Mill Hunting

// October 24th, 2007 // travel

“Every week again I push my own borders”, says a random lady who I just met and who is cycling from Amsterdam to Abcoude, a tour of nearly 15 kilometer. “Every week I change the route somewhat and each time I just try to cycle a bit more. Maybe one day I go as far as you!”

The lady was impressed when I told her I came cycling from Huizen, my home-town, which in fact is only twice as far as Abcoude. Even in Holland, where there are more bikes than people, you are looked upon when you travel ‘large distance’ by bike instead by car or public transport.

In other words, traveling can be so relative. I could have told her why I was in Holland or about my travels this past year, or about a friend who is touring the world on his bike, but the lady was already impressed because of the small trip I was making that day. But the woman is right, as I never really traveled in my own country, now I feel I can rediscover this country in different and new ways.

“All you need is to apply at home the same fresh look that a traveler has when discovering new cities and new cultures”, Paul from Austria told me when I visited him half a year after he had couchsurfed at my place in Barcelona. So true.

Anyone who seriously did some long distance-traveling knows the real difference: it is your attitude to what is around you. Are you only caught by what is different to you? Or are you able to keep this way of searching, to look at things that are more familiar to you in the same open way?

So on my way to Amsterdam I made a nice touristic tour of 45 kilometer. I called it the hill-hunting tour, as my goal was to see and photograph mills on this route. I discovered seven mills, just one I had seen before in my life (when I was little).

So I am happy I can cycle again. My Romanian bike-accident was already five weeks back, and I am able to cycle again longer distances. And while the tour towards Amsterdam took me over 7 hours, the next day I cycled the shortest way back. I got home in 1,5 hours – even quicker than public transport on a Sunday and a lot nicer.