September 28, 2017
The Worlds Longest Street - and it's not Younge Street: Day 52 - Slavonski Brod to Kutina
Kirsten posted the picture of her ‘interesting’ meal last night on Facebook and it garnered quite a few comments. I think the perfect summary is one of the Trip Advisor reviews of the restaurant by a (local, Slavic ??) lady, who, to quote, wrote … “ …and the potatoes were undescribable (sic). One finger up!” … She gave it 5 stars. K gave it one finger too.
Notwithstanding the odd dinning culture, we are enjoying Croatia. I have to spell out though that the Croatia we are seeing is NOT the Croatia of the holiday brochures. I’m fairly sure that 99% of tourists who come to Croatia are not seeing what we are. When we hit the Adriatic coast in a few days we will get to experience what they do. For now though we are basically riding across the country east to west, and it is largely farms, but not as we know them Jim (sorry, I can’t resist this Trekky reference).
Both K and I have been amazed at the riding. From the maps it looked like we would be riding through a very rural landscape with small villages every 10 km or so. The village part has proved to be correct, but in between, for the vast majority of the 200 km(ish) we heave done since Vukovar, the road has been completely built up with houses and farm buildings. All the buildings are right along the road, and it’s farmland behind them on both sides, but from our perspective it’s like we are riding through one huge continuous town.
That’s not a bad thing as all of the traffic is local, is going relatively slow and there are very few big trucks. Another big plus is that there is lots of activity … we’ve seen more small tractors pulling every imaginable wagon, filled with corn, turnips … or people, and just the general business of life. It’s not highly photogenic, but it’s quite cool to ride through.
We also noted that for the most part the buildings and farms are quite simple and modest, but well kept. There were scores of people out mowing and trimming he ditches along the roads (most wearing full visors when using power trimmers … good HSE in action!). However we also noted that within the habitated, well kept buildings, there were a number of derelict (burnt / bombed out?) buildings, including churches that looked like they might have been Orthodox. Vestiges of the Independence /civil war?
Seeing this pattern over the last couple of days brought back into focus a conversation I had with my long-time friend and colleague Pav, whose parents emigrated from Serbia after WWII. When the ‘90’s Balkan wars were in full flight, Pav and I were discussing why this was happening. He was as frustrated and disillusioned as I was, in fact more so. He educated me that the people (his family and realtives) who differentiated themselves as Croats, Serbs or Bosniaks, were ethnically, and if you go back far enough, culturally, the same people. What gave rise to their current cultural / ethnic identity was a function of which imperial power had influenced or controlled specific areas. If you lived in what is now Bosnia, there was a long period of Ottoman control, and you were likely to be Muslim. Similarly if you lived in Serbia you were controlled / influenced by the Russian Orthodox church, and the Croats were under Hapsburg and hence Catholic control. For the most part, over centuries, these three influences lived in some form of equilibrium, however there was always a political / religious narrative that was driving differentiation. This came to a head in the ‘90’s (not for the first time) and led to a lot of bloodshed and suffering. I think the derelict buildings and churches, plus the abundance of modern graveyards, we saw today are a testament to that.
While this might seem like we were in a down mood today, that is definitely not the case. The tractors, their drivers and their payloads, the roadside vegetable stalls and just general bustle of life made for an enjoyable and interesting ride. Plus we had a good stiff tailwind today. We rode like ‘lean mean cycling machines’!
We had our highest avg speed, almost 22 km/hr , not bad for geezers, and made short work of the day. We booked another pension / room attached to a pub / restaurant in Kutina and it’s very nice. Great room, good pub with great post ride beer, and …. A good restaurant!
Simple but well prepared food and a good selection of Croatian wine. We’re trying to sample the local wine whenever we can, but you’ve got to be in a place that gives it a good shot (i.e. more than a choice between ‘red’ or ‘white’) and tonight was that night. We also had TEN other dining companions, doubling our Croatia total!!
Hopefully this is a trend that will continue as we get closer to the coast, however at lunch we had another twilight zone experience. As we pulled into one of the larger towns (by my estimate about 3000 people) there was a short pedestrian section of town with multiple shops and SEVEN bars / cafes … none of which served a scrap of food!
K asked in one place if there was anywhere that did serve food, and after a (long) period of thought the guy she asked gave her directions to a restaurant a few blocks away.
Left to our own resource we would have never found the said restaurant, but with this guy’s help we did, and it was open! There were even other people in it …. and the food was simple but good. Can’t ask for more. Every place has its own peculiarities, and dining out in ‘rural’ areas seems to be Croatia’s. We can live with that.
Zagreb tomorrow and the a day off the bikes.
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Song of the day:
My Companjera by Gogol Bordello ... these guys have more of a 'southern Balkan', or dare I say, even a Black Sea regional feel, than the more restrained rural Croats, but this song worked for me today..
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Today's ride: 119 km (74 miles)
Total: 3,786 km (2,351 miles)
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