It is time for another little adventurous trip. It’s only a short one, but like the trip to Japan, it was postponed for some years, in this case due to the Pandemic. Three years ago, my mate Stefan and I decided to do a trip together, the concept was fairly simple: visit the white spots (aka unvisited countries) on my motorbiking map. In this case, this means Bosnia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia. Not in three weks. Nor two weeks, no. We plans to do it in 9 days, which is equivalent to one country per day. And of course I ride with my trusted steed, i.e. the old Honda XBR500 with 397.000 km on the clock.

After leaving the fair in Munich where I worked this week, I returned to my place in Miesbach and changed gear considerably. I left shortly after 5 p.m. in showery rain and picked up Stefan. We filled up and set off for our first long ride together in four years. Our old ladies (a 1985 XBR and a 88 R100GS) go slow, but steady. We had decided to do a short trip in the evening of about 280 km that would save us some riding the next day; we passed Salzburg and crossed the Alps on the Tauernautobahn direction south. We had put on our rain gear at home and finally we passed some strong showers; riding in the sunshine in full rain gear does look somewhat stupid. In the end we profited from our anticipation.

After 2.5 hours we reached our destination for today, Villach in Carinthia. The hotel is “no frills” near the station but ok. We walked a short distance to a nice brewery where we had some good beers and good local food. Tomorrow the heat will start and rain gears won’t be needed for a while.

Should you be interested in checking the GPS track: https://new.spotwalla.com/trip/7ded-65eee9b-cf5f/view?p=Balkan