Diary written by: Bernt Pölling-Vocke ( bernty@gmx.com )

"Morning has broken lalala", here we are, ready for the last stage and definetly ready to escape from Malgrat. The breakfast buffet at our "hotel" was another "experience". Some people still tell me that I have a tendency to eat more or less too much of everyting, no matter what the quality might be but today I proofed them all wrong. I have probably had my share of bad breakfasts in my life but today´s breakfast easily topped them all. An orjange juice that tasted like yellow water, bacon so greasy that one could puke right away, no cheese at all, some sausages that were probably not good enough for the pigs of the local farmers, all in all I can only say that it was disgusting. But did I expect anything else? Probably not, I can´t say that I was dissapointed. It was also interesting to see that there was a german sign at the entrance to the dining room with at least 20 spelling-errors in ten lines. Considering the fact that all german stuff everywhere else in the hotel was more or less right I would say that this was supposed to be funny, just as it is funny to talk wrong german in Germany. Considering the surroundings I didn´t find it funny at all though, it was just another embarrassing example of the shit all tourists around me put up with. It´s a vacation so what?

2nd entry of the day:

3:58 pm, Barcelona, we made it I guess. Approximatly an hour ago we checked into the Hostal Abrevadero, just around the corner from the olympic stadium (good place to stay..), the Ramblas and the city beach which probably features less dumb tourists but a lot more waste. Inner-city or metro-area-beaches are kind of suspicious to me, I think I would be too scared of disappearing body-parts in order to jump into the waves right away.

The road was quiet boring today. Yesterday´s "last hooray" was really a nice finish for the whole tour, today we just rolled into Barcelona on heavily used roads and along a mixture of hotel-areas and industrial areas.

When we finally made it to the famous Sagrada Familia for our winner-pictures my personal sense of relief was rather limited. The tour had just been too much fun and while it was great to have reached Barcelona by bike I also wished that Barcelona would be another 1000 kilometers down the road. "Getting there" is probably always better than "being there" but here we are...

I also never really doubted that we would make it to Barcelona by bike even though I told other people quiet a different story. I also never thought that I would make it up the Mont Ventoux which, once again, I also projected different in advance even though I never went as far as to guarantee that I would make it up there. I would have never predicted, thought or anythinged that I would be up there half an hour before Frank. I still don´t believe it...

At least Barcelona appears to be a rather attractive city so far and I have no doubts that we will have two great days here. There should be a lot to see and a lot to do, finally some relaxed sightseeing after all those kilometers on the road. Maybe it´s not so bad for a change after all, it could have waited another week though...

While I tried to find a cheap hostal at the tourist information Frank met a cyclist from Canada. He had visited a friend of his in Great Britain and somehow decided that he could just as well take a look at the rest of Europe. He bought a bike, cycled through Denmark, Germany, Poland and so on all the way until Spain. Now it was time to get back to Canada, I didn´t get a chance to ask him how many kilometers he did overall but I think that a Cologne-Barcelona-tour must seem like a warmup for him.

Tonight we will eat at the Hard Rock Café for the annual winners meal. I know that I bitched a lot about tourists and their habits during the whole diary but I also know very well that celebrating the whole tour at the Hard Rock Café is just as tourist-like like a lot of the stuff I bitched about. I can live with some criticism for this, I can also live very well with free refills, good Nachos (almost as good as mine but cheaper) and a good Burger. Later on we will also visit Easy Everything, the best internet-café-chain I know. I only know their stores in Munich and Manhatten but with tons of computers, good coffee and good prices it is definetly worth a visit, at least if you really want to know who the Rangers gave up in order to land Eric Lindros. And maybe I will also find some nice e-mails from, could become a long night at the café before even longer days of sightseeing until we fly back to Germany in a couple of days.