creative pause in Romania

Guess what, last night my rear tire exploded.

check out the new fotos from the Romanian countryside, the old ones you can find here (be aware that it starts with the most actual picture)

Day14 (24.8.)

Got a new rear rim with new spokes and took to the road at 12h. It was the main Euro Highway to Cluj Napoca. That's the road evryone takes whos got some east/west business goin on in Romania. First major climbs along the river valley.

Day15 (25.8.)

Up in the mountains its cooler, so in the morning waiting for my tent to dry I could just simmer for a while in my tent imagining those mountains ahead.
The thing with maps at 1:700.000 is that you can only guess what mountains you're about to be climbing in the following days. But that only keeps things interesting does'nt it ;)
Today was also the first day I was able to catch one of those hikes we biukers like. Not only we suffer at the mountains but also the trucks that have been build before the fall of the sovjet empire. Thats what really makes this love-hate relationship. Hanging on to the backside of a truck wheezing up the hill at little more than walking speed lets you forget about a lot off evil honking and almost beeing blown off the road. It also strengthens the left arm...
I reached Cluj around 5 pm and left it after a little shoppinh tour. After that it was only another little climb out of the valley onto the new lesser frequented road.

Day16 (26.8.)

It was raining from 4 to 6 am. When I got up and going it was all dry. This day I was really unlucky with the tab water. I bought a 2L bottle of Coke instead. On the road the usual crap food becomes asimple source of energy.
It was a winding road with lots of little valleys to get in and out of (meaning up and down). When taking a pause at 3pm cooking my last pea soup from Lidl in CZ I was washing my dishes in a small river with a dead black chicken in. Bad omen?! Don't think so, just a little disgusting when finding out too late.
From that on it was escaping the rain. I did a pretty goo job taking the last climbs on the way to Rhegin. On my way I saw a puking Italian lady outside a BMW X5. That brings me to another exiting discovery: its actually+50% of the cars that have an Italian license plate. I didn't know much about the Romanian minority in Italy, but its seems they're doing pretty good since those Italian cars make up about 95% of the market value that is out there on the street. It reminds me a bit of Turkey where it was kind of the same with Turks playing rich uncle from America upon visiting their relatives in the villages of rural Turkey.
After checking out a couple of hotels in Rhegin I decided that it wasnt worth spending 20 EUR for a night. So I took the road into the unknown. Another backroad kepping me away from those TIR trucks and close to the villages. Shortly after passing a miltary compound with lots of old equipment rotting in the rain it made a big bang. I already gave you the answer to the question. No, it was'nt the military trying to shoot that suspicious spy-like guy on a bike. It was the second Continental Travel-Contact tire that IU've managed to kill on my journey. This one only lastet only about 600kms. Know thats a bad omen if I want to get to Georgia on a bike.
What I'm going to do tomorrow is to buy a new tire, put it on the front rim and use the last Conti for the back. Maybe I can order a new Marathon XR into Odessa.
"Que sera, sera,
]Whatever will be, will be;
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera,
What will be, will be."

check out the new fotos from the Romanian countryside, the old ones you can find here (be aware that it starts with the most actual picture)

Romania and Spoke problems

It took me 2 days and 300km to get from Budapest to Oradea the first town in Romania. It was a fast and unspectaculasr ride across the puszta plains.

on day11 I found a good Bike shoop in the centre of Budapest through the shimano.com shop locator. They said that the rim was still OK and did the centering for 4 EUR. I saw that the rear tire was broken - the reason for the constant wudupp-wudupp. Luckily I had a foldable spare tire with me.Next time I will take the Marathon XR instead of Continental Travel Contact that I'm riding on right now.
The rest of day was hangig around the Hostel and...yes, meditating. No Yoga bullshit but that 20 min meditation I've told about earlier.

