About this trip

The Beginning!

Hi all! To those readers who don't know me, I am Mika, a traveller from Finland. This blog is about the bike trip that I will soon start: a trip beginning from Berlin, Germany and from there reaching north, back to my home & home country, Finland.

Dear reader, in case you think I am an experienced cyclist, let me get it straight from the start. I'm not and I didn't actually come to Berlin for this. I have been living here for half a year and I  need to move back to Finland now, so what better way than biking! My longest biking trip so far dates back to 2002, when I was still a kid. It was a fun-as-long-as-it-lasted trip with an untimely ending. My friend's bike broke down 150 km away from home, so we called my dad to pick us with a car. :) Not an option this time, so wish me luck!

Flying back would have been definitely faster, easier and way cheaper option. However, I love biking and have always wanted to do a long biking trip. Just didn't have enough time and opportunity for it. Now I have! And where did the idea come from? It's actually rather ex tempore. The idea originally came from a friend as a joke: "Yeah, why don't you bike back to Finland." What a piece of gold!

The initial plan is to first follow the (semi)famous Berlin-Copenhagen bike trail. At Copenhagen I will take a (hopefully) well-deserved break, visiting a friend and just enjoying, as it's the first time for me in "the city of the mermaid." From there on, if condition of bike, biker and rest of the gear allow, I will continue with an improvised route through our beloved neighbor country Sweden. The goal is, of course, to find my way to Stockholm and take a ferry from there to Helsinki. In Stockholm I will also possibly have a pitstop to visit some friends and spend my last Kronor.

I will try to bike at least 100km daily, maybe 150km if possible. I have to admit I have no idea how much I can actually cover in a day. Vamos a ver! Anyway, the goal is not to make it as fast as possible, but to enjoy biking, nature and the travel. At this point, I will set a very approximate ETA: 23.3.2014 in Helsinki.

Updates will follow as frequently as I can access Internet along the way. Posts will mostly cover the travel itself, but a few posts about the bike, gear and preparation will be possibly included as well. Let the journey begin! Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, ich werde dich vermissen!