Istanbul by bike
Budapest to Belgrade to Bucharesti
Before we get pedalling
Travelling by bike round the world is tourism in a special form, but still it is tourism. It is a thin skinned kind of tourism because there is no tangible barrier between the rider and the environment. The birds can serenade you, the children greet you, little boys may slap you, people stop you, dogs chase and sometimes bite you, the sun burns you and it does get very wet. Combined with wild camping its a stunning way to see the world in all its glory and its decrepitude.
This story is on the whole light hearted. The route to the east gradually coils away though from the privelige and gloss of western europe and one begins to see real poverty and dereliction in places. I found that the Hungarians were a bit straight laced and humourless at times, the Croatians rather mellow and pleased with themselves, Serbians affable but prickly all the same as many resent the press they recieve in the west. These generalisations are of course weak and stereotypical. The sections on Romania though do get a bit dark. I just strolled back from the rail station in Bucharest, through scenes of poverty and misery, decrepit infrastructure and disorganisation. The Romanian people are stalwart in the face of their real problems , which are the legacy of a hugely complex history. At times my blog is ironical about this and I do not want to give an impression of lack of empathy with a people who face great challenges. I was treated with kindess and respect by Romanians and they are really trying to build a new nation. I wish them nothing but good fortune in the future.
On with the Odyssey!
I ran straight into the three muskateers coming out of Budapest through Rackeve. The Bikeline guys http://www.esterbauer.com/rtb_uebersicht.html who wrote the four Danube trail mapbooks that all this journey is based on, rightly suggest taking the train out of Budapest to avoid heavy traffic. These three young german lads were listening to a traditional folk concert on the pavement outside a chateau. We immediately got into a bikers conversation and they were full of fun and energy. They were wild camping on a tight budget and as it was late we set off for the woods on the banks of the Danube to set up camp. We got nicely lost in a village where every street seemed to have been dug up for obscure reasons and it was quite dark when we found the shelter in the forest that is shown in the first photo.
The lads surprised me by having vast quantities of food and next to no equipment except a set of pans it seemed someone had borrowed from their mother. No tents, just ponchos and sleeping bags. As we entered the dark wood, Alex who is the wit on the team, said ‘The mosquitoes here are bad..bad, but the bears are worse.’ I giggled in my best adolescent way, but he had inserted a tiny doubt that grew in the night. I recalled re-reading the section in the Bikeline guide that I first looked at in France that said as the Carpathian mountains come down to the Danube at the border between Serbia and Romania, there was wild life ‘including jackals and bears.’
The commonest animal we found along the Danube were frogs and toads. Night after night the Greek chorus of frogs would squeak and blow raspberries. I had grown fond of this rural soundtrack, but that night in the woods after abandoning my hammock and setting up the tent in the middle of the night to get away from swarms of mosquitoes, as I fell asleep, the barking of toads kept sounding uncannily like the growling of, well....Bears!!! Despite hours of intellectual self soothing “Listen Patrick there are no bears in Hungary! the bears are far away in er..Serbia and Romania which are the very next countries I will visit.’ Here was the start of a kind of neurotic process we could call ‘bear anticipation’. We will come back to that.
‘The Three Muskateers’ Timo, Mathias and Alexander.
On the road again
We soon got into a rythmn together finding spots to wild camp, building fires, cooking, singing and my mouth organ saw some solid service in these very appropriate circumstances. Timo was very keen on kilometers in fact they all loved the kilometer and devoured them in large chunks. On day 2 together Timo announced a new regime to capture more of them and that was to get up at 6:30am and cycle 25 kilometers before breakfast! The theory was that we would make better progress AND breakfast would taste better. It worked. This permitted long breaks for lunch and swimming, chasing frogs and all the other delights of the outside world.
On one of these early morning jaunts, Timo was annoyed to find the bikeline or Euro 6 route came away from the Danube for 30Km near the border into Serbia. After a brief council it was decided, with me abstaining, to take a deserted and grassed over track along the river which would save us 19Km. The muskateers were very pleased to find an old rusty surveillance tower about 30m high that swayed at the top in a way that persuaded me to come down pretty quick. This structure might have provided us with a clue as to what was going to happen next. Mathias was sent off from this strategic point to find a spot to breakfast by the Danube and he found a lovely place through thick undergrowth. We all enjoyed a hearty breakfast and a swim. i was just drying off when the police siren sounded and looking up I witnessed two burly Serbian policemen in blue fatigues coming through the undergrowth. We were all assembled and papers examined. We were briskly informed we had illegally entered Serbia by evading the Hungarian border crossing and that reports would be made and we were to accompany them to the station! They both spoke excellent english and in the wagon became very affable, roaring with laughter at the slightest humour from Chiefly Alex. I was at first a little tight lipped being perhaps older and wiser.
The illegal entry point to Serbia from the rusty survellance tower
The conversation went something this:
Dimitri [the dark reflective one] ‘we worry about the bad press you give Serbia in the west, everyone thinks we are monsters and responsible for all the bad things in the world, the axis of evil and all that, when really we are not so bad and others …...have done bad things too.’
Paddy (in slight sucking up mode) ‘You have an important job as policemen, it must be tough at times?’
Stefan (the really big one with the stentorian laugh) Yeah its real big shit, man. Its a laugh being a policeman in Serbia, the place is run by robbers and the pay is African! We have nothing, the economy is just big shit, we sell apples for e10 a tonne and we buy applejuice back for e50 a tonne! No its not that bad! ‘
They carried on in this ribald way all the way to the station..laughing and laughing.
we biked through Vukovar, Serbia at night - here a grim reminder of the conflict of 1999
A frog search
Later I was to ask myself why with so few resources, were the Serbian police so affable - had they already had a few vodkas perhaps to lighten the shift up? They settled us into the grubby and decrepit station and offered six varieties of tea, with or without sugar. We amused ourselves playing chess until after an hour Dimitri came in to announce that we were to be transferred to the Hungarian border police, who would process our applications to cross the border legally. So we bundled the bikes and baggage and ourselves into the huge police 4by4 and drove off to a frosty reception from the Hungarian police. Our Serbian hosts dropped us off affably laughing and shouting and shaking hands. The Hungarian team were very po -faced indeed and we were questioned mirthlessly on our travel plans and origins. They spoke virtually no english and little german. As the hours ticked by we were offered nothing except water and escorted to the locked toilets in the cells. It all looked a bit grim, but the muskateers kept up a continous banter which kept our spirits up. In the constrained and hushed atmosphere of the interview room, the slightest wit seemed
The campfire by the Danube.
excruciatingly funny. Where we behaving like condemned men, enjoying a final joke?
The reason for the glee of the Serbians and the resolute glumness of the Hungarians soon became obvious as the pair assigned to us labouriously typed with one finger on a computer. Their teeth were clenched as they slowly worked their way through the endless forms that all police all over the world hate. Four five page reports with all demographic details checked, passports scanned in. The slow and monotonous click of the one finger typist on the keyboard marked the passing hours. As we realised the sheer tedium of their task a kind of reversal took place and we started to regard the police as objects of pity and felt guilty that we had screwed up their day with hours of bureaucracy instead of their being out and about chasing dope smugglers in their comfy 4-wheel-drive wagons. We later learnt that because Serbia is not part of the EU and Hungary is, the Serbians have less resources, but also less paperwork!
More frog fun!
Finally we were sent on our way, hungry, wiser and tired but intact. As we passed through passport control I spotted a beautiful american touring bike with up market bags, a laptop and Garmin GPS. Out of the station popped a thickset young black woman. There was a quickfire exchange of information and it emerged that she, Erin was 19 and from New York USA, had been on the road biking in Europe for 7 months and incredulously, I heard her say she was sleeping in the woods on her own.
