News from the road

It’s over . . . for now

2008-12-30T23:36:00.000-08:00

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; . . .
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known;
. . .
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from Ulysses

Gratitude 1

I was on the road almost four and a half months with my bicycle, and in that time collected many of the “timeless moments” that make a pattern of history (T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding). This blog is full of them, and they visit me at random the way memories do. As I write this, I’m at home in Vancouver, resting under the cover of a rare and record-breaking dump of snow. I remember a day five months ago, at the end of July: I had just started on the Donauradweg and I was in a state of elation over the long, paved, car-free cycling road ahead of me, the scenic Danube canyon and the warmth and light of summer. I had been two months on the road, was feeling strong and in my element. Free of navigational challenges and motorized traffic, my mind instead played with thoughts of people in my life. I felt overwhelming appreciation for family and friends at home, and new friends I was meeting along the way.

I thought in particular of two other people I wished I could have told about my adventures. One was my dad. He would have had a large map set up on a bulletin board, pins in hand to mark my progress with each blog, email or phone update. (Unbeknownst to me until later in my trip, my nephews and niece were doing this with their parents.) The other person I thought of with gratitude, and sadness for his early leaving, was Peter Marcus. He wouldn’t have approved of the weight I was carrying (he probably would have made do with a toothbrush and a minimalist repair kit), but he would have given a thumbs up for the ride. And it was on one of his and Ana’s Gabriola Cycle trips (Mexico, 2005) that I got re-enthused about cycle touring, and on another (Camino de Santiago, Spain, 2006) that I was inspired to come back to Europe for this solo cycle tour. I am indeed “a part of all that I have met” (Tennyson, quoted on one of those whimsical bike route sign posts in Serbia).

Gratitude 2

“Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.”
Moon River

Thanks, Tidy Man.

Colours of Ireland

2008-12-26T22:07:00.001-08:00

Met on Earl Street, Dublin

Session at The Celt, Talbot Street, Dublin

Cold feet

Cliffs of Moher

Storm on western shores

Mural in Derry; The Troubles

Near the Giant's Causeway

Finn MacCool's Causeway . . . to Scotland

November 28 to December 5, 2008

While we were in Saranda, Albania, our perpetual traveler friend Bobby had introduced us to the websites of no-frills airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet, and we had made a rare advance booking for a Ryanair flight from Venice to Dublin on November 28. Ireland in December? Craziness, you might have thought, and why would people from Vancouver choose a cold and rain-soaked isle? For Dan it was part of his heritage tour (he claims to have Ukrainian and Irish descent, although I believe he’s a Romanian gypsy); and music is a draw for both of us. However, against all expectations our sojourn in Ireland was mostly under clear skies. We spent a couple of days in Dublin, and then took off in a little rental car for a whirlwind tour of the island.

What astounding colours! Emerald carpets, luminous in the low December sun, rolled down the hillsides either side of our road; white houses dotted the green. Around the Ring of Kerry, shorn sheep with red paint on their rumps scrambled up the rocky golden hillsides away from our advancing Mercedes. (Two on the downhill side peered over the edge in uncertainty.) On a clear morning in the western seaside town of Lahinch, a lone wetsuited windsurfer stood ready on the promenade, and white spray hung over the crashing surf in the bay. In changeable weather, dark clouds hung over a sunlit white surf and green shores on another wide western bay.

The December days were short, but colours didn’t fade in the night. In Killarney, we walked into a pink sky toward Ross Castle. Stars poked holes of light in the darkening blue canopy of sky; winter trees reached their naked branches to meet it. Above the castle by the lake, a glow: the crescent moon with Venus attached to its underside. Later, in the warmth of a pub, Guinness in hand, the mellow dark brown of wood walls and tables shone in the light of the coal fire.

We had looked forward to the advantages of being in an English-speaking country, and were a bit surprised at the high proportion of people working in hostels and restaurants and pubs who were from other countries, come to partake of the success of the “Celtic Tiger.” Many of these foreigners are from EU countries (e.g., Poland, Netherlands, England), but Australia is also well-represented. At 8.65 euros ($14.85 CAD, compared to $8 CAD in British Columbia) the minimum wage is attractive, even taking into account the high cost of living, among the highest I’ve encountered on my recent travels. Ireland is succumbing, however, to the downward global economic trend, and this was very much on people’s minds.

Although many of the people we met, especially in the Republic of Ireland, were foreigners, we enjoyed the Irish gift of talk. The car radio was rather more entertaining than even beloved CBC as we sped along the coastal roads listening to people’s stories and issues. In Northern Ireland, a woman at the Museum of Free Derry talked to us about the “Troubles” and the events of Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, when 13 unarmed demonstrators, among them her brother, were shot and killed by British troops. She also showed us the huge rubber bullets, about five inches long, that were used in those days against rioters. But no one we met was more articulate in his passion for Irish unification and nationalism than Damien, a 27-year-old we met in a Belfast bar called Fibber Magee’s. Early in the evening, he was almost professorial in his answers to our questions; he was knowledgeable about any aspect of Irish history and folklore. As the empty Guinness pint glasses multiplied on the table, he got more personal. “I grew up in f*ing Bosnia,” he said, meaning Belfast, where he witnessed daily injustice and persecution, had his nose broken three times, and got so fed up that coming out of school he was “ready to join up” (the IRA). He “had to get out”: his grandfather, leader of regular all night family music sessions, especially worried about him. Whether he was sent or went of his own accord, he didn’t say, but he ended up at university in England. There he made friends and learned that the English “are people too.” Now he is a lawyer for the Queen’s Court, working inside the system for change. He appointed himself our Irish tutor for the night, teaching us Gaelic words, providing context for the Irish songs the band was playing, and singing along in my ear so I wouldn’t miss the words.

And sadly, the Irish tour ended there—but we’ll be back. Ireland’s heading the list for the next overseas cycling trip.

Venice

2008-12-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

Gondolas for hire . . . if you're feeling rich

Palazzo Ducale on November 27. On December 1, I would have been standing up to my neck in water.

San Marco in afternoon sun

In Venice, we drank Italian coffee in the morning sun by a canal and watched a German couple negotiate the price of a 20-minute gondola ride--80 euros ($130 CAD) with hard bargaining, including the old "walk away" tactic. It's off-season, too, so you can get an idea of the sticker shock we experienced.

It was of course wonderful to walk in Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square), and visit the church when the low afternoon sunshine lit the gold domes and mosaics. We were interested to note the appearance of elevated walkways, about two feet high, all over the city from one day to the next. Dan bet the city was expecting floods, but we were still amazed to see the photo in the December 2 Irish Times newspaper: a woman waded thigh-deep past the pillars of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace), where we had been snapping photos just a few days earlier. The prepared walkways were nowhere to be seen, useless at only about two feet high (although perhaps the woman in the news photo is actually standing on one of these and the water would be up to her upper chest otherwise). The paper reported that the water reached five feet two inches deep before it began to recede.

Balkan Jigsaw

2008-12-03T12:33:00.000-08:00

for Bobby

After a month of travelling around the western part of Turkey by bus in October and into early November, it was time to start homing in on Amsterdam, where I had a plane to catch on December 7. My bike was dispatched by post from Istanbul to Vancouver; it arrived safely only 13 days later by sea. Dan and I then embarked on a three-week overland journey through the Balkan Peninsula as far as Venice.

I know that some readers of this blog are familiar with the countries on the Balkan Peninsula, and that others, like me before I visited this region, keep in their brains an untidy jumble of familiar place names that, aside from Greece, they wouldn't bet money on their location on a map. (In alphabetical order, the Balkan countries are Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo (recognized by the UN), Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Sometimes included are Moldova, Romania, Slovenia and Turkey.) In September, I placed the top edge pieces of my own Balkan jigsaw puzzle by travelling through Croatia, Serbia and Romania by bicycle. In early November we travelled by train and bus from Istanbul to Athens and placed the bottom edge pieces, Turkey and Greece. Over the next couple of weeks the western edge pieces were filled in: Albania, Macedonia (a middle piece), Montenegro, Croatia (the Dalmatian Coast), and Slovenia.

Athens, our first stop after Istanbul, was a requisite stop: it may have the most famous touristic monuments in the world. And these monuments did not disappoint. When we emerged from the Acropoli Metro Station into the night on arrival, the famous rock of the Acropolis was floodlit above us, promising a good couple of days exploring. We stayed in nearby Placa, the tourist district of Old Athens, where the pedestrian-only streets are paved with time-polished stone, and moussaka and Greek salad is on every restaurant's menu. On Sunday the 9th of November, we found ourselves at the finish line of an international marathon in the Olympic stadium (built in 1896). We cheered marathoners who had started the race at Marathon, 26 miles away, living out the ancient legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier who ran this route to announce victory in battle (some versions of the story have him expiring on arrival in Athens but modern day marathoners are expected to finish in good health).

That night we travelled to Saranda, Albania, near the Greek border and just an hour's ferry ride to Corfu (Greece). There was an unusual camaraderie amongst the passengers, who were clearly strangers to each other at the beginning of the ride. I came to realize, through observation and shameless eavesdropping, that they were almost all expatriate Albanians working in Greece. They shared stories and laughs all night in a way common to comrade exiles everywhere. We arrived in Saranda at 7 a.m. sleepless and hoping for breakfast and coffee. There were plenty of cafes, occupied only by men, many of whom were drinking beer, but no food was on offer, so we stumbled down the hill to the seaside promenade to continue the search. The town was tranquil in the early morning, the rising sun just starting to light up the calm sea. The strains of Louis Armstrong floated in the air and as we got closer to the source we heard a raucous greeting: "Where are you from!" It stopped us in our tracks. Minutes later we were sitting with the owner of the voice, a tall, blond and shaggy Irishman (he corrected this label later, telling us he is a Celt). Bobby's 58 years show on a kind and craggy face. A perpetual traveller, he makes a clear distinction between tourists and travellers. We apparently made it into the favoured travellers' category and soon had a cup of coffee in front of us. Bobby arranged for us to have a room in the next door hotel for 5 euros a night each; but as the hotel didn't open until after 8 a.m., we would have to sit and drink beer first. I declined, but Dan found the Albanian cafe culture agreeable. He cracked the tab on his first tall beer around 7:30.

Over the next couple of days, Bobby became fond of us in particular among the few other travellers in Saranda, and we enjoyed some fish dinners at his friend Benny's cafe, and sat around telling stories over many beers. He was enchanted by the story of how we had been travelling independently across Europe until we met in Varna, and had been together ever since ("Magic!"). He told this story to his Albanian friends one night in slow and simple English. As each stage of the story was revealed, the three men at the table responded in unison: "ooh," they said, leaning in; "ah," leaning out, "oh," leaning sideways.

The hours sitting at Benny's cafe in Saranda were educational. We sat amongst the men and wondered where the women were? At work, of course, while their men drank coffee and beer at the cafe from 5:00 a.m. onwards. It was not necessary for cafes to provide food; the women would have a meal ready when the men returned home. We counted the Mercedes Benz cars parked on the other side of the street: eight out of nine. (We continued this research elsewhere in our travels in Albania and came up with the same ratio.) "Stolen," Bobby informed us. There was also a lot of repetitive discussion about the recent election of Barack Obama. The men could not understand how Americans could elect a black man. The "most educated" man in Saranda (according to Bobby), an artist and a teacher, told us that he felt Obama could lead a country like Jamaica, but not the United States. My argument, "But he's American, not Jamaican" did not have any weight. In Turkey people were elated about the Obama election, and it was hard to listen to such rigid racist beliefs in Albania. These can probably be partly attributed to Albania's political isolation and insularity until recent years. When we continued our journey to the inland town of Gjirokaster, we saw bizarre concrete domes, like beetles with eyes, scattered all over the countryside--bomb shelters--more evidence of insularity and paranoia during communist rule. According to the Lonely Planet guide, over 700,000 of these were built in anticipation of attack.

