Sep 21

Goodbye Danube

Today I have left the Danube after having followed this river for 2350 kilometers. The weather decided to make it a sad day, as it has been raining until well after noon.

The start was early today, as I was told that the ferry to the Bulgarian side would only leave at 9 A.M. and 6 P.M.. After I had arrived, after 5 kilometers of cobblestone riding, the border official told me the ferry would be leaving at 10.30 today. Great: 2 hours of waiting in the rain. Thankfully they had a shelter and I was even invited to join the border officials for coffee.

When the ship finally arrived at the other side (after a 10-minute crossing), all I could really do was to go to a tea-room and have some chays with the locals of Nikopol. Around 2, the rain finally slowed down and I could get moving. My final destination for today became a small pension in the town of Levski, in rural Bulgaria.

Sep 20

Romanian roads

Horse and cart are a very normal way of moving people and their belongings from place to place. Some carts are filled with wood or furniture, others carry whole families, as we normally do in our cars. I have also seen many ‘parked’ horses at the side of the road in the towns, probably waiting for their owners to return from their grocery shopping a in mini-market.

Today, I must have left behind a 175 kilometer long string of cheering, waving and high-fiving people. This is how it must feel to be a celebrity. Obviously, most people here have never seen a bike like mine, but they are so openly enthusiastic about it. Really great to make people’s day by just pedaling through their villages. The 175 kilometers was possible because of a raging storm that was building up behind me, creating an almost gale-force tail-wind. For the second half of the day, my speed has rarely fallen below 30 kilometers per hour, with peaks over 40 and that on flat terrain! I was in Turnu Magurele just an hour or two before the storm and am now very happy to be in a warm (although a bit expensive) hotel with wind and rain outside the window. Tomorrow and the coming weeks should be fine again

One other interesting thing: today I noticed that a clock at the side of the road was an hour ahead of my cycle computers time. After checking, it turned out that I had crossed the time-zone border when I entered Bulgaria yesterday. Lucky that I found it out today, as I’ll have to catch the 9 A.M. ferry to Nikopol, a ferry that only sails twice a day…

Sep 19

Welcome to Romania

I had already seen some stray dogs in Serbia and read that Romania had so many of them, but the number of dogs walking/sleeping on the streets here in Calafat is just enormous.

I had pretty low expectations of Calafat and expected more industrial ugliness, but this turned out to be completely wrong: it is a very nice town with many nice buildings (ok, some of them have been neglected just a bit), fountains, restaurants, a real supermarket and two reasonably priced hotels. The hotel I am staying in certainly has seen better days, but the room has a bed and WiFi, so what more could I really want?

Sep 19

33 kilometers through endless Bulgarian hills

While talking with the Bulgarian border officials (they obviously had very little to do on the small border crossing near Bregovo), they suggested that riding on the highway to Vidin was a better option than the route along small roads that I had in my book. Traffic would be no problem and there was only one hill. The best of it all: 33 instead of 62 kilometers.

They were right about most things, but the hill was pretty big. I did get to Vidin in about 1.5 hours, which was pretty good. While riding on this highway, I hardly saw any car. What a waste it has been to build this road…

After arriving in Vidin early, I had all the time for not finding a hotel, so I decided to move on the the other side in the end: Romania.

Sep 19

2000 kilometers!

Sep 18

The Iron Gate

Today I rode through the part that is called the Iron Gate, supposedly the most spectacular part on the Danube. From what I have seen so far, this is indeed the best part so far. The river has cut itself through the rocks here, which resulted in a gorge that is only 150 meters wide at it’s most narrow part, with a water depth of 80 meters!

The downside of all this natural beauty is that the terrain was not completely flat. Not at all really, with climbing percentages up to 10%. This was the first time I encountered these climbs, but it actually went pretty well. That certainly boosts the confidence for Bulgaria next week!

After a 140 km trip (accommodation was very scarce in this area), I have now arrived in Kladovo, a nice little town in Serbia, with ugly Romanian industry within eyesight at the other side of the Danube.

Sep 17

Siesta

With locals who were all very eager to tell me the best way to follow along the river (there were 3 different best ways of course)…

Sep 17

Ferry from Stara Palanka to Ram

This is the sort of ferry service you don’t see in Western Europe: It was just a barge with a loosely attached boat on the side to power it. Also, there was no real ramp, just a dirt road ending at the riverside. The barge was just ‘crashed’ into the dirt, after which some men with hand-shovels tried to close the gap so far that cars could actually drive on and off the thing. It also left half-an-hour late, as the crew were drinking beers and sleeping at a table from a restaurant next to the ‘ramp’. We (two German cyclists and me) made it to our destination just before dawn.

Sep 16

Passed Belgrade

From a distance it looked quite nice, but from the inside, this was a big old busy city. Not a place that I wanted to spend more time in than I already had while searching for the center.

