The second Journey
End of July 2002 - 8 weeks later
"Through the Wild East"

All of this happened because Göran had this idea... of cycling through the east.

And it was one of the best ideas he ever had!

The plan was clear, Tine, Göran and myself wanted to cycle along the River Danube from the Black forest to the Black sea. For this we calculated that we'd need about two to two and a half month. And because Tine still had o write her exams end of July, we had to meet up with her on the way. And which location is better than the Pepsi Sziget Festival in Budapest. The one week festival on an island in the Danube. Göran and myself had been a bit naive, or we just didn't look onto the map carefully enough, because as soon we left Donau Eschingen, where the source of the Danube is, we came across a signpost that said "Budapest 1050km" and the festival ended in 12 days...

Nothing to bring us down! And after two days we had been into a good pace and we did at least a 100km a day with a good few stops on one of the many beer gardens along the way. And the cycle track from the source up to Vienna is very good! Paved all the way, but also crowded with all kind of weekend cyclists that block the way with their fancy racing bikes. It had its good and its bad to cycle so fast. The good part was that Germany and Austria are very expensive, specially along the Danube cycle track, but we could escape the prices very fast. The bad side was that we didn't have time to enjoy the cities and places we passed, and so we were rushing through cities like Ulm, Regensburg, Passau, Linz, Vienna and Bratislava...

After 4 days cycling it happened that one of my brake rods broke, but this is the good part about cycling a HIGH NELLY, everything is made to be easy fixed again, and with a bit of good wire and some pliers it was done...

After ten days we arrived in Budapest and cycled straight onto the festival... Good Craigh!

When we met up with Tine she told us that someone broke into their car and everything including Passport was stolen... But nothing could stop us anymore, during the day we organized the new passport and during the night we were having a good time on the festival and people gave her a backpack and a blanket and we were sorted again.

After the festival the rain started, and whoever lives beside the River Elbe in Germany knows how much water came down in once... And we also had to stay for a few days in Budapest, and had enough time to buy a bicycle for Tine. Also Göran didn't mind too much because so he had still a few more days with his brand new girl friend, and so it happened that we didn't see him at all for those days...

At the first sunny day we left Budapest and cycled straight south... But the rain came again for one day that we were stuck again. One long day, three of us stuck in a half tent... But the next day we got a fine tailwind and Croatia came closer and closer and we came through a city called Donaujvaros, and if you ever want to see a typical socialistic built city go there. Everything is a bit old now, but I think at its time, it had been a pretty modern city. The next town is called Dunaföldvar and we had just been maybe 80km out of Budapest and Tines bike broke down... One bearing was worn, and so we stayed a day in that nice town, fixed it up and cycled south again. Until my brake broke... But as I said nothing is not fixable, and the Bike is also called the "All Steel Bike" and steel is weldable and some nice mechanic did so.

Thanks to you and I wish you lots of broken down cars!

Finally we had everything sorted and now we realized what all the rain did and what it means if too much rain falls... It was like one big wave, everything was pretty flooded already, and we always tried to stay a bit away from the river during the night, but one morning I woke up and the water that had been good 6meters away the night before was about 10cm close to my feet... The fireplace was flooded already, so I woke the others and moved a bit up, but whoever knows how Göran sleeps knows that it is impossible to wake him except he wants to get up... And as soon he got wet feet he wanted... Later on we realized that the place where we were sleeping was completely cut off... and we had to chance it and cycled through meter deep water... Did work, and it was summer...

... ready to leave Hungary, but somehow the Croatian custom was a bit suspicious... And he didn't believe that we were no gypsies and checked us as carefully as possible... But afterwards we had been in Croatia! And cycled through the minefields towards the east. When we came to the city of Vukovar, all of us got really shocked... I mean we had been 17 when the war was over and all we knew about it was out of the news on telly, but because it was the telly it seemed so far away, but if you cycle without stopping on a festival for 2 weeks from Germany you are there... And Vukovar is a city that is no more... The complete city is destroyed. We were wondering why they don't build up everything again and we couldn't understand, but now I realized why, because there is no one anymore that could do it... Most of the people in Vukovar had been Serbian and they had to leave... And Vukovar is a symbol of all that madness of this war!

