On our way from Sevilla to Tarifa a spoke broke the day before yesterday between Arcos de la Frontera and Medina Sidonia. Well, this is it what we thought when we heard the classical "tzoiing"' sound which all long distance cyclists fear. Since we arrived already after sunset on the camping site and we put up our tent when it was dark already, I could only check the damage in detail next morning. The diagnosis: 3 spokes broken and the 'flansh', i.e. part of the rim which holds the spokes at the gear box also broken - the "Rohloff disease" many long distance cyclists know of - which tends to happen when the tension of the spokes becomes unbalanced. After a series of phone calls and whatsapping with Siebert from Velodroom in Brussels we arrived at the conclusion that the best, cheapest and fastest solution is actually to fly to Belgium to have the Rohloff gearbox repaired immediately and to have a new back wheel built. This is what Koen from Koli3, the Rohloff representative for Belgium based in Leuven, kindly offered to do. So we went to the bus station in Medina Sidonia, disassembled there our tandem, wrapped the parts in the footprint of our tent, which also serves as transportation bag, and took the bus to Algeciras (with a change in Alcala). We were very lucky: The friends with whom we stayed in Sevilla offered to put us up again, this time in their weekend house nearby, and even came to pick us at the bus station in Algeciras.
Next day I (Andreas) took a bus to Malaga airport with the back wheel as hand luggage, flew to Brussels and went to Leuven where Koen already waited. After two hours of calm and amazingly professional work - I learned that wheel-building for heavy duty purposes is an art in its own right! - I left his workshop with a new wheel. Big, big thanks to Koen for helping us out so promptly (after all it is Saturday evening!), to Siebert for finding this solution and, again, to Christine and Tobias for hosting us and helping us with the logistics.
Koen from Koli3, Leuven/Belgium, building us a new wheel.