After an ice-cream, I headed to the next town, Pancevo, where all accommodation was full. ‘Luckily’, the chain got stuck behind a chain wheel and the frame and I had to get out some real tools to get it out again. When I had just finished, a French couple of bicycle-world-travellers came by to take a look at this special bike. They told me they were staying at the hostel. I congratulated them for getting the last free room there and then it turned out that they had an unused bed in their room which they invited me to use if I wanted. Problem solved and a very nice evening as well!

Sep 15

Novi Sad

Arrived in Novi Sad today, where the tourist info had already closed when I arrived at 3 P.M. and that on a Saturday! Finding a hostel was not too difficult though, the result of some good preparation…

Novi Sad is a nice small city, but not very special. The picture does no right to the city, as it looks much better in the center. I do like the car advertisement so much that I put it on here. Zastava cars like this are still a very normal thing to see on the roads here in Serbia. I have certainly seen hundreds of them already.

Sep 14

-5 star accommodation

But the food was good!

It happened like this:

After about 110 kilometers of riding through rainy weather (of which 7 kilometers involved pushing the bike over a muddy path that had become unrideable because of the rain), I decided to look for some accommodation in the town of Karavukovo. I stopped at a bar and asked. The lady asked if I could speak German and started to phone someone, then pushed the phone in my hands. It turned out that her husband has a small old restaurant 8 kilometers out of town. He gave me directions and I went there. There was not much luxury and I did not dare to drink the water because of a very metallic smell that you could taste when only washing your face. That must also be the source of the rusty traces in everything that has something to do with water. For dinner, there was nothing to choose: it was two types of fresh fish, roasted over wood-fire, with some bread and fresh tomatoes and paprika. Just delicious. This more than made up for the ambiance of being the only guest with a host than could only speak a tiny bit of German. He went home to the village to leave me to sleep at his restaurant after the meal and came back to serve me a breakfast of bread and two hot sausages.

Sep 13

Wait-On-Weather in an internet-connected bus shelter.

image

Rainy today. But it is not all bad with WiFi-enabled bus shelters here in Hercegszanto, Hungary. Crossing the border into Serbia in 4 kilometers…

Sep 12

Terrible road surface in Hungary

EuroVelo6 is a nice route, but the last couple of days, the quality of the road surface has been maddening for hours on end. So much that I have decided to do longer detours over proper(ish) roads instead of trying to get my FWD bike over loose boulders and through deep sand, something it is definitely not built for.

The good news is that, when looking at the maps for the coming days, all riding in Serbia will be on asphalted roads. This was the main reason to choose for the Serbian side by the way, the Croatian side seems to be worse in this respect.

Sep 11

Passing through Budapest

This morning was the first time that I used my GPS receiver; getting into Budapest was (as expected) a complete nightmare. It was either riding on a highway, or on dirt-paths that would be better for a horse or if need be a mountain bike. I chose the latter, but horse nor mountain bike are in my possession, so it was very hard work.

I had decided not to visit this big city and sleep in another noisy hostel as I have just came from Bratislava. Instead, I have taken in the views from the cycle paths that took me through the middle.

Now arrived in the small town of Rackeve, some 50 kilometers south of Budapest, in a nice, quiet campsite with spa again…

Sep 10

Monday evening rush-hour in Visegrad

Only 40 kilometer from the madness of Budapest, this is the scene during the rush-hour. A nice little town, this Visegrad.

Sep 10

1.000 kilometers!

Sep 09

Riding in a team for a day

This morning, while getting the bike out of the basement of the Blues Hostel in Bratislava, I met this Kiwi with his Colombian girlfriend who where preparing their tandem.

I did not expect to meet them again, but just after I had started again after a rest, they pulled up beside me. We rode the remaining 80 km’s or so together. Apparently two people on a high-end tandem have about the same performance as a single person on a loaded recumbent…

Spent the night in Komarom, at a campsite with spa!

Sep 08

Vienna and Bratislava in one day

Camping 35 km before Vienna, I managed to be in it’s city center at 10 AM. And out at 11.15. What a hectic experience that was with building-sites everywhere and a terrible bumpy cycle path.

Bratislava is a whole different story: very relaxed and beautiful. The only thing is that German or English doesn’t get you very far here (and it is only 10 km’s from the border). One thing that is a little troublesome: all the cobble-stone streets: impossible to ride on without falling apart.

Down South, into Hungaria tomorrow.

Sep 07

Speeding along the Danube River

The paths and signage are so incredibly good, that I mam able to put out up to 165 kilometers a day! Views are still very good at 28 kilometers/hour!

Past Passau and on to Vienna…

Sep 05

Niceness on the road

Many fruit trees and gardens along the road. Some gardeners even put out baskets so that cyclists can share in their harvest. Very nice indeed.