Bobby had been settled in Saranda, where people greet him by name with great fondness, for some months, but he was getting itchy feet and thinking of moving on. He came to see us off on our bus on the morning we left, beer in hand, and while we had a coffee at one of those food-less cafes, he jotted a rough itinerary of some of his favourite spots on our way along with a letter of introduction to friends of his who run an Irish bar in Macedonia. He waved us off, a bit teary, and we headed to the first town on his list, Gjirokaster. It's an ancient town of steep stone streets under a hilltop castle. And thus began a routine over the next few stops. First, a morning bus journey of some hours through dramatic terrain: steep and winding empty roads through valleys and around mountains inland in Albania and Macedonia; bright vistas of the Adriatic along the rocky coasts of Montenegro and Croatia (excellent cycling country, I tried in vain not to think, as we lurched and sped through it on buses of varying size and repair). We were blessed with sunshine and the beautiful clear days that come with fall.

Next, on arrival in town, find a place to sleep. Most often, we'd get off the bus and start walking with our packs, a clear target for someone to step out of the shadows of a shop door or lean out from an upper balcony to ask the welcome question, "Are you looking for accommodation?" In Macedonia, Montenegro and Croatia, private accommodations are common. The quoted price for a night was consistent, usually around $20 CAD each for a double room, often an apartment with kitchen. We enjoyed the luxury of privacy and space, and started to get used to it. In Dubrovnik, our host Nikola offered to drive us to the Old Town and back and even gave us a phone card so we could call whenever we wanted to be picked up. Then he called his pal Luka on Hvar Island, who met us off the ferry and drove us to his rooms in Hvar town, a good 25 minute drive (and a pricy bus ride). These two in particular were great sources of advice and information. Nikola has his home in a village near Dubrovnik. He served in the Croatian army for three years during the war in the nineties, when Dubrovnik was under Serb attack by sea, land and air. About 70% of the town was destroyed then, but it is rebuilt, pristine and beautiful now, white houses and red tile roofs bright against the blue Adriatic. Luka lived in California for some years and peppers his rapid speech with American idiom. In addition to "Luka's Lodging" in Hvar town, he has a house in the village where he grew up. He recently had guests stay for free while they helped to harvest his olives there. The olives are pressed in a communally operated press, and the product is superb . . . we enjoyed it with our bread and pasta.

After locating our room, the usual next item on the agenda was to stroll through town. Budva, Kotor, Dubrovnik, Hvar and Split all have centuries-old walled towns which continue to be occupied to this day with cramped houses and shops and restaurants: quaint and fun to explore. Dubrovnik's old town has wide walls tourists can walk on top of (for a high admission fee, which is why only tourists would do it) giving magnificent views of the winding streets inside and the sea and rocky cliffs outside. After the walled town, we would head straight up the hill to the town's castle for views of the countryside. Every town we visited had a castle: Ohrid, Macedonia; Budva and Kotor, Montenegro; Dubrovnik, Hvar, and Split, Croatia; and Bled, Slovenia. We climbed to the first few, but I confess that our enthusiasm started to wane by the time we got to Hvar. Gjirokaster's castle was most recently a prison, decommissioned in 1968. It would have been an echoing, damp and drafty imprisonment; we stood for seconds in a cell with a closed door, looking up at the high window and it was enough. We got an especially dramatic view from Kotor's castle, and climbed even higher on the sheep tracks to look down on its ruins and the Bay of Kotor, surrounded by mountains. As we came back down the track to the town just before dusk, two nuns were working in a small chapel; back in the town we could see the track lit up for their return journey. Bled's castle was mysterious in the falling snow and glorious in subsequent brilliant sunshine, but we enjoyed it from below. At the higher elevations inland, the weather cooled off considerably, and the good smell of rotting leaves accompanied our rambles.

The coastal towns of Croatia had excellent seawall walks and trails to enjoy the coastline. Rosemary scented the air as we brushed past large bushes of it along the trail. Lavender also covers these coastal hills, particularly in Hvar, and although it wasn't flowering in November, I could well imagine it. The last olives were still clinging to the trees and littering the ground. We were blessed with sunny and warm days to enjoy the coast. The Adriatic sun does something to colour here: it makes the red roofed white houses luminescent, the sea a brilliant turquoise, the trees and plants glow.

We left the warm weather behind as the bus climbed from the coast up into the mountains to our inland stop in Croatia's capital, Zagreb. We shivered in the cold night air as we made an exploratory foray into downtown Zagreb, an elegant city of imposing Austro-Hungarian architecture similar to that in Vienna and Budapest. After an early morning stroll in the city in sunshine, once on our way we were surprised to see snow flying past the train window in horizontal lines; then even more surprised to see it stick on the ground and find ourselves later in a winter wonderland in the mountain resort town of Bled, Slovenia. From the window of our upscale hostel room on the hill above the lake, we looked out onto a UNICEF Christmas card scene of village houses on a snowy hillside. The next day the snow stopped for our tramp around the lake with the church on the islet in the middle, and the day after the clouds went somewhere else, showing us the surrounding mountains with their fresh caps of snow against a blue sky.

Thence to Venice by train . . . next post.

Croatia and Slovenia photos

2008-11-24T09:29:00.000-08:00

First snowfall, Bled, Slovenia. Nov. 24

What? Two days ago we were on the Adriatic coast, sun shining on palm trees, and it was 25 degrees! Bled, Slovenia (Nov. 24)

Morning sunshine, Zagreb, Croatia: Nov. 24

White coast, Hvar Island, Croatia, Nov. 22

Ferry ride from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Hvar Island, Nov. 20

Dubrovnik Old Town Walls, Nov. 18

Dubrovnik Old Town

Macedonia and Montenegro

2008-11-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

Samuil's Fortress, above Lake Ohrid in Macedonia

Political graffiti in Stari Grad (Old Town), Budva, Montenegro

Budva

The fortress above Kotor, Montenegro

View of Kotor, Montenegro

Athens to Albania

2008-11-15T07:25:00.001-08:00

The Parthenon, Athens (5th C BC)

Face in theatre pillar at Butrint, south coast of Albania (ca 6th C?)

Mosaic in basilica, Butrint: still to be uncovered, 6th C AD

Albanian bunkers: they cover the hillside. Almost as numerous as Mercedes Benz cars. Albania is the 2nd poorest country in Europe after Moldova.

Drive from Gjirokaster, Albania, to Korca toward the Macedonian border.

Turkish Delight

2008-11-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

Ephesus

Travertines (calcium carbonate pools) at Pamukkale

Pamukkale sunset

Fethiye harbour

Oludeniz beach from the Lycian Way trail

Lycian Way trail to Kabak

Bee hives--buzzing fills the valleys and honey is plentiful

Sunset at Kabak

Cyclamen

Canyon trail on the Lycian Way

Cappadocia caves

Pigeon Valley, Cappadocia

Cave houses in tuff cone, Uchisar, Cappadocia

Love Valley, Cappadocia

Love Valley

Aya Sofia, Istanbul, at night

The way I see it now, cycling across Europe to the Black Sea was the main course, and Turkey was dessert. My ride ended in Varna, Bulgaria. There, at the Yo Ho Hostel, I was given a choice of roommates: two Kiwi women who had covered the bunks and floor with every item in their packs, or a Canadian man who had left his pack neat at the end of his bed, and Call of the Wild open on the pillow. I chose Tidy Man.

Tidy Man's name is Dan, and I followed him to Istanbul. We spent three days exploring old Ottoman neighbourhoods, stopping for chai in hole-in-the-wall tea gardens with low tables, where old men passed time chatting and fingering their prayer beads. We walked the Bosphorus and Marmara seafronts, the palace park. On a Saturday night our English travel pal from the Varna hostel, Doug, led us into the teeming entertainment district of Beyoglu to find kebap and raki. We bar hopped until we settled at a cozy place with a popular Turkish guitarist-singer and a saz player. We were there until 3 a.m., and when we made our way back down the main street (Istiklal Caddesi) it was still full of partying Istanbullus. On the Galata Bridge, fishermen were propped along the railing elbow to elbow, hanging on to their long rods in the hope of catching tiny fish. This city doesn't sleep.

One of the highlights of my stay in Istanbul was meeting up with Meezan in Ortakoy for lunch. She now works in Erbil, northern Iraq, and fascinated us with her stories of life there (check out her blog, www.dailyhawler.blogspot.com). She enticed me with her enthusiastic suggestion of a cycling route through south-eastern Turkey to Erbil, promising a car pick-up from the border (I hadn't at this point decided on my mode of travel in Turkey).

The day after Dan left Istanbul to go south toward Greece, emails flew. I parked my bike and gear at the Orient Hostel, bought a backpack, and followed him to Selchuk, near the magnificent Roman ruins of Ephesus. We've been travel and soul mates ever since.

From Ephesus we travelled by bus to Pamukkale, where travertine (calcium carbonate) pools cascade down a hill from the bottom of Hierapolis, another ancient city spreading its stone ruins across a dry hillside.

Fethiye was the next stop: a Mediterranean seaside town from which we took a four day cruise on a gulet, a 75 foot wooden yacht. We had idyllic days cruising the Turquoise coast, swimming from the boat, lazing on deck, eating delicious meals of vegetarian stews, salads, and fish, in the company of other travellers from Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Hungary.

Back in Fethiye, we headed out for a three-day trek on the beginning of the Lycian Way, rated one of the top ten hikes in the world. We could see why as soon as we found the trailhead. It led us through pine forests and onto the edge of a mountain from which we had stunning views of Oludeniz beach and the anchorage we'd been at just days before. By the end of the first day we were walking against the steep sides of a mountain canyon and down to the top of Butterfly Valley just before sunset. The second day ripe olives littered our path like little animal droppings; pomegranates decorated branches like shiny Christmas ornaments. Terraced fields slid down the mountain as we descended into the beach camps at Kabak. Our final day was a steep ascent through pines and up dry riverbeds to the little village of Alinca, perched on a high headland.

From there we bussed to Olympos, a backpacker hangout now quiet at the end of season. We clambered over ruins and hiked up a long pine-lined road to the Chimera, where eternal flames emanate from the belly of the mountainside. Our walk back was under a thick star filled sky.

Next stop on this trip through a land of wonders was Cappadocia. Here we wandered in valleys lined with incredible stone formations, towering over us in weird shapes. In the fairy chimneys and tuff towers cave houses and churches have been carved over the centuries, mostly by Christians for escape from persecuting invaders. It's an astonishing, other world landscape.

This morning I entrusted my bike and camping gear to the Turkish post office in Istanbul for delivery to Vancouver in about a month. The biking adventure is done, and the backpacking adventure continues. We're heading to Thessaloniki, Greece, tomorrow.

Istanbul photos

2008-10-24T00:22:00.001-07:00

I spent six days in Istanbul, revelling in the sights, sounds, smells, and good food. Here's a sample of the sights.

Bosphorus

Gulhane Park, outside Topkapı Palace

Seaside

Fish Market

Blue Mosque from hostel rooftop

Grand Bazaar

Black Sea: Constanta to Varna

2008-10-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

Constanta, Romania, Mosque

Turco-Tatar Festival, Constanta, Romania

Vama Veche, Romania, out of season

Evening fishing, Balchik, Bulgaria

Coast Road to Varna, Bulgaria

Cathedral, Varna, Bulgarıa

These last few photos are of the end of my bike ride to the Black Sea. It was just under 200 kilometres from Constanta to Varna. The highlight of the trip down was the town of Balchik in Bulgaria, where I rested up after a brutal day of fighting a very strong and consistent headwind. The dozens of wind turbines along the way was an indication that the wind was not unusual and I dreaded much more of it . . . In Balchik I found a quiet and cheap hotel away from the main hotel drag; from my room I could see, smell and hear the sea. I also scored a 90 minute massage in the hotel. It was evident that the time was coming to give up the bicycle. My last day was a short one to Varna, but my tire went flat again and my right pedal was clicking loudly. I was glad to arrive at the Yo Ho Hostel in Varna after some searching for it; I spent another rest day in Varna and put myself and my bike on the bus to Istanbul the next day.

posted in Fethiye, Turkey: 6429 km to Varna

Istanbul

2008-10-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

I arrıved ın Istanbul two days ago and am havıng a great tıme ın thıs exotıc cıty. I have been enjoyıng the sıghts and sounds too much to settle and wrıte, but wıll do so soon. What a welcome change from rural Romanıa!

Happy Thanksgıvıng to the Canadıans!

Romanian Danube to the Black Sea

2008-10-03T01:23:00.000-07:00

Dervent Monastery: The door was open; should've stayed.

