Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Packing my motorcycle after a couple of days in the same place is always interesting, somehow my gear never seems to fit gracefully back into the panniers – it always requires prodding, poking, stuffing, punching, pushing to finally squeeze those lids closed. Needless to say nothing I carry is remotely fragile, except me of course.…

I woke in my small hotel room in Ouistreham. It had a maritime theme; shells and mermaids painted on the wall, a porthole for a window and I’m sure the room was swaying from side to side. I felt ill, I wasn’t sure if it was seasickness brought on by this claustrophobic steerage cabin or…

It was time to leave Luxembourg. Packing after staying in the same place is never easy when you need to pack all our gear into a couple of panniers, you always seem to have more stuff. I got it all in eventually and packed the bike for the journey. We said our goodbyes and headed…

The day after a marathon is always a challenge especially in the walking normally department and this particular day after was additionally challenging since the race finished earlier that morning. The first order of the day was breakfast, and a slap up fried brekkie with all the trimming was, for once, well deserved. My family…

After a good nights sleep I was up and out early. I wanted to briefly visit the Mercedes-Benz museum before leaving Stuttgart so after I checked out and  packed my motorcycle I made the short trip across town towards the museum. I found a nice café nearby for breakfast before going in. Once inside I…

Riding through the Bohemian countryside from Prague to Pilsen was a joy. I was on my way to Pilsen to visit the first brewery in the world to brew Pilsner before entering Germany. Staying off the main highways I found myself stopping often in towns and villages that seemed to ooze an honest cultural warmth…

Prague was a surprise. Its endless narrow winding cobbled streets, large bright squares and stunning architecture had me walking for hours and loving every step. A day was never going to be enough and I found myself being pulled onto the next sight as time was ticking. One thing that I noticed about Prague was…

Last day in Krakow and after packing the bike and paying off the sour faced car park attendants I headed for Oskar Schindler’s ceramics factory. To get there I had to cross railway tracks and I could help but wonder what these tracks carried during the second world war. The factory was close to the tracks…

Today I could relax, and the only distance I had to cover was as far as I wanted to explore on foot in Kraków. This city is beautiful, it is crammed with the most beautiful architecture I have even seen, it is clean and seems to have everything I could want. The Main Market Square…

After two days off my motorcycle I was looking forward to getting back on the road. It was going to be a long day; I had to ride over 600km to reach Kraków in Poland. Leaving Berlin I was filled with equal measures of excitement and apprehension as I started the next leg of my…

I slept really well and was woken by an announcement in Dutch over the ships loud speakers… luckily the message was repeated in English and it turns out I have a little over an hour before we docked in Holland. My cabin was right a the front of the ship facing forward so when I…

To many the purpose of the trip is to run the Luxembourg marathon but really it’s all about the journey… it’ll take two weeks and almost 5,000 kilometers to get there and back and I’m looking forward to every minute and meter on the road. It didn’t start according to plan, I forgot that I…