Offline across the Alps by bike - Part 1
so right now I'm getting my phone out for the last time for a long time now I've had this thought at the back of my mind especially when I'm planning some new adventures. Is it really necessary that I bring along my phone on this one? am I really so dependent on this little tool that I cannot go on any Adventures without it well there's really no doubt that phones have totally changed the way how we travel navigation for example has become so very easy with phones. With phones we can always check exactly where we are which route we have to take or where the closest train station or the closest supermarket is back there I accidentally took a big time wrong turn into the wrong Valley we don't even have to give up communication with our friends and our family. We can just contact them whenever we like
and with social media we can even always check what everyone's up to at the moment if we want to find out if it's going to rain tomorrow we just pull up the weather app, if we want to find out something about the place we find ourselves in we ask Google or if we want to listen to some music we just open Spotify. so yeah I can only imagine what travel must have been like before phones but after all that's what I'm here to figure out wow really grateful to be here now I'm not entirely new to this whole thing as a couple years ago in the mountains of New Zealand I've already done a hike for eight days without a phone and actually without seeing any other humans but over there navigation wasn't a problem at all because I had just had to follow one single Trail now traveling through the densely populated middle Europe with thousands of roads to choose from on the bicycle without a phone... that would be a completely new kind of Challenge and I really didn't know how well it would turn out but of course I had to try it morning, I'm out here by the Lago Maggiore in the southern part of the Alps um yeah I'm just outside of the city of Locarno in southern Switzerland it's uh the Italian part of Switzerland here and the plan is to cycle back home to Freiburg where I live and study um to get there I have to get all the way across the Alps through all of Switzerland and then a little portion through the blackforest and then I'll be home and I'm not gonna use my phone for the whole time I will have my phone with me, what I'm gonna do is I will switch my phone off right now and if everything goes well I will switch it on again when I get to Freiburg and not use it at all during that time. I think I will only switch the phone back on again if there's an actual Health Emergency. I feel like all the problems that are not related to my physical health I
should be able to overcome without a phone. there's some really good cycling paths that you can follow here in Switzerland so I just have to watch out for those signs and just in case I wrote down all the city names that I want to pass all the cities that I want to go through so in case I lose the Cycling path I can just look at my piece of paper here check out what's the next city that I have to get to and just ask someone for the way I got a bunch of books with me of course so yeah it'll just be me the road the mountains my books and yeah the real life as you could say um yeah I'm excited to see how it will affect me so let's get my phone out for the last time phone is off doesn't feel much different right now. enough talk about the phone let's enjoy the journey. right now I'm gonna cycle the rest of the Lago Maggiore and head somewhere into those mountains cloudy today but it's very good cycling weather and I just realized that I will not have a clock with me and I will not be able to check the weather so really that's going to be exciting waking up in the tent and not knowing what time it is not knowing what the weather is going to be like. also as you realize you're watching a video right now on YouTube I guess so that means I'm carrying my GoPro in my hand right now um and the only other electric thing that I have with me is my headlamp so yeah some poplar plantations here so right here you can see the signs that I'm following and so far I've been following the 31. and from now on I'm gonna
follow the number three signs and they're really everywhere. Its hard to miss the signs To get quickly to Freiburg it's the easiest if I take the the you know the quick and big routes um so oftentimes I'll be sharing the routes with a lot of bigger roads and railway lines but that's cool I had a good lunch break There's an actual Beach here a bunch of stuff to explore around here and by the way this is how I know how much kilometers I can do in a day or how much more kilometers it is to go um I wrote down the kilometer numbers next to the cities that I'm passing through so. although I have no clue what time it is um but yeah it feels like it's not too late and I'm just gonna do about 30 kilometers more like I said and see where I get to back there I accidentally took a big time wrong turn into the wrong Valley because I lost the signs Then i stopped at a bus station because they always have some little Maps there and on the map I saw that I was going into the wrong direction I believe that little river here is also the ticino river which flows into the Lago Maggiore. oh I guess this is what you call intuition I just saw a little little Trail going into leading towards the mountains and thought it looked interesting and really wanted to check it out I just felt like there's got to be something there and check this out so happy I made that decision and stopped my bike this is wild well that was a cool little side Adventure I feel like there's still some room left today for some cycling so I will not stay here for the night but yeah Great Adventure Houses of Rock Rock built into the rocks over here we see a big concrete fields of Industry I don't know what it's for all right so today came to an end I'm just gonna Camp next to the ticino river gonna find a spot right now somewhere in the forest there, what an awesome day all right so I just woke up maybe an hour ago had some breakfast some coffee and yeah it's kind of cool you know waking up without any clock I still don't know what time it is you know I have no appointments or anything so I just wake up when I wake up I get going when I get going um I feel like I had enough sleep and yeah so it's probably been like 24 hours without a phone now and yeah I can't say that it's that big of a challenge I mean I'm really enjoying myself here yeah but the the one thing I guess is the music you know uh yesterday I'm just cycling for hours and hours and