Eastern Europe - A late and extended edition

Hello beautiful readers. It’s been a long long long time since I’ve written. Thank you to everyone who's been so nice about this blog since we got back - it makes it all worth it. Having reread most of it now a lot of it could definitely have done with a good proof read... Ever since we got back this blog has been quite literally an unfinished chapter for me and it's been on my mind for a while to give it the conclusion it deserves - and I'm also worried that some people might think we finished after the last post - especially as it was quite negative (sorry Bulgaria). I'm going to do a few more posts to "finish it off" starting with a blog post I wrote ages ago whilst we were still on the road - not sure why I didn't post it at the time. There’ll be more to come – including some deep reflection(!!) and another Q+A. 

Drobeta to Belgrade - June 22nd to June 25th 2017 

We left Romania via the damn at Drobeta. There was a very highly advertised museum at the damn so we decided to make a visit. The entrance fee was $4, which seemed a bit steep, but luckily we didn’t have that much money and they let us in anyway. Mum would say the museum was fab, I’d say it had potential. The exhibits were about the Danube but were randomly arranged, not via geography or chronology. There were also massive stuffed animals everywhere. And everything was in Romanian. Eventually Mum managed to drag herself away from pretending to read the noticeboards and we crossed the border. Our first problem was the lack of place to change money, and the nearest cashpoint being 50km away. Why does this always happen to us? We scraped together a below par lunch and were eating it when a British cyclist stopped for some water. It turns out he actually lives in Lapland. Lapland? It turns out there are genuinely people that live there, and supermarkets, and pubs… (although champagne apparently is expensive). He works for Father Christmas in the winter and spends the summers travelling. He was very interesting, but he did tell us about a climb coming up which wasn’t such welcome news. The view from the climb was absolutely staggering. 

We’d heard a lot about the iron gates gorge and it lived up to all expectations. After this we headed to the small town of Donji Milanovic and found a cashpoint, a 5 euro hostel, some delicious food, and two Swiss cyclists. 

We had a lovely time with them in the evening and in the morning continued on Eurovelo 6. The road on the Serbian side of the sea is beautiful and free of traffic, unlike the Romanian side which we could see lorries barrelling along across the river. The gorge continued and was really stunning. What wasn’t so beautiful was the constant headwind. We’d been struggling against this since we left Bulgaria and I was seriously worried it would follow us back to GU9 (Phoebe from the present - turns out all my fears came true). That night we wild-camped by the side of a deserted river and woke up absolutely surrounded by cars full of fishermen – we were a bit stressed we’d stolen somebody’s regular spot. They were all very friendly. Thankfully they didn’t offer us any fish.

 We soon reached the capital Belgrade which we’d been looking forward to for a long long time. We splashed out on a really nice hostel and a private room. (Phoebe from the present - we actually booked at Bike Hostel Belgrade but when we got there it was run by three not very nice looking men who had literally never heard of cycle tourists. It was a 6 bed mixed dorm with no kitchen or anywhere to do anything. I kicked up a huge fuss because I'd been so excited about this rest day. Mum very kindly gave in - and I think she didn't regret it). The next day we separated as we had different priorities – I went to the Nikola Tesla museum and Mum went to some old churches. (Phoebe from the present - I read out this post on the phone to her and she pointed out she also did all the laundry and fixed the tent zip...). I always crave these separations from Mum and then always miss her desperately when they actually happen #tragic. In the evening we reunited for a Bicycles Take The Street protest during which we met the BBC correspondent for old Yugoslavia. Anyway all too soon it was time to set off again and we headed off on Eurovelo 6.

Belgrade to Budapest - June 25th to July 1st 

Eurovelo 6 is mixed – sometimes it’s beautifully segregated, tarmacked, and sometimes it’s a field.. or a motorway. 

Our next milestone was Novi Sad. As we cycled into the city we could see the remains of bridges bombed by NATO, surprisingly recently. We decided to have a quick look round the city before pushing on and finding somewhere to camp. We soon found some riverside pub things with massive gardens that we thought looked good for camping. We picked one and went and asked. They were fine about it and we pitched our tent before heading in for a drink. We were immediately set on by this very drunk man who gave us both a “beautiful present” of a sponge and a scouring pad each. He did give us a sponge that matched each of our cycling jerseys, mine was blue and mum’s was yellow. That was a nice touch. He then gave us each a fly swatter. After these “beautiful presents” he tried to persuade us to come back to his house were we could sleep in the lift! He did some great demonstrations of us going up and down all night. Sadly we had to refuse this tempting offer. He then tickled me and was shouted at by the owner of the pub. He moved away, only returning to try and sell us some ladies tights. We didn’t have much use for these. Eventually we escaped to the tent and were hit by a huge thunderstorm. I was absolutely terrified despite mum’s continued reassurance that lightening couldn’t strike us in the tent. Her explanation of the physics of this was very suspect and I've since done some googling and it turns out she was talking complete rubbish.

