Before I went to the Benelux countries, I spent a few days in Germany. The first days I spent near Kiel. Subsequently, the motorcycle was brought to the Honda dealer for maintenance. After the maintenance was done, I drove to my next destination, the Transrapid Test Track. What should have been a showpiece project of German engineering art, now bums to himself. The Transrapid is a maglev train that can reach top speeds of over 450 km / h. There were already plans for routes throughout Germany, but increasing development costs and a tragic accident with 23 deaths in 2006 meant the end for the Transrapid. Nevertheless, today a track is active and used by millions of people. Not in Germany, but in China. In Shanghai, the Transrapid is used as a shuttle train between the airport and the city.
After visiting the test track, I drove on to Dusseldorf. Divya was already waiting for me there. Her husband died recently and I stayed with her for a while before going to the Netherlands.
For motorcyclists, the country does not offer much, not in the part I drove. The landscape is flat and there are hardly any curves. So I drove through the day, looked at windmills here and there and stayed overnight at a camp site near a farm. The next day was the same and I reached Ghent in Belgium in the evening. Again, the country was flat with little curves. In Ghent I stayed at a campsite on the outskirts. From here there was a free shuttle bus to the city. I met again with Barbi, the girlfriend (or now ex-girlfriend ???) of Robert, who died in Sweden. We had already met in Dusseldorf. We visited the old town of Ghent together. The city is already very touristy, but not as Amsterdamm. Barbi and I spent half the day together in Ghent. In the evening she drove on and I stayed at the campsite again. My destination for the following day was Germany, or at least near the border. So I decided not to drive all over the country, but to drive around Brussels on the motorway. I stopped in Liège to look at an abandoned observatory. You could not see much, because the site was in a private area and was locked. As I drove on, I saw directions to Spa. In my head it began to rattle ... something was in Spa ??? ... Then it made "click", there must be a race track where the MotoGP was. So I drove to Spa, through the village and after a few corners I was at the racetrack. I went for a walk along the track, watched the cars turn rounds and drove on to Germany.
The day had been long and I decided to take a room. I found a biker hotel in the Eiffel and ate in the restaurant. At the same table sat Astrid and Axel. They too were traveling by motorcycle. They stopped there to watch the DTM at the Nürburgring on the weekend. We talked about motorcycling all the evening, my trip and this and that. The next morning we met again for breakfast and then everyone went back his way. They drove to the ring and I drove to Zweibrücken.
Zweibrücken was my next destination for two reasons. When I was in Kiel, I had ordered new glasses and I could pick them up in Zweibrücken. The second reason is more interesting. The university there has an observatory. This looks like R2D2 from Star Wars. Definitely worth a visit.
After the short visit to R2D2 I drove on in the direction of Luxembourg and stayed overnight at the border on a campsite near the Moselle. In the evening I went by foot across a bridge to Luxembourg, enjoyed a dinner and went to sleep.