May 30, 2015
The Direct Route: Belgrade to Novi Sad.
"Just do it." I tell Renata, a young Croatian in the same dorm when he saw my bike and said 'One day I would like to do something like that.' I add "You don't need anything special. For my first tour I rode an ordinary bike and carried whatever I needed in a rucksack. Not ideal, but its a start."
I decide to cycle north to Novi Sad on the Danube and being not much more than seventy kilometres, I'm in no rush getting on the road. I'm up at seven. Make a cup of Turkish coffee and sip while reading my own journal, then another journal.
At quarter past eight I check with Danniela on reception how much I owe; and she tells me for seven nights, the bill is eighty-four euros.
It is time for some breakfast so I go out to a bakery round the corner. The sky is cloudless and it's going to be a warm sunny day. The street is already full of people in Summery short-sleeves. I stop at an ATM, as I don't have enough money to pay the hostel, and withdraw fifteen-thousand dinar, about a hundred and twenty-five euros. The bakery has a few customers ahead of me, all buying "burek" a meat pie, which they eat in the morning here. When it is my turn, I point at what I want and the woman behind the counter lifts a half burek pie with a fish-slice and lays it on the scales. I am charged according to weight, which together with a small bottle of drinking yogurt, the necessary accompaniment to neutralises the salty taste of burek, the price is two-hundred dinar.
I wish I had my camera with me as I return to the hostel, because an old orange volkwagon campervan with a roof-rack of shinny racing-bikes slanting forward with front-wheels separate come to rest at traffic-lights. It would've made a good picture: the driver's window down and the driver's elbow protrudes as he looks ahead for the lights to change.
Once I've ate the Burek with yogurt, I microwave a bowl of bean stew leftover from the evening before's dinner. Then make another cup of Turkish coffee and write a message in the hostel guestbook "I have stayed in many wonderful hostels on this trip, but this place has a special touch. The good receptionists have really looked after me and are so kind, especially Slasha, who made me coffee whenever she was on mornings. I hope to come back soon"
I eventually wheel the bike down the steps at quarter to eleven. Danniela who's on mornings hugs me goodbye.
I haven't worked out a good way to cycle from "Terazje Kralja", the hostel street down to the Branhov bridge. The traffic is a bit of a nightmare. Yesterday on the way to the bike shop I cycled in a circle round the city-centre without seeing a handy way down to the river and ended up riding down a narrow back street over rough uneven cobbles. The only direct route down to the bridge approach is one-way traffic up to Terazje Kralja, but further down it is two-way traffic, where bridge-bound traffic emerge from a tunnel, so I push the bike on the pavement down to that point, upon which, I'm on the wrong side of the street and there's no safe crossing over to start cycling. The only way into the traffic is a bit ahead at a bus-station, the buses enter the road when lights turn green.
Sitting behind buses is horrible: you cannot see anything but their backend and the air is rich in diesel fumes. Passing them is short lived relieve as they overtake again and pull in in front of you at the next bus-stop. Such is my ride until I cross the bridge, whereupon I go right, down onto cycle path through the riverside park, which being Saturday has a lot of other cyclists and people walking and sat on the grass enjoying the sunshine.
The cycle path ends outside the bike shop on the end of the huge grey socialistic block Hotel Yugoslavia. I turn out on the main road here and pass along the front, pass the entrance and see that it really is a hotel. I'd thought until then it had been a communist secret police headquarters.
The road number according to number placards is 22, the continuation of the road I arrived in Belgrade upon, but the Google map has a different number on this road. It is narrow: the traffic constant in both directions and the surface has a continuous lipped ridge on the edge of the road where I'm trying to ride, the furrow pressed up by heavy truck wheels. The rear-wheel doesn't track well upon it, falling down either side; and steering the front wheel is risky: I've to be extremely careful, as a moment's lack of attention, turning the wheel against the parallel ridge could bring me down in a split second. Like riding against a tramline.
The way itself is as the crow flies straight to Novi Sad, well away from the Danube which curves in a crescent north, then west. The countryside is plain with large fields of potatoes to the side beyond red poppy sprinkled long grass verges, their green leafy tops closing in the ridged rows; and other fields with rows of maize, or corn for Americans, at a young two leaf stage of growth; also, bluish-green wheat with grain-heads fully developed.
The way passes through a few towns. In Indija I catch up a cyclist with bright yellow rear-pannier and a neat homemade front-rack and bar-bag on an old Peugeot road bike. He is from Belgrade and tells me about a hill ahead, saying this is the only hill in the area. The road climbs it.
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Approaching said hill which is a large fold in the plain, the road swoops down first across a valley into the incline, which is a steady shallow gradient of nothing more than five per cent, but is energy sapping in the afternoon heat and the road surface is even rougher, having gone from tarmac to concrete, perhaps to avoid frost-heave. The regular joins at right-angles are badly broken up and have been roughly patched with tar which the bike jar into.
Where the road levels out I stop and buy strawberries at a roadside stall. The man and woman have also local cherries and red and white wine for sale. She scope me up a bag, weights it and takes forty, about thirty-three cents. The man sat in a deck-chair in the shade of a tree calls out "You alleman?" 'No.' "Where you from?" I tell him and he continues "I like to practise English. Irish people and Serbian are the same people." He momentarily holds out a webbed hand, palm down and closes the index and middle finger together as one to empathise his point. He then relates the story of a village nearby settled in the middle-ages by Celts, half of which travelled to Ireland. I listen politely until I see my chance of getting away. Then stop a bit further and sit under a tree eating the perfectly ripe strawberries. Sweet and filling. Reaching the urban riverbank there's a steep rise up onto the bridge over the Danube where I suddenly feel out of breathe and I have to stop. I lift the bike up upon the pavement to the side and gaze at the river, brown and in a swell of swift current after days of rain.
It is four o'clock when I lean the bike against a street light and take a picture of the bike pointed toward the main square looking very Hungarian. The main pedestrian street is a throng of weekend visitors, families with small children and there are men selling balloons and others blowing bubbles and two Peruvians playing Andean panpipe music.
I have downloaded the Google map for a hostel called Downtown. When I eventually find it after much finding my bearings, I had to show my computer to a girl behind the counter in a phone shop and she pointed me to the street, they are full; but, the young man there phones another place. They are full too at first, but a minute later before I leave, the phone rings back to say there is place.
I get there shortly and a boy about twenty gets out of a car and lets me in. I wheel the bike into the hallway and he shows me round. It is small and looks like nothing has been done to the interior since the seventies. But my main gripe is there isn't a kitchen. I was for staying two nights, but just pay for one; perhaps Downtown will have place tomorrow, it being Sunday when people go home.
Later I go out for dinner and eat typical Serbian cuisine, a plate full of meat; contenting a filet, tastes like pork; ground meat rolled in a sausage shape and sausages.
I return to the hostel. In the dorm the Peruvian street musicians that have latterly arrived occupy the floor counting money. It looks like the bootie from a bank-robbery, there is so much of it; stacks of hundreds, two-hundreds and five-hundreds. I excuse myself as I step round to get my note book and also tooth brush and tooth paste which I don't see on the table at the side where I thought I'd left them. I look in the bathroom, it is neither there, nor did I absent mindedly put them in any of the panniers. They seem to have vanished. I sit down to write knowing they'll perhaps turn up when I'm not looking. The Peruvians have finished counting their riches and have gone to bed, so I don't want to be making noise looking around the floor where tooth brush and tube of toothpaste may have fallen.
Today's ride: 76 km (47 miles)
Total: 4,650 km (2,888 miles)
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