To Vinci, Serbia: Most of the way by bus

September 13, 2015

Sorry if this is late. I'm at a guest house in Vinci, Serbia, which is quite nice but does not have WiFi. The restaurant in town doesn't have WiFi, either, and I did not get a SIM card for Serbia, so I'm disconnected. This post, via email, will go into queue and be sent when I connect. I'll add photos later.

I ventured back to the bus depot this morning, with my fully loaded bike. I had decided to catch a bus out of town to avoid the city traffic. The guys at the hostel said the traffic was really bad, but I spoke to someone at the information center who said it wasn't so bad. I was a little skeptical of his statement, but he also made a comment that if I was going to catch a bus to Smeredevo, I may as well catch one to Veliko Gradiste, and avoid a section of EV6 that pulls away from the Danube. That sounded good to me, so that's what I did.

The information I had gotten yesterday was that the bus leaves at 1 pm, and that it is up to the driver whether or not he will take the bike. I went to the depot early to make sure I had time to buy my ticket, and extra time if I was stopped from bringing my bike inside. The bike was not a problem at all, despite the sign saying no bikes inside the station. I wheeled it past the police and through the crowd of Syrians, and no one payed attention. That is until a Syrian boy, maybe 3 or 4 years old, looked at me and said "beep beep". I don't have a beep beep, but I gave him a ring a ding ding with my bell, and then everyone looked. Oh well. The boy seemed pleased.

The bus driver didn't blink at loading my bike. We put it in the baggage space, and didn't even remove the panniers. I expected to unload it, remove the front wheel and perhaps use the couplers to split the frame, but none of that was necessary. Baggage is charged separately from the passenger. The driver charged me 2X for the bike. To put that into perspective, a bag is usually 40 dinar, so I was charged 80. In the bus depot, it costs 50 dinar to use the toilets. Maybe it has been inflated due to the migrants, but it's about 50 cents. My ticket was 1080 dinar.

One other thing about the bus station that is worth noting is that it has an Internet Cafe. The Internet Cafe, however, does not have internet. It is only a name.

The bus was nice and clean and modern. It had Wi-Fi, and also air conditioning, although the temperature was set warm for me. The ride was uneventful. I got off in Veliko Gradiste, and it was like the world had changed. It was quiet, and empty, and seemed like there was no one else in the world. I headed out of the bus station toward the river, and quickly found signs for the bike route.

Many of the Serbian EV6 signs have this quote, "The world is a great big book, of which those who never travel read only one page."

I also found a vicious headwind, reminiscent of my first day out of Tallinn, and decided to make it an especially short day and stop in the first town with accommodation, since it was already mid afternoon.

That town was Vinci. I actually passed up the first opportunity, as it was rooms over a bar and I expected it to be noisy, and took the next one. It's a guest house, up a side street, sort of a cottage in the woods. The proprietor doesn't speak a lick of English, and we actually used a bit of French, although neither one of us is very good with it. I'm the only guest here, so its a little strange, and I didn't get the alien registration form required by the police, but it's a nice room with attached bath, very clean and tidy and there is no traffic noise at all.

The views of the Danube from the road are spectacular. There are waves and whitecaps from the wind. I'm not sure how usual that is. On the Romanian side, across the river, there is a wind farm so maybe wind is normal, but the turbines were spinning quickly. I had dinner at a restaurant on the river. We also had language difficulty. I ordered fish, but ended up with catfish, which I don't especially like. I was the only person eating at the restaurant. I'm an early diner here, but it would be nice to have some other tourists about, no matter where they're from.

Very nice bike path through Vinci. Not too long, however.

Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 2,367 km (1,470 miles)

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