We've had quite some cyclist passing through the house. Cycling around the world, or just the Netherlands, or people cycling from Paris to Copenhagen for example. Most of these people found out about the house through friends or through hospitality exchange networks such as Couchsurfing (closed-source and top-down structured) or Bewelcome (which is more grassroots and based on open source/ free software). But so far none of the cyclist had contacted us through Warmshowers.org, a hospitality exchange network for touring cyclists.
Up until last week when Lionel contacted us through that network. He travels by bike from a town South of France towards the North Cape, and back, for which he calculates 7 months to do. An interesting point is that Lionel managed to get funding from his local council to make this trip, which also made his step to quit his water research-job more easily.
He only spend one night with us, which is compared to what we are used to, very short. When we basically warned him that most cyclists, like him also plan to stay for only a couple of nights they somehow end up staying for way longer, he decided to go the next morning, to happily enjoy the first rainy day after he started his journey three weeks before. And now, 4 days later he reached the border with Germany.
Lionel also holds a blog in French. Here an excerpt from his latest post, where he is also mentioning the Casa.
J'ai eu la chance de pouvoir passer 3 jours à Amsterdam. 2 nuits chez un couple très agréable qui voyage à vélo et une nuit à la Casa Robino, qui est un lieu d'échange et une vraie leçon de vie pour tous les voyageurs qui y transitent. C'est très long à expliquer mais il y a beaucoup à apprendre sur ce mode de vie un peu hors du commun...