My fatherly concern must have seemed crude to her, but I said immediately to her that I though she was taking a huge risk travelling alone as a woman and probably more so due to possible racism. She was being detained for a visa violation and it seemed she had outstayed the six months the EU allows US citizens. We went into a huddle down the road and the three muskateers decided to stay with her to see if they could help and I went on to find accomodation and money in Serbia.
The following day after sleeping in the hammock in a vinyard as there was no accomodation to be had, I was reunited with the three musketeers in the beautiful Croatia Danube nature reserve. They recounted that the pugnacious Erin had been arrested and cuffed for visa violations and was being dispatched to Budapest for deportation back to U.S. We speculated on her motives for allowing her visa to expire in the EU, when she was clearly an experienced traveller. I congratulated the three Ms for going back.
Chess in a Serbian police station.
I had been struck by her independent attitude and alarmed by her potential vulnerability. Personally she evinced an attitude that she was as vulnerable as a US marine in full combat kit, but objectively as a young woman cycling alone in eastern Europe and sleeping in the woods, she was really taking risks. They were frustrated they could not help the damsel in distress. I said there would be other princesses in other towers for them to practice chivalry in the future. It appears she was in too much deep shit to really appreciate their gesture and asked 'So where's the old British guy?'. I reflected that we had done the right thing by splitting up and the four musketeers set off once more together for a long lunch and swim in the lake that was so crowded with frogs I can't imagine how the supply of flies in Hungary keeps up.
I ought to explain a little more about the lads. They are all members of a philanthropic youth organisation with religious aspects, but broad as Alex says he is atheistic and this is no problem. They are sponsored to volunteer in care situations in eastern Europe instead of serving in the army. Mathias is the more quiet one and intends to study Polish and maybe theology, he is in charge of navigation on this trip; Timo works in a village in Czech Rep for children of parents with drug and alcohol problems, in the scouts he learnt to be camp cook and he is a genius of the cooking pot and campfire. Every day we have cooked lunch and sometimes dinner as well. We shop at 4pm before doing more kilometres into the evening and Timo sets up a little kitchen round the campfire and chops garlic, toms, onions and cooks with cream and eggs, try dessert of fried banana with honey, cream and nutella round a campfire!
Last night Timo made bread dough with yeast and we baked it in the campfire wrapped round pointed sticks and the inserted hotdogs in the freshly baked bread while frogs croaked on the riverbank. Alex is the communicator and speaks English and Rumanian and some Hungarian. He is handsome in a quiet graceful way, and displays effortless good manners as he talks to old men and women in little Balkan villages with skill and respect. They boys are all incredibly fit, attacking every hill a bit like my son-in-law Greg who is a demon biker too. Alex works in a poorly resourced old people's home in a country town in Rumania as a carer, which means intimate care. His charges have nothing, there is no entertainment and he eats the same food, without the meat as he is vegetarian! On the trip, Alex also supplies an endless supply of dry witticisms that turn every problem into a source of amusement. All three are 20 years old and I keep thinking they must have marvellous parents, because they are so kind and thoughtful. Alex is teetotal because he objects to the mindless culture of youth drinking and the others are abstemious. We buy no alcohol and have great fun on adrenaline (another type of drug). This video shows the guys hitching a ride from a farmer and his tractor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1WprB8PXjQ
Sadly we parted this afternoon slightly before Belgrade as I caught a cold and the route became very hot and hilly and I could not really keep up with the lads. I waved farewell from a hot and rusty train from a little village 30km from Belgrade
Timo enjoys a swim while..
Alex relaxes with local Serbian folk.
June 21 day 65
I finally prised myself out of the very chilled 'Hedonist' hostel in Belgrade run by extended entrepreneurial family. Grandma Mellika is a p/t ophthalmologist and runs a private laser Clinic and helps out her son Michail in the hostel and other son and daughter bring grandkids in and just hangout at weekends and evenings. It has a designer courtyard garden which is winning it very good ratings.http://www.hedonisthostelbelgrade.com/
To avoid monstrous traffic, I took the train out to the country and the guard stuck the bike in the rear of the end carriage with the rear connecting door open showing the receding rails and a receding vista in vertiginous detail, so there are plenty of photos and videos to add to the blog. (at least there was going to be until the Iphone was stolen later on!) Serbia uses two scripts one Cyrhillic, one European. Maps are printed with one and street signs and road directions with the other! Consequently at first, you simply never know where you are! The train only stops for two minutes and will actually move off with the doors open. One has to move very fast to first scream the name of your destination to some poor old lady on the platform and hope for a nod rather than pages of explanation in dialect. Precious time can be wasted staring at the station name, it does not get any clearer.
Just check out the size of the lift to get the the bike in there!
Old and new in Belgrade
The passengers were no help, one young guy spoke reasonable English and said Mala Krstna was next. but one, then everyone else in the compartment disagreed and a huge shouting match started. I sneaked off to fling my side panniers on the platform and then prepare to lunge out with the bike over my shoulder as the train inexorably restarted. Mala Krstna of course was a tiny broken-down rural Station where I got off and only one man got on. Lucky he was the good Samaritan type and helped me off with the bike. I wild camped that night in what seemed to be a pleasant wood. It turned out a bit too pleasant as I only noticed the beer cans and used condoms after I'd fixed the hammock and boiled the pasta. As it was only two couples turned up and they were both jogging to some other more exciting part of the wood. This was the first outing for my mosquito net. Modern mosquito nets are just the same as old fashioned ones! They consist of a huge quantity of white bridal netting descending from a large wire ring that you have to suspend, in the woods, right over your hammock and the once inside, you have to reach round each end of the hammock and tie off the nets. You end up wrapped in white lace like you are someone's unwanted huge wedding present or perhaps some humongous chrysalis. It is very important to pee before all this wrapping as it is really hard to undo once it is done. How this would appear to some poor drunk stumbling home in the dark coming suddenly on this phantom wrapped in white veils suspended in the woods, I don't know.
The nets worked brilliantly. There were no bites, but precious little sleep, since the bats emitted high pitched but quite audible shrieks, magpies and woodpeckers rattled all night, owls hooted, and every dog in the neighbourhood howled all night. Even the top of the range wax earplugs could not keep it out. I also got chilled and immediately my cold returned as if the virus had only had a weekend off and had just come back on duty.
Ram - the ferry crossing from Serbia to Romania. There is a great little restaurant just here.
In the early morning I adopted the routines of my previous young German comrades and did 25 Km before breakfast. The biking went well, despite sniffling and Ram, the ferry point between Serbia and Romania turned out to be a jewel-like Mediterranean resort on the vast Danube - an inland sea. I had a perfect lunch of Danube Perch and put my hammock up near the beach to sleep off the cold. This worked really well and I did 40km in the evening and reached Veliko Graviste at the start of the Danube gorge thro' the Carpathian mountains. Before that though there is a long gruelling stretch through the mining terrritory, a virtually treeless wilderness.
The opencast mines near Kostolac, Serbia.
