26/4/2019 0 Comments Meet Jelica and SashaWe had met Jelica at the picnic two days before and she had invited us to come and stay at her home in Negotin. We are hesitant to bother people to much, but she was so friendly that we took her up on her offer. We didn't regret it for a single second. Not only did we get an enormous room, with the first proper bed since we left six weeks ago, but we also got to spend the day with what can easily be called the nicest and most interesting people we have met on our trip so far. They took us for a spin in their car into the hills - another first in six weeks - and showed us around the village they grew up in. It's a beautiful place with pristine little streams running through the valley. Jelica and Sasha live in Frankfurt now, but they are very much looking forward to returning after they retire in a couple of years and live in what is now their holiday house but still home. They are saddened by what migration to the west had done to their region with some villages almost abandoned - they told us how in one village the school enrolment list dropped from 200 to 0 in only one generation. But there are some signs of hope: the wine industry which had almost completely disappeared is undergoing a renaissance. Based on the wine tasting and the delicious grill restaurant they took us too, we would happily recommend East-Serbia to every foody. These two were so friendly and hospitable that it was hard to say goodbye. With all their openess and honesty they taught us more about their country than the whole of our travels did the previous two weeks. What we will remember the most is how at home they made us feel.
0 Comments
26/4/2019 0 Comments Flat tyres, no sparesAfter about 1500km we had our first flat. We were not too bothered by it and swiftly replaced the punctured inner tube, so we could get back on the road and repare the broken one later. It all went so smootly that in our little victory dance celebrating our technical competence we didn't pay much attention to the strange shape the tyre had taken once inflated.
The euphoria about our bike repair skills quickly disappeared when only a few kilometers further we had a flat again. It took us another hour and a spoiled lunch break to realise that we had the wrong spare inner tubes. So there we were, somewhere in the Serbian countryside, with no spares. Luckily it's not the end of the world. We will order some. But it's just another testimony to how ill-prepared we are. 26/4/2019 0 Comments cherry on the Serbian cakeWe were almost at the end of our ride through the stunning Djerdep national park and we were looking for a place to camp. We asked some locals and they pointed to a row of caravans on the banks of the Danube. Once there we found a big group of people drinking and eating together, including a whole roast pig. We later found out that the local fireman had saved some of their caravans from a fire and to thank him for his heroism they had thrown him a party.
What followed was a great night for us too. When we had a swim in the Danube to freshen up after a day biking, some of the group couldn't take it that the tourists were the ones 'opening the swimming season' so they jumped in too. After that we were invited for a copious meal of soup and roast pork, washed down with rakija and beer. What we didn't realise was that the more gulps Acacia needed to down her shot, the more children she would have. So now we are predicted to have five. Later they gave us rosery beads and a picture of the patron saint of travel for religious protection and a pair of knitted woollen socks because Acacia kept running around barefoot. We ended up having a very warm night by a fire, grateful for so much hospitality. 26/4/2019 0 Comments Meet NikolaThis is Nikola - a Serbian farmer who let us pitch our tent on his farm for the night. Unfortunately there isn't much we can share about him as we didn't share a common word of language. What we do know is that he was widowed recently, and living alone in this tiny farm cottage that hadn't changed since long before either of us were born, surrounded by his modest farm with sheep, goats, cats and dogs. He showed us photos of his wife with tears welling up in his eyes as he reminisced. And one of his little dogs had crooked front legs which we think he said was from digging, although this didn't make a lot of sense.
We gathered these little snippets of information when he kindly invited us in for a 7am coffee and rakija (by now we had realised that this is a Serbian tradition, and not a crazy one-off. They even have a saying about the inseparability of the two drinks). 20/4/2019 0 Comments meet ericThis is Eric Capdeville - a cancer surviver and inspiring fellow traveller on the route to Central Asia. Telling his story, he said that the eight months of intensive radiotherapy he had to undergo was not even the hardest part of fighting cancer. What came after that, regaining his physical strength and getting his life back on track, was even more challenging. He is now biking from Biarritz in France to Tajikistan, a project he has trained for for two years.
Through this incredible endeavour he is calling for more attention for the physical and mental struggle of people who are recovering from cancer. He also wants to bring a message of hope to people in the same situation and show that anything is possible. We had the incredible honour of joining him on his journey for three days from Vukovar to Belgrade. You can find out more about his story on Instagram and Facebook: 20.000 roues sur la terre 20/4/2019 0 Comments Serbia propaganda: badWe always try to be open-minded but we entered Serbia with some doubt about what to expect. Let's be honest, the country's rep is not the best. And some of our reservations were not totally unjustified. On our first day we had some young kid shouting "F*ck the EU" at us. A lot of people - from our taxi driver in Belgrade, to a French speaking man in a parking lot and to the the nicest old man who let us camp on his farm - managed to either say something really racist about Muslims or blame all the misfortune of the country on the Western sanctions and the NATO bombings of 1999. Actually, most of them brought up both of these points and generally within the first five minutes of conversation.
