September 24, 2012
Crossing the border by a broken fence: Novi Knevejac - Szeged (Hungary)
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IT WAS THE STUFF of which seedy films and true life stories are made. I crossed a border through a hole in a fence and on a highway which cyclists are not allowed to ride.
I should start again from the beginning. You'll remember that two old buffers on a bench outside a house in Novi Knevejac said it wasn't worth pressing on to the border 17km down the road because the barrier came down for the night at six. That was why I camped in the wood and set off early this morning with a song in my heart and the wind behind me to make my way into Hungary.
I spent the last of my Serbian currency on stamps and food in the border village, then got into conversation with a lean man in jeans and chequered shirt who hoped I might buy household goods and clothes spread on and around the car in his driveway next to the post office. I should add as an aside that it has been a custom throughout eastern Europe for people to leave often large quantities of clothes and shoes by the roadside for other people to use.
"What passport?", he asked.
"Français."
He pulled a face. "Not good. Normally only Serbian and Hungarian. But proba."
So I tried. And he was right. The border official was apologetic but there was no way I could cross without a Hungarian or Serbian passport.
"So why isn't there a sign to say so?"
He shrugged to agree that in a well-ordered world there would be, but life has many shortcomings and I had just come across another. There was nothing to do but ride 17km back the way I'd come, this time into the wind, then finish a 30km loop round to the next crossing. This seemed little inconvenience to the border man, who'd never had to do it on a bicycle, of course.
Well, the ride didn't turn out too bad, although it was galling to pass the spot where I'd left my camp site two hours earlier, but there was fresh fun to be had. The road to the border village finished at a T-junction, a local road to the right and the start of a trans-European highway, closed to cyclists, to the left.
I explored the local road and found nothing. I rode back to the village and placed my hopes in a man with huge forearms and a belly-stretched black T-shirt lettered "In this land of darkness."
"Ha, big problem," he said in German. "Autobahn."
He thought noisily to himself. A woman came out from a shop to join in and a 10-year-old who happened to be passing on a mountain bike stopped to see if there was mischief to be had. Between them they discussed
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the situation in Serbian and eventually the boy was deputed to show me the way.
We set off down the local road at a decent lick, went over the railway crossing again and then as far as a sandy road through an orchard to the left. And there we stopped. He pointed down the trail and said "Right", which can mean "turn right" or just "go straight ahead." Since there wasn't a right turn anyway, I followed the path to a metal fence at the foot of the embankment which supported the motorway and on which a line of trucks was waiting to pass through Customs. I turned round, resigned to riding up this trans-European road regardless. It would be just a few kilometres and everyone seemed sure I could cross the border there.
I was halfway back to clip the small boy round the ear for sending me the wrong way when I crossed with a thin man pedalling a bicycle from which hung a basket of bread. He guessed what I wanted and told me to follow. And so we went back down the same path but this time, just before the end, turned right on to another track, so narrow that my panniers pushed against the vegetation on both sides.
The fence was still there. But 30 metres further on it had been torn down and the man and I scrambled up the embankment, pushed our bikes between trucks and rode to the border control on the centre of three lanes of international highway.
Nobody thought it the least odd.
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