Once the trunk was fixed we were on our way to the next city: Munster, Germany! The drive was mainly freeway or “autowan” driving today and it was a little scary. You see there is no speed limit on the freeways in Germany, so people would be doing 160km/hr, just wiping right by us. We stayed in the right lane for most of the drive. The left lane, just like in North America, is the fast lane, or in this case, the “faster lane.” During our drive I started listening to some oldies on my iPod and made some new discoveries. I’m a huge Laurin Hill fan, and have always loved her live album MTV Unplugged from 2002, but it wasn’t until this drive to Munster that I really connected with the lyrics from her song “I Get Out.” As many people know, over the last month the people of Iran have been protesting against the fraudulent acts of the Iranian government during the 2009 presidential election and fighting for their freedom. Although Laurin Hill’s song was not intended for the people of Iran, when I was listening to the lyrics, it seemed as though the people of Iran wrote the words and were speaking out against the Iranian regime. Here are some of the lyrics:

“I get out of all your boxes/You can’t hold me in these chains… Oh I’ll get out/I want out of social bondage…
Your stinking resolution/Is no type of solution/Preventing me freedom/Maintaining your pollution/I won’t support your lie no more/I won’t even try no more/If I have to die oh lord / That’s how I choose to live…I won’t be comprised no more/ I can’t be victimized no more….
Now I’m choosing life yo/I’ll take the sacrifice yo/if everything must go then go/that’s how I choose to live….No more comprises/I see past you’re your disguises…
See you don’t change the truth/And your hurt feelings no excuse/To keep me in this box/Psychological locks/Repressing true expression/Cementing this repression/Promoting mass deception/So that no one can be healed/I don’t respect your system/I won’t protect your system/when you talk I don’t listen”

The song is brilliant! After almost an hour and a half of driving, Riel and I made it to Munster and found ourselves in the middle of a bio organic farm. This was where we were staying tonight. The Young Greens of Munster had organized for us to camp out here for two nights. No one from our team had arrived at the final destination yet, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to hit the city centre and find some wi-fi! Munster was beautiful! It has been my favorite city visited so far on this trip. It was really surprising to me how stunning the city actually was, because when you first get in it seems like it’s all farmland, then you drive about 20 minutes towards the centre and it’s like a modern roman town with pillars everywhere.

Anyways, so I hit a coffee shop as soon as we got into the centre, while Riel went on a mission to find a adapter for our NA plugs, as he had lost one of ours the day before. The waitress at the coffee shop was extremely nice. I was actually quite surprised at how friendly and welcoming these minimal-English speaking Germans were. I ended up sitting there for five hours and working away on my computer. We headed back around 5:00pm to see if any of the riders had made it to the organic farm. It turned out a few of them had arrived for several hours and had found a miniature golf course near by and were having beers and hanging out. Shawn and I headed to the grocery store to buy dinner for the gang! We had BBQ sausages, salad, and tuna for dinner…yum!

Before heading to dinner, everyone was scrambling to set up their tents because it started raining and the wind hit us out of no where fairly strong. As I was emptying out the car, Shawn and Eileen’s tent flew right at me and hit the car. LOL. I quickly grabbed on to it and ran back down the road to give it back to them. It was quite funny!

After dinner the Young Greens joined us around a campfire and each organization introduced themselves. The Young Greens are part of the Green Party in Germany. After our introductions, they wiped out a lyric book filled with 90s sing along songs in English. We ended the day with Brian Adams, Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Green Day, Nirvana, and a few more that I can’t remember right now.

Mark Masongsong, a rider from Victoria, had volunteered to drive in the car with Maryam and take a day off riding to lend me his bike. The only problem being that his bike was too small, his seat was broken, and he rode with clip-in style pedals. After raising the seat as high as we could and firmly duct-taping it into position we were on our way. The others in my pod recommended that I swap out the pedals as soon as possible, so we made it part of our plan to stop in the next town – Arnhem.

I only had three hours of battery for the whole day, so I decided to set up the camera at lunch and spend the afternoon shooting. The morning would be dedicated to getting used to riding Mark’s bike and finding a bike shop. We were the last pod to leave Ede – departing at 8:45am after a breakfast of Mueslix and yogurt. We made very good time on our way to Arnhem, quickly covering the 20km. Once in Arnhem we spent a lot of time navigating the city. The bike shop we planned to stop in was found pretty easily in a main shopping district in the town’s centre. I purchased some regular, flat pedals and tried to get the seat fixed, but I was quickly informed that the seat was beyond repair (a lot of duct tape was then used to secure the seat in place, with mixed results).

The pod split up, some went to find washrooms, others went to find food. Sabrina shared croquettes and some raisin buns with the group (being a vegetarian I passed on the croquettes). We rode through a series of small towns, stopping periodically to find our path. After almost a week of driving, often through densely packed cities, I was grateful for the opportunity to get some exercise and to be out in the sun.