Cursed cobblestones

First sight of the Black Sea and the Cazino

The pink line

September 20 - October 1, 2008

Just as I was taking my last gulp of familiar Serbian air before committing myself to the Romanian border checkpoint on September 20, two young Swiss women I had met in Smederevo four days before, Rebecca and Angelica, cycled up behind me. They waited for me while my Canadian passport underwent the usual thorough scrutiny, then we cycled into Romania together. Their company made the transition to this much-maligned country easier. Unfortunately, we parted in the first town, Drobeta-Turnu Severin, because although I had cycled less than 30 km, my left knee was stiff and sore from the fall three days before; the long and steep hills of the Danube Gorge over the previous two days had probably made it worse. I tried not to mind too much that I couldn't continue with them, but in fact I had been hoping for the company of other cyclists for the 800 km trek across Romania. I had weighed the risks of cycling alone against my strength and experience as a cyclist, the good condition of my bike, and my careful calculation of the distances between towns with accommodations, which looked just doable within the shortening daylight, all going well. But I couldn't do the distances with my knee in that condition, and I didn't want to be stranded if I tried and failed. "I sure as hell wouldn't want to camp in Romania" had worn a groove in my brain. So I cooled my heels and iced my knee at the Hotel Continental in Drobeta-Turnu Severin for two days, enjoying a room with a Danubian view, learning some key Romanian phrases, and writing about Serbia. The hotel claimed to be a "four star hotel with three star prices" (my single room was 170 new Romanian lei, about $75 CAD a night) but I soon realized I was back in the developing world: the light in the bathroom didn't work and neither did the bedside lamp; there didn't seem to be hot water when I wanted to shower, and the power went out as I sat down to use the computer. These problems were beyond the scope of the desk staff to solve, but I knew what to do from years spent in similar settings: grope, shiver, and shrug.

I set out for the next town, Hinova, two days later. It was less than 20 km down the road, but the cycling guide warned it was the last town with accommodation before Calafat, 120 km away, and I wanted to have a warm-up day, and situate myself as close to Calafat as possible. In fact, Hinova's one motel was not in operation, and I had to cycle all the way back to the edge of Turnu Severin, where I checked into a motel. The next day's ride was 137 km as a result; the day after, to Corabia, 147. Long days but in good weather. In both Calafat and Corabia I felt affection for the towns' rustic run-down nature and found the peeling post-office and the non-flushing toilet almost humourous. My view was coloured by my first days' cycling success and newness to Romania. Anyone familiar with the classic culture shock wave will recognize the "honeymoon" phase, and knows it's downhill from there. My initial response reminds me of a time in China when Susan and I, with some visiting friends, got locked inside our sixth floor apartment again, due to a malfunctioning lock. As we struggled in vain to open the door, a woman from Canada who had been in China just three days was laughing, merry, "ha ha, only in China, ha ha ha." She provided a perfect example of someone in the honeymoon phase, where everything new is wonderful. I, on the other hand, somewhere way down in the trough, fumed in frustration and rage.

Perhaps I wouldn't have plummeted quite so fast to my Romanian trough had the weather not deteriorated. Three days of rain followed with the cruel addition of a consistent headwind and bumpy roads. The distances required between towns were smaller--32, 56, and 78 km--but the days were just as tiring as my pace slowed and the uncomfortable hours mounted. The villages I passed lost their quaintness; they were mired in mud and the grey days sucked the colour out of them and the sodden fields. The general disrepair was dispiriting. In Zimnicea, many of the buildings are still skeletal after the 1977 earthquake. I reached the nadir in the city of Giurgiu. The first hotel I approached spooked me with its empty industrial location and I hoped I wouldn't have to stay there. A bright and friendly woman thankfully emerged on the front steps, put her warm hand on my arm and redirected me to the Motel Prietenia. There I was checked in by a woman who was so cold in her manner that I got the impossible impression that she hated me. (A great irony is that "prietenia" means "friendship". The motel was probably named after the "Friendship Bridge" between Giurgiu and Ruse in Bulgaria, which in another irony, for years no one was able to use.) Ensconced in my room, I decided, as I stared unhappily across the train tracks at the ugly stained concrete apartment blocks with soggy laundry hanging limp from windows, not a tree in sight, that Giurgiu qualified as a "shithole."

The next day my outlook improved with smooth roads, weak fall sunshine, and a corresponding increase in my pace. Gone were the dawdling days of riverside picnics and dropping in on castles and cafes; I was in a daily race to get to my next hotel room: Calafat, Corabia, Turnu Magurele, Zimnicea, Giurgiu, Oltenitsa, Calarasi . . . and finally, Constantsa on the Black Sea.

The ride to Constantsa was going to be the longest yet at around 150 km, and the morning I was going to do it I woke up feeling just not ready. I was worried about my knee; also, for the first time in almost 6000 kilometres, I had sore sit bones. These two physical problems had sapped the joy from cycling, but I was also worried about the untrueness of my rear wheel. By the time I opened my eyes on the day, I had decided that the wheel was wandering a centimeter away from true with every rotation, and that I should take it to the bike shop I had seen on my way into Calarasi the day before. When I got the bike out to look at it, I realized my anxiety about the ride had inflated the degree of the wheel's untrueness; it was noticeable but only a couple of millimetres. And besides, all the spokes were tight; closer inspection revealed that the rim was damaged. I'm pretty sure it happened on the day of heaviest rain, when the roads in some places were half muddy lakes. In spite of my frequent self-reminders to be careful of the cracks and potholes lurking under the water's surface, I fell into a deep hole at speed, which shook the bike and me with a tremendous jarring rattle. I think the rim was hit by the pavement on the way in or out of the hole. This kind of damage can only be remedied by wheel replacement and my wheel size is unlikely to be found in this part of the world. The problem shrank back to its real size (small) and I went out to spend my rest day exploring Calarasi on foot. It was a warm fall day and it was restorative to look in shops and meet people at a walking pace.

The next day I was on the road just after first light (7:40), exulting in the promise of the sunny morning. Get up early enough, and anything seems possible. I caught the ferry across the Danube to the edge of Silistra in Bulgaria, and made my first climb of the day, over cobblestones, to a ride with a view of vineyards sloping to the river. Just after ten I arrived at Dervent Monastery, with its garden and view of the plain. The man sweeping up around the entrance asked me if I were alone--my answer, yes, entitled me to sleep there. I was so fresh and keen to go that I declined, a decision I regretted within a couple of hours. The ride was the best yet of my journey since the Danube Gorge, with its rolling hills and views, and the warm (but not hot) day with a tailwind. But. because of the ferry ride and the cobblestones, I was already behind schedule when I got to the monastery, and I should have known better than to think I could catch up. The result was a ride spoiled by the need to push it all the way to Constanta with barely time to eat or rest, and also no time to properly visit the archaelogical site at Adamclisi. Every town with a cobbled street got my curses but the curses didn't help my speed. The tailwind did, though, and I was very fortunate to have it as I flew the last 50 km into the city at about 25 to 30 kph, a good pace. I reached Constanta at 6:00 with less than an hour to spare before dark, much later than I am comfortable arriving without a place arranged to stay.

I was so preoccupied with my visual search for a hotel-- any hotel--that I was surprised when I saw in front of me a shining mass of blue-green wind-dancing water: oh yeah (palm struck forehead), the Black Sea! My goal! I took a moment to look and revel and snap a couple of photos. My seaside hotel was just around the corner; when I walked into my room I was taken off-guard by sudden sobs. My impartial observer-self asked, "What was that?" and answered itself, "Exhaustion," since my other self was unable to answer.

On the bad days, I started to question my goal-oriented tenacity. And what kind of adventurer was I, seeking respite in hotel rooms every afternoon, escaping into Animal Planet and Seinfeld and CSI on TV? Not in the ranks of Colin Angus and Julie Wafaei (check out their amazing trip just completed, from Scotland to Syria, much of it along the same route as mine: http://www.angusadventures.com/rowedtrip/index.html). And what kind of person cycles across Romania, anyway? The kind that doesn't mind people saying "better you than me." So what do I get out of it?

There's the achievement of an athletic feat. There's the pink line on my map reaching from Amsterdam and the North Sea through France, Switzerland and all the way down the Danube to the Black Sea; there's boasting rights. But none of these would induce me to do the last couple of weeks again. There are more complicated benefits to edgy travelling.

There are the quirky human encounters. My favourite one of the last week was the greeting team in one muddy town I pumped through. It was a group of older adults this time, standing chatting on the right side of the road: women in head kerchiefs, skirts, aprons, and rubber boots; men in their round brown fur hats, ear flaps up. They saw me round the bend, their faces creased in smiles, and their mouths opened in unison to produce this multilingual chorus: "Ciao-Guten Morgen-Bonjour-Hallo-Salut!" And as their voices rang in the air, a man across the road called out, "Hola!"--the cymbalic finale. This scene still makes me laugh, as it did then, putting a smile on my face for some distance down the road.

And the context for these encounters can never be forgotten. It is as if I have sprayed my map of Europe with Lemon Pledge (pick any spray cleaner you know), taken a sponge like the woman in the TV ad, and wiped away the dust from where I've been. Once revealed by hard travel and its attendant intensity of feeling (elation chasing desperation) the place also evokes understanding and compassion, love even. I feel (for a time) a better version of myself for it.

Constantsa, Romania, 6233 km

Good Questions

2008-09-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

Christine asks, and I answer:

- do you phone ahead for accomodation or just show up?
In Romania, I ride into my destination town as early as possible in the day (around 2-3), with fear that I won't and hope that I will find a decent hotel, or any hotel. My cycling map tells me if there are going to be accommodations but sometimes the one hotel in town has packed it in (I left Turnu-Severin for Hinova and had to ride all the way back to within 5 km of my starting point, for this reason). In the best scenario the hotels are on the street I ride in on. Otherwise, I target a friendly looking cafe or shop and just start asking. I phone ahead when I'm going into a big city (Budapest, Beograd), but since the quality varies so widely in Romania, I like to see what I'm getting before I agree to stay in a place. I have not encountered any tourist information offices yet in Romania. I think it's safe to say that the tourist industry is not likely to take off soon in the Romanian Danube River Valley.

-how has your health been?
Travel has been excellent for my health; being happy is good for the immune system. The only exception to that is my left knee, which has been "paining" me since my fall in the rain over a week ago. I took a couple days out and I've been icing every day. I've had to do two long days since then (140-150 km) because of scarcity of accommodation, but where possible I've shortened the days a bit.

-any flat tires?
Two, one of them this morning. A huge piece of glass punctured right through the Mr. Tuffy liner.

-what are you using for a guide book?
The Bikeline series guide for the Danube route. After I get to the Black Sea, I'll use the best map I can find to get to Istanbul. If I decide to keep cycling.

-are you getting tired of wearing the same clothes?
Not at all, actually, as long as they're clean! The only new thing I crave is a WIFI device, like a PDA with WIFI. Internet is a lifeline, and WIFI is more common than an actual computer.

Romanian Snapshots

2008-09-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

The Calafat, Romania, Post Office, in need of TLC. How about some EU cash?

Wouldn't I like a ride?

King of the Castle

flat, flat, flat

Today's road to Oltenitsa: typically flat, but untypically smooth

Words of disuasion, August 2008
"They're not like us. It's like the middle ages." H, Switzerland
"It's not like here [Austria]." J, Australia/Germany

It's been a gruelling road (~580 km) between Drobeta-Turnu Severin and here, Oltenitsa, with ups and downs that need some processing and reflection. Until I write about that, here are some "snapshots" from my last week of cycling.

Border crossing
"The purpose of your journey?" My mouth is open, to answer, but words aren't coming out. With a smile, "You're cycling to the Black Sea. Have a good trip."

Too vigilant
A guard outside the ATM, wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words VIGILENT SECURITY, leans in and peers over Angelica's shoulder as she tries to get her first Romanian cash.

Iron Gates Museum, Drobeta-Turnu Severin
Exhaustive collection on three floors and many rooms, representing a long and impressive history stretching back 42,000 years (oldest human remains in Europe were found in Romania): dusty, faded displays with parts missing. As I approach each room, a different woman rises from her seat behind the door to turn on the light.

Morning highway sounds
Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop.