Day12 (22.8.)got up at 6:30 shortly after the last ones went to bed. After 40 kms I had reached the eastern outscirts of Budapest and a road that was less Autobahn than the one leading to the airport. Non the less that day I had to go on the Euro Highway 4 that leads eastwards. It has exellent tarmac and with tailwinds I did 40ks in an hour but it is no fun. On the backroads it was the total opposite. No traffic at all, just the occasional truck carrying the harvest from all the fields there is. After 161kms I put up my tent and was only bothered by an unknown animal of unknown species and size at night that made quite some noise approaching through the brushwood and then just breathed beside my tent for a while. If anyone knows send me youre suggestions what it might have been. I don't really think theres bears in the plains of Hungaria, maybe a crocodile or camel...
Day 13 (23.8.)
If youre short with Hungarian Forinth buying breakfast with youre VISA card at a supermarket is a great thing. It just gave me the energy I needed after that exhaustive ride the day before. This time it was all riding through villages with people in amazement at the sight of such an unusual tourist. I was even able to send another packet back to Berlin. It contained another Kilo of stuff I don't need anymore (maps, books, handheld computers and the like).
Shortly thereafter I heard that knack from the back of my bike that tells me that a spoke was broken. Maybe carrying that Watermelon around all day was little to much. I was still able to ride the bike without worsening things. After another 40 kms of carefully avoiding every pothole I reached the Schengen Border to Romania. customs took only a couple of minutes and I was outside of the EU! The 15 km road from the border to Oradea is sidelined with either abandoned industrial sites of the sovjet times or new ones being set up with the EU accession ahead by the end of the year - or maybe next year...
Looking for a hotel in Oradea remained somewhat of an elusive quest that took two hours of riding behind friedly taxi drivers showing me the way to hotels where I was greeted with a frosty smile by the concierge telling me that not only their hotel but all the hotels there are are fully booked out and, no, there was no way of getting a room for less than 25$. All stupid bullshit of course.
It was the first time on this journey that I encountered that relict sovjet behavior of not beeing able to give a simple answer without having the carrot right infront of your face. But that was only in the hotels, on the streets everyone is able to have at least a simple conversation in english (I had BIG problems with these kind of things in the last three contries...).
Before going again out of town to find some camping resort that was promised to me by two very bright guys working in a pet shop I just headed for the university. I just asked two girls walking back to their hostel and they helped me through the negotiations with the doorman who initially had his doubts about all that. But then gave in and showed me a room that I could share with a young student of computer sciences. He only told me that I had to leave early in the morning (I think he was afraid of his superior finding out about that illegitimate guest)...He DID knock at the door at 5 in the morning.

Day14 (24.8.)

After sitting around the city centre watching the city getting up and to work I was looking for a "professional bike shop". Ended up on the basar but then went back to find a very unfriendly salesperson first refusing to let me enter the shop with my bike and then telling me just like those unfriendly people at the hotel that nothing was possible, in other wnot to bother them and fuck off.
Found the righ shop after all that has just opened while I'm still here tpin...

The King is back!

I knew i could still do 150ks with a fully loaded bike. Well, I just got to Budapest after what was a hell of drive first twords the Danube, then along and finally over the hills right into the capital of Hungaria - my fourth country.

check out the new fotos, the old ones you can find here (be aware that it starts with the most actual picture)

But where were we. I think it was



Day5 (15.8.)

After hitting the major Euro Highway - the one that I promised to make so many ks in so little a time was becoming narrower with almost no road shoulder left I could ride on. I had to backtrack uphill and in the end it was 10kms of worthless riding in the rain. Pretty frustrating for starters.

In the end I found the right road tha took me to Pardubice and thurther on to the direction of Brno. it was kind of rainy all day so I made thought it would be good to outwait the rain inside my tent...the minute i put it up the sun came out:)
It was a nice spot after all.

Day6 (16.8)

After getting an early start on the road it had to stop at a gas station to clean my bike and especially the driving chain since it got very dirty during those recent rainy days. Cleaning my chain is an almost meditative thing that takes about 20 minutes and the same amount of Q-Tips. The thing about gas stations in Slovakia is that the seem not only to sell gas and all the other stuff but the also cater for other needs, basically the ones of male drivers. Theres always a young lady waiting to clean your window. Sometimes a rather sad thing to be watching. I would say its somwhere between working as a waiter and, well you can figure it out.
For the night I spottet a nice storage lake that turned out to be very nice but no good for camping so put myself up on the banks of a water sport company that was located at the bottom of the dam. During peak hours the little river became very big.

