KTM tour August 2011
 
You really need an excuse to get away. Sometimes. Some other times you've got some friends who'll excuse you. So there's Marc, he finds the KTM Superduke interesting and buys one. One's enough. But there's more where they come from, so they say. So then you start talking and convince him to pay a visit to the factory. That's rideable since it's situated in Austria. We're pretty glad he didn't bought an oriental bike, for that matter. That would really would have cost us our spare time for the next years...

So, there we go. We are enthousiasts and planned a rout of 3500 KM and more. Just to have some fun on the way since Austria has many mountains and such. Here's the plan. We'll see what happens... And it did, we made it. 3769 KM in total.
Day Start Through End
28-08 Sunday Boxtel, NL Belgium Mersch, LU
29-08 Monday Mersch, LU France, Germany Greifensee, CH
30-08Tuesday Greifensee, CH Liechtenstein Pill, AU
31-08 Wednesday Pill, AU KTM factory & CZ rep. Königswiesen, AU
01-09 Thursday Königswiesen, AU  Slovenia Feldkirchen, AU
02-09 Friday Feldkirchen, AU Italy & GrossGlockner Niedernsill, AU  
03-09 Saturday Niedernsill, AU Kühtai Beuren, DE
04-09 Sunday Beuren, DE Rheinland Pfalz  Boxtel, NL
 
As you can see, this is a nice route. Every day has it's own color. Missing is part of the light blue route on the left side. We have hit 11 countries: Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Italy.
 
So the base for a classic ride in the range of how to get an iron butt in no time is here, and these are our attendants: Marc on a Superduke, Twan on a Multistrada and Bart on a Tuono.
At day one started after dinner and drove to Mersch, just up from Luxembourg city. At the start of day 2 we made a picture at the hotel. We went to Switzerland through nice routes along the Rein and the border between France and Germany. And ended up at not one of the most cheap hotels in Greifensee. Going there, never forget to ride the Alptalstraße to Allbruck!
 
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After the refreshing hotel in Greifensee we went onwards to Liechtenstein what really flashed in our eyes. Then in Feldkirch suddenly one's shifter was bend. But soon forgotten when we hit the Silvrettastrasse. What a view! Onwards we rode to Pill, Southern Tirol. Grab a beer and entertained the lady of the house. By accident, not on purpose.
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Wednesday we went through Brixen, Bart knows the place. Had a great view on the "Wilder Kaiser" and went straight through the little tip of Germany to arrive at noon at Mattighofen, where KTM is situated. First we went inside the engine factory. Got send off to the main factory which was actually closed for visitors except on Friday.

Excellent, after buying a t-shirt (been there, done that) we headed for the Czech Republic. Saw the tip of Lipno lake and headed back into Austria.

After a suddenly closed first Gasthofe we found one that included a café, butchers', brewery and bbq. We needed all of it!
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Then Thursday we headed for Slovenia, our 10th country. Weather was still perfect, not a drop of rain. Except there. Only been there for one hour, but that's enough! On the way back we saw a nice route in the mountains that would have closed in 1969. And, it did...

Still we found our fun going along the route and finding ourselves still about half a day ahead of our scheme! Finding a Gasthöfe was amazing, first we were send off at a biker's place. I think because we didn't drive Harley's. But the next one was in the middle of the forest, most enjoyable!
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The next day there was a lot of pressure. It would be our destiny of reaching the 11th country, Italy. Obviously we found a nice route to go there. And arrive at lunchtime. Finally the best pasta and expresso was at our hands. Hard to leave, but we still had to find our way to the Grossglockner mountain.

Arriving there we heard it was a bit wet. But we had a bit of luck on our side and drove all the way up at the end of the day to find the sun piercing through the clouds. These following pictures tell that story.

Ending this Friday we had a hard time finding a place to sleep. We were told off at one place (again) because it was full of Czech people and really was closed (???). But the latter one was excellent, we even got excited because of a pink bunny. Whatever.
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Saturday was quite a change. We rode all day long! First we saw a big waterfall (forgot the name) and then headed for Kühtai. Great man, to see the plains there and cows everywhere. How many...

Then we made a mistake and split up on the highway. Not that good of an idea. But we found our way back to eachother and headed for Germany again.

Unfortunately we ended up on the Fernpass, which is the worst road to get on. It is really filled up with cars, caravans and motorhomes. Then we found there is no way you can get hold of a room in Stuttgart easily, so after many stops we found two and had to split up. But in Beuren the food was good and beds were great as well.
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KTMtour-119 Our last day, Sunday. Quite a distance to ride, again. So we started early as always and headed for one of the most fun tracks of Germany to go home with. The route went from Karlsruhe to almost Koblenz and went along the "48". Remember this, folks!

A few stops for gas later, we arrived in the Netherlands. Got bored easily along the highway and after that we were a little dissapointed by the many speed bumps. So headed for "de Ketting" where we ate and said goodbye.

This was a "one-off" trip, but really brought us a lot of fun and many things to see. We never thought we would be riding only. Between 9.00 and 18.00 we sat on our bikes. So you really don't need Gran Tourism machines for these trips!