Danube Valley landscape
Mountains far off now; the gold September fields stretch wide on both sides.

The gift
A horse-drawn cart behind me on the road: clip clop, clip clop. Then, ca-lop, ca-lop, ca-lop. Gaining! Attack from behind? I pull over. The man holds the reins with one hand, reaches out with the other--two apples for me from the pile in the cart. The woman grins, points into the cart--wouldn't I rather ride with them? They drive off, but as they are only doing about 15 kph, I soon pass, call out again, "Multsumesc! (thank you!)" My most handy Romanian word.

King of the Castle
High on a massive stack of corn husks, women in skirts ride, legs splayed. From behind, the horse's legs just visible, kicking back in rhythm.

Funeral procession
Mourners fill the road. Many old women in dark skirts, aprons, and head kerchiefs. The coffin rides on the tractor. A brass section-two horns and drum-brings up the rear.

Goats on road
A teen girl strolls behind her goats, no hurry. Goat aroma sharpens the air. One takes a huge pee.

Dogs in ditch
Some look like they're just resting, others have the grisly appearance of road kill. I've never seen this much canine carnage.

Water well
In the town of Calafat, a woman draws water from a roadside well.

Main Street
The road I'm travelling is one long main street for small town after small town. Children are enthusiastic: "Bonjour, madame!" "Salut!" In another town, "Hola!" In another, "Ciao!" and "Ciao bella!" (this boy wins points for charm). In some towns English is the choice: "Hello, how are you?" If I get to go first, I say "Bunai dimineatsa! (good morning!)" The old ladies watching life on Main Street smile with surprise and an echoing "dimineatsa!" is my reward.

Oltenitsa, Romania, 6002 km

Serbian Danube

2008-09-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

Cosmic Sausages, England, at Novi Sad International Street Performers Festival

View of Sava/Danube confluence from Kalemegdan Fortress, Belgrade

Various incarnations of Belgrade

Stop for a moment: poem memorializing the 1941 bombing of the National Library of Serbia

Belgrade house

Drama at the parliament

Ernst van Damme

Bratislav and Ljiljana

Dressed for rain, approaching the Danube Gorge

Golubac Castle

The Danube Gorge. narrowest point

Decebalus Rex, Dacian king carved into the Romanian side of the Danube Gorge

"GOOD BYE. You are leaving Serbia. Don't cry because it's over-smile because it happened :)"
(on Eurovelo 6 bicycle route sign at the Iron Gates Dam border crossing to Romania, September 20, 2008)

As far as cycling goes, my last three days in Serbia were the best-scenic riding along the edge of the Danube Gorge, looking across at MDR (Most Dreaded Romania) on the other side. It looked pretty much the same as the Serbian side, a road blasted into the vertical rock, occasional houses gathered at the river's edge. The other three days I spent cycling the Danube route between cities in Serbia isn't a part of the trip I can recommend. Perhaps it was the mostly wet and cold weather that tainted my view, but sunshine wouldn't have made the air less foul (from burning garbage and belching trucks, cars, buses and tractors) or removed the plastic bottles piled along the road edges around the cities of Novi Sad, Beograd, Smederovo and Pozarevac. Amongst the filth, the river continued to host fascinating sites of antiquity. Scattered all along my route were Stone Age and Roman excavations, but wet and cold, I lacked the will to take sidetrips to find them. Easier to find and enjoy even in the rain were the massive remains of the fortress of Kalemegdan in Beograd, perched on its rock across from my floating hostel, and the medieval walls of Smederovo's fortress, situated directly on the Danube's bank and atmospheric in the gloom of a grey dusk. In the Danube Gorge, I enjoyed cycling through the gates of Golubac Castle, shrouded in morning mist. And I even managed to enjoy several hours at an umbrella'd cafe table on the broad walls of Petrovaradin Fortress across the river from Novi Sad, while the hot days were still on us. All these monuments have been important through history as fortifications since Roman times, ruined and rebuilt in turn by Hungarians, Turks, Serbs. Today the Petrovaradin Fortress is the site of the annual EXIT Festival, said to be the best music festival in Europe. Fantastic site, overlooking the shining Danube.

Some days I felt that for the scenic view of some places I passed, it would be better to study the tourist brochures or watch a PBS documentary at home. But Serbia will be a highlight of my journey and will hold a place in my heart nonetheless, and this has everything to do, as usual, with people I met. I want to introduce three people in particular.

Miki
Miki was standing on the edge of Liberty Square looking out for tourists who might like to stay at his new hostel, when I hove into view, walking down the "fussganger" (pedestrian) zone and turning my head from left to right looking for the tourist information office. He asked if he could help me, and was I looking for accommodation? His hostel's name was Sova. I said maybe, after I found the tourist information. I continued down the street looking for the tourist info in the direction he had indicated. Three minutes later a beautiful blonde lady, his wife Sanja, asked if she could help me, and did I need accommodation? The teamwork proved irresistible and I followed her up the stairs to the second story apartments they had renovated: high ceilings, freshly painted walls and old woodwork, gleaming parquet floors, tall windows with leafy trees outside softening the sun and dappling the rooms. Pavarotti singing Verdi on the stereo. Comfortable chairs in the living room which also contained the computer for the free internet access. I moved in. Two days stretched to three, three to four. Miki was almost always around, and he and the other guests made an instant, temporary family. Coming "home" to the hostel after a night out at the International Street Performers' Festival (five wonderful evenings of seven stages of free folk, jazz, percussion, fado and more on Liberty Square and the fussganger zones around it) I sank into a chair and Miki brought a large cold beer; we laughed a lot, talked about history, travel, Serbian language. By the end of the day he would be exhausted from the effort of speaking English (one of several languages he speaks) and when the English words failed to come, he'd make another coffee, light up another cigarette and battle on. I asked him about the NATO attacks in 1999 when all the bridges between Novi Sad and Petrovaradin were destroyed in nightly bombing raids. "Terrible, terrible. The sirens, whaaah, then the bombs. Every night at 6:00." Did he take his family (daughter then 6, twin sons 8) to a bomb shelter, I asked. No, they stayed at home--a bomb could land there, could land here. And history-he waved his hand dismissively. Whose history. When I eventually did leave for Beograd, into a pissing rain, his farewell was warm and heartfelt. I struggled to express in words what a special place he's made of the hostel. "Well, nobody's perfect," he said. Then with a glint in his eye, "I'm nobody."

Ernst
Every night Miki's mobile would ring. He'd glance at the number on the display, then raise the phone, a smile lighting his face. "It's Ernst," he'd say to me and Oek, a young Dutch man who'd been staying at the hostel when Ernst was there. "He came for a couple of days and stayed for eight", Miki had said to me a few times, as my own stay stretched from day to day. Into the phone, "Hallo, my friend."

Ernst left his home in Amsterdam on April 7 to walk to Tibet. He's walking for Justice, Dignity, and Humanity, and will meet the Dalai Lama when he reaches Dharamsala, planned for July 2009. I caught up with him in Belgrade, on a ship on the Danube, where for 1100 dinara (about $20 CAD) you could get a little cabin like the one I had in mind for my basic cruise to the Black Sea. The ship was hellishly noisy with wedding parties dancing on the deck above until 11 pm, followed by other parties on the river until around 4, followed by the frenzied barking of the stray dogs in the kennel adjacent to finish off the night. But it was worth staying there to hook up with Ernst. We didn't meet right away because he was out partying with people he'd just met, but on the day we were both planning to leave we got together for an early coffee, which turned into breakfast, which turned into another coffee . . . by noon we had barely grazed all there was to discuss, and besides, it was pouring again. I moved back into my room, and we headed off to the city centre together on foot and spent the afternoon exploring the Bohemian Quarter and the area around the government buildings. In front of the Parliament we saw dramatic security men in action. Two of them straddled each rear passenger door of a black limousine; a VIP got in, and the two of them ran to the car behind, jumped in and slammed the doors. The two cars sped off. No one else was paying attention to this drama. Our sightseeing done, we retreated to the warm top floor of Mamut bookstore, where we got facing computer terminals so we could work and chat at the same time. Ernst showed me his blog (www.voettochtnaartibet.nl, where you can see a photo of Miki and Sanja (dag 148). Our day ended at 11:30 after dinner back on our boat. It was hard to believe we'd met for the first time that morning, but some meetings on a long trip are like that.

Ljiljana
Two days later, I had covered the mostly unpleasant ground between Beograd and Veliko Gradiste. It had been wet and cold, 10 degrees according to the weather website Ernst pulled up on his PDA. I was having trouble adjusting to the 25 degree drop in temperature, and was still wearing capri tights, to be finally exchanged for long fleece-lined ones the next day. The cycling had finally become peaceful, clean and idyllic at the end of this second day as I got closer to the Gorge. I had come 100 kilometres, more than usual, and I was hoping to find a place to stay soon as I had a slow leak in my rear tube which was now giving an audible hiss when I pumped. The rain started up again, a slow but dense rain that soaks. There was a shallow, narrow ditch that I should have crossed on the perpendicular but couldn't because at that moment a car came by-I tried a parallel maneuvre that would have worked had the little ditch not been full of water. Landed on my hands and knees on the road with the weight of my bike on top. Surely I must have suddenly disappeared from the car's side or rear view mirror in a mysterious fashion, but the car didn't stop. I was shaken and nauseous as I got myself upright again. I heard a whimper float in the air around my head and told my inner child to scram. This was a time for a grown-up to be in charge. And what had Ernst said, when things are not going well, sit down, have a coffee, and some solution will appear. Two minutes down the road, I saw a hand-painted sign, "sobe/apartmani" (rooms/apartments) and turned down the driveway. Five minutes later, I was sitting in the kitchen of Ljiljana and Bratislav with their two friends, a thick Turkish coffee in front of me. Two large bottles of sljivovica (Serbian alcohol) were produced and my bleeding fingers doused. Bratislav called for a cigarette and the guest produced one. Then he carefully cut off 5 mm sections of tobacco and laid them on each wound, then with great care not to let the little mounds of tobacco tumble off, bound my fingers with gauze. The whole procedure was repeated for my left knee, which I discovered was also bleeding under my tights. The next morning my wounds were clean, so I can recommend this treatment.

I wasn't sure, during my Serbian alternative medical treatment, if I could in fact have a room. We didn't have a common language, and Ljiljana had looked perturbed that I didn't speak German. However, she warmed up to me and led me around the corner of the house with a big gesture to follow. As we approached an annex to the house where the room was, she looked back at me with a wicked grin, then said with a perfect North American accent, "C'mon boys!" and we both laughed. "Serbische cartoon," she explained, and this was how we communicated the rest of the evening and the next morning--in a telegraphic mix of gestures, and German, English and Serbian words. Initially I understood I was to eat dinner at a restaurant, but soon I had a a date first for hot homemade caramel milk and cookies, and then for dinner in the kitchen, and for a large "fruhstuck" (breakfast) the next day. Our conversation never flagged. We didn't cover as much ground as Ernst and I did with our common language of English, but with the album of family photos taken in August at Bratislav's 80th birthday, we had lots to talk about. There were also tears. She wanted to tell me about the terror of the bombs. She lives in Beograd except during the summer season when she is here in Veliko Gradiste (or more correctly the tourist recreation area of Silver Lake). But in 1999 she was in Beograd and produced the same terrifying wailing sound that Miki had described of the siren announcing the beginning of the nightly bombing. She pointed up, "bomb, bomb," and gripped her crotch to show how she peed her pants. She showed me the array of medications she takes for her nerves. Born in 1931, the same year as my father, she also lived through the bombings and explosions in Beograd of the Second World War. Today with her four children grown and with families of their own, and one great grandson, not to mention her "lav," Bratislav, she has a lot to lose to the terrors of today. Al Qaeda beheadings in Kosovo, planes flying into buildings in New York--these brought tears as well. (Miki uses black humour to cope. Ernst told me how Miki took him out to "work" one day, to recruit guests at the square. "Do you know how to tell the difference between European or American tourists and Serb tourists?" Ernst admitted he didn't. "European and American tourists look like this"--he moved his head from left to right, then back again, probably in a perfect imitation of me on my first day in Novi Sad. "Serbian tourists look like this"--he moved his head from left to right, then did a skyward sweep with his eyes. Looking out for bombs.)