June 24 day 68
Turnu Severin is my first stop in Romania, just below the massive dam at Sip. After rekindling my cold by sleeping in the hammock in the woods I emerged into a stunningly beautiful landscape as the intensive farming of Serbia gives way to the
the Carpathian mountains beckon in the distance.
foothills of the Carpathians. My recuperation was aided by opting for a nice little boarding house for the overnight stay. As I sipped a not so very miniature brandy in my cot I began to feel braver about tackling the bears all alone. I cunningly planned the route so as to arrive precisely at villages with accommodation at nightfall to avoid staying under canvas with all my tasty bear-tempting snacks in the tent. Come morning I set forth determined to prove the superiority of homo dulwichiensis over mere 600kg carnivores. I was still pleased to meet finally after four days alone a fellow biker albeit going the other way. I cheerfully called out that it was good to see him but he was going the wrong way. (Ho ho!?) He came over and agreed with me , he was lost and wanted to head towards the Black Sea.
Juliani at the Danube gorge. 
The author just posing by the ancient castle at Golubac, Serbia
My new companion then turned round and we teamed up for the next four days. Juliani turned out to be Finnish and had fought with NATO forces in Kosovo in 1999. We did the gorge together and it is stupendous, sadly no bears, but you can't have everything!
cooling the feet
Local workers in Ram insisted I join them for a drink.
June 25 day 69
This trip is full of surprise! I have not talked too much about the actual biking. I biked the 'Iron Gates' or Danube gorge with my Finnish mate Juliani. Stunning 600m cliffs fall perpendicularly into the river which suddenly narrows as it forced its way thro the Carpathian mountains. The Turks and other medievals struggled with this 100Km section, but the Romans under Trajan, a very 'can do' emperor just got the slaves to build a flat road right along and the topped it with the longest bridge in the ancient world at Turnu Severin. Later when the barbarians were flooding in Constantine knocked it down and maybe gained Rome a few years. It took modern man about 1500 years before they could build another bridge over this part of the Danube.
Paddy and Juliani - togetherness.
After saying goodbye to juliani, I launched into the Romanian heartlands. Soon I was in the land of horse and cart and rustic wells. A place where everyone sits on a bench in the street after the day's labour is done and talks to the neighbours and of course wave encouragingly to ageing bikers as they pass by . During the morning I meandered thro the villages taking photos. Gradually a powerful north west wind built up and started pushing me in exactly the correct south east direction. I reflected that I was very fed up with potholes and monster gravel and the description of the backroads favoured in the Danube bike trail was absolutely foul. With this wind what I needed was a nice main road and I found the E56. This wind was nearly force 3/4. As a cross wind it nearly blew me over. As a tail wind it was like rocket fuel! Romania is not that backward, the E56 was like velvet, not a pothole to be seen. A few huge lorries of course, but they treat you with respect when you are strobing and doing 45km/Hr!!! I set up the IPhone music, the sun shone and the wind blew in my back for 100km. Town after town sped by, I cruised at 35km/hr and a little thigh flexing took me up to 50km/hr with moderate effort and this went on for hours! It was like being in a Merc with a great sound system, only no engine, just pedal and wind power.
Goodbyes at Turnu Severin
Uphills were all wind assisted and a doddle. It was the most faultless and exhilarating days cycling I can remember. Sadly there was a 120deg right turn for the last 13km so I then cycled into the teeth of the wind, but could hardly complain - 140km in a day with 25Kg baggage is pretty good going!
Into Romania
Rush hour traffic in Romania
I just dropped by to say hello.
June 26 day 70
Another jarring change of pace strikes the interstellar wind biker. It is an open secret in Romania that today is Yes. Sunday! However the thin lipped and it seems to me, unnecessarily austere staff in my ex- soviet style concrete bunker hotel, failed to remind me of this crucial fact when I paid and headed my heavily laden bike to the rail station. Calafat station is like a a huge red Transylvanian castle and it appeared, was quite deserted. On the way down as I carefully picked my way round the bath-sized potholes in the tree-lined once grand boulevard, grimy gypsy children ran out of derelict warehouses screaming 'Lei!!!' (i.e. Romanian currency) barring my way and slapping my arms as I ploughed on. There were no vehicles in the forecourt and no passengers in the eery cathedral-like waiting room. I pushed the bike in and the door squeaked shut behind me with a monumental echo then there was total
Calafat railway station - ‘quitter sans Iphone!’
silence.
I racked my traveler's brain to try and understand the reasons for so much inactivity I heard the welcome clanking of a train actually arriving at what I had started to think was a low budget set for an east European version of the opening scene of 'Once upon a time in the west'
Two passengers got off the train. I found a ticket office and by rapping on the window I was able to wake the lady who was snoozing gently in the back. My Kindle phrase book helped me describe to her the kind of journey I intended. The Danube bike book said it would take 6 hours but her computer screen showed three changes and a journey time of 13 hours arriving at 6 am the following day. It occurred to me that there was some flaw in my travel plan and slowly it dawned on me what everyone else knew that it was Sunday and nothing, simply nothing was happening. Helpfully the lady suggested mainly with sign language that I was better off riding the bike! I smiled at this irony, having done nearly 3000km already and trogged back to the hotel for an unexpected further day in Calafat.
This was a curious day. It reminded me of the sometime late days of summer holidays at school, when you were home from the caravan holiday in Skegness and all your pals were away camping in France. Those wet days at the end of August when your brother cheats at Monopoly and you have to take the dog out for walks and sit on the swings under the grey skies with no battery in your tranny. Imagine that but slightly worse Romanian style.
I hate Sundays in Calafat
I wandered round the broken down parks on the bike by the Danube among the litter and plastic bottles and there were stray dogs than usual. There was a grey sky and a very strong warm wind from the north west and everywhere the trees bent and softly roared in the wind. This white noise seemed to isolate people. The very few walking by the river had their heads down against the wind and no one seemed to talk much, except maybe to shout occasionally ‘What an awful day!’ to each other perhaps, in Romanian.
The Panorama Hotel had that dismal character of a scene from the space station in Tarkovsky’s
russian movie ‘Solaris’
The dining room was huge and every table ludicrously decorated with crimson table runners and white silk covers on the chairs that caused you to slip off every now and then. The waitress was very pale with jet black hair like a vampire victim post blood-letting. In common with perfect Romanian manners she never smiled. This was before I read in the guide that Romanians think it is really gross to meet strangers with huge toothy smiles the way Brits and Americans do. You must empathise with this and imagine that the average ordinary Romanian may find your glassy grin really quite intimidating. They prefer plain serious unobtrusive manners on the whole, except when they are drunk and then the game changes on a grand scale. The waitress also said ‘Nem’ surprisingly often to my requests. That is; No, ‘we don’t have’. What was not available was quite random. One day at breakfast it was milk that was ‘not have’. I believe Romanian milkmen are not entirely reliable, on another day it was jam. Dessert was available only once and wine only came in large 75cl bottles, not in trivial glasses. I gave in that night and finished the bottle in bed. These inconveniences were treated by staff as simple facts of life to be digested by guests calmly, without rancour of any kind. There were no apologies when things became ‘not have’-ed.
I reflected at times that there was a moral lesson for pampered west europeans who have never lived under communism. Lack of availability of consumer goods was perhaps a sign of the superior collective way of life and it was considered really wet to complain about no spoons or hydrogenated marge instead of full cream butter. I grew to quite admire the waitress, though some readers will not be so surprised at this revelation. The dining room was so huge it took her it seemed almost five minutes to reach my table from her smoking zone at the side of the room...During that time she moved sensuously on her dizzyingly high heels but her pale face always maintained a funereal calm. I gradually by instinct almost, suppressed my toothy smiles and learnt to communicate in the slightly military dissaproving manner that was favoured.
