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04/05/18
Wolfsburg
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Baltic Sea Circle: ice-cold around the Baltic

Story: Baltic Sea Circle: ice-cold around the Baltic

7,500 kilometres of rallye excitement in a Touareg and a T4 Syncro

A holiday can have many faces: The sea or the mountains, relaxation or action – however the fancy takes you. But it’s very rare that it will take you into icy regions. At the end of February 2018, that is exactly where 47 teams decided to go: They set off on a circular tour of the Baltic – at temperatures as low as -24°C. The start and finish of the ‘Baltic Sea Circle’ was Hamburg.

The ‘Power of Adventure’ team is ready for the off: Sebastian, Jonas and Lucas show that hats are the epitome of style.

The rules for mastering the 7,500-km tour were clearly defined: no motorways and no onboard navigation systems. Instead, a roadbook provided by the organisers of the rallye – spiced with tasks that sometimes stank to high heaven. We let the teams ‘Champagne Supernova’ from Arnsberg and ‘Power of Adventure’ from Dresden tell us the highlights (and lowlights) of the trip to the Lofoten Islands, the North Cape and dingy bars along the way.

Granddad's builder’s Microvan was suddenly destined to become an Arctic explorer
‘Right at the start, we had to find an answer to the decisive question’, says Lucas Günther. ‘What kind of vehicle would fit our needs?’ Lucas (32) is a member of the ‘Power of Adventure’ – his brother Jonas (20) and Sebastian Siwek (36), one of his mates, are along for the ride. The 1994 T4 Syncro was affectionately nicknamed the ‘Syncronator’. One rule of the rallye was that all vehicles taking part must be at least 15-years old – the 78-hp, 4x4 Microvan was old enough, and had already clocked up around 270,000 kilometres. Jonas explains: ‘My granddad bought the T4 years ago. As a building site vehicle, it had never been driven all that far at a stretch – at least until we came along.’ As it happened, the Syncronator took everything in its stride – without a hitch or hassle at all. ‘We even slept in it a couple of times’, adds Sebastian Siwek with a grin.

An Arctic experience that Arndt Gaube (48) and Boris Terwey (46) from the ‘Champagne Supernova’ were spared. The put their trust in a 15-year old, green Touareg to get them through the tour. ‘I took it out for a test drive, and I knew right away that this was the one. It will get us to the North Cape and back.’ In an ironic aside, the guys from the ‘Power of Adventure’ team poke fun at the Touareg – ‘It’s only got a measly 98,000 kilometres on the clock. What’s so tough about cruising around the Baltic in a nice and shiny Touareg?’ They were soon to find out.

15-years old, 98,000 kilometres on the clock and not tired at all. The ‘Champagne Supernova’ team’s Touareg.
Fascinating scenery in Northern Scandinavia: Ice floes in the sunset.

Just wait for a while and follow the snowplough
Gaube drove the Superlative Adventure Club route with his wife, two years ago. The easy way – in summer. He sets us straight, ‘The winter tour is a totally different calibre.’ ‘Quite a few teams had to be pulled out of ditches, and a couple of teams didn’t make it at all.’ The fact is, on icy tracks, all it needs is just a tiny mistake and the situation starts to get hairy. That’s why some stretches could only be driven behind a snowplough. Gaube: ‘You have stop and wait at a roadblock until the snowplough turns up. You build a convoy behind it and, after another 10 or 15 kilometres or so, the road is given the all-clear.’ The snowplough turns around and leads the cars on the other side of the road through the danger zone like a ferry.

But let’s get back to the red Syncronator. What exactly was the issue with overnights? Lucas Günther, who studied mechanical engineering together with Sebastian, tells the story: ‘The thermometer was down to -24, and we hadn’t found anywhere to stay. Our rescue was the tiny, 600-Watt radiant heater we had had the foresight to install.’ So we got our happy home on wheels warmed up to a cosy -4 degrees and managed to get through the night in our thickly padded sleeping bags. As a rule, all teams spontaneously found places to stay in cabins, guesthouses or through Airbnb. What about food? ‘We found a sponsor. A butcher from my home town in Franken set us up with all kinds of tinned meats’, reports Sebastian Siwek. The trained cook is still rapturous about the ‘Sauerbraten’ he warmed up on the petroleum stove. Gas stoves are well-known for giving up the ghost at temperatures below -10.