We stopped for lunch in a gorgeous church courtyard in Zelhem, and after eating I set up the camera for riding. I decided to use my HDV camcorder to start, but the results were mediocre, so I switched over to the 5D Mark II. Most of the cycling paths and lanes were paved, and we were able to get some really beautiful shots. We stopped periodically to snag photos of the riders, at an old windmill, and at the border. Our group was taking its time to say the least, our average speed being about 12km/hr.

We finally arrived in Vreden, after exactly 100km, at 7:30pm! Our accommodations for the evening consisted of camping out at a soccer clubhouse. The host had provided the group with a 24 case of beer, but they were all gone by the time our pod had arrived, as some of the riders arrived three hours before us. Our car wasn’t there so I collapsed in the grass and read an ebook on my iPhone. Maryam was anxiously waiting for Mark and Gene Gisin to return with our car from their trip to get groceries for dinner. They had left while she was at the swimming pool, and had been gone for over an hour, and the grocery store was only 5km away. Her main concern was the fact that the car wasn’t hers, so she felt bad not being there, but also that the HV40 camera, and all our tapes were in the car, including her laptop bag, with the driver. You see, she normally carries these things with her 24/7; so the farther the distance and the longer she was separated from these incredibly important items, the more anxious she got as she started to imagine the worst.

They did make it back, and everything was in place. They set to work making veggie burritos for the group. I was thoroughly exhausted from the eleven hours of sun and riding; after eating I crashed hard!

The group quickly made their way to Ziest for a 10:00am meeting at the head office of the Triodos Bank. We were greeted by Gera van Wijk, PR & Communications Manager for International Funds, who kindly helped the riders park their gear and showed us the way to their eco-friendly board room. All the products in this building were made with renewable resources. As we were waiting for everyone to arrive, they offered us organic coffee and biscuits. It was all very pleasant.

Once all riders arrived, Gera introduced us to Frank, Deputy Manager, who manages a team of investors. Riel videotaped the entire session. The discussion started off with Shawn Smith, President of Global Agents for Change, telling Gera and Frank about what the organization does and why they were bicycling across Europe. The bank representatives seemed fairly impressed that a group of young North Americans would travel to Europe to bicycle from Amsterdam to Istanbul to raise $100,000 for microcredit funds.

Next, Frank shared with us some of the banks activities and their objectives.  Their mission is to “…finance(s) companies, institutions and projects that add cultural value and benefit people and the environment, with the support of depositors and investors who want to encourage corporate social responsibility and a sustainable society.” Triodos specializes in four types of funds: microfinance, sustainable trade, renewable trade and venture capital. Most of the discussion surrounded microfinance. We learned that Triodos has been a pioneer in the microfinance sector since 1994, and has financed over 100 institutions, in 40 countries in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Triodos manages 250 million Euros in microfinance funds, which in turn has enable these institutions to have served approximately 4 million people in the world.

Once the Q&A discussion with Frank was complete, the riders quickly rode off to our next destination – Ede. Riel and I took the opportunity to interview Gera before we headed off to Utretch for our next interview for the day. Gera talked to us about what microfinance is, the role of Triodos bank in the financial industry, and what her thoughts are about youth and our path to a sustainable world.

After the interview, we headed to Utretch to meet with Jonathon van der Stok, Secretary General of Youth Service Initiative. The Youth Service Initiative is an organization founded by youth for youth and consists of a one year volunteer program. Their overall objective is to create a “…youth culture of service by encouraging young people to take initiative in their community,” both locally and internationally. The program is divided into three stages: working locally to gain insight into the community, working internationally in an international exchange that includes sustainable development for third world countries, and working on creating an individual project that includes their skills, and interests. Jonathon brought with him one of the youth volunteers, his name was Victor Lorentzen and he was from Norway. Victor was almost at the end of his program, he had worked locally with seniors, gone to Ghana to build playgrounds for impoverished children as part of his international work, and was now organizing a youth soccer (or football as they call it in Europe) workshop that encourages fair play and sportsmanship.

Once we wrapped up our interviews we hit the road and headed to Ede to wrap up the remaining three rider interviews. Our host accommodations in Ede consisted of an army base! The rooms were really cool. We took over three rooms, with each one holding 8 beds. Riel and I managed to wrap up the interviews before sunset.

We then ate dinner, and explored the base. We found a training area, with a climbing wall, hanging rope, and a climbing net. Everyone was pretty tired so we hit the sack by midnight!

Riel and I hit the mall with Keely Jade Dakin and Jake Moir, found some really cool pop up tents for 35 Euros, ate some lunch, and headed back to the campsite so they could pick up their bikes and start their 45km ride into Utretch.

