpectedly, is that there is so much to see that one's ADD (Average Daily Distance) goes down drastically. So we (I had a German friend along for 3/4 of the trip) only did 2000 km in about 5 weeks riding. The Law of Camelot was in force: it rained almost every day, but only at convenient times, like during the night, or when we were eating, or inside a museum or church. The people were wonderful, the scenery was great, so was the food, but the old East German tank roads were a horror, as were some of the forest tracks and sand traps that their cycle routes follow.
John