On the morning after the Iphone was stolen she was slowly approaching the table and with head bent I could hear her stiletto heels clicking slowly across the marble floor. She stood calmly over me and waited patiently for me to look up. I did and was a startled to see a very, very slight smile on her thin red lips. ‘Something happen with you?’ She said slowly. A question but actually it was a statement indicating that she and all the staff knew every single thing. ‘No Iphone!’ I said and shrugged my shoulders dismally, throwing my arms in the air and struggling to suppress a sob. ‘Am sorry for you.’ She said, ‘tomorrow better.’
I last saw the phone when I unplugged the little red active speaker that had played ‘You’re Learning the Blues” from the Capitol Years album of Frank Sinatra while I packed the side panniers to leave the previous day. Determined to squeeze every ounce of charge into the phone before leaving, I had left it plugged in and lying on the floor. I was a little anxious about braving the dogs,potholes and gypsy children on the way to the station and all the lifting and carrying of the bike over rail tracks and across broken platforms and my leaving room check was perfunctory. i did not look at the floor and that was that.
Having struggled onto the train with all the kit, I set to playing a few tunes and then reached to look up a chord sequence on the Fakebook app on the OHH NO.......I left the fucking thing in the room of the hotel. I looked out the window we were trundling through the endless central
Happy scenes from Romanian life on the desparate return to find the phone
plain to Craieova three hours away. I bailed out with all the kit at a tiny rural station in the middle of nowhere. The conductor and passengers waved wildly shouting ‘Nem Craieova!!!’ Behind the inscrutability, they were really concerned for me. I had to sprint a dismal 40km on the fully loaded bike and got back to the hotel after four hours. But the phone was gone gone gone.
Head of the four man team that came to the hotel was Inspector Nicoleta Badele who was in her very early thirties I thought and dressed in jeans like that new Danish cop programme and she was in charge of three middle aged blokes. Nicoleta interviewed me again the following afternoon. The police were keen to throw resources behind the hunt for the thief and indulged in lengthy and detailed discussions. She looked me deep in the eyes, in fact, several times and I found I had to concentrate on the matters in hand rather a lot as she was disturbingly attractive, You know the look, deep, tired shadows of overwork and dedication under her eyes and no makeup, very businesslike but very tight jeans and a lacy blouse. She shares an office with her superior and must drive him wild, but, but.. there was not the slightest hint of any subterranean erotic undertow. In fact all the women in public places I noticed in Romania exhibit almost gothic suppressed straight-faced, unfriendly manners and then look over their shoulders at you as they click off on those enormous high heels.
The Iphone recovery plan in the little red Moleskin notebook
June 29 - day 73
After battling across country in the train [see later too] I sheltered from rainstorms in a vast half empty hotel in Turnu Magurele. When I went down to find the bike in the garage I stumbled on two women butchers gaily chopping a pig into pieces for that day's menu. The sight stayed with me for days and I began to long for decent vegetarian food. Sossies anyone?
June 30 Day 74
I just ran into more shit, the bottom bracket came loose after a day in the pouring rain battling the endless romanian landscape. The gears kept falling out and I stopped twice to tweak the deraiileur, I inspected everything very closely and it seemed the chain was jumping. then it got better completely and I thought that is mysterious. Then the pedals seemed to wobble, then I noticed the spindle of the bottom bracket was working loose.
Luckily I had arrived at some god forsaken town Zimnicea, I have checked into another expensive boring hotel. The Flying Dutchman, for it is he, has lent me his laptop and went off to dinner and he met me 20 minutes ago. He is a wizened incredibly fit-looking 74 year old american Jack, born in Holland who has sailed his yacht with a motor down the danube over three years solo. The engine broke last October and he has been marooned in Zimnicia since then. Amazing, you know the story. The FD was sentenced to sail the world for eternity unless he met Ava Gardner which luckily in the film he did. The crew of his vessel are supposed to have been guilty of some dreadful crime, in the infancy of navigation; and to have been stricken with pestilence ... and are ordained still to traverse the ocean on which they perished, till the period of their penance expire. {so says Wikipedia)
This town was wrecked by an earthquake in 1970 and much remains, well, pretty wrecked including the roads. They do not remotely have a bike shop, so its more self help required. I have pushed it all back together and tightened up but it is noisy. I will have to think through the risk of biking 40Km to the next town to get the train to Bucharest where they do have bike services.
Gawd, its one thing after another in Romania. There are french and german bikers here tho, so some cameraderie.
Budapest to Belgrade to Bucharesti
Before we get pedalling
Travelling by bike round the world is tourism in a special form, but still it is tourism. It is a thin skinned kind of tourism because there is no tangible barrier between the rider and the environment. The birds can serenade you, the children greet you, little boys may slap you, people stop you, dogs chase and sometimes bite you, the sun burns you and it does get very wet. Combined with wild camping its a stunning way to see the world in all its glory and its decrepitude.
This story is on the whole light hearted. The route to the east gradually coils away though from the privelige and gloss of western europe and one begins to see real poverty and dereliction in places. I found that the Hungarians were a bit straight laced and humourless at times, the Croatians rather mellow and pleased with themselves, Serbians affable but prickly all the same as many resent the press they recieve in the west. These generalisations are of course weak and stereotypical. The sections on Romania though do get a bit dark. I just strolled back from the rail station in Bucharest, through scenes of poverty and misery, decrepit infrastructure and disorganisation. The Romanian people are stalwart in the face of their real problems , which are the legacy of a hugely complex history. At times my blog is ironical about this and I do not want to give an impression of lack of empathy with a people who face great challenges. I was treated with kindess and respect by Romanians and they are really trying to build a new nation. I wish them nothing but good fortune in the future.
On with the Odyssey!
I ran straight into the three muskateers coming out of Budapest through Rackeve. The Bikeline guys http://www.esterbauer.com/rtb_uebersicht.html who wrote the four Danube trail mapbooks that all this journey is based on, rightly suggest taking the train out of Budapest to avoid heavy traffic. These three young german lads were listening to a traditional folk concert on the pavement outside a chateau. We immediately got into a bikers conversation and they were full of fun and energy. They were wild camping on a tight budget and as it was late we set off for the woods on the banks of the Danube to set up camp. We got nicely lost in a village where every street seemed to have been dug up for obscure reasons and it was quite dark when we found the shelter in the forest that is shown in the first photo.
The lads surprised me by having vast quantities of food and next to no equipment except a set of pans it seemed someone had borrowed from their mother. No tents, just ponchos and sleeping bags. As we entered the dark wood, Alex who is the wit on the team, said ‘The mosquitoes here are bad..bad, but the bears are worse.’ I giggled in my best adolescent way, but he had inserted a tiny doubt that grew in the night. I recalled re-reading the section in the Bikeline guide that I first looked at in France that said as the Carpathian mountains come down to the Danube at the border between Serbia and Romania, there was wild life ‘including jackals and bears.’
The commonest animal we found along the Danube were frogs and toads. Night after night the Greek chorus of frogs would squeak and blow raspberries. I had grown fond of this rural soundtrack, but that night in the woods after abandoning my hammock and setting up the tent in the middle of the night to get away from swarms of mosquitoes, as I fell asleep, the barking of toads kept sounding uncannily like the growling of, well....Bears!!! Despite hours of intellectual self soothing “Listen Patrick there are no bears in Hungary! the bears are far away in er..Serbia and Romania which are the very next countries I will visit.’ Here was the start of a kind of neurotic process we could call ‘bear anticipation’. We will come back to that.
‘The Three Muskateers’ Timo, Mathias and Alexander.