Petroleum stove idyll below zero: dinner time for the adventurers from Dresden.
Mountains and the sea: The Touareg and its drivers enjoy the icy atmosphere.

Delicacies along the way: ‘Sauerbraten’ and ‘Surströmming’
The much-loved (by Swedes) and infamous (for everyone else) Swedish fish-speciality was not quite as popular with team as ‘Sauerbraten’. Surströmming is herring fermented for six months in brine. What was probably the toughest test in the roadbook involved opening the pressurised can and driving through the landscape with it open for the next 200 kilometres. Gaube and Terwey never want to subject themselves or their Touareg to such an ordeal again: ‘Surströmming stinks to high heaven. Some people strapped it to the back bumper with gaffer tape’, recalls Gaube from experience. And how did the colleagues take it? Their dubious pleasure can be seen on Facebook. As Siwek recalls, ‘Before we opened the can, which is under pressure, we masked off everything with paper kitchen towels. Our clothes, our skin and everything else. At the end of this rigmarole, I actually managed to force down a tiny bit of it – the others spat their portions into the snow.’ Well hey, these are the things you do when you’re having an unforgettable holiday …

Hang on a minute! Fast rewind to the wonderful moments. Both teams agree that the most spectacular scenery on the trip was on the Lofoten Islands. Terwey: ‘The light, the picturesque huts on the seashore, snow covered mountains that rise majestically out of the sea – you can hardly imagine how wonderful it is when you see this peaceful world before you.’ Gaube, a Game of Thrones fan, adds, ’All the time I was expecting the White Walkers to appear.’

Champagne at the North Cape: Arndt (right) and Boris raise their glasses to the spirit of adventure.
Picturesque fisherman’s huts: The ‘Power of Adventure’ crew celebrate themselves and the beauty of the Lofoten Islands.

A wild karaoke party in the middle of nowhere
The Lofoten Islands (in English, Lynx paw islands) are located beyond the Arctic Circle, just off the coast of Northern Norway between 67 and 68 degrees latitude. Lucas Günther, the enthusiastic photographer who wanted to stop after every corner, couldn’t get enough of it: ‘It’s a shame we couldn’t have stayed there longer. But rallye is rallye, so you know what’s in store: Eating up kilometres is the name of the game.’ Nevertheless, the guys from the ‘Power of Adventure’ team did find time to get their quadcopter in the air to shoot some spectacular video footage (view the trailer).

Fjords, ice-roads, the steel globe at the North Cape – and chatting for hours with the other rallye crews. But the anecdote to top them all belongs to the Touareg Team, which drove most of the route with spikes. Gaube took the plunge on an unforgettable night in Nurmes, a small village somewhere in the wild east of Finland: ‘We left our hotel to have a couple of beers at the nearest bar. Five Finns looked up for a second as we walked in and ordered our beers at the bar. No one could ever have thought that the evening would end up as a wild karaoke party with 50 or 60 people.’ He felt like he was in Tarantino’s ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, sang Iggy Pop’s ‘The Passenger’ and Terwey thrashed out „My Way’ at the top of his voice – all-in-all, a pretty surreal affair. Someone once said: People who travel always get the best stories to tell.

Off with the tyres, on with the spikes – the green Touareg mustn’t end up in a ditch.

A rallye for a good cause: 94,000 euros in donations
That was the end of the rallye, but not where the story ends. Because it was all for a good cause. At the end, each team that took part had to collect at least 750 euros in donations for a good cause. No matter whether for an official charity partner or for their own, specially chosen charitable organisation. The ‘Champagne Supernova’ team took first place in this special discipline: Arndt Gaube and Boris Terwey were able to contribute 7,713 euros to the overall sum of 94,000 euros. ‘That was one euro for every kilometre we drove’, explained the friends, not without more than a little pride. They donated this to the non-profit organisation Global H20, which has drilled more than 85 wells for villages in Central Africa since 2017. ‘Power of Adventure’ actually handed over the sum of 1,500 euros to Sonnenstrahl e.V. in Dresden, a charity organisation dedicated to helping children and young people with cancer, before the rallye began.

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