Budapest by Bicycle Stage IV ..... The Danube and Transcontinental Shipping

If UNESCO is anything like the Olympics Committee, you should be able to recognise them by their very nice winter sea jackets. Only one ferry company is permitted to operate through the Donaudurchbruch between Kelheim and Kloster Weltenburg, and no private craft or canoes are permitted. The cost of world heritage.

Kelheim is where the Main-Donau canal joins and international shipping on the Danube starts, creating an east west link across Europe which is well used by cargo ships (they are too big to be called barges) from Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland and even Italy (lost? like their political leadership?).

There are many locks and hydro power stations taking advantage of the huge volumes of water and swift current.Best of all are the cable ferries: they have no engine, instead hanging off a pulley on a high overhead cable across the river and steered by a huge oar to keep the pointing 45 degrees into the current to propel them across the river.

Passau is an old city at the confluence of the Donau, the Inn and the Ilz, a busy passenger liner port. I am now 1200km into my bike ride and about 700km downstream of Donaueschingen, half way to Budapest.

Budapest by Bicycle Stage III ..... The Blue Danube and the Limes

Sidetracking away from the Donau to Blaubeuron is fascinating. The dive shops should have alerted me to what was going on. This is a particularly pretty abbey town, but its main attraction is a deep blue hole out of which gushes up to 32,000 L/sec of blueish, limestone-purified water. Divers have not yet found the end of the tunnels, struggling with Jules Vernes directions after  a few kilometres, but they are full of huge chambers with islands and stalactites.

Another deviation took me across to the parallel valley of the Alt Muehlertal, formerly known as the Donau valley before it broke through the limestone cliffs at Kelheim a few hundred million years ago. I spent another few rest days enjoying the forests, cliffs, castles and rich fossil exhibits and exploring the fascinating remnants of the Limes (Hadrian's wall) and the early Roman frontier.

Water from Blaubeuron takes about 2 months to travel to the Black Sea. I've taken 2 weeks and 914km to cover the first 430km of the Donau, so it will probably beat me to Budapest.

Budapest by Bicycle Stage II ..... The Upper Danube and its Disappearance

The Donau starts to get interesting at Tuettlingen as it begins to carve its way through the Karst limetsones of the Swabian Alps. I spent a few rest days Around Findingen (celebrating its 1150th anniversary). As some will know, my rest days can involve some refreshing 30km hikes, and I walked through some really beautiful forests, up to lookout stones over huge vertical cliffs, to catsles, abbeys and hiostoric towns. The higly ornate abbeys each have their own specialty, and you won't find better wheat beers and fresh smoked sausage anywhere else in the world. I didn't try the flowers.

It's Karst country with impressive cliffs and deep caves. The steadily increasing size of the Donau suddenly disappears into the porous "Versickerung" (= draining away). It's probably no coincidence that this word is pronounced exactly the smae as the english pronounciation of "Versicherung" (= insurance), that great hole where money drains away.

Budapest by Bicycle Stage I ..... From Stuttgart into the Black Forest

I set off early morning in magic weather, but it had got cold overnight and downhill in 7 degC through dark shady forests soon had my toes and fingers uncomfortably numb. No wonder no-one else is riding in shorts and sandals!

Stuttgart is a very green city and you're never more than 15 minutes from a forest or park. The cycleway through the heavy industrial harbour area is amazingly full of trees and views only of river and forest. It gets a bit built out around Ploechingen, but from Tuebingen south, the ride up the Neckar valley is very pretty, with lots of castles, forests and quaint little fachwerkhaus villages like Horb and Rottweil.

It took me two and a half days and 280km to make my way to the source of the Neckar and across to Donaueschingen, the source of the Danube at KM2840 to start my journey. These two springs are only a handful of kilometres away from each other, but one flows to the North Sea, the other to the Black Sea.

Dans la vie, tout est lié!

Je reviens de l’assemblée générale annuelle de l’association Meeting Professional International (MPI) chapitre Montréal & Québec. J’y occupe bénévolement le rôle de vice-président communications, depuis l’automne 2010. La rencontre, qui réunissait plus de 130 personnes, se tenait au tout nouveau Sheraton Aéroport de Montréal, à Dorval. Tout est lié, pourquoi? Parce que AIESEC HEC y organise le congrès national d’AIESEC Canada en décembre prochain.