Tears gave way to laughter and affection again for my third warm leave-taking in a week. Ljiljana stood two steps above me, grasped my head and kissed the top of it three times. "Serbski custom?" I asked. "For my kinder (children)," she said. And she waved until I cycled out of sight.

Drobeta-Turnu Severin, Romania, 5435 km

Budapest to Croatia

2008-09-12T02:25:00.000-07:00

Paprika and garlic for sale

Paprika field

Waiting for the ferry at Mohacs

Mohacs colour

War damage, Vukovar

Breakfast on the terrasse, Hotel Dunav, Ilok

The week I spent travelling from Budapest south through Hungary and Croatia brought experiences that were especially delighting because of the low expectations I had laid on the whole journey henceforth due to the rumbling doubts about Romania. I had already learned about the positive power of negative expectations, and no story illustrates it quite as well as what happened at the post office near the Budapest hostel. One morning Trish and I were there, waiting as directed at one of the wickets, but no one came to the window. After some time, an old lady behind us moved to another wicket where a blonde woman was sitting behind the window, watching us wait at the other wicket. The old lady bought a stamp for her letter, and Trish and I lined up behind her. Trish handed over her postcards. One bundle for Canada, which the woman stamped and threw in a bin. Then another bundle for European destinations. The woman was annoyed to get another set, and when Trish couldn’t come up with exact change she slammed the wicket shut and went off in a clear demonstration of a huff to find some. Then threw it through across the counter. I steeled myself for my turn. My mailing was surely going to be more complicated, a pile of books and maps, and I didn’t even have an envelope yet. The envelope boomeranged at me and I was dismissed until I had addressed it. Back at the counter, huge sighs when the large number of stamps required were troublesome to glue on the lumpy packet. I waited for the customs sticker usually required for parcels. She eventually looked up and I asked if I needed to fill out a customs declaration. She snarled at me, if I wanted to register it . . . I said, no, no, thank you, and backed out into the street. ˝It’s only 8:30 and she’s already having a bad day,“ Trish said.

The next day I had a postcard to mail and on the way to the post office prepared myself for more customer abuse, telling myself not to take it personally. When I approached the wicket and handed over my card, the postie beamed at me, looked at the destination, said, ˝Canada!˝ meaning, now that’s special! And I fell in love with him on the spot. So much for not taking it personally. His response made my day in a way that it might not had I expected cheerful customer service.

And my expectations of the road ahead of Budapest? Low, low, low. All the doubtful looks and comments had psyched me out. Leaving Budapest, oasis of culture, music, cafes, and thermal baths, was especially hard. I postponed my departure one day, and left much later than intended the next: there was one more internet session at the so-convenient and cheap place with the QWERTY (English) keyboards, and the math tutor who ran it wanted to show me a web page about ˝noobs˝; then I found hostel buddies Judy and Andy in the hostel courtyard and had coffee with them . . . it was hard to get away. I didn’t want to leave this little community of friends that was already forming and holding me there like the gentle-strong strands of a cobweb.

So I pushed off into the mid-day heat, braced for the worst—and it was. It took me an hour to figure out how to get past the East Railway station, where massive construction was underway. The traffic was constant, an ugly rumbling mass of destructive power. My coping strategy was surreal stoicism and patience, detachment; but unbidden, these time-worn words played at the edges of my mind, ˝Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it seems as though they’re here to stay . . .˝ For three hours.

Silly melodrama. By late afternoon I was in the shade of a riverside fish restaurant, digging in to a most tender ¨heck˝(hake?) and gulping glasses of soda water with lemon. Another hour down a quiet country road I found that the camping I expected in Rackeve no longer existed, and I was only too happy to check in to the roadside ¨panzio˝(pension) nearby. It had huge windows that I opened fully and I could almost have been sleeping outside, enjoying the river air and sounds of insects and birds.

Having finished with the traffic of Budapest’s outskirts, the next main challenge in my first five days travel south through Hungary and into Croatia was extreme heat. Temperatures were approaching 40 degrees, and a steady, strong, south (head) wind blew on me like a hairdryer on the “hot” setting. It took me a couple of days to figure out how much more I needed to drink (several litres) to avoid the pounding dehydration headaches that came knocking by 11 a.m. Each day felt like a serious test. I stayed stoic and tried to focus on the sights and sounds of the road. There was the dyke road soundscape, shirring giant poplars and the rustling of dessicated corn plants. The paprika (pepper) fields dotted the landscape red. Strings of paprika and garlic were strung and hung for sale at driveways. Occasionally a flock of sheep would pour up and over the dyke road, a sheep dog rounding them up in style, the shepherd following behind.

The best pleasure of all, though, I have to say, was the end of the ride, a cold shower or bath, and the chance to spread horizontal, preferably on a bed in an air-conditioned room. I camped twice and was tormented by mosquitoes in addition to the heat, so it’s no tragedy to me that the camping symbol appears less often on my map now. I love this recurring miracle: that one moment I can be homeless, and the next, not. One moment standing on the road, the next sitting in a garden with complimentary cold beers and snacks, laid out for our unannounced arrival by a hostess with the biggest smile I encountered in Hungary, or anywhere (Babolna, with Trish). One moment thinking, I will melt if I have to go further, the next spread on a bed with the air-con remote control in hand; knocks on the door every half hour heralding the arrival of 1) a bowl of ice cream and bottle of iced water; 2) three heated sausage rolls; 3) a plate of grapes; and 4) a plate of homemade pudding squares (Bilje, Croatia). One moment standing at the edge of the manicured grounds of a three-star riverside hotel, the Danube shining, seductive (“last night wasn’t expensive, I would pay 200 kuna for a room here”; at the front desk, “300 kuna ($65 CAD)? I’ll take it”), the next in possession of a room with a view (Ilok, Croatia).

I was apprehensive about leaving Hungary, where I had learned enough vocabulary to survive: etterem (restaurant), elelmiszer (grocery), kavehaz (café/bar), panzio (pension); and my use of “koszonom” (thank you) often brought a smile after a round of sign language communication. (I didn’t get a good grasp of the Magyar greeting: It’s “szia” and is used like “hello” but also in parting. People always said “hallo” to me. The other day as I got off a ferry the dockhand said “hallo,” meaning “goodbye” and I said “hallo” in return. It seemed churlish not to, and maybe it’s become a standard Hungarian leavetaking).

My apprehension mounted at the border. A good looking, tall, young, and very unsmiling Hungarian official scrutinized every stamp in my passport, lingering on the one from Frankfurt on May 30. The heat already had me perspiring out of every pore, even the backs of my hands and forearms, and a few more drops jumped out of my skin. Canadians can spend 90 days out of 180 in the Schengen Area, which includes most EU countries of which Hungary is one. It was now September 7. The twelve days I spent in Switzerland didn’t count towards my 90 allowable days and by my own calculations I had until September 9, two days hence, to get out. However, until now no country had marked my entry or exit, not even non-EU, non-Schengen Switzerland, so it would be my word alone to support my case. Minutes ticked by, and finally he took out his stamp: ka-lick! My passport was handed back and I returned it to my bag, trying not to let my hands shake as he watched me do so. In my blind relief I almost pedaled straight through the Croatian checkpoint, where I collected another stamp: Hrvatska.

In spite of the formality, and in spite of the sudden blank after the border on my GPS map (the map software doesn’t include eastern Europe), I was suddenly happy that first day wheeling along in Croatia. The Danube route is signposted: Ruta Dunav signs appeared at regular enough intervals. The route started to head more east, which meant the south wind helped instead of hindered, adding 5-10 kph to my rolling speed. Best of all, I started to experience something I had missed in Hungary: A light tap on the horn of a small car, three greeting honks from a container truck, a chorus of “zdravo!” from a gang of about eight 12-year-old boys on bikes: I was welcomed as I rolled along. It was surprisingly cheering to be acknowledged. I reflected on the relative infrequency of Hungarian smiles and the probable relationship with their oppressive history. I had visited the Battle of Mohacs memorial that morning. In an hour and a half on August 29, 1526, the Turks disastrously defeated the Hungarians: 18,000 soldiers died out of an army of 25,000 (the Turks outnumbered them more than three times). Hungarian self-determination ended for the next several centuries—the Turks ruled for a couple hundred years, then were ousted by the Austrian Habsburgs who ruled Hungary until the 19th century. More recently the Soviet and Communist regimes didn’t give much reason to smile either.

That night I was safe under a roof in my “soba” (room) in Bilje, well fed and watching old Croatian (maybe Serbian) movies on TV, when a great storm thundered in, flashing the sky and pouring rain. The next day the heat dropped and the air was clear, giving me beautiful fieldscapes to enjoy for my ride to Serbia. I also passed through Osijek and Vukovar, both of them with buildings still pockmarked from the war in the 1990s. Vukovar especially was sobering, as along the road houses were alternately bullet-pocked and faded, restored to pristine condition in all shades of red, orange and yellow, or caved in with trees growing inside the remaining brick walls. In every village I passed through, at least one house was having its façade re-plastered and painted. What a long rebuilding and restoration process. Yet people seem resilient, judging by their continued friendliness along the road. A man on a large blue tractor pulling a trailer pulled over and got out to talk to me. I had just stopped to have my picnic under Jesus nailed to a cross. He said, “Sprechen sie Deutsche?” I said with regret, “No.” Then added, “Nein, Englische.” He gestured at the vines and said “Essen!” “Essen!” I said. Eat. Perhaps I did speak German after all. He was inviting me to enjoy his grapes, for as I understood the gesturing conversation we had, they were his vines. They were sweet, delicious.

And on to Serbia: next post.

Novi Sad, Serbia, 5000 km

Why do it?

2008-09-10T06:59:00.000-07:00

"If you really don't want to go, don't go. But if you're not sure, go."
Harald, world traveller, on making travel decisions

In my last post, I described my trepidation at continuing on the Danube Bike Route to the Black Sea, and relayed the cautionary words of three well-meaning people. They specifically referred to travel through Romania, most damningly described as a "shithole" (John, Australia/Germany, who cycled there 20 years ago and worked in Transylvania last year). Concerns have also been expressed about the effect of my blonde hair, petty theft, and drunk driving. And the latest worry is, "Don't they kidnap people for their kidneys there?" I wrote that I had weighed these cautions, but I didn't say against what. Here's my attempt to redress the balance.

First, the following description of the Danube's route fires my imagination:

". . . wheeling round the ultimate headland of the Bakony Forest and heading due south for the first time on its journey, it strings itself through Budapest like a thread through a bead and drops across the map of Europe plumb for a hundred and eighty miles, cutting Hungary clean in half. Then, reinforced by the Drava, it turns east again, invades Yugoslavia, swallows up the Sava under the battlements of Belgrade, and sweeps on imperturbably to storm the Iron Gates" (Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts, 1977).

The Danube is also the thematic link across countries for so much of the history that I've learned in the last two months. I want to see it through to its logical end, the Black Sea and Turkey. (Early on in my journey, a Sunday rider in France asked me, "c'est quoi le thème de votre voyage?" I had a vague answer at the time, "to see what I see, be open." The focus has sharpened.) I didn't want to give up on completing this route because of other people's fears. I wouldn't have cycled across Canada, lived in Japan or Vietnam or China, and I wouldn't have got married if I had let other people's fears guide me. I wouldn't trade one of these experiences from my life's store. And here are some facts to inspire fear: last year in my Vancouver neighbourhood there was a shooting in a cafe and a woman was swarmed by a gang of girls in an unprovoked attack. My neighbour's houses have been broken into. A young Korean student was randomly attacked in Stanley Park and left severely handicapped for life. In West Vancouver in January 2002 I was abducted at knifepoint in a carjacking. Parts of Vancouver could even be described as a "shithole": Hastings Street either side of Main, for example. Most tourists still take away good memories.