On the road again
We soon got into a rythmn together finding spots to wild camp, building fires, cooking, singing and my mouth organ saw some solid service in these very appropriate circumstances. Timo was very keen on kilometers in fact they all loved the kilometer and devoured them in large chunks. On day 2 together Timo announced a new regime to capture more of them and that was to get up at 6:30am and cycle 25 kilometers before breakfast! The theory was that we would make better progress AND breakfast would taste better. It worked. This permitted long breaks for lunch and swimming, chasing frogs and all the other delights of the outside world.
On one of these early morning jaunts, Timo was annoyed to find the bikeline or Euro 6 route came away from the Danube for 30Km near the border into Serbia. After a brief council it was decided, with me abstaining, to take a deserted and grassed over track along the river which would save us 19Km. The muskateers were very pleased to find an old rusty surveillance tower about 30m high that swayed at the top in a way that persuaded me to come down pretty quick. This structure might have provided us with a clue as to what was going to happen next. Mathias was sent off from this strategic point to find a spot to breakfast by the Danube and he found a lovely place through thick undergrowth. We all enjoyed a hearty breakfast and a swim. i was just drying off when the police siren sounded and looking up I witnessed two burly Serbian policemen in blue fatigues coming through the undergrowth. We were all assembled and papers examined. We were briskly informed we had illegally entered Serbia by evading the Hungarian border crossing and that reports would be made and we were to accompany them to the station! They both spoke excellent english and in the wagon became very affable, roaring with laughter at the slightest humour from Chiefly Alex. I was at first a little tight lipped being perhaps older and wiser.
The illegal entry point to Serbia from the rusty survellance tower
The conversation went something this:
Dimitri [the dark reflective one] ‘we worry about the bad press you give Serbia in the west, everyone thinks we are monsters and responsible for all the bad things in the world, the axis of evil and all that, when really we are not so bad and others …...have done bad things too.’
Paddy (in slight sucking up mode) ‘You have an important job as policemen, it must be tough at times?’
Stefan (the really big one with the stentorian laugh) Yeah its real big shit, man. Its a laugh being a policeman in Serbia, the place is run by robbers and the pay is African! We have nothing, the economy is just big shit, we sell apples for e10 a tonne and we buy applejuice back for e50 a tonne! No its not that bad! ‘
They carried on in this ribald way all the way to the station..laughing and laughing.
we biked through Vukovar, Serbia at night - here a grim reminder of the conflict of 1999
A frog search
Later I was to ask myself why with so few resources, were the Serbian police so affable - had they already had a few vodkas perhaps to lighten the shift up? They settled us into the grubby and decrepit station and offered six varieties of tea, with or without sugar. We amused ourselves playing chess until after an hour Dimitri came in to announce that we were to be transferred to the Hungarian border police, who would process our applications to cross the border legally. So we bundled the bikes and baggage and ourselves into the huge police 4by4 and drove off to a frosty reception from the Hungarian police. Our Serbian hosts dropped us off affably laughing and shouting and shaking hands. The Hungarian team were very po -faced indeed and we were questioned mirthlessly on our travel plans and origins. They spoke virtually no english and little german. As the hours ticked by we were offered nothing except water and escorted to the locked toilets in the cells. It all looked a bit grim, but the muskateers kept up a continous banter which kept our spirits up. In the constrained and hushed atmosphere of the interview room, the slightest wit seemed
The campfire by the Danube.excruciatingly funny. Where we behaving like condemned men, enjoying a final joke?
The reason for the glee of the Serbians and the resolute glumness of the Hungarians soon became obvious as the pair assigned to us labouriously typed with one finger on a computer. Their teeth were clenched as they slowly worked their way through the endless forms that all police all over the world hate. Four five page reports with all demographic details checked, passports scanned in. The slow and monotonous click of the one finger typist on the keyboard marked the passing hours. As we realised the sheer tedium of their task a kind of reversal took place and we started to regard the police as objects of pity and felt guilty that we had screwed up their day with hours of bureaucracy instead of their being out and about chasing dope smugglers in their comfy 4-wheel-drive wagons. We later learnt that because Serbia is not part of the EU and Hungary is, the Serbians have less resources, but also less paperwork!
More frog fun!
Finally we were sent on our way, hungry, wiser and tired but intact. As we passed through passport control I spotted a beautiful american touring bike with up market bags, a laptop and Garmin GPS. Out of the station popped a thickset young black woman. There was a quickfire exchange of information and it emerged that she, Erin was 19 and from New York USA, had been on the road biking in Europe for 7 months and incredulously, I heard her say she was sleeping in the woods on her own.
My fatherly concern must have seemed crude to her, but I said immediately to her that I though she was taking a huge risk travelling alone as a woman and probably more so due to possible racism. She was being detained for a visa violation and it seemed she had outstayed the six months the EU allows US citizens. We went into a huddle down the road and the three muskateers decided to stay with her to see if they could help and I went on to find accomodation and money in Serbia.
The following day after sleeping in the hammock in a vinyard as there was no accomodation to be had, I was reunited with the three musketeers in the beautiful Croatia Danube nature reserve. They recounted that the pugnacious Erin had been arrested and cuffed for visa violations and was being dispatched to Budapest for deportation back to U.S. We speculated on her motives for allowing her visa to expire in the EU, when she was clearly an experienced traveller. I congratulated the three Ms for going back.
Chess in a Serbian police station.
I had been struck by her independent attitude and alarmed by her potential vulnerability. Personally she evinced an attitude that she was as vulnerable as a US marine in full combat kit, but objectively as a young woman cycling alone in eastern Europe and sleeping in the woods, she was really taking risks. They were frustrated they could not help the damsel in distress. I said there would be other princesses in other towers for them to practice chivalry in the future. It appears she was in too much deep shit to really appreciate their gesture and asked 'So where's the old British guy?'. I reflected that we had done the right thing by splitting up and the four musketeers set off once more together for a long lunch and swim in the lake that was so crowded with frogs I can't imagine how the supply of flies in Hungary keeps up.
I ought to explain a little more about the lads. They are all members of a philanthropic youth organisation with religious aspects, but broad as Alex says he is atheistic and this is no problem. They are sponsored to volunteer in care situations in eastern Europe instead of serving in the army. Mathias is the more quiet one and intends to study Polish and maybe theology, he is in charge of navigation on this trip; Timo works in a village in Czech Rep for children of parents with drug and alcohol problems, in the scouts he learnt to be camp cook and he is a genius of the cooking pot and campfire. Every day we have cooked lunch and sometimes dinner as well. We shop at 4pm before doing more kilometres into the evening and Timo sets up a little kitchen round the campfire and chops garlic, toms, onions and cooks with cream and eggs, try dessert of fried banana with honey, cream and nutella round a campfire!
Last night Timo made bread dough with yeast and we baked it in the campfire wrapped round pointed sticks and the inserted hotdogs in the freshly baked bread while frogs croaked on the riverbank. Alex is the communicator and speaks English and Rumanian and some Hungarian. He is handsome in a quiet graceful way, and displays effortless good manners as he talks to old men and women in little Balkan villages with skill and respect. They boys are all incredibly fit, attacking every hill a bit like my son-in-law Greg who is a demon biker too. Alex works in a poorly resourced old people's home in a country town in Rumania as a carer, which means intimate care. His charges have nothing, there is no entertainment and he eats the same food, without the meat as he is vegetarian! On the trip, Alex also supplies an endless supply of dry witticisms that turn every problem into a source of amusement. All three are 20 years old and I keep thinking they must have marvellous parents, because they are so kind and thoughtful. Alex is teetotal because he objects to the mindless culture of youth drinking and the others are abstemious. We buy no alcohol and have great fun on adrenaline (another type of drug). This video shows the guys hitching a ride from a farmer and his tractor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1WprB8PXjQ
Sadly we parted this afternoon slightly before Belgrade as I caught a cold and the route became very hot and hilly and I could not really keep up with the lads. I waved farewell from a hot and rusty train from a little village 30km from Belgrade
Alex relaxes with local Serbian folk.