After spending around ten days in Serbia our view has changed. We love the country, especially after our journey through the Djerdep national park on the borders of Romania and Bulgaria. The landscape here has been stunning, and we have been greeted with warmth and enthusiasm by almost everyone. For us, Serbia has been a place of extremes... heartwarming hospitality or guarded hostility, flashy wealth or simple subsistence farming, pristine nature or dumpsters full of burning plastic. Looking back, maybe our first encounter sums up our experience the best. We had just crossed the border when we sat down on an empty patch of grass for a picnic. After only a couple of minutes a man came out of his house with a bottle of home-made Rakija, the (strong) local liquour, and offered us shots. He insisted that we take the bottle, which we did (even though cramming a 1 litre bottle into our limited baggage compartments was less than simple). Over a cup of strong Turkish-style coffee and a second shot he had some wise words. He hardly spoke a word of English but he managed to easily express his concern about what people think of his country - "Serbia propaganda bad". 20/4/2019 0 Comments meet magdalenaThis is Magdalena - our Croation guardian angel. We cycled past her house and she didn't even look up, too busily engrossed in her knitting. We stopped a few hundred metres later to check the map, and after a few minutes she came wandering up the road towards us.
What ensued was an intense monologue in Croatian which from what I gathered - not really speaking a word of Croatian - entailed us being blessed by all of the saints and being warned to watch out for police and traffic. She was particularly interested in me (Acacia), to whom the majority of the monologue was addressed. I've had this sort of attention a few times now and can only imagine that seeing a woman embarking on this sort of trip fills them with wonder but mostly trepidation, being so different from their experience of the world. We loved this meeting with Magdalena despite the lack of common language and it's a reminder as to why this sort of travel is so special and allows you a privileged glimpse into the lives of people. Note: A Croatian friend later told me that all she could make out from a video we took of this conversation was 'You cut too little wood. Well how much would you like?'. So, maybe this had nothing to do with us actually and was simply a senile ramble! Sometimes, ignorance is bliss. 15/4/2019 0 Comments zeemvel Since we left people have showed some strange fascination with some parts of our body they should not have any interest in. To be less cryptic: we get quite a lot of questions like: “How is your ass?” The short answer: "It's fine, thanks!"
Growing up like Jasper in a country where cycling is a national sport you hear a lot of stories about what cyclists did back in the days to ease the ride. There's classics like filling up drinking bottles with wine or champagne or taking the notorious "pot belge", a mixture of amphetamines, cocaine and all sorts of painkillers. We have done no such things (besides the occasional rakija while on the road). Another cycling classic is putting a steak in your pants (really), but we haven’t reached that level of desperation (yet). But there is one little trick that we swear by: using a "zeemvel". This is what Wikipedia has to say about it: "Chamois leather is a type of porous leather, traditionally the skin of the chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra), a type of European mountain goat but today it is made almost exclusively from the flesh split off a sheepskin. The leather is favored for its gentle, non-abrasive composition and absorption properties." We can add that this little piece of what is essentially a cleaning cloth has done miracles for us. 15/4/2019 0 Comments vukovarIn the beginning of the nineties this small idyllic Croatian town on the border with Serbia dominated the world news for weeks. The brief summary is that Serbian forces were trying to capture it, while Croatian troops were defending it. The most horrific story is that of the hospital, where hundreds of people were hiding for weeks while the building was under constant attack. When the city was finally captured and despite assurances as to their safety, those people were taken away from the hospital and never to be seen again. Later mass graves were found in different villages in the area.
Biking through a region that was so recently the scene of such atrocities was surreal. There are still many damaged buildings with bullet holes clearly visible and in every village there are memorials for the victims, that look like they were built yesterday. The local museum and the big memorial on the local burial ground left us silent. We don't want to go into politics here. Talking with locals you realise quickly how sensitive it still all is. It just made us realise that peace in Europe is absolutely not a given. All the critics of the European Union who say that peace is not enough or have forgotten why we need to work together, should go to Vukovar. 15/4/2019 0 Comments The first 1000We broke our fancy Garmin bike computer after a week. We don't really know how and it happened before we worked out how to use it properly. So, yet again, we have established that we are complete technological nitwits. Nonetheless our phones manage to keep us on route and with a speedometer we keep track of the kilometers.
Thanks to the latter, we were able to celebrate the 1000km mark. We crossed this symbolic mark in Vukovar in Croatia, which is 1500 km from home. Here is our route over the past 30 days, of which 18 were on our bikes. Day 1: Brussel - Leuven (30km) Day 2: Leuven - Roermond (train) - Kessel (20km) Day 3: Kessel - Duisburg (70km) 4 days in Duisburg for an article we're working on and then a train to Plankenfelz for a 2 days visit to Acacia's sister Mayan Day 4: Plankenfelz - Bayreuth (25km) - Passau (train) Day 5: Passau - Ottensheim (74km) Day 6: Ottensheim - Linz (10km) - Neulenbach (train) - Baden bei Wien (55km) 2 days in Vienna to visit Acacia's friend Brita Day 7: Baden - Bratislava (90km) Day 8: Bratislava - Lipot (55km) Day 9: Lipot - Komarno (80km) Day 10: Komarno - Vizegrad (73km) Day 11: Vizegrad - Budapest (42km) 4 days in Budapest Day 12: Budapest - Szigetujfalu (45km) Day 13: Szigetujfalu - Apostag (58km) Day 14: Apostag - Kalocsa (53km) Day 15: Kalocsa - Scerenble (55km) Day 16: Scerenble - Mohacs (45km) Day 17: Mohacs - Kopaceva (69km) Day 18: Kopaceva - Vukovar (55km) |
Archives
October 2019
Categories |