It's possible that I'm perverse and that other people's doubts just serve as a red flag to the bull. But I'm actually a cautious person and I haven't disregarded what I've been told. I investigated other ways of getting to the Black Sea. The train didn't interest me as I would miss too much on the river itself. For awhile I was excited about the idea of floating downstream, and I had in mind passage on a plain old ship with sleeping cabins for which I would be willing to pay as much as $1000 CAD. Why not go in style, I thought. Well, I found out I'm out of touch with what it takes to go "in style": $4000 USD for seven days in the lowliest kind of cabin. The price was a blow, but then the image arose of me tottering on and off the ship with old people to be toured around the Iron Gates. The idea of the Captain's Ball was even more distressing. You can't show up for that in quick-dry travel pants. My bicycle started to glow in my imagination, dusty Saviour. I was flooded with grateful recognition: the bicycle is the way for me. I have the time to do this, and if it is less comfortable than a vacation should be, so be it. It may ultimately be more rewarding. It may be one of the worst memories of my life. Only in doing it will the outcome be known. I am more likely to regret what I don't do than what I do. At the very least, if I succeed, I will be able to put my pink line across unknown (to me) countries of central and Eastern Europe: Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, and Most Dreaded Romania.

Novi Sad, Serbia, 5000 km

Dunaj/Duna: Slovakia and Hungary to Budapest

2008-09-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

East of Vienna

Tata, Hungary

Feeling small at Esztergom Basilica

"Triumphant entry", Budapest

Synagogue, Dohanyi Street, Budapest

Parliament Buildings in Pest from the Citadel

Mosaic cupola ceiling in Szechenyi Baths, Budapest

My route to date in pink: Amsterdam-Belgium-France-Swiss Jura & Rhine-Germany-Austria-Hungary to Budapest

My departure from Vienna was more enjoyable than my entry had been a few days earlier. There were two reasons for this. First, I had a more correct understanding of Vienna's location in relation to the Danube. A few things have changed since Johann Strauss composed "Blue Danube: the city fathers had a canal built to manage the Danube's flood waters and as a result Vienna's centre is bordered by a skinny ribbon of water instead of the more inspiring river granddaddy. The second and more important reason is that I now had Trish with me, and a more determined navigator I could not have found. I admit that in the following days I was happy to follow where she led, since she had read and reread the guidebook from cover to cover, she had the map, and she speaks German. My supplementary role was GPS consultant, and this suited me fine. We still missed a turnoff and put in a few extra kilometres, but this was due to absorption in conversation on our way along the Prater, former royal hunting grounds and now Vienna's vast city park.

There was a distinctly different atmosphere east of Vienna, even before we crossed the Austrian-Slovakian border later the same day. The grafitti that covered the bridge underpasses set a tone of desolation that we didn't leave behind with the city. The long path along the dyke had the feeling of a no-man's land, and I was glad of the strong tailwind that powered us along this stretch. The one town of size on our first day was Hainburg. It was once the main eastern outpost of the Roman Empire, and has impressive 13th century gates. One, the Vienna Gate, was paid for partly with the ransom money for the English King Richard the Lion-hearted back in 1193 when he'd been kept in the Durnstein Castle upstream. We stood in the dank shadows of the narrow "Blutgasschen", Blood Alley, where the desperate Hainburgers tried to escape the scimitars of the Turks (advancing on Vienna) on July 12, 1683, but were trapped by a door that wouldn't open. Only 100 people escaped. 8432 died or were taken prisoner. We felt a bit trapped too, but only by the stairs--we had to find another way into the town centre. But once we did, we found a subdued altstadt, faded and peeling or unpainted. This state was more the rule than the exception this side of Vienna. Towns seemed a bit run down, tired; the roads more likely to have potholes and broken pavement. Even the fields were less tidy. The combination of wood smoke and summer heat betrayed a poverty I hadn't encountered since travels in tropical third world countries. The season conspired as well to add to my unease: we rode past vast fields of sunflowers, now with huge blackened, drooping heads. Bratislava had a stately and well maintained Baroque centre befitting the Slovakian capital (and former centre of the Hungarian empire for 200 years until the Turks won the Battle of Mohacs in 1526), but just a few minutes walk brought us to the violence of broken windows and pavements, grafitti, and sad weedy parks with waterless fountains. Other touring cyclists having mostly disappeared from the scene, I was really glad to have Trish along as I made the transition from the Donauradweg, the Austrian portion of which started to look suspiciously Disneyesque in retrospect. Discussing the large numbers of older cyclists on rented bikes I had met, Trish, always a straight talker, said, "because it's so tame! Younger people are doing more adventurous things." I was a teensy bit deflated, but she's absolutely right, as straight talkers often are. The journey henceforth promises more adventure.

We spent two days in Bratislava enjoying the hospitality of friends of Trish and getting a brief introduction to the Slovak language and life; then "a-ahoj!" we pedalled off to Hungary. I remember some petulancy on my part with the paucity of umbrella'd cafes and the small grocery choices in the towns we passed through, but the lowlights have faded as they ought, and the highlights remain.

One of these is the sense of entering a vast stage for big history. The Magyars (Hungarians) first claimed the Hungarian lands for themselves in the 10th century, but before them the Celts, Romans, Huns, Lombards, Avars and Slavs fought it out for dominion. The Magyars were almost entirely wiped out by the Turks during their 200-year occupation, but after the Habsburgs turned them back (1686), Serbs, Dalmatians, Slovakians, Croatians and Swabians (Germans) were brought in to repopulate the decimated areas.

Some highlights on this historical stage were the towns of royal residences, such as Tata and Visegrad. One early morning we rode right around the Old Lake in Tata, where the castle looked back at itself in the lake. This was owned by one family, the Esterhazys, from 1727 to 1945. The same day we approached the magnificent basilica of Esztergom, rising on its pillars on a cliff ahead of us and visible while we were still many kilometres off and struggling through dusty rutted roads towards it. In Visegrad we rode under the castle high above the Duna (Danube) on a treed hill. And then we were in the "Danube Bend," and taking ferries back and forth between Szentendre Sziget (Island), and the mainland. The island was a calm and lovely rural refuge. It is known for its strawberries, but like our Canadian Gulf islands, many Hungarian writers and artists have congregated there and in the town of Szentendre.

And thence to Budapest. This we could classify as a "triumphant entry" (borrowed words). Part of the reason for our triumph is the same as the reason for my difficulty finding Vienna. Unlike Vienna, Budapest straddles both banks of the Danube in magnificent style. Hence, it was easy to find. We entered on the Buda side, so we passed under the castle without being able to see it; but instead the glorious parliament buildings, doubly lit by direct and reflected sunlight came into view on the Pest side.

We ensconced ourselves in a comfortable and central youth hostel in Pest, and here I am, ten days later, finding it hard to leave. For one thing, this is a city of sights around every corner. The architecture is grand and gracious, the kind that makes you want to walk around with your head tilted upward a lot of the time. There are cafes and teahouses everywhere, ensuring frequent breaks to cool off, reflect and read Hungarian poetry. (If you're depressed, you know you've got fellow travellers amongst Hungarian poets: "The heart freezes if it doesn't love;/But when it does, it gets burnt/Both are bad. Which malady is better?/Only God knows." Sándor Petöfi, 1846.). And there are baths. We had enjoyed the pleasures of a thermal bath and swimming pools at campsites on our way (Lipót, Tata and Esztergom), but those were backyard affairs compared to the Gellert and Szechenyi Baths, only two of many bath houses in Budapest. These had been built and renovated in their own fashion by the Romans and the Turks after them; extensive mosaics are one legacy. We strolled from bath to bath, trying different temperatures, and also sunbathing at the edge of the outdoor pools, with the occasional dip or body surf in the wave pool (likely not a feature of either the Roman or Turkish baths).

Also, of course, there are the major sights, some of which I've managed to see. Our hostel is on the edge of the Jewish Quarter, so visiting the great synagogue nearby was imperative: it's the biggest in Europe. We heard some moving personal stories by the guide about the horrors and heroism of the war years; there is a holocaust memorial adjacent. A plain plaque honours the names of non-Jews who hid or protected Jews, headed by Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish ambassador. Many of these were taken to the edge of the Danube, shot and thrown in. They were ordered to leave their shoes behind. "Shoes on the Danube" is an unlabelled sculpture on the promenade: a long line of shoes permanently looking as if their owners just stepped out of them. We also stumbled on a photographic exhibit in the dank and dripping underground bunker in the citadel, mostly of the horrors of 1944 and directly after: dead soldiers, blood, gore, heaps of skeletal corpses from the Jewish ghetto, many of them children. How could anyone forget.

I wrote much of this post sitting on a bench with a direct view of the pillared and domed Buda castle on the opposite bank (I visited the Hungarian National Gallery inside several days ago). I was sad to see Trish off at the station yesterday, and it's time for me to move on myself.

The next stage of the journey promises adventure. I'll spare you the need to read between the lines. It means life is about to get rougher; I can expect lower lows but also, I hope, higher highs. I've had to weigh what I've heard--"it's like the middle ages there," "I sure as hell wouldn't want to camp in Romania," and "Romania is a shithole." I overheard a man on Citadel Hill telling someone on his cellphone, alone in the crowd of tourists, "I don't have a dream right now, I have a decision!" His bearing was like that of the Liberty statue holding her palm frond aloft above us, exhilarated. I don't know what his momentous decision was, but mine is to continue east on the Danube route, heading for the Black Sea. My ultimate goal is Turkey. I feel scared of my own courage again, but I'm ready for the adventure, within reason.

Still in Budapest, 4503 km

Austrian Danube

2008-08-15T09:47:00.001-07:00

Austrian Donauradweg sign

Must be Saturday: St. Florian Abbey

St. Florian ceiling fresco

Austrian countryside

Melk ceiling fresco: beating back the Turks

Melk ceiling fresco: rejoicing in victory

Wachau Valley vineyards

Gruss Gott: Welcome to Austria!

I cycled downstream from Passau on the German side of the Danube for about 25 kilometres with Austria on the other bank. The pink line running down the middle of the Danube on my map then made a right angle north across my path, but on the road, no sign: another EU invisible border crossing. At the end of my first happy day, a morning of riding in the shade of steep treed banks and an afternoon of riverside rest under a tree at the Schlogen loop, a woman said to me with a certain formality, "Have a good time in Austria." I was startled--I had barely registered that I had left Germany. I had to keep reminding myself over the next few days which country I was in.

One of my excuses for this is the seamless continuation of the excellent cycling infrastructure along the Danube route. If anything, the services for cyclists stepped up another level. There were "Radler Info" stations where someone could help you make accommodation or transportation bookings. Numerous posters advertised luggage transfers and travel deals for cyclists wanting to take their bicycles on a bus, train, or ferry between towns along the route. You could even pick up the phone to get a ride from a "Radl taxi" (although bicycle breakdown is the only imaginable reason to want one--heading east, the route is better than flat, it goes slightly downhill). Even the bike route signs had extra flair: the universal bicycle symbol now carried a cyclist with a jaunty hat and a flower in his backpack.

Is the 330 km Danube Cycle Way between Passau and Vienna better than the 583 km stretch from Donaueschingen to Passau? Yes, and no.

With the river now carrying the combined forces of the Danube and the Inn, there was more drama in the landscape. The river banks steepened, and the landscape beyond became more contoured. More often I found myself riding by the river's edge, sometimes almost level with the water. A lot of this bikeway must have been based on old towpaths. I have fond memories of riding along beside vertical rocks on the paved track, with overhanging trees to absorb the heat of a summer afternoon. As the river widened, it resembled a small shining sea stretching to the far bank. Between Tulln and Vienna, the river kept its silty green brown look, but seen at a distance, its width allowed it to become almost blue. Now too there was more shipping activity to watch: instead of grain, wine and salt (the white gold of old), now stacks of shiny economy cars load the barges pushing water upstream.

Historic towns with baroque building facades appeared at even more frequent intervals along this stretch, just as meticulously maintained as in Germany. I picnicked less and stopped more often in old town centres for a coffee or "eis" (italian ice cream). I succumbed to the pleasures of a "Vienna breakfast": soft boiled egg with thinly sliced white cheese and ham; melt-in-your-mouth rolls and butter, jam and honey. I spent a few mornings under hauptplatz cafe umbrellas at sun-dappled tables, writing amongst my breakfast wreckage and still half-full pot of coffee. To complete this picture, you might imagine me listening to homeboy Mozart on the cafe stereo, but this wouldn't be accurate. The concept of the "nostagie cafe" is popular, but I'm not sure whose nostagia it is. When I stopped off in the centre of "atmospheric" Ybbs for example, I hummed along to "lemon tree very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet," and "there's nothing I can do, I only wanna be with you."