there's always like a little nagging feeling thought and in the back of my head where it's like you know "some music with my headphones my ear would be cool right now even some podcasts or something maybe" I love music and I think I gotta learn that you know every moment has its amazing quality so if there's music playing in a certain moment then it's great I can enjoy that absolutely enjoy that music but if there's no music at another time then also I gotta learn to just appreciate those moments also you know especially if it's for a long time like I I don't want to Crave things. I'm really happy to be learning to be more sensible to all kinds of sounds that I don't choose to play in my ears you know like the birds singing right now, the cars going on the highway, the river flowing the trains to choochooing When I go to through cities you know people talking machines humming all of that stuff's just sounds you know and I'm really grateful to be able to hear sounds so whether it's music or anything else so that was my morning talk hope you enjoyed and now I'm gonna hit the road So right now I'm here at the train station in airolo. to get across the Alps um at this time of year in April you basically have to get through a tunnel through the mountains and so yeah I'm just going to take the train for One Stop, the train goes through the mountain through a tunnel and then I'll continue by bike there It was also no problem getting a ticket without a phone you know there's ticket machines yeah so here I'll show you what I'm having for lunch it's um these crusty Little Bread pieces with an olive pasta sauce tastes just like a little pizza a little olive pizza and cold and kind of crusty but it tastes great Well I just rode on the train and came out the other side and it's actually sunny on the other side whereas on the other one was totally cloudy like not a single bit of blue sky and now it's downhill also actually this train has also brought me from the Italian part of Switzerland to the german part of switzerland all the leaves you see in this Frame of the video are edible so that's a lot of greenery there good stuff and even over there from the trees there's some Hazel leaves that I can eat there's a linden tree leaves those are actually pretty good Maple Leaves over there a lot of food all around here this is the valley that I came down from up there from the train station and it continues towards the North to the flatter parts of Switzerland and I'm going up into a side Valley of this big Valley I don't know if that's the geologically correct term but yeah and for the record I was expecting this whole trip to be slightly rainy weather and haven't had rain so far it's sunny now and people on the train told me that it's just going to be cloudy without rain tomorrow so yeah the world is really kind to me right now That was quite the rough uphill with the bike really steep. now I've repacked all my stuff that I need
for tonight into my backpack here. the hike starts right now wow that looks beautiful there's still a bunch of houses around. I want to get somewhere up there so as all things do today's adventure has come to an end. the trail would go across the bridge right there for some reason the bridge which is kind of just a ladder they put it over there so there's no Bridge anymore and there's still a little bit of snow and over there too but you can also see how the snow is melting rapidly it's been really warm today so of course you could try to walk across the snow get to the other side and then up there but yeah like I said it's melting at the moment and it will probably support me but I'm alone right now and if I fall on that River I'm dead you know it's just if I fall in that's it so yeah even if it's just a very slight slight slight slight chance that I'll fall in uh just not gonna do it and find somewhere else to camp around here it's not like I'm in a bad spot here yeah I'm not sad or anything that I can't continue it's just how things are you know. got amazing views right here so what more could I ask All he rocks facing this side are actually still warm. Sun must have been so intense today Well not lookin too shabby here eh? couldn't ask for a better spot , the waterfalls over here Thank you thank you for this place Really be grateful to be here I'm gonna have myself in a nice dinner with a view and after today I'll probably sleep real well I've just been sitting here looking outside for a while so nice and now I'm gonna have some oatmeal for breakfast. well I just did some morning exploring
I thought I had to pack a lot of books and I did but I guess when I'm traveling with my bike and Hiking all day you know and I'm totally tired from all the activity in the evenings I can maybe read a few pages and then I'm just too tired I mean actually I'm reading and writing more in the mornings uh uh because then I'm not that tired and you know I don't have a schedule or anything so I just take my morning slow and now I'll get on my way see what the day has to offer see how the snow is melting at the moment and all the grass is still very flat so it just melted away and you can see here there's some tunnels for what I think it's from mice maybe if someone knows better you can correct me but... look at that cave up there it's huge on there's another cave I've just done a little bit of grocery shopping and now I'm enjoying this insane biking trail I actually know this area a little bit I've been hiking here one year ago and trying to find the same camping spot me and my friend Riley camped at last year yeah just incredible here and here we have got some Linden Leaves I really like those because they don't taste like much like they're not bitter so you can really eat a bunch of them and they almost have some like filling qualities you know some free snacks out here some of them are really big leaves yeah thank you trees! now look at this, I found the spot feel like I've already done so much today and seen so much and the sun is still so high up the day just keeps going and going. yeah I must have had breakfast around seven then or something. yeah it's nice just sleeping for as much as the body needs I mean human have lived for thousands of years without alarm clocks. all right my GoPro is charging in the Sun um I made myself a cup of coffee because I didn't have one today in the morning real cold. I just had to jump in and it's also kind of the middle of the trip
so very good time to you know wash myself a little bit if you can call it that. I think now I'll enjoy this evening even more I even bought myself a beer which still feels really cold
2022-10-15 21:43