Day7 (17.8)

Next morning the weather was sunny from the beginning. I made a quick ride into Brno, a rather big town in the east of the CZ. It is worth a minitrip of its own. I just stopped by at the tourist info and bought extra strong sun protection. I coul;d really make some kms that day and finally after fetching 12L of water at a gas station I got myself installed on what used to be the field where the battle of Austerlitz took place in 1805 or so. It was a quite night, only in the morning I was just right to take off while the farmer was humming down the field in his tractor twords my tent...

Day8 (18.8)

First time I had tail winds! That was very much to my liking since I was feeling a bit tired and my legs werent a strong as I had hoped for that day. I took many rests and buttered up at the last Lidl before the broder to Slovakia. It has become ritual of spending the last money at a supermarket near the border crossing. So far I have managed to spend the exact amount of money that is left in the actual currecy Im trying to get rid off.
In Senica 30 km behind the border I asked the nice grils of the tourist info if they had an accomodation "below the usual standart", they had exactly this. A hotel room for me and my bike with a TV and all for just 8 EUR! I really enjoyed the shover after what was four days of camping. Then I took to town to check out what entertaining there was in this town of 15 hundred.

Day9 (19.8)

The bed was so good that it took me until noon to finally get going. But it turned out to be a good decision. My legs where doing fine and crossing what was indicated as the "small Carpathians" was no big deal. Going downhill I reconed a constant "wudupp-wudupp" on my rear tire. Im going to solve that problem in Budapest.
In a little village I got to drink fresh wine (in German it would be called Federweisser). The guy selling it in plastic bottles out of his front lawn was very nice, he even gave me grapes that where absolutely delicious. After lots of kms again I spend my last Slovakian money at a supermarket and rode out of town with lots of water abord rady to camp in the fields.
I found a nice place. It was behind some bushes so no one could see me from the road. I was cooking one of my favourite dish when beeing on the road: Penne Rigate (the real Italian ones from Lidl...) with baked beans and cheese. Then I went to bed and was only disturbed by the sound of a little frog hopping into the yet uncleaned pot outside the tent. I all went well until 2:30 in the morning when I heard a traktor...
It turned out that the farmer liked working at saturday night. Be it that he did'nt had air conditioning and therefore preferred to work at night or that simply liked his new halogen beamers. For me it meant getting packed and into emediate evac mode. At 3am he was about 50m away, thats when I packed the tent and moved to a different location just a couple of hundred meters away. This is a first timer by the way, I'm not going to change any of my habits because of this.

Day10 (20.8.)

To make things really worse last night when slowly driving twords what was supposed to be my save heaven I drank out of a 1,5L bottle of Cola. i fell out of my hands spilling its content all over my driving chain. So next thing in the morning I realised that the gears werent working properly. It was a shitty 10km ride to the first gas station where the usual 20 min meditation followed.
It took me about an hour to do the remaining 25kms to get to the river Danube and to the broder crossing to Hungary. Again it was buying goodies at the supermarket. I decided to go along the river and then cross the mountains to get to Budapest. It was a I-really-wanna-get-there-TODAY kind of a ride. The sun was really hot. I had to constantly slip-slap-slop but at 5pm after 140km I reached the city center of Budapest.
When hitting suburbia I was told that today was National Day and therefore all shops and internet places closed. I really should have widened the focus during the preparation of this journey. You really have to get there first before you can ride the Caucasus...
Anyway, asked a couple of fellow travellers and they told me about that nice Hippie Hostel they where staying at. A phone call and I had the permission to put up my tent in the courtyard. Getting a bed was out of question. It took me another 2 hours and litres of Coke to finally get there but it turned out to be just right.
It will be my last backpacker community experience until Istanbul in October.

Day11 (21.8)

today I try to get a new rear tire that will endure the coming adventures.

check out the new fotos, the old ones you can find here (be aware that it starts with the most actual picture)

oops

seems like blogspot didnt like the hyperlink to my flickr account. You can find it below.

anyway, camped on the fields of the battle of Austerlitz, really like the air conditioned Lidl supermarkets on my way where I´m cooling down from time to time.

more extensive coverage on all of this later.