After we escaped from the clutches of the weird man and survived the storm we headed off again down EV6. EV6 was becoming more and more official as we got further west, and there were jazzy signposts marking the route, with philosophical quotes sometimes like “It’s not the destination it’s the journey”.  There were also route options, with unpaved being red, normal being orange, and bad weather being green. This led to some tough decisions (arguments). After we left Novi Sad we decided to go for the more direct route, having read Beth and Adam’s blog (Beth and Adam are the American couple who wrote incredibly detailed blog posts, we'd been following them ever since Azerbaijan and I really feel like we're firm friends at this point. They're especially funny because Beth didn't want to go cycle touring and hates it) – they’d found the red route very hard. The German cyclist we’d met had also told us about “the best ice cream shop in the whole world” and the red route didn’t go past it.. We took the green route and the road was horrendous – very busy and narrow and full of lorries, but the wind was behind us for once and we made great progress. The ice cream lived up to expectations (I think it was in a place called Odzaci). We had planned to stay at “Bike Camp Longtour” that evening, in a place called Sombor. The campsite was quite expensive but how could we not stay at a place called Bike Camp Longtour?? We were hoping to meet other cyclists there as well. We got the campsite which was run by a lovely couple and it was great. The wall was covered in messages from other cyclists, and they had great facilities (although weirdly not a washing up sink in the kitchen??) and we got great advice from the owners. There were two other French cyclists there which gave me an opportunity to practise my French for Erasmus, as we listened to the archers and cooked spaghetti bolognaise on a proper stove I was shocked at how quickly our lives had improved. The hard days really did seem far away.

When we left Sombor we decided to take a brief detour into Croatia (mainly just to say we’d been there). The border queue was very long with a lorry tailback for miles and miles (#brexit) but we got to skip this and were soon in Croatia. 20 minutes later we were at another very long queue to get into Hungary. Mum said we should have tried to get through Croatia without unclipping, but we did fill up our water bottles. We didn’t spend any money though. We got to Hungary and went to a cashpoint, and the classic moment when we had no idea how much was an appropriate amount of money to withdraw. How much is 100,000??? Anyway we picked a random number. Hungary was a massive step up from anywhere we’d been so far and the border town we were in (Mohacsi) was very sophisticated. Mum had been to Hungary back when it was a communist country (if she hasn’t told you this I’m amazed, also did you know she went Vegan for lent last year?) and kept making jokes about how all ice cream was 3 forint so we could go anywhere and they would all be the same price.  I quickly stopped finding these jokes funny. We had an ice cream that definitely didn’t cost 3 forint, and then decided to cycle to the nearby town of Baja. To do this we had to get a ferry across the Danube which went every hour, and after waiting for ages we made the terrible mistake of getting on the ferry without a ticket. The angry Hungarian attendant shouted at us to get off but we couldn’t wait another hour so I dropped my bike, left Mum to be shouted at, sprinted up the slipway IN MY CLEATS and bought two tickets. When I got back he was still very very angry but we didn’t mind. We weren’t really sure where we were going to camp in Baja but as we arrived we saw a line of tents near the river and joined in! It turns out wild camping is legal in Hungary! Happy days. We also met alovely Hungarian cyclist.

After we left Baja we decided to divert off Eurovelo 6 and head for Lake Ballaton, which Mum had been to many years before (did you know she went to Hungary when it was a communist country?). As we left Eurovelo 6 we went from seeing lots of cyclists, to none. We were making much faster progress along the roads rather than the bumpy path though. The weather was rubbish and the wind was howling against us. HOWLING. We realised we’d missed the supermarket closing time, we had no food, nowhere to stay, and the weather was shit. I was not happy. We saw a pub advertising takeaway pizzas and decided to buy one. The sky was a deep dark ominous black with the wind whipping around us. Mum took the opportunity to have a beer whilst I brooded just like the sky. We tried to beg the pub to let us camp but they kept saying it wasn’t safe. Instead we ventured into the wilderness, found the first possible spot for out tent not too near any trees and pitched it as quickly as possible, chucked all of our stuff in and then it started raining as if the world was about to end. Another night of wondering whether Death Was Approaching was not what I needed but we survived again and set off. We got to the lake and entered a completely different country full of rich tourists. We had a delicious kebab which brought back the turkey memories and found a really nice hotel to stay at. The feeling of having a shower and spreading out all of our stuff and not having to put the tent up after camping for a while really is unrivalled. It turned out there was a cycling race finishing in that town that day so we went to watch! It was very exciting. I had a nice roadside convo with a man who told me all British cyclists were rubbish. I wouldn’t have minded but that’s just not even true.

The next day we had a sick tailwind due to our direction change and absolutely hammered it to Budapest. We spent another classic day not doing touristy stuff because it was too expensive – but we did do lots of free sight-seeing, and made the obligatory trip up the castle to try and find Mum’s guidebook she’d left there on her previous trip (Did you know she went to Hungary when it was a communist country?). It wasn’t there. Another thing we saw were the dancing fountains on the island. Would I sound uncultured if I said they were my favourite thing about Budapest? Probably.