And then we came into Serbia, and it was the best country crossing ever! By that time you still had to buy a "visa" from the customs and this custom was just a container with one officer... And we just had Kuna, the Croatian currency. A transit visa valid for 7 days was 6 Euro each. And after a hard bargaining we got it for that price in Kuna... And this despite the fact that they don't accept the money in Serbia at all. Not even the banks would change the money as we later had to notice... Good deal!

Straight behind the border we went into a bar and this was a bit of a strange welcoming, but it also was my fault, because we started drinking with the lads there and one pretty drunken guy asked me weather I'd like to play bowling, and of we went, after a while he tried to explain me that we played for money and that I have to pay now... What a fecker, but of cause we didn't, and as soon he left to the toilet we paid the drinks and off we were...

So we came into our fourth capital along the Danube: Beograd. As closer we came we could see the difference between the war in Croatia and Serbia, in Croatia it were mainly the people that were shooting themselves and the rest to bits, and in Serbia it was the NATO... All the big factories, bridges and strategical points were just a heap of bricks... FUCK WAR!

But Beograd is a nice city, we stayed in a hostel and explored the city. You just have to be careful, cause they always try to get your money, and if the police wants to get payed because you crossed the street, just tell him about 10 thousend times that the next time you will take the traffic light and after while he gets bored and lets you go again...

And so we left towards Bulgaria. And we just realized a few weeks later, but from Beograd on east we got a present every single day until we reached the Delta... The first was a bag of plums someone gave us when we woke up and had our morning coffee.

Thanks to all of you good people!

If you look up the map, you will see that the Danube meanders at one point pretty much. This is where the Karpaties and the Balkan mountains meet and I tell you, this is next to the Schwäbschen Alb and the Delta the most beautiful part of the Danube. She is a very big river by then, but the mountains don't give here any extra space and so it becomes a huge wild water stream. And when the mountains end, there is the "Portile de fir" the Iron gate. It always was the gate through the mountains and here are so many ruins of castles from all ages that one knows it always was a trouble place... And a beautiful one!

Then we crossed the border to Bulgaria. And this is really a border between Cultures. We had the same impression when you cross from the "west" into the "east" from Austria to Slovakia, but this is even one step further. You didn't have to worry about cars anymore, you just had to be careful that you didn't hit a donkey that was standing in the middle of the road.

Bulgaria is a very beautiful country, and a very relaxing as well. The pace of life is just right and so it can happen when you sit in bar that a car pulls by, the driver gets out, drinks a coffee, takes an air pump and pumps up his tire again to drive probably 10km further to have the same procedure... I mean obviously he didn't have the money to buy a new tire, but he also didn't seem to worry.

And it was also in Bulgaria when we started to give points for the best toilet. It is great, if one doesn't mind, when you sit in a bar, and you have to go to the back garden passing the chickens to come to a shed which is the loo... All stages from Luxury, that is a proper toilet where you can sit in a tiled room and have to pour water from a bucket to flush, a simple and comfortable with Plastic insulation on top of the wooden plank that you don't get cold, up to a stinky hole in the concrete in the middle of the village...

And after so many days of non stop cycling we wanted to go under people again, and so it happened, it was a saturday night that we arrived in Svistov and went to the disco, and this was great, I mean it probably doesn't happened every day that three people from Germany drop in by bike to get pissed on Rakia...

"Wir unsere Volke trinken Rakia mit Tomate"

did he say and gave us one Rakia after the other and afterwards you always have to eat a bit of tomato. Very nice! And the people were dancing with each other on the counter and you could think everyone was completely drunk, but this wasn't so. Most of the people were when they were drinking at all, drinking Coke. And they were enjoying themselves very good. Some people should think about it...

But then we finally wanted to go into Romania! We could see it already for at least one week across the river and in Ruce we finally crossed the river. We didn't get off the bridge, by the way there are I think just four more bridges across the Danube from Beograd on, anyway we crossed one of them and at the end of it a armed soldier jumped out of the ditch and wanted to know who we are... I think he didn't expect three bikes coming across the river, but he was pretty friendly and so we had been in ROMANIA, the last country on our trip.

And Romania is huge! And so it is also changing constantly. The Iron gate with the Karpaties is one face, the vast meadows along the danube the dusty wild west plains and the Delta... And this was just along the Danube. And all has its own charme.