CZ to SL

I´m in Slovakia in the small town of Senica 30 km behind the border. Weather is great (got sunburned on both arms and knees), infrastructure in SL reminds me a bit more of the "real" Eastern Europe. Now I can even afford a Hotel (8EUR).

sorry for not updating the

Brno, three days to Budapest

Im in the tourist Info in Brno, lovely old town. But that is to say about almost every little town ive seen so far. Still seeing about 50 cyclist per hour. But they are just short range cyclists. Telling people that Im riding all the way to Tbilisi is always a good introduction when asking for refill of my 1,5L water bottle.

more detailed info soon

Day5
Its raining outside. Just been to the postal office and got rid of 5kg. Last night I slept at what turned out to be a workers hostel. 6EUR incl. a bunch of construction workers. The guy I shared my room with was a 60yr old pensioneer from Poland still working abroad. He invited me for a drink and he told me lots of stories about places he'd been working during the last 35yrs. He didn't seem to feel sorry for his fate, he just said "my wife is working in Germany, what am I supposed to do, sit around at home with my measly pension?!"
About some German collegues he said they simply lacked the flexibility to go to a place like Irland. Next morning he got off to work at 5:30am.

I'm trying to make some kms on the Euro Highway today... but wait its already 2mp

Well, maybe tomorrow I will crack the 100 for the first time on this journey.

Crossing the first mountain range in Czech Rep.

Thats how my first campspot in Zittau, Saxony looked like the morning after.

It has been a lot of ups n downs since then. I have to admit that i didn´t really know what was ahead of me. I have done extensive research on the topography of the Georgian mountains but are currently travelling with a 1:300.000 road map.

Anyway, those mountains have now been dealt with and current road conditions are undulating

Heres a short summary of what hapened so far:

see http://www.flickr.com/photos/tillstar/ for more pictures

Day1

Clearing my room and getting packed took quite some time. I got off at 5:30, took the train for about 250kms to Zittau, Saxony, where it was dark, cold and rainy on my arrival. It took me some time to find a gas station where i could buy some pasta and then a camp spot for the night that had already advanced. I ended up camping about 150m outside the official camping ground which I refused not only because it would have cost me the eqivalent of ten nights in one of those worn out sovjet style hotels in Ukraine that I love so much.

Day2

Getting up and going befor the ward would get me. Crossing the border to Poland which only lasted for 1,7km. Next thing was Czech Rep. Lots of cars froom the Netherlands! Lots of other cyclists aswell. About 50 per hour. Theres a fairly sophisticated network of bike trails that I´m riding on. I don´t really know where 4085 is leading to - did I already say that I got insufficient maps for CZ - but mostly it gets me to the next town. The Euro Highways are a no go in CZ. I´m glad the Czech road infrastructure is so fully developed, but as a consequnce i need to stick to the backroads thereby making a lot of detours but also getting a good impression how life is in the villages.

In Liberec I bought a new crank set and took a rest at a storage lake listening to three hours of turbo-folk adaptions of Abba and the bawling of a bunch of young men playing beach volleyball.

The second day ended on a mountain where I was asking a couple of retirees if could put up my tent on the meadow infront of there cottage. Next thing was exquisite sandwichy and tee. Later when asking for the toilet I was offered a hot bath. It was only until then that we really started communicating - in russian. What followed was a bear and a short summary of both our lives. Around four in the mourning a perky wild swine approached my tent but was driven away by Kuba the dog...

Day3

Getting up took quite a wile since it was still raining. Got off a 11:30 riding up a narrow road through the woods. Downhill a high speed my bike felt a bit wiggly both due to the high weight but mostly out-of-center back tire.

That day I left the mountains behind and got to valleys where the roads are lined with appletrees. The weather got better and there was no problem with another roadside camp.

Day4

Today i rode into the town of Hradec Kralove. When finishing this post I will pick up my bike at the mechanic and book a room in the - according to tourist info - least expensive accomodation in town, 5EUR for bed in a dorm.

until i found out how to properly layout this blog go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/tillstar/ for more pictures

Rainy days and a test drive

The weather for the next week looks BAD. Its all rain in the Czech Republic. When your alredy on the road you just keep going even if its really bad. But sitting at home waiting for the last banking cards to arrive going out in the pouring rain with your bike is bit masochistic.

Tomorrow I´m going on a little test drive in Poland. And then theres another farewell BBQ...

by the way, the last one was great.

Anyway, I´m hoping to e on the road by the end of the week.