Maybe You Are Going the Wrong Direction?

60 Days, 2050 Miles

Across the Great Hungarian Plain; it’s pretty flat and rather tranquile. The raised levee kept me clear of the mud, and the sheep kept the grass short, it was a bit like riding across a golf course.

The small towns were fairly festive this Saturday. The first town had an old DC-3 flying low orbits above the treetops. The next town had a parade of sorts. First the galloping horses, with the crack of the whips, then the whole town followed, riding in horse drawn carts. One person waived; I waived back a bit confused about what was happening. I later found out this was the Fall harvest celebrations.

The last town in Hungary, Baja, was a pretty town with a misnomer of a name, it just makes me think about Fish Tacos and beach volleyball.

South of here, the river heads into a 10 mile long cul-de-sac, Duna-Deva National Park, with no real roads, just the levee path. The comments on Google maps indicated that they opened the path into Croatia just the past year, but I didn’t really have any way to verify this.

As I proceeded further, the Croatian border ran along side me, razor wire lining the path. This didn’t seem terribly promising, I was getting a bit nervous that I might have to turn around, backtrack, and go all the way around to a real border crossing.

But at the very end of the cul-de-sac, the rumor was true, they had pulled back the razor wire !

You could walk across the 5 feet of no-mans-land between countries and then get back on the bicycle and continue along the levee. I spent a few minutes here; the national park, the razor wire, the rusty gates, the quiet, it all added up to something, if not something special, well at least something unique.

Not wanting to lug around a bunch of useless currencies, I had been obsessed with trying to spend the last of my Hungarian money, and had done a pretty good job at the last grocery store. I had just 275 Forints left, about $1, which I deposited on the gate, and then rode off.

There’s hardly a campground to be had now, they’ve closed for the season, or they closed for the mud, or they just don’t exist.

There are lots of inexpensive guest houses, if one can figure out how to check in. You make a reservation, then you show up, nobody is there of course, then you wait around till some neighbor shows up and makes a few calls around town, and then someone else shows up and checks you in. It’s a bit stressful, the uncertainty of it all, but in the end you get an entire vineyard villa to yourself for less than a California State Park campsite.

And climbing up onto the roof of the villa you can walk up the hill to enjoy an evening walk through the grape vines.

Briefly away from the Danube, I passed through Osijek, which had a sleek bicycle bridge with an absurd stair step on either side. It just about caught me off guard, I mean you bicycle up the span, and then roll down the other side, gaining speed, and then at the end there is a single, unmarked step where you have to stop and step down, or, if distracted by the cityscape, not notice the step and go flying over and crash!

This being the last chance to spend Euros, I carefully counted my coins and exchanged them for 2 chocolate bars and a pack of salami, with a mere 12 cents remainder!

The border town of Vukovar was besieged by Serbian troops when Croatia broke free of Yugoslavia in the early 90s. There is hardly a building older than 30 years, except for the war ravaged train station.

And the pot-marked water tower, which was hit by hundreds of missiles, but refused to fall over.

The war atrocites continued in the fields outside the city, where the town leaders were executed when the town fell.

It was a rather somber place, and looking across the river at Serbia, “the aggressor”, there was a border with guards and passport checks, and forbidden food items. I wasn’t sure I wanted to head that way.

There were lots of trucks on the Croatian side and lots of trucks on the Serbian side, but none of them actually crossed the border, appearently the relations between nations have not improved greatly. The border crossing was quiet, just myself and one other car. The Serbian guard looked at my passport for a minute, typed three letters into his computer, stamped my passport, and off I went without so much a question about any apples or blocks of British cheddar I might be carrying.

Much of my apprehension about Serbia went away once I reached Novi Sad, it was a lovely town on a lovely day, and all the people like Denver!

Denver basketball player Nikola Jokic is an icon for Serbia, and consequently I can say I’m from Denver and people know all about the place.

You can see Joker’s style all about: The warm-up pants, the short clipped hair, the slightly awkward gate that begs the question “I’m not sure he can run?”. It’s a look that has caught on in Serbia.

I rented a room from Nikola Jokovic, who proudly commented, “It’s spelled like the Joker, just with an extra ‘ov’ “.

He then told me the door code, 0303, the area code of Denver! And he suggested I take a walk to the town square, which proved lovely.

Each country has there own style of bicycle route signs. Serbia’s style is to place the sign so that it’s impossible to tell which way to turn, it’s usually just pointed at a house or into a corn field!

While not particularly useful as a navigation aid, Serbia has added unique quotes to each sign, which gives me something to look forward to: “Maybe you are lucky to be going slowly, because you may be going in the wrong direction?” That one cheered me up!

I had a rare campsite on the outskirts of Belgrade, it was a nice change of pace, I didn’t have to find the neighbor.

On my day off, I wanted to ride the bus into town, which proved difficult. You can’t just pay cash, there are no ticket machines. First, you have to install the Belgrade Plus App on your phone, the app being a gift from Russia in the spirit of Friendship.

Then you have to enter all your banking information. After submitting a payment of $1.12, I guess to prove it’s your real banking info, then you get a bus pass, an all you can ride pass! You find the bus stop, marked with the international symbol of Friendship.

And bam, you can ride the neat Trolleys all about town!

I rode the trolley to the parliament building, then I rode the trolley to the national museum, then I rode the trolley to the fortress. It was definitely worth giving all my banking info to the Russians, I’m sure the good folks at JP Morgan Chase have things under control security wise.

Downstream of Belgrade is stunning, wetlands on one side of the Levee, just a bit of fall color in the trees. On the other side of the levee just the occasional farm house. A swan here or there gliding in to a landing on the water.

The actual path is not the greatest, but I try to follow the locals on their two-stroke motorbikes, trying to miss at least some of the pot holes. Here’s a 22-second video of my day, you get the point, just another 5 hours of that.