Croatia. That was the whole plan.
Eighteen years with a license, five weeks on an R 1250 R, nine days - and one word as a travel plan.
There was exactly one condition, and it was one word: Croatia.
No return date other than the number of days. No bookings. No route.
What there also wasn’t: experience.
I’d had my license for eighteen years. It says what you’re allowed to ride, and on mine that included the big bikes. So for eighteen years I carried it around in my wallet. I never rode a thing.
First, a refresher course, voluntary, at the driving school around the corner. It had nothing to do with the exam, which was long behind me. I’d rather drop a driving-school bike than end up on the ground next to my own like a complete idiot.
Then I bought a G 310 R. It was too weak, and that was easy to explain: I weigh 100 kilograms, the 310 has 34 hp, and with a passenger on the back not much happens. I put Lisa on it, my girlfriend then, my wife now. She was the one who complained it wasn’t enough. No begging for permission required.
Four weeks later an R 1250 R was parked outside my door, five weeks before departure. That was enough time for the first service, at 1,000 kilometers, and a few kilometers on top. A naked bike. Boxer engine, shaft drive, no fairing, no factory luggage system, no tank built for Dalmatia.
And with that machine and that track record I rode out of Franconia, Lisa on the back, toward the Adriatic.
You can call that brave. You can also call it what it was: the only honest way to learn to ride. Driving school teaches you procedures. Nine days with luggage, heat, wind, passes and a second person teach you who you actually are on a motorcycle.
The really remarkable thing was the person behind me. A passenger on a nine-day trip is the most unprotected participant in the whole system - no control, no view ahead, no handlebars, and she still has to ride along with every decision. Lisa did it with someone who had a little over two months of riding behind him, five weeks of that on this bike. On a motorcycle, trust isn’t a metaphor, it’s an operating condition, and she fronted it before there was anything to cover it.
In the end the odometer read about 2,940 kilometers, spread over nine days at the end of August 2024.
Putting in the kilometers
The first day was pure distance. Leave Franconia behind, head down toward the Alps, burn kilometers so that day two can start with something nice. The most thankless day of any trip, and the one nobody writes about.
We left a little after ten, via Ingolstadt and the Chiemgau into the Berchtesgaden region. We wanted to land somewhere in the foothills of the Alps, a place to sleep, nothing more. And then we got lost, or more precisely: the navigation app on my phone had crashed, and after the restart it had forgotten the destination I’d changed to Inzell half an hour earlier. It led us dutifully to the old one. A little after 8 p.m. we were standing near the Königssee, a good way from where we wanted to be.
We rode back on empty batteries, above all the intercom’s: I couldn’t hear any navigation prompts anymore. On the side of the road we charged for ten minutes so there’d be something in it again, then kept going. Just after 9 we reached Inzell.
We hadn’t booked anything in advance, nothing at all. We booked Inzell that evening on my phone, about two hours before arriving.
So we spent the night in Inzell. Not at the Königssee - near it. That turned out to be the upside of the mistake, because prices in Inzell are nothing like the ones at the lake.
That evening on the bench in front of the house, beer in hand, mountains right in front of me, legs humming from sitting - and a neck that told me for the first time what “naked bike” means over 563 kilometers. On a naked bike at 130 km/h you hold your upper body against an airstream that a touring bike simply clears away. That isn’t pain. That’s work you only notice once you get off.
Lisa said, “And tomorrow?”
I said, “Croatia.”
She said, “I know that.”
Day 1 in numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Distance | 563 km |
| Start | Franconia |
| Destination | Inzell |
| Route | Ingolstadt, Chiemgau, Berchtesgaden region (Königssee area), Inzell |
| Passes and elevation | no passes, Inzell sits at about 700 m |
| Countries | Germany |
| Overnight | Hotel in Inzell |