One thing was that we never stopped when people wanted to invite us into their house or wanted to drink with us for the whole day, but in Romania we had to, we were forced. The one evening when we wanted to buy a few beers and some food the people insisted that we have to stay with them for the night. They said it is too dangerous to sleep outside, but everyone we met said this , and as I said we even got a present every day, but this time they didn't want to let us go... And so we stayed in their house. And we stayed for couple of days. They were really nice people,they tried to make us feel like home, and they managed. We were working with them harvesting the corn, were playing with fire pois the whole night and tried to solve there personal family affaires. Very nice, it is just a pity that all of us are so lazy to write and so we lost contact... We might see them again one time.

The second time we were forced to stay for the night was a bit weirder... We were sleeping in this small valley of a tribute river of the Danube. This valley was very narrow and steep cliffs with dark deep caves in them rose to both sides. Here we were sleeping underneath a tree were the Squirrels through the walnut shells onto us as a man came out of the middle of the night with a big baton in his hand and a touch lighting just his face... We didn't know what happened and all of thought that this time it was to dangerous to sleep outside... But it wasn't so, as soon he noticed that we were not the people he expected us to be, he just said we can't sleep here and that we have to take our stuff and stay with him. He was everything but welcoming and nice, but as it seemed we didn't have a choice... He gave us a room in his big house, something to eat and to drink but all the time there was this weird feeling in the air. After a while he looked at the clock went out and was shooting once into the dark, and another shoot from somewhere else replied... I don't want to know what kind of sign this was, but I also don't want to... Just afterwards he said that we have to go to bed and that was it a brief coffee in the morning and we had to leave... What a strange happening...

As closer we came towards the the Delta, as more demotivated we became... Specially when we got a strong Headwind that didn't disappear for a couple of days. We thought about taking a ferry for the last kilometers but there was not even a fisherman that wanted to give us a lift, and so we had to cycle on towards Tulcea. The last bigger city before the black sea, and I think latest here Tine was quite happy that we couldn't take a boat before. From Tulcea there is no road towards the black sea, in fact there is no road from anywhere there, because it is a huge, and I mean huge at least 100 by 100km big swamp. From here we had to take the ferry and on that ferry we met the three spanish Carles, Manolo and Jose. Mad people, after a 6 or 8 hour boat trip to St. Georgie a small fishing village on the south arm of the Danube we all went into a bar to celebrate our arrival at the black sea with lots Vodka, and the spanish were amazed by our trip and came along to the beach to keep on celebrating.

This was a great feeling, to go for a swim in the still warm, it was October, Black Sea... After 8 weeks on the day! From a Thursday to a Thursday. You start in the middle of High Tech Germany and on those about 3000km the world changes completely. And then someone thinks this how we live is europe... But it is just a glimp of it. Europe is so much bigger, and I haven't even been to the far east point of it. And when I look at the people and about the quality of life, and I didn't mean the material wealth, I can only hope that with this united europe, and it will be the whole of europe earlier or later, this unique lifestyle and this culture that is in the eastern part of europe won't be destroyed and replaced by the western way of life, which is if one looks around all the same from Norway via Germany to Italy.

And on the beach it also was where Tine and Carles came closer and didn't leave each other since... But here it was also where, I don't know what, but something knocked me out completely, first I thought it was the alcohol, but I was actually missing one whole day in my life, they said I was lying like dead on the beach and at the next morning I had the worst cramps in my stomach and didn't feel well at all. But we anyway hired a boat incl. driver and went off to explore the vast Delta with all its Pelicans and I don't know what all for beauty... Of cause it was a romanian boat and it had to break down in the middle of the biggest lake we passed... but the skipper could fix it alright...

And that's it!

The way back we made by train, went with the Spanish to look for Dracula in Transylvania, but we just found Quasimodo who was working as a porter in a hotel, and finally Manolo and Jose had to continue their trip on their own cause Carles decided to come along with Tine to Flensburg... And after we managed to get the bikes on the train, this is the funny thing about it all, you could think no one takes any law very serious, but when it comes to bike on the train, they make a big fuzz about it, we zoomed through the night and two days later I have been in Bremen again...

FIN

Sorry you won't find any Pictures anywhere, cause some things are better to keep in mind than on a piece of paper. If you want to see how it is there, cycle yourself!

And here comes the 3rd trip...

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