Tim's Balkan Bike Blast 3

The horse and cart had long disappeared by the time breakfast was over. 

I packed up the remaining clothes that were hanging in the sunshine to dry. With any luck the rain and damp would stay away today. There was a lot of biking to do.

Just how much I had no idea. I just wanted to be somewhere in the Carpathian mountains and fairly close to the Transfagarasan Highway by the end of the day’s ride.

The bike had been carefully guarded by the rubbish bins at the back of the restaurant. It only took a minute to unlock the bike, then load up the rucksack and tank bag. Hardly time for the engine to warm up.

The route planner had 125 km to Novi Sad, which seemed a good point to aim for before refuelling and a morning coffee. The main highway was good. The countryside opened up as I headed north east and everything seemed to be more developed. Bigger settlements, the occasional factory, larger fields, more colourful clothes and more cars. Water melons obviously thrive in this area. Outside people’s houses and seemingly abandoned at road junctions, whole carts were piled high with dozens of water melons for sale. Presumably there was an honesty box, or the seller was somewhere hidden in the shade. A village would have maybe 20 carts, each cart with a few dozen melons, it was a major industry. I have no idea what percentage they sell, but it couldn’t be all of them since everyone seemed to have their own supply.

The route planner didn’t always hook up well with the headset and would go quiet for long periods, which was fine until faced with an either/or junction. So I stopped quite a few times to double check the direction and asked quite a few people, most of whom gave correct directions.

In one town a US Steel plant sat next to a Gazprom petrol station, which sort of summed up Serbian development. Not quite Wild West, but open to multiple influences.

There are no photos for the simple reason I chose not to stop. I was there for the ride, for the experience, not bound to keeping the world up to date. Anyway, they would get even more bored. 

It is depressing seeing people at major events, from pop concerts to sports matches, trying to film everything on their phones, in bad quality. They miss the fun. Let it go.

So I let it went and kept the throttle twisted. Somewhere near the river Sava the land morphed into marshes and wheeling overhead was a solitary stork. A fairly simple thought process led to remembering ... Hello stork, it’s my birthday. The stork took no notice. 

But the road called and it was time to eat up the miles.

Avoiding motorways meant the ride was pretty much in a straight line, so it would take about the same time, but would feel a lot more fun. The strange part about the roads was that base had not been well compacted before the asphalt arrived. So the first heavy loads had rutted the roads. That was a little disconcerting on occasion, but the Tiger wanted to stay upright and moving forward. So we did.

Some big signs advertised the Fruska Gora National Park and the road wound uphill, through thick woodland, with sharp bends and intermittent coaches. I had not seen a single one the day before, now the odd one lumbered past, seemingly heading the other way. I saw some half a dozen bikes on that stretch, maybe they had already migrated to the Carpathians.

I was getting tired by the time the roads into Novi Sad got confusing with multiple signs to the centre pointing in different directions.

Somehow I ended up on the right road which had a wonderful view of the beaches along the wide, wide Danube, which was more grey than blue. Strauss was presumably a pre-industrial composer.

The beaches had industrial rows of umbrellas, like docking stations for sun seekers.  It was a good day for them, close to 30C.

The town is large and not Sad, so choosing a coffee stop was easy and random. Somehow the random choices were working out well. The Baby Blue Café of course had wifi, and good coffee.

I caught up with the facebook birthday wishes and some emails while standing in the shade. Somehow sitting to take a rest didn’t seem so obvious. Different muscles needed a look in now and then.

The roads out of town were confusing and there were no signposts for my next major destination, Timisoara. That should not be so surprising as Timisoara (pronounced Timmy-shwara) is about 150km away and in a different country. So I filled up at a petrol station that was on the wrong road, but they put me right and it was time to cover distance.

The countryside was very similar. Open, few settlements, good roads and little traffic. Chomp, chomp, chomp. And the settlements got sparser, there were fewer water melons and the sun shone on.

I have no idea how they decided where to put the border at this point between Serbia and Romania, it seemed a pretty random location. No major landmark, just a few cabins plonked on the landscape. Leaving Serbia was pretty easy, but coming the other way were a couple of bikes which had Italian plates. A very good excuse for a chat.

‘Boun giorno, siete Italiani’. Good day, you’re Italian - more statement than question, but you never know. 

They were, from somewhere near Rome. Oh, I’m from Marche, (which is some 250 km the other side of the peninsular). They then admitted they were from Fermo, which is about 10 km from my house. Only close to Rome if your map is very small. 

They wanted to know about motorways, which I hadn’t used and anyway there didn’t seem to be any heading directly back to the Adriatic. I left them a business card just in case we could meet up back in Italy and swap stories of Romania, but haven’t heard anything since.

Just as I was about to set off across the no mans land, Michael called, I didn’t answer as Serbian calling charges would be expensive.

The Romanian border guard contingent all got involved in my documentation. Not only the passport, but drivers licence, insurance and bike ownership. They noticed I had a duplicate drivers licence and I confessed the previous one was lost a couple of years ago. They hadn’t noticed that it was my birthday. As the documentation came back Michael called again and I answered. He wished me happy birthday, it was good to catch up and we chatted for 15 minutes. As soon as we finished I got a text from Serbian telecom who had happily relieved me of Eur 15 for the call. Oh well, time to move on.

There were no houses or farms close to the border. It all seemed a bit strange. Still there were no cars either so the biking was easy.

About an hour later I was firmly embedded in a traffic jam in Timisoara. 

It seemed close to the town centre so I just went very slowly the wrong way down a one way street and parked the bike.

It was time for lunch but the big café on the edge of what was probably the main town square didn't take credit cards. Luckily the major banks were close-by. Time for cash. Time for Lei. Western Union would probably cost a fortune so I decided to try my luck (fortune/luck - geddit?) at Unicredit. A big Italian bank. That should help if something went wrong.

Something went wrong...