In this stretch too there were days when it seemed that around every turn, there was another castle or abbey or church in the near distance, perched on a hillside or hugging the river bank. Durnstein had both these: the craggy ruin of the castle in which Richard the Lion-Hearted, King of England, was imprisoned in the winter of 1192-93 looms above the town, and a magnificent early 15th century abbey with baroque retrofitting dominates the river bank.

There were bits and pieces of history from every era along this part of the river. In Passau I learned about the history of the powerful Catholic prince-bishops in the middle ages, and medieval castle life. At Mitterkirchen, I walked around a reconstructed celtic village, on the site where 8th century BC burial remains were found in 1980. It was fascinating to think of life here 2700 years ago. (I planned to have a snack at the "Prehistoric Cafe," but decided to give it a miss when I heard "Highway to Hell" blasting out of the prehistoric kitchen.) I visited the great Benedictine Abbeys at St. Florian and Melk, with their amazing baroque buildings, courtyards, libraries and ceiling frescoes. I regretted the impracticality of lying flat on the marble floors to have a really good look at all the characters and scenes portrayed on the different ceilings (other tourists looking upward would have tripped over me) . One depicted the defeat of the Turks, who advanced up the Danube as far as Vienna. (As I go east, there is increasing evidence of Turkish occupation.) Forward to the 20th century, I climbed to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp memorial, the last of the Nazi camps to be freed by the Americans in May 1945. The grim camp and the survivors' stories of the evil and cruelty endured here (heard through an audioguide) are almost unbearable, but it stands on a beautiful site with views of rolling hills around. As I picked up more and more of these historical pieces scattered about the landscape, they started to cohere for me in a bigger picture that gets more complete as I progress down the Danube.

My social scene changed as I lost the companionship of the Donaueschingen to Passau crowd, but I gained new companions, most of them German: a couple from near Frankfurt, a man on a recumbent bicycle from the Bodensee who introduced me to "zander" (pike perch), a fish unique to Europe; two couples from Donaueschingen; a man from Heidelberg.

The Passau to Vienna route was mostly idyllic; there were, however, some lengthy stretches of riding alongside really busy roads--on a safe bike path, but nevertheless the stink and noise of automobiles spoiled slightly the otherwise idyllic Wachau Valley, for example. Also, here's a quibble that only an over-indulged cyclist could make: you had to keep choosing which side of the river to ride on. I misunderstood what I had read about the approach to Linz and came in on the south bank, which was scenic but with no bike lane. I was four kilometres into the eight kilometre stretch of busy road before I realized that I meant to have gone on the other bank which had a bike lane, but I was speeding along with a tailwind at 30 kph and just wanted to get it over with, so kept on, right into Friday afternoon bridge traffic in Linz. Horrible.

Coming into a city on a bike is often not pleasurable, and the approach to Vienna was no exception. I had enjoyed the first part of the day. Midmorning I stopped to have a snack and dry my tent at a picnic table, which turned out to be social central. Recumbent Man stopped on his way back from Vienna to ask how I had liked the Eis Palatschinke (ice cream pancake) he had recommended for dessert; the man from Heidelberg stopped to have a fruit snack, the two couples from Donaueschingen called out their greetings as they sailed by. My fellow picnickers were two couples from Holland who had rented their bikes near Passau and would be returning them in Vienna. (Take note: only 45 euros ($Cdn 75) for 13 days.)

The heat and wind took every last drop of moisture out of my tent, fly and groundsheet, and I packed them away and headed for Vienna. It looked so easy to get downtown on the bike map that I didn't use the GPS, and there were lots of other touring cyclists headed that way. I passed most of them . . . and then I was mysteriously alone. As the kilometres mounted up, I realized I had somehow missed the turnoff for the city centre. When I finally asked someone for directional help, he laughed. I was so far off I wasn't even on the map. He took me across the railroad tracks--"there is no traffic," he said, as he nimbly jumped over several sets of tracks with his light bike in one hand; I decided I would abandon my own unwieldy steed at the first rumble of a train. He pointed me back toward Vienna and said with more sympathy than before, "it's only 15 minutes to the bridge; now the wind is with you; good luck!" In another hour or so I was on Vienna's ring road and eventually found the youth hostel I had booked, clocking over 20 kilometres more than I had planned for the already long day. I had heat exhaustion and was dehydrated; it was a less than glorious end to this stage.

There was a little adjustment, waking up with roommates in a small room in the city after all those dewy river grass mornings, but Vienna has some compensations. My first afternoon I walked around feeling small beside the towering buildings of the museums and palaces and theatres. The decorative detail is Baroque--coats of armour, twirling ropes, but most notably, statues abound: standing atop, straining to hold up pillars beneath, muscles bulging; and everywhere, heads poking out of the facades, grimacing and frowning.

At the end of my introductory stroll I headed for a magnificent multi-towered building that I thought might be the cathedral, but turned out to be the Rathaus (City Hall). A huge screen stretched across its front, and in the Rathausplatz hundreds of people were eating and drinking; restaurant stalls surrounded the square. It was the Vienna Film Festival: free films of concerts, dance, and opera every night through the summer. The price was right--free! I had just got a plate of grilled fish and vegetables and a beer when I saw Nadine, my Parisien roommate from the hostel and the only person I knew in all Vienna. We had dinner together and then found seats in front of the screen among the thousands set out, which filled up quickly as the showtime approached.

The film started at 8:50 p.m., just after sundown: a concert of the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra & Gustavo Dudamel live in Caracas. Different members of the orchestra apeared on the huge screen, now the brass, now the violins, the conductor with his wild hair; and behind the passionate musicians the Viennese sky deepened to a darker blue between the five floodlit towers of the Rathaus. The statuary on guard all along the balconies far above looked down, with feet forward as if ready to deal with such a huge crowd. A magnificent setting for a magnificent concert. The audience in Vienna responded almost as the audience in Caracas, clapping, cheering, turning to each other in appreciation and amazement, as Nadine did to me: "Magnifique!"

The next day, August 14, was a banner day: Trish arrived from Vancouver to join me for the cycle eastward on the Danube. She was ready to ride, but I managed to keep her in Vienna for a classical music concert of "greatest hits" of Mozart and Strauss in the Orangery Concert Hall at Schonbrunner Castle. In this concert hall Mozart and Salieri had competed in a musical contest. (Salieri won, but Mozart has won the contest of time.) At the Castle we also visited the apartments of Kaiser Franz Josef and Kaiserin Elisabeth, not remarkable in themselves but interesting for the glimpse into their personal lives--not so very happy it would seem. Elisabeth was ambivalent about the king (who adored her) and about marriage and was rarely there; she was murdered at the age of 60 on one of her many overseas trips. The king was lengendary for working long hours at his desk; he slept (and died) on a narrow cot beside his prayer bench.

The following day we picnicked in the huge square between the Natural History and Art History Museums, oblivious to the heads frowning down on us while we caught up on our news. Then followed a dreamy afternoon strolling in the picture gallery amongst the work of great painters of the 15th to 18th centuries: Titian, Breugel the elder (the biggest collection in the world is here), Rubens, Durer, so many greats in one place.

And next day, eastward to Bratislava, Slovakia: next post.

Budapest, Hungary, 4503 km (August 29, 2008)

German Danube

2008-08-14T01:56:00.000-07:00

Danube Valley near Tuttlingen: that's a castle up there!

Ulm Munster (Cathedral) tower

How I felt on the way up the Ulm Munster tower

This could be you on the Donauradwanderweg

Danube Gorge

Passau Castle

Zeltplatz on the Ilz River, Passau

Ihr Standort: You are Here!

"Germany! . . . I could hardly believe I was there." Exactly my thought, but it was an echo of Patrick Leigh Fermor in 1934, on his walk from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, then known as Constantinople (A Time of Gifts, 1977). He continues, "For someone born in the second year of World War I, those three syllables were heavily charged. Even as I trudged across it, early subconscious notions, when one first confused Germans with germs and knew that both were bad, still sent up fumes; fumes, moreover, which the ensuing years had expanded into clouds as dark and baleful as the Ruhr smoke along the horizon . . ." My own place in history is sixty years distant even from the black clouds of the second world war, but wisps of war history did linger in my mind. I wasn't really sure what to expect, and this state, I have found, is best for finding wonder in a place, as I was about to do.

I spent most of my first afternoon toiling to get over the lump of land between the Rhine and Danube River valleys. As always, the climb was worth the effort: after the misty Bodensee, my first views of rural Germany were of rolling green hills dotted with colourful houses. The day was clear, but it became hot and heavy, in the oppressive build-up to a thunderstorm. I was out of energy as I neared the summit of the lump at the small town of Liptingen. Just as the first thunder cracked the sky I saw "Gasthof" in the typical Bavarian script on a cream facade with green shutters, and "moderne fremdenzimmer" on a sign by the door-''modern tourist room." Within minutes I was in possession of a room out of an IKEA catalogue: double bed with puffy duvets and a sitting area in flowered pastels. Later in the gasthof's restaurant I started my nightly Weizen beer habit: "it's fresh, for summer," the friendly waitress told me, and brought a tall foaming glass (50 cl). I was asleep a second before I wrapped myself up in the duvet.

The next day I rolled down the hill from Liptingen into Tuttlingen, the town where I joined the Danube near its source. And here I learned my next impressive multisyllable German word, "Donauradwanderweg, which I translated to suit myself: Danubebicyclewanderway ("wander" more accurately refers to hiking). From Tuttlingen, my plan was to follow the Danube all the way to the Black Sea, 2743.0 km away. As I started downriver, I tingled with the excitement of being in a place long anticipated. Through my iPod earphones Flying Mountain, a seventies folk group, sang to me, over and over, "Follow that stream down to the end, you just follow that stream down to the end." I laughed out loud.

The Danube Cycle Way is typically done in stages: in Germany from the river's source in Donaueschingen to Passau (I joined it at Tuttlingen, 36.5 km from Donaueschingen), in Austria from Passau to Vienna (said to be the most popular bike route in Europe), Vienna to Budapest, and the last, Budapest to the Black Sea. This fourth stage is clearly marked on the Eurovelo6 promotional website as being part of the whole route, but raised eyebrows and expressions of doubt about it are common. More on that in a later post.

Back to my first day on the German Danube. I spun along on the mostly flat green river valley with rocky cliffs towering on both sides, and very soon, saw my first Danube castle perched on a high crag. Along this stretch there were several encampments of large white tents: children's camps where I could hear the happy sounds of games and singing. Inflatable rafts were pulled ashore, indications of adventure to come.

After the first dramatic day of riding between the vertical rocks and trees, the countryside opened up into more conventional agricultural land--corn, in these early days of August, fattening; within arm's reach, tempting. As the days of August mounted up, more wheat fields were brush cut; in other fields coarse leafy greens were being grown (probably for livestock feed, suggested my informant from Stettler, Alberta). The cycleway was through these agricultural lands but also sometimes directly beside the river. On the riverside path there are numbers posted on large signs. These are the kilometre markers counting down to the Danube's end at the Black Sea.

And never too many kilometres down the road an historic town to explore, with a central tower and clock, often with the town's coat of arms, each building painted in crisp colours. I can't say if it's because this is a well-travelled tourist route that the towns are so well maintained, but I didn't see any that were run down with peeling or faded buildings. It's as if nocturnal workers toil on scaffolds with their brushes and paint while we sleep.

Some outstanding images: the huge castle in Sigmaringen, my first overrnight stop. Along its mass turrets poked the sky. In Ulm I climbed the Munster (cathedral) tower, at 161.6 metres, the highest church tower in the world. The tower seemed less substantial and skinnier as I neared the top but perseverance yielded a spectacular view of the Danube winding its green-brown way past the industrial area and train yards toward the clusters of white houses with red pointed roofs on streets curling in on themselves. In Donauworth, the Danube Cycle Way intersects with the "Romantic Road" leading to another series of towns with castles, including the one on which Disney modeled its own castle. . . At Weltenburg, a huge church (kloster) bordered the river where it became steeply banked again; the road ended, and a cyclist and pedestrian ferry took me downstream through the gorge about five kilometres to Kelheim, another town with a schloss (castle) high on a hill. Regensburg also had a magnificent castle, Thurn und Taxis. I approached it early on a quiet Sunday, new sun lighting the elegant facade. The enormous leafy park around it was peaceful with just the padding feet of joggers. And to top it off, beautiful Passau, the end of this stage. The old centre of Passau is where three rivers meet: the Danube, the Inn (only slightly shorter than the Danube, but wider--had it been a bit longer the Danube from henceforth would have been the Inn), and the Ilz, a smaller river where the campsite was located. Passau has a commanding waterfront. The houses are joined as one but are painted in different colours: creamy yellow, blue, orange, green. The castle climbs the steep hill above the Danube and dominates that bank. Tiny windows are painted around to look bigger, and the castle has a pristine look that it probably did not have before tourism became its main purpose. Not unlike other towns with such an advantageous location, Passau likely has 7000 years of continuous settlement, one long story of prosperity, changing fortunes and rulers.