Parce que Charles Goyeche, qui occupait le poste de directeur des banquets au Holiday Inn Pointe-Claire (où j’organise plusieurs événements par année) est rendu au Sheraton. Parce que ce soir, plusieurs étudiants du Collège Lasalle étaient présents. Parce que parmi eux, deux m’ont félicité de mon nouveau poste d’enseignant (en plus de ma job régulière à temps plein d’agent de liaison et planificateur d’événements à la Chambre immobilière du Grand Montréal) chez Zoom Académie. « Nous étions dans la classe de Lyne Branchaud l’été dernier, quand tu es venu faire une présentation test ». Pourquoi tout est lié?

Parce qu’en revenant à la maison m’attendait une enveloppe du Centre de formation professionnelle des Découvreurs. Je ne peux croire que 23 ans après avoir quitté ma ville, la plus belle ville du monde, je serai sur le « payroll » de mon ancienne commission scolaire du primaire et du secondaire.

Tout est lié parce que ce jeune chef d’entreprise que j’ai rencontré ce soir à l’AGA MPI est à Montréal depuis quatre ans et qu’il est originaire du quartier Montcalm à Québec. Il habitait sur la rue Joffre, pas loin d’où mon père a travaillé toute sa vie et d’où je suis né.

La vie me lance une fois de plus le signal que je suis tout à fait dans mon domaine dans l’événementiel et l’associatif. C’est quoi une association? Un rassemblement de gens qui partagent les mêmes valeurs et qui se regroupent pour améliorer les choses. Les gens qui donnent du temps dans leur association sont des passionnés. Je me sens tellement choyé d’en côtoyer à mon travail à la CIGM et dans mes implications bénévoles chez MPI, AIESEC HEC et AIESEC Canada.

Hier soir, je me trouvais dans les locaux de Zoom Académie, près du marché Atwater à Montréal. Devant mes futurs étudiants! Samedi, j’étais à Toronto pour la réunion du premier trimestre du conseil d’administration d’AIESEC Canada. Demain matin, je présente LinkedIn  à un groupe de 110 courtiers immobiliers à l’hôtel Ruby Foos.

Le point commun de tout ceci? Des gens qui s’impliquent pour faire avancer le monde. Des gens qui ont compris que dans la vie, il faut échanger avec ses pairs pour grandir. Et vous, cher lecteur, quand vous impliquez-vous pour changer le monde?

The Rise and Fall of Technology

The widespread availability of the internet and email ten years ago was a world changing milestone in communication technology. And good it was. Internet cafes sprang up and it became an easy, quick and affordable method for travellers and others to stay in touch with family and friends. Internet cafes are still thriving in South America, and still exist in the PIGS countries of Europe, but northern Europe has got over the crest and moved on, freewheeling it speedily downhill. Wifi and WLAN cafes are now all the rage. Great, perhaps, if you carry a notepad or eye phone, but even if I had one, I don't think it compares to the simple, old-fashioned PC and 17 inch screen. I'm back to communicating by postcard and am not convinced that technology has moved forward here.

I'm even more certain that camera technology has gone down the wrong path. I love my old Pentax K1000, but finding slide film and getting it developed is next to impossible. Digital cameras take almost as good a photo, and save carrying the heavy, bulky rolls of film. But with technology advances, they now no longer have viewfinders (unless you buy a big, heavy, bulky digital SLR): instead they have large energy-hungry screens. I now have to carry more weight in batteries (or recharging devices) than I ever had to with film, only getting 200 to 300 photos out of lithium batteries when I used to get 700 to 800 with the first digital cameras. Worse still, the cameras don't last. I'm now on my third digital camera in less than 8 years, and it's probably my last. If I had any, I'd sell my shares in Canon and buy an eye phone.

Budapest by bicycle map

This is a rainfall map and I'm trying to not fall into the blueish colours. The intention is to depart Stuttgart up the Neckar, go around the Schwäbische Alb to the source of the Donau, then down to Passau and on into Austria, Czech and Hungary.