June 21 day 65
I finally prised myself out of the very chilled 'Hedonist' hostel in Belgrade run by extended entrepreneurial family. Grandma Mellika is a p/t ophthalmologist and runs a private laser Clinic and helps out her son Michail in the hostel and other son and daughter bring grandkids in and just hangout at weekends and evenings. It has a designer courtyard garden which is winning it very good ratings.http://www.hedonisthostelbelgrade.com/
To avoid monstrous traffic, I took the train out to the country and the guard stuck the bike in the rear of the end carriage with the rear connecting door open showing the receding rails and a receding vista in vertiginous detail, so there are plenty of photos and videos to add to the blog. (at least there was going to be until the Iphone was stolen later on!) Serbia uses two scripts one Cyrhillic, one European. Maps are printed with one and street signs and road directions with the other! Consequently at first, you simply never know where you are! The train only stops for two minutes and will actually move off with the doors open. One has to move very fast to first scream the name of your destination to some poor old lady on the platform and hope for a nod rather than pages of explanation in dialect. Precious time can be wasted staring at the station name, it does not get any clearer.
Just check out the size of the lift to get the the bike in there!
Old and new in Belgrade
The passengers were no help, one young guy spoke reasonable English and said Mala Krstna was next. but one, then everyone else in the compartment disagreed and a huge shouting match started. I sneaked off to fling my side panniers on the platform and then prepare to lunge out with the bike over my shoulder as the train inexorably restarted. Mala Krstna of course was a tiny broken-down rural Station where I got off and only one man got on. Lucky he was the good Samaritan type and helped me off with the bike. I wild camped that night in what seemed to be a pleasant wood. It turned out a bit too pleasant as I only noticed the beer cans and used condoms after I'd fixed the hammock and boiled the pasta. As it was only two couples turned up and they were both jogging to some other more exciting part of the wood. This was the first outing for my mosquito net. Modern mosquito nets are just the same as old fashioned ones! They consist of a huge quantity of white bridal netting descending from a large wire ring that you have to suspend, in the woods, right over your hammock and the once inside, you have to reach round each end of the hammock and tie off the nets. You end up wrapped in white lace like you are someone's unwanted huge wedding present or perhaps some humongous chrysalis. It is very important to pee before all this wrapping as it is really hard to undo once it is done. How this would appear to some poor drunk stumbling home in the dark coming suddenly on this phantom wrapped in white veils suspended in the woods, I don't know.
The nets worked brilliantly. There were no bites, but precious little sleep, since the bats emitted high pitched but quite audible shrieks, magpies and woodpeckers rattled all night, owls hooted, and every dog in the neighbourhood howled all night. Even the top of the range wax earplugs could not keep it out. I also got chilled and immediately my cold returned as if the virus had only had a weekend off and had just come back on duty.
Ram - the ferry crossing from Serbia to Romania. There is a great little restaurant just here.
In the early morning I adopted the routines of my previous young German comrades and did 25 Km before breakfast. The biking went well, despite sniffling and Ram, the ferry point between Serbia and Romania turned out to be a jewel-like Mediterranean resort on the vast Danube - an inland sea. I had a perfect lunch of Danube Perch and put my hammock up near the beach to sleep off the cold. This worked really well and I did 40km in the evening and reached Veliko Graviste at the start of the Danube gorge thro' the Carpathian mountains. Before that though there is a long gruelling stretch through the mining terrritory, a virtually treeless wilderness.
The opencast mines near Kostolac, Serbia.
June 24 day 68
Turnu Severin is my first stop in Romania, just below the massive dam at Sip. After rekindling my cold by sleeping in the hammock in the woods I emerged into a stunningly beautiful landscape as the intensive farming of Serbia gives way to the
the Carpathian mountains beckon in the distance.
foothills of the Carpathians. My recuperation was aided by opting for a nice little boarding house for the overnight stay. As I sipped a not so very miniature brandy in my cot I began to feel braver about tackling the bears all alone. I cunningly planned the route so as to arrive precisely at villages with accommodation at nightfall to avoid staying under canvas with all my tasty bear-tempting snacks in the tent. Come morning I set forth determined to prove the superiority of homo dulwichiensis over mere 600kg carnivores. I was still pleased to meet finally after four days alone a fellow biker albeit going the other way. I cheerfully called out that it was good to see him but he was going the wrong way. (Ho ho!?) He came over and agreed with me , he was lost and wanted to head towards the Black Sea.
Juliani at the Danube gorge. The author just posing by the ancient castle at Golubac, SerbiaMy new companion then turned round and we teamed up for the next four days. Juliani turned out to be Finnish and had fought with NATO forces in Kosovo in 1999. We did the gorge together and it is stupendous, sadly no bears, but you can't have everything!
Local workers in Ram insisted I join them for a drink.
June 25 day 69
This trip is full of surprise! I have not talked too much about the actual biking. I biked the 'Iron Gates' or Danube gorge with my Finnish mate Juliani. Stunning 600m cliffs fall perpendicularly into the river which suddenly narrows as it forced its way thro the Carpathian mountains. The Turks and other medievals struggled with this 100Km section, but the Romans under Trajan, a very 'can do' emperor just got the slaves to build a flat road right along and the topped it with the longest bridge in the ancient world at Turnu Severin. Later when the barbarians were flooding in Constantine knocked it down and maybe gained Rome a few years. It took modern man about 1500 years before they could build another bridge over this part of the Danube.
Paddy and Juliani - togetherness.
After saying goodbye to juliani, I launched into the Romanian heartlands. Soon I was in the land of horse and cart and rustic wells. A place where everyone sits on a bench in the street after the day's labour is done and talks to the neighbours and of course wave encouragingly to ageing bikers as they pass by . During the morning I meandered thro the villages taking photos. Gradually a powerful north west wind built up and started pushing me in exactly the correct south east direction. I reflected that I was very fed up with potholes and monster gravel and the description of the backroads favoured in the Danube bike trail was absolutely foul. With this wind what I needed was a nice main road and I found the E56. This wind was nearly force 3/4. As a cross wind it nearly blew me over. As a tail wind it was like rocket fuel! Romania is not that backward, the E56 was like velvet, not a pothole to be seen. A few huge lorries of course, but they treat you with respect when you are strobing and doing 45km/Hr!!! I set up the IPhone music, the sun shone and the wind blew in my back for 100km. Town after town sped by, I cruised at 35km/hr and a little thigh flexing took me up to 50km/hr with moderate effort and this went on for hours! It was like being in a Merc with a great sound system, only no engine, just pedal and wind power. Goodbyes at Turnu Severin
Uphills were all wind assisted and a doddle. It was the most faultless and exhilarating days cycling I can remember. Sadly there was a 120deg right turn for the last 13km so I then cycled into the teeth of the wind, but could hardly complain - 140km in a day with 25Kg baggage is pretty good going!