I cycled this stretch from July 28 and ended up in Passau on August 6. During this time the weather pattern for each day was consistent: warm and sunny days, and rain almost every night. Heavy dew was also present on the nights it didn't rain. This meant fresh mornings. Some days I cycled into a white mist which dissipated by 9:00 into a blue sky. The river in the humid heat has the same smell, the familiar fug of the great Asian rivers I have been on--the Mekong, the Red River.

My days settled into a comfortable and easy routine--follow the river; follow the Donauradwanderweg arrows. Picnic frequently along the way. And as I picnicked, others rode by, calling out, "Guten morgen!" "Guten apetit!" Some mornings I even did some writing at my picnic site while my tent fly dried.

The quality of my wandering changed on this stage: it became more social from the first day. Germans (and after them, the Austrians) along this route were very outgoing and forthcoming with help. I needed only stop and look the slightest bit perplexed, and someone was there to advise. In Tuttlingen, my first town on the Danube, I was walking through the market square looking for the tourism office when a retired army colonel and a touring cyclist himself, asked if he could help me, and ended up inviting me for a coffee to talk about cycling adventures. On my second day on the river, a cheerful grandmother cycled up beside me and the discovery that I did not speak German did not phase her at all. With her ten words of English and my ten words of German, we chatted all the way to her doctor's appointment in the next town in telegraphic speech. One hand on the handlebars, she used the other to demonstrate with poking jabs what she was going for--a blood test, I think. Then we parted with a cheery "Tschuss!" (Bye!).

And there were scores of other cyclists on this bikeway. There were the streamlined lycra-clad ones on light racing bikes, as well as ones with wobbly butts and billowing t-shirts, laden for a tour. Lots of couples. There was the romantic who rode behind his sweetie, pushing her bike with one hand as he rode uphill. (Although I could swear I saw the thought bubble over the head of one raspberry-faced man as he pushed his bike up another hill: it said, "I get to choose the next vacation.") And I finally found "my people": these are the cyclists at the "zeltplatz," the tent site, usually a specific spot within a "campingplatz". Nightly reunions at the zeltplatz had us sharing stories of the road and life over dinner. I never felt lonely on the Donau.

On our last evening together in Passau, Herbert, Romy and I reflected on our journey down the Donau to this point (some 600 km). They were heading home to Switzerland the next day. Romy said, not sure she could believe it, "Everyone says the next part (Passau to Vienna) is the best! Can it be true?" Romy's question will be answered in the next post.

Kromarom, Hungary, 4294 km (August 21, 2008)

Switzerland: The Rhine to Lake Constance

2008-08-13T04:35:00.000-07:00

Basel Rathaus (Town Hall)

Basel Rathaus

Industrial Rhine

Stein-am-Rhein

I followed the Swiss Cycle Route #7 (Jura) all the way into downtown Basel, and reached the Rhine at Schifflande, where a great pedestrian and tram bridge spans the rushing upper Rhine. I was delighted to discover here the familiar sky blue Swiss cycle route signs, now pointing eastward with the number "2" on them: the Rhine route, and below, the EU yellow stars on blue with a "6" inside that indicate "Eurovelo 6". As I had entered Basel with some apprehension about my lack of German and how I would find my way, this was a gift. And as it happens, the Rhine route passes right by the jugendherberge (youth hostel), where I was headed. The location was ideal: just steps from the Rhine, on a small rushing stream powering a paper mill. If there were any urban noise to disturb my sleep by the open window of my bunk, it was completely shut out by the ongoing "shhrrr" of the stream. This peaceful riverine neighbourhood is also just a 15-minute walk from the old city centre, so I was set to park my bike for a couple of days. I spent a good part of a morning in a multi-level bookstore as big as a department store, where I made a blog post from a modern, fast computer. I visited the History museum (and wished I'd chosen the exhibition on the colour "Red", among so many possible museum choices in Basel). I finished this day with a circuit tour on a regular city tram, with the transit ticket provided free to all visitors during their stay.

My best memory of Basel is a picnic in the evening sun by the river. The Rhine here is a clear emerald green, different to the clear brown of the Amstel or the Doubs, or the muddy brown of the Loire. But like the Loire and the Rhone pouring out of Lake Geneva, the Rhine is moving fast. I had been intrigued as I first strolled on the riverfront by the bobbing bodies amongst the ship traffic. Now as I ate my take-out Greek salad on a picnic bench in the sun, I watched people take an after work float downstream. Most of the floaters left their belongings somewhere on the walkway along the bank and jogged or walked back, dripping in bare feet, but some floated with drybags, which also functioned as flotation devices. That's how I would do it. Not being so equipped and with no one to watch my stuff, I watched them, savoured my salad and studied my German phrase book. I was thus engrossed when a man stopped and asked me something in German. He switched to English without effort to tell me that he wanted a picture of my feet for his website, as he liked the look of them in my Teva flip flops. Our conversation was frank and interesting--I learned the German word for "impact," auswirkung, and he learned "breasts". I didn't get the German as there was no need after his demonstration. I let him take pictures and maybe one day my feet will be famous.

When I did get the chance to swim a couple of days later, I enjoyed the pull of the current and hung on to the stones on the river bed like a piece of kelp.

I had the romantic but unrealistic notion that my route eastward would be right on the Rhine as it was here, in the city. I was disappointed when the route left the river within minutes of my departure from the youth hostel, and made a tortuous way through Basel's suburbs. I was travelling without the benefit of a detailed map, so it was critical not to miss the signs, and furthermore, to know the intermediate destinations along the way as bike routes intersected and signs started pointing left, right and straight ahead. One advantage of looking foreign with a loaded road touring bike is that everyone else seems to know where I should go. On my way out of town I could see the cyclist in front of me watching me in the rear view mirror on his handlebars. He signalled left and right for my benefit (I was the only one behind him), and when our paths diverged (I thought), he stopped and called me back; I had chosen the wrong path. Thus aided, I navigated about 16 kilometres of suburbia until I got to Augusta Raurica.

Augusta Raurica is the remains of a Roman city which thrived from about 60 to 250 AD with about 20,000 citizens. There is an open-air theatre for concerts rebuilt on the original foundations, and the remains of an amphitheatre where gladiators fought to the death. The remains of several temples also are dotted around the area. This location would have been on the fringes of the Roman empire then; a kind of outpost.

Around 30 km from Basel, I was back on the Rhine on a relatively rough track for a road bike, high above the working river. Below me the river was being put to the service of hydro-electric power on the far bank, and dredged on the near one. By my second day on the Rhine I was in more rural riverside country.

By this time, I had figured out the Swiss German greeting that the first day I had heard only as a friendly but mysterious hiss from cyclists or walkers coming toward me. I knew for sure it wasn't "Guten tag" and I knew "guten tag" wasn't the appropriate thing to say as I had never heard it said by anyone except an American to me at Augusta Raurica. But by the second day I had it: I rode through a group of cyclists standing on the path and called out, "Gruezi!" in three syllables as I had been taught, and they responded in kind, a group hiss.

I stopped to add my body to the tourist crush at Rheinfall near Schaffhausen. There are several well-placed viewing platforms from which you can see the Rhine pouring out of Lake Constance (the Bodensee). Looking down as tons of water crash underneath you induces vertigo. It's also disorienting to see the equivalent of a "Lady of the Mist" boat, full of perhaps one hundred laughing and chatting tourists, skidding backward like a toy boat near the tap in a running bath.

From Schaffhausen to Stein-am-Rhein, my last Swiss town before entering Germany, the bike route ran directly on the river. I went through an arch into the centre of the town, and on all sides of the "Marktplatz" (marketplace) the buildings were covered in murals, portraying city fathers and their deeds. Inviting cafes stretched along the waterfront. I came back into the town before eight the next morning (a Sunday) when all was peaceful and I could stand and stare to my heart's content without bumping into anyone. The bakeries and konditoreis were open early too, so I spent the remainder of my Swiss francs on expensive but tasty apricot energy bars and still warm "brot."

The last bit of road in Switzerland was lined on both sides with sunflowers: sentries seeing me out. It seemed fitting after my sunflower greeting to la Suisse to be sent on my way from die Schweiz in the same manner. I was sad, having just learned how to greet people, to be leaving, but also excited to be entering Germany, for me a new frontier. And then I was cycling around the northern shore of Lake Constance in morning mist, having at some unrealized point crossed the border.

Next post: Donauradwanderweg.

Vienna (Wien), Austria, 4058 km

Up and Over: The Jura

2008-08-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

Nantua Lakeside Monument

Bellegarde-sur-Valserine

Swiss welcome

Swiss vista: French Alps

Swiss Jura

St-Ursanne, Switzerland

Over the few days preceding my anticipated arrival in Geneva, I took out my map time and again and tried to work out a back roads route, but no matter how clever I tried to be, it always ended up in a squiggly dead end on a mountain top. From Bourg-en-Bresse I could take a minor road for about 10 km, but then I would have to get on the main road to Nantua, another 50 kilometres. The route between Nantua and Geneva looked like it would also involve joining the cars for significant stretches. A rail line was marked on my map, and that was Plan B, but I wanted to try cycling first.

In the last village before I left the minor road, the church bells started pealing and I stopped to consider the reason. I didn't think it was Sunday. Two small boys were walking toward me. "C'est un mariage, madame!" one of them called out to me, nonchalant; right, Saturday.

At first the main road wasn't so bad. It was scenic, as Michelin had indicated with the green line alongside it on the map. Aside from the cheerful wedding guests honking and waving on their way into the village, the traffic wasn't heavy. It wasn't much different than riding B.C.'s winding and hilly Sunshine Coast Highway, which I have done a number of times. The trouble was, I had become spoiled by the idyll of quiet French country roads, and had no desire to have cars speeding by me. But I consoled myself that it was scenic. And I enjoyed the flying descent to the Ain River, and the river crossing, marked in large letters on the map, "Gorges de l'Ain". I had not noticed the tiny print beside the road as it left the Gorges; it read "15%". I discovered that I had embarked on a serious climb, 10 kilometres long with 15% and 10% grades most of the way. "Rock falling on road" signs were accurate; I had to manoeuvre around bits of cliff on the road, shakily struggle with my heavy bike up the 15% grade, and keep an eye out for overtaking, oncoming cars coming downhill. When I got to Nantua (a town on a lake), I was unconvinced about continuing further, especially since I had been unable to connect with Susan in Geneva. I went to inquire about taking the train back to Cluny so I could continue with my French idyll--take that enticing bike path north up the Saone River to Chalon-sur-Saone. But Plan B was a bust! I discovered that the French government had decided to take out the tracks, and there was no train to take either to Geneva or back to Cluny. Plan C was to stay in France and continue in the mountainous terrain north to get back to the rivers route. But in fact, I had set my heart on getting to Geneva; I wanted to be with an old friend, and I needed a reprieve from my own company.

Over the next two days I continued to try and reach Susan, leaving several messages by text and voice on four different numbers, and waited for my phone, diligently charged each night, to ring. I was stuck: I didn't want to continue east to Geneva without making contact, and I didn't want to go north in case I did make contact. In a cruel synchronicity of weather and mood, the sunshine I had come to take for granted disappeared, replaced by drizzle and dropping temperatures. Waking up in Bourg-en-Bresse, Nantua, and then Le Poizat in the mountains, I had a hard time getting out of my tent in the morning, dreading the wet exit.

In my successful efforts to procrastinate in going anywhere, I visited the museum in Nantua about the French resistance movement and