Once we arrived to Utretch, we were pleasantly surprised by our accommodations for the evening. We were staying in an enormous abandoned semi-converted office building. Four young guys lived there, each of them with their own arm of the building. It was huge! Sam was our contact, whom Sabrina had found on couchsurfing.org, an online website that “…seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance, and facilitate cultural understanding.” The building had everything, a shower, decent Internet connection, a kitchen, and a bar! The riders were stoked too as they each got their own empty room.

Riel and I wrapped up two more interviews before heading off into the city to meet an old friend of mine Parry Malm and his girlfriend for dinner.  Parry and I went to Simon Fraser University together a few years back and I hadn’t seen him since graduation, as he took up a job offer in the UK soon after, and just recently got transferred to the Netherlands. We ate Dutch pancakes for dinner on a beautiful canal side patio, while we reminisced about our old university days. The canal was breathtaking, and the company was magnificent, although our wine did end up getting bird poop in it, it was actually pretty funny. Our server was great; she replaced it for us right away. Once the bill came, Riel and I learned about the tipping system in the Netherlands. That is, one doesn’t actually exist. People don’t really tip in Europe I’ve come to find, and if they do it’s usually because they feel that the service was exceptional, but even then it’s minimal compared to the 15%-20% norm in North America.

When we arrived back to our accommodations, the riders were all sitting in a circle discussing microcredit, as the next day we were all going to the Triodos Bank in Ziest, to meet with some of their representatives. Triodos is one of the largest microcredit financing banks in the world and just recently received the Financial Times Sustainable Bank of the Year Award at the International Sustainable Banking Conference in London. Once the discussion wrapped up, we played two rounds of hide and seek, and I won the second round!

We started the day with the continuation of individual rider interviews. During breakfast we were able to wrap up two rider interviews before they commenced their official first day on the tour. Once we loaded up the car, everyone headed to the city centre to take some group photos before heading to Amstelveen. We met in Museum Square by the I AM AMSTERDAM sign, then headed to the bibliotheque to continue filming.

i am amsterdam

Filming interviews right outside the library in the heart of the city was not the best idea. During Sabrina Dominguez’s interview, one of the riders, we had to cut on almost every question due to noise complications. There were motorcycles, scooters, trucks, and bicyclists riding by in the street behind us. To add to the disruption, in the middle of filming, this old man comes right in our shot and asks Sabrina to move so he can get his bike out, as she was leaning on a bike rack. He took his time, road off for a few minutes, then decided to come back again to lock it up because he said there wasn’t enough air in his tires to ride it. LOL . What should have been a 5-10 minute interview turned into almost 25 minutes. You might be wondering why we didn’t just move. Well, we thought about it, but we would have had to reshoot her entire interview due to continuity, so we just decided to finish hers up then relocate to a quieter area for subsequent interviews. The next three went fairly smooth, although today’s entire session in Amsterdam ended up being our most costly so far. Is parking ever expensive here. I was blown away. Four Euros per hour! Unbelievable. I thought downtown Vancouver was expensive; this was a whole new ball game.  

Anyhow, we decided to continue filming once we arrived at our next destination, as the riders had to get on their way to make it to the campsite in Amstelveen before sunset and the price of parking was starting to add up quickly. Riel and I headed to the mall on our way to pick up some wires, and adapters for our equipment. We ended up getting lost again, as per usual, due to construction roadblocks, but we managed to arrive at the campsite by 7:00pm and started filming right away. We were able to wrap up two more interviews that evening while we still had natural light.

camp site

Now, it was time to find Internet! I was really excited when the guy at the registration desk told me they had Wi-Fi, although he had failed to mention that the connection sucked. So I ended up paying 5 Euros for 2 hours of internet, and spent most of that time uploading one large zip file of images to Jay Grandin at Giant Ant Media and managed to send two, maybe three emails in total. What was pretty funny is how I sent it. Because we were on a campsite there was no way to tell where the Internet router was, so I walked around the campsite holding my laptop in my hands as I searched for a stronger signal. Well, I finally found a spot that gave me 3 bars, so I parked myself right at that spot, in the middle of the road and sat there for over an hour while the images uploaded to YouSendIt! Hey, at least the file went through successfully without disconnecting, that was my main concern.

Once everything was uploaded, I headed back to the campsite, drank a bottle of 4 Euro sweet white wine with some of the riders and fell fast asleep!

Finding Internet

Finally, I started to fall asleep maybe an hour after the vomit incident, to get woken up once again to the sound of ducks, birds, and roosters at 5:45am, and that was pretty much the end of my sleep that evening. People started playing music, having sex, and talking loudly, so sleeping clearly was not going to be an option. I got up, showered (paid .80 Euros for a 5min shower, but it was well worth it after having slept in a steam room all night), and got ready for the day’s activities. 

