After a long time, the last December I managed to organise a real down-on-the-road trip (by train) getting to the Netherlands and norther Germany, in places I have never visited before, except one: Berlin, where I've been once 15 years ago.

It was that kind of journey I always long for, just travelling on local trains, watching people and places. And what a nice feeling to meet also people I know living in many different places. That was what gave me the most of the whole trip, that was a real fun everyday everywhere I have been!

I got to Amsterdam by plane and then started to travel by train making my way through most of the main towns in Holland, and then I shifted to to visit the winter markets (and not only) of many German towns. All the way to Berlin, which I have to mention separately.

I've been just once in Berlin before, in the summer of 1995, and I really have to say i couldn't recognise it, so much it has changed after all these years. Still, the atmosphere is so particular, I couldn't avoid to get involved in the night life, full of people at any time. Without much chaos, it looked also quite safe, a big town where maybe life is not that bad, after all.

Here below the full route of my Dutch-German trip, and I've also taken some pictures.

View Holland-Germany 2009 in a larger map

And there you go! As of 7th June 2009, I have finally driven 100 000 km with my Aprilia Pegaso Cube 1997!!! It is really a great satisfaction, if you think that the engine has never been opened!

So here we go with the 100 000 km maintenance:

• Cooling liquid replaced
• Air filter replaced

And here some other pictures:

Update (23.3.2009): also on the ABC:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7071701&page=1

Nella tabella qui sotto sono riportate le frequenze delle stazioni radio FM ricevibili a Oulu, Finlandia.

(k): canale via cavo

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The reason is that when a request is made for a page on your site, Joomla! returns the HTTP status code “200 – the server successfully returned the page” also for error pages. This is problematic for those working with Google Webmaster Tools and trying to get a sitemap resolved.

Information found (after weeks of search) here. That is: “When all else fails, read the instructions”.

UPDATE 12.8.2008: Forget what I have written above, at least in case you use SEF, it doesn’t work. That is, the if loop is inexplicably matched all the time, so it returns a 404 Page Not Found also for existing pages

UPDATE 27.8.2008: Following this suggestion on a Joomla! Forum thread, I managed to do the trick. The best way is to create the error.php page not in the way it is suggested on the Joomla! web site, but in the following way:

// no direct access
defined( '_JEXEC' ) or die( 'Restricted access' );

if (($this->error->code) == '404') {
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where error-404-page-not-found is your customised “404 Page Not Found” error page. This will return a 404 page for any error it occurs. To prevent to show the 404 page for other errors, paste the full code showed in the post.

With a total amount of 2224 km spanned in ten days, the trip day by day was as follows:

• 18.7. Oulu – Virrat – Tampere
• 19.7. Stay in Tampere for the Iron Maiden’s gig
• 20.7. Tampere – Hämeenlinna – Helsinki
• 21.7. Trip to Suomenlinna (not by bike)
• 22.7. Helsinki-Porvoo-Helsinki
• 23.7. Helsinki-(ferry)-Tallin-Haapsalu (Estonia)
• 24.7. Haapsalu-(ferry)-Kärdla-Kiudja-Kõpu-Ristna
• 25.7. Kiudja-Sõru-(ferry)-Triigi-Kurressaare-Mändjala
• 26.7. Mändjala-Kuivastu-(ferry)-Virtsu-Tallin-(ferry)-Helsinki
• 27.7. Helsinki-Valkeakoski-Oulu (almost 700 km in one day!)

So basically the journey was half in Finland and half in Estonia, including five ferries to get also to the island of Hiiumaa and Saaremaa. If you count on top of this that 800 km have been done in two people with tent and mattresses on the back, it was really a good seikkailu!

I have to say really enjoyed Estonia, still quite cheap (but I wonder for how long), wonderful sand beaches and nice people.

And, by the way, on the way back to Oulu, the Pegaso overtook 97000 km, just 3000 to the sixth figure!

Here below the detailed map of the journey, it might take a while to load: be patient, I said it was a long trip!

View Larger Map

For brave people there are also some interesting videos of the SMB gang. We tried to dub them in Italian, but it was extremely difficult, due to the bad command of any language of those ugly mugs, so it was decided to add some English subtitles, but it ended up to add just nothing to an impossible understanding…

SMartaBoys video section