Into RomaniaRush hour traffic in Romania I just dropped by to say hello.June 26 day 70
Another jarring change of pace strikes the interstellar wind biker. It is an open secret in Romania that today is Yes. Sunday! However the thin lipped and it seems to me, unnecessarily austere staff in my ex- soviet style concrete bunker hotel, failed to remind me of this crucial fact when I paid and headed my heavily laden bike to the rail station. Calafat station is like a a huge red Transylvanian castle and it appeared, was quite deserted. On the way down as I carefully picked my way round the bath-sized potholes in the tree-lined once grand boulevard, grimy gypsy children ran out of derelict warehouses screaming 'Lei!!!' (i.e. Romanian currency) barring my way and slapping my arms as I ploughed on. There were no vehicles in the forecourt and no passengers in the eery cathedral-like waiting room. I pushed the bike in and the door squeaked shut behind me with a monumental echo then there was total
Calafat railway station - ‘quitter sans Iphone!’silence.
I racked my traveler's brain to try and understand the reasons for so much inactivity I heard the welcome clanking of a train actually arriving at what I had started to think was a low budget set for an east European version of the opening scene of 'Once upon a time in the west'
Two passengers got off the train. I found a ticket office and by rapping on the window I was able to wake the lady who was snoozing gently in the back. My Kindle phrase book helped me describe to her the kind of journey I intended. The Danube bike book said it would take 6 hours but her computer screen showed three changes and a journey time of 13 hours arriving at 6 am the following day. It occurred to me that there was some flaw in my travel plan and slowly it dawned on me what everyone else knew that it was Sunday and nothing, simply nothing was happening. Helpfully the lady suggested mainly with sign language that I was better off riding the bike! I smiled at this irony, having done nearly 3000km already and trogged back to the hotel for an unexpected further day in Calafat.
This was a curious day. It reminded me of the sometime late days of summer holidays at school, when you were home from the caravan holiday in Skegness and all your pals were away camping in France. Those wet days at the end of August when your brother cheats at Monopoly and you have to take the dog out for walks and sit on the swings under the grey skies with no battery in your tranny. Imagine that but slightly worse Romanian style.
I hate Sundays in Calafat
I wandered round the broken down parks on the bike by the Danube among the litter and plastic bottles and there were stray dogs than usual. There was a grey sky and a very strong warm wind from the north west and everywhere the trees bent and softly roared in the wind. This white noise seemed to isolate people. The very few walking by the river had their heads down against the wind and no one seemed to talk much, except maybe to shout occasionally ‘What an awful day!’ to each other perhaps, in Romanian.
The Panorama Hotel had that dismal character of a scene from the space station in Tarkovsky’s
russian movie ‘Solaris’
The dining room was huge and every table ludicrously decorated with crimson table runners and white silk covers on the chairs that caused you to slip off every now and then. The waitress was very pale with jet black hair like a vampire victim post blood-letting. In common with perfect Romanian manners she never smiled. This was before I read in the guide that Romanians think it is really gross to meet strangers with huge toothy smiles the way Brits and Americans do. You must empathise with this and imagine that the average ordinary Romanian may find your glassy grin really quite intimidating. They prefer plain serious unobtrusive manners on the whole, except when they are drunk and then the game changes on a grand scale. The waitress also said ‘Nem’ surprisingly often to my requests. That is; No, ‘we don’t have’. What was not available was quite random. One day at breakfast it was milk that was ‘not have’. I believe Romanian milkmen are not entirely reliable, on another day it was jam. Dessert was available only once and wine only came in large 75cl bottles, not in trivial glasses. I gave in that night and finished the bottle in bed. These inconveniences were treated by staff as simple facts of life to be digested by guests calmly, without rancour of any kind. There were no apologies when things became ‘not have’-ed.
I reflected at times that there was a moral lesson for pampered west europeans who have never lived under communism. Lack of availability of consumer goods was perhaps a sign of the superior collective way of life and it was considered really wet to complain about no spoons or hydrogenated marge instead of full cream butter. I grew to quite admire the waitress, though some readers will not be so surprised at this revelation. The dining room was so huge it took her it seemed almost five minutes to reach my table from her smoking zone at the side of the room...During that time she moved sensuously on her dizzyingly high heels but her pale face always maintained a funereal calm. I gradually by instinct almost, suppressed my toothy smiles and learnt to communicate in the slightly military dissaproving manner that was favoured.
On the morning after the Iphone was stolen she was slowly approaching the table and with head bent I could hear her stiletto heels clicking slowly across the marble floor. She stood calmly over me and waited patiently for me to look up. I did and was a startled to see a very, very slight smile on her thin red lips. ‘Something happen with you?’ She said slowly. A question but actually it was a statement indicating that she and all the staff knew every single thing. ‘No Iphone!’ I said and shrugged my shoulders dismally, throwing my arms in the air and struggling to suppress a sob. ‘Am sorry for you.’ She said, ‘tomorrow better.’
I last saw the phone when I unplugged the little red active speaker that had played ‘You’re Learning the Blues” from the Capitol Years album of Frank Sinatra while I packed the side panniers to leave the previous day. Determined to squeeze every ounce of charge into the phone before leaving, I had left it plugged in and lying on the floor. I was a little anxious about braving the dogs,potholes and gypsy children on the way to the station and all the lifting and carrying of the bike over rail tracks and across broken platforms and my leaving room check was perfunctory. i did not look at the floor and that was that.
Having struggled onto the train with all the kit, I set to playing a few tunes and then reached to look up a chord sequence on the Fakebook app on the OHH NO.......I left the fucking thing in the room of the hotel. I looked out the window we were trundling through the endless central
Happy scenes from Romanian life on the desparate return to find the phone plain to Craieova three hours away. I bailed out with all the kit at a tiny rural station in the middle of nowhere. The conductor and passengers waved wildly shouting ‘Nem Craieova!!!’ Behind the inscrutability, they were really concerned for me. I had to sprint a dismal 40km on the fully loaded bike and got back to the hotel after four hours. But the phone was gone gone gone. Head of the four man team that came to the hotel was Inspector Nicoleta Badele who was in her very early thirties I thought and dressed in jeans like that new Danish cop programme and she was in charge of three middle aged blokes. Nicoleta interviewed me again the following afternoon. The police were keen to throw resources behind the hunt for the thief and indulged in lengthy and detailed discussions. She looked me deep in the eyes, in fact, several times and I found I had to concentrate on the matters in hand rather a lot as she was disturbingly attractive, You know the look, deep, tired shadows of overwork and dedication under her eyes and no makeup, very businesslike but very tight jeans and a lacy blouse. She shares an office with her superior and must drive him wild, but, but.. there was not the slightest hint of any subterranean erotic undertow. In fact all the women in public places I noticed in Romania exhibit almost gothic suppressed straight-faced, unfriendly manners and then look over their shoulders at you as they click off on those enormous high heels.
The Iphone recovery plan in the little red Moleskin notebook
June 29 - day 73
After battling across country in the train [see later too] I sheltered from rainstorms in a vast half empty hotel in Turnu Magurele. When I went down to find the bike in the garage I stumbled on two women butchers gaily chopping a pig into pieces for that day's menu. The sight stayed with me for days and I began to long for decent vegetarian food. Sossies anyone?
June 30 Day 74
I just ran into more shit, the bottom bracket came loose after a day in the pouring rain battling the endless romanian landscape. The gears kept falling out and I stopped twice to tweak the deraiileur, I inspected everything very closely and it seemed the chain was jumping. then it got better completely and I thought that is mysterious. Then the pedals seemed to wobble, then I noticed the spindle of the bottom bracket was working loose.
Luckily I had arrived at some god forsaken town Zimnicea, I have checked into another expensive boring hotel. The Flying Dutchman, for it is he, has lent me his laptop and went off to dinner and he met me 20 minutes ago. He is a wizened incredibly fit-looking 74 year old american Jack, born in Holland who has sailed his yacht with a motor down the danube over three years solo. The engine broke last October and he has been marooned in Zimnicia since then. Amazing, you know the story. The FD was sentenced to sail the world for eternity unless he met Ava Gardner which luckily in the film he did. The crew of his vessel are supposed to have been guilty of some dreadful crime, in the infancy of navigation; and to have been stricken with pestilence ... and are ordained still to traverse the ocean on which they perished, till the period of their penance expire. {so says Wikipedia)
This town was wrecked by an earthquake in 1970 and much remains, well, pretty wrecked including the roads. They do not remotely have a bike shop, so its more self help required. I have pushed it all back together and tightened up but it is noisy. I will have to think through the risk of biking 40Km to the next town to get the train to Bucharest where they do have bike services.
Gawd, its one thing after another in Romania. There are french and german bikers here tho, so some cameraderie.
Jack (The Flying Dutchman) and Armel provide much-needed emotional suipport for my loose bottom bracket.
More glamorous locations in wet Romania Everything has gone funky again!!
A hot strong wind blew me into Calafat, Romania at great speed. I felt like an argonaut sailing through village after village with local peeps shouting 'Hola' from their little benches outside cottages on the route. But Calafat was also my undoing as its strange Blackpool out -of-season atmosphere had started to wear me down even before the Iphone was stolen. Although the exotic and mysterious Inspector Nicoleda of the Calafat police provided good copy, nevertheless I felt my spirits dropping as I gazed at the one million ways to cook pork with chips on the hotel menu. When I finally escaped on a decrepit train I began to feel brave about coping without an Iphone. I said to myself that I would go back to writing with a pencil in my Moleskin Notebook like Ernest Hemingway and play the harmonica unaccompanied instead of with the full jazz combo backing tracks on the Iphone. I would sing a capella instead of listening to Frank Sinatra and Anita O'Day on Itunes, but I, well, could still feel the sexy, slithery alloy body of the Iphone between my fingers and life was not the same without it.
As I trundled across country the weather became grey and overcast and promised rain and thunder storms. I paused for two long hours at some awful wrecked town called Rosiori where the feral dogs had colonised the station and trained all the human passengers to feed them. Eight or nine dogs prowled the platforms growling and whining for food and all the people who ate from the buffet fed them scraps compounding the
A feral dog waits for me to eat at Rosiori station.
problem over and over again. I could not eat until I got on the train at 8pm as I knew that I would be assailed by five or six dogs and be obliged to feed them. By the time I arrived at Turnu Mageori it was dark, pouring and the few other passengers showed a kind concern as to where I was going to sleep. Luckily despite the dire warning in the guide book never to ride at night in Romania, it was a straight road an only two kilometers to the usual 60s tower block hotel.
the next two days were just hard graft with continuing rain, endless potholes and dog chases. The dogs usually lurk at the outskirts of villages and when you are at the end of your tether and with 25Kg of baggage you have to sprint out of town to get away from them. I started to ask villagers to escort me on their bikes. At get togethers with other bikers the frequent topic is dogs and how to deal with them.
Technical Note
It is interesting how you diagnose faults on a bike, especially in difficult conditions. The whole thing started with the gears slipping out of sync, it was only when I got on the internet on Jack's laptop did I read the technical spec from Shimano which points out that persistent problems with the gears may suggest the bearing in the BT is loose. That is exactly what happened. I managed to dismantle and refit the chain and retighten everything and the following day, it worked better than ever, totally smooth. I conclude that ever since the new parts were fitted in Vienna, it has been slowly coming loose and the rough running of the gears which I attributed to wear and tear has now dissappeared.
alles is klar! July 1
That was good because yesterday back on the trail, it was drenching rain and dark storm clouds nearly all day with massive potholes filled with muddy water and big farm trucks, combine harvesters and the usual gangs of surly dogs, growling and chasing.
It never rains but it pours
July 2 day 76 Bucharesti.
I got pretty drunk last night with three chemistry engineers who had been biking in bear country until their bikes were stolen outside the tent! They had got there final results. Two firsts and a good 2:1, a good excuse for several bottles of wine. Whenever there was a lull in the conversation they turned to the subject of Romanian dogs. They had had several run-ins and sprint races with packs of snapping canines. I have been comparing al the various devices bikers are using to defend themselves; from large batons to hinged metal flails. One frenchman I met was happily in possession of an electronic high frequency animal alarm.
An example of the Romanian country dog.
run-ins and sprint races with packs of snapping canines. I have been comparing al the various devices bikers are using to defend themselves; from large batons to hinged metal flails. One frenchman I met was happily in possession of an electronic high frequency animal alarm.
I had checked into a reasonably-rated hostel in Bucharest and they apologised ar registration for the building conversion work. The rooms were dirty and dusty due to this, in the morning I woke sneezing with a rhinitis attack. The builders were using the toilets and then opened up with power drills. One of the chemistry engineers reported his camera was missing. We could not hear each other speak over breakfast.
I pondered what to do while saying goodbyes to the three engineers. I had spent a fruitful time on the train to Bucharest reading Sam Cel Roman's 'The Complete Insider's Guide to Romania' on my Kindle. http://www.facebook.com/people/Sam-Cel-Roman/100001745848174 Sam is a living expert on his adopted country and has so many wise things to say. The guide has an enthralling immediacy of someone who has engaged with a new country and made it his own. There is a detailed and absorbing chapter on the Romanian character, history and communism. My understanding is that Romanians have been serfs for most of history and oppressed by Hungarians, Austrians and Turks. They only became a real nation in 1918 and that ended in catastrophe as they signed up with the Nazis and were totally pasted by the Soviets as a result. One of the reasons that the country is littered with wrecked factories is that everything was owned by the state under communism. After the 1989 fall there was a fire sale of real estate to the tiny and underdeveloped private sector. Since most of the previously state run services were inefficient and uneconomic under capitalist conditions, property prices collapsed and nearly all these sites became financial burdens. The Romanians stripped out every bit of scrap and now all thes sites are just left to rot. They are everywhere and they lend an uncanny, desolate, end-of-the world feel to many towns and cities.
In Sam R's manual on dealing with Romanian hierarchies the advice is that Romanians are deeply servile to authority and when things go wrong, to get things done you have to scold people very firmly and seriously like a stern father figure. The manager of the hostel is a woman Anek (not her real name for obvious reasons) in her late 30s. She came to ask how I was doing and I scolded her to perfection and really enjoyed hearing my eloquent denunciation. Cel Roman says that Romanians then have to look very sad and sorry and cringe and then immediately tidy up the problem.
This worked perfectly. Anek went into an endless speech of self deprecation, saying that she was guilty and so sorry and she was struggling with the business because the builders were thieves and had her over a barrel. She was also quite a charming person, but having read the manual I paid no attention to this and just ploughed on condemning her lack of concern for my health and other guests and the risks of injury and theft allowing builders to have open access to the living spaces. The result amazed me.
Anek said fulsomely that I was completely correct and had every justification to complain. She reimbursed me on the spot. She called another very cool new hostel with only one other guest and her brother came to drive me over. room and bedroom to myself and there is a lovely italian restaurant and Bucharest's best park round the The new Hostel is called Green Frog and it is like having a first class hotel all to myself. The fridge has unlimited free beer, it is quiet and peaceful. I have unlimited access to a computer and the internet.
Many thanks to Roxana and Dan at the Green Frog Hostel for making my stay in Bucharest really comfortable.
There is still life in this trip and the Romanian blue period seems to be over. Fingers crossed! Now the plan is down to the Black Sea and across to ................................Constantinople!!!!I
See you for Blog number 5 and the final end of it all.
Paddy Byrne