Riel and I started filming today! We got some nice shots of the bikers meeting up, and going through orientation. We also started to interview some people individually. The Canon 5D Mark II takes breathtaking footage. 

Today really was a day to get to know the cyclist better. We heard about their fears, hopes, and dreams during orientation and about what makes them angry and how they deal with it. We also learned about the biking rules and etiquette. Once we broke for lunch, Riel and I headed to the city centre to grab some last minute stuff, like you know a notebook and toothbrush. Yes, Riel forgot his toothbrush, but he was okay with his super mouthwash. Most stores were closed on Sunday in Amsterdam so we will be making another trip to the city to pick up a fire-wire cable and a car adapter for our iPod. 

Once we got back, they were pretty much wrapping up orientation and had a guest speaker from the Baha’i community come speak to them on empowerment. The Amsterdam Baha’i community has sponsored an evening of camp accommodations (equivalent of 200 Euros for 25 people). The Baha’i community believes in providing community service in lieu of prayers. 

We wrapped up the day with some interviews, beer, and a picnic. Tonight we get to sleep in wagonette cabins. So I am super excited! We had a rough start but things are definitely starting to come together. 

The beginning of our road trip was fairly smooth. We were almost half way to Amsterdam and had been driving for 3 hours with no complications so far. We were on the freeway in Brussels, Belgium when one road block turned into a 2 hour delay. Our GPS system, or TomTom, did not know that there was a new bridge being built in Brussels, and Riel and I had not figured out that there was a button called “Find Alternative Route” on the TomTom that would recalculate a new route for us, so we got lost and kept driving around in circles until we found a gas station. Now this is a different story all together. We figured this would be a good opportunity to fill up since we were at a quarter tank of gas. Easy enough, right? Wrong. We couldn’t find the gas tank opener for the life of us. We searched everywhere!! Trust me, if you were there you probably would have had the same problem. We concluded, there must be something different about European cars that we don’t know about. So after a good 15 minutes of searching we started to ask people. No one seemed to know. At one point we had two men looking up and down and around the car for the release button, but no luck. Finally, I found the car manual! Bingo! Wrong again. It was in German. But luckily, we found an Englishman who happened to live in Brussels, and could read German. Go figure. So here is a tip for anyone that ever gets stuck in our predicament: You must place the key in the drivers keyhole and unlock all the doors at once since they are all connected to a central locking system, then the gas tank will open! Voila!

Okay, so now we have gas, and Riel has figured out there is a “Find Alternative Route” button on the GPS and we were well on our merry way to Amsterdam almost 2 hours behind schedule. We get to our first destination at 8:00pm. At first it looked kind of sketchy, but once you got on the campground it wasn’t all that bad. Yes, we were about to camp in Amsterdam. We found some of the riders, who will be cycling across Europe to raise money for micro-credit, which are small trust based loans that are given to impoverished entrepreneurs in third world countries, and whom we will be following and filming for the next three and a half weeks. 

Setting up our tent was quite the adventure. Everyone was really amused at how our tent just popped up without having to put it together. You just take it out of the bag, pop it up, and peg it down. As easy as 1-2-3…maybe that’s why it’s called EZ-TENT lol. Once we got our tent set-up, we headed to have dinner at the camp restaurant: Veggie burgers, fries, and Heineken it was!

Once at the luggage carousel, again I found myself enclosed in a small area sweating like a dog, but only this time it was with approximately 1000 people stuck in a little terminal with two carousels. Since the electricity was still down, we couldn’t get our luggage. So we waited. And waited we did for about an hour. It was pretty miserable, especially after traveling for 14 hours. 

Yes! Finally, my luggage came out and poor Riel having flown in a couple hours earlier with another airline, was waiting outside for me. We headed to the train station to get tickets for the TGV (fast train) to Metz, France where we would be staying the evening with Fabienne, who I will elaborate on in a moment. Of course I didn’t get a chance to purchase our train tickets online prior to leaving Vancouver, so we had to stand in the huge ticketing line up for almost half an hour. Our train was scheduled to leave in 40mins, and the next one wasn’t for a few hours. So we got lucky. 

Fabienne was there to greet us at Lorraine Station. She was absolutely wonderful. Fabienne is Fred’s cousin, who lives in France with her husband Remy, and Fred is my boyfriend’s uncle who lives in Winnipeg but has a car stored in France, and who was kind enough to lend it to us for our trip. 

Our evening at Fabienne’s home with her three cats was delightful. We slept, talked, and ate wonderful French food. She made a marvelous ratatouille dish. After dinner she gave us a tour of Metz in the car, and showed us the new Modern Art Gallery that was being built. Her hospitality was magnifique.

Welcome to the Boundless Films blog. Maryam and Riel are just a week away from the first phase of production, following Global Agents For Change from Amsterdam to Vienna. We’ll be updating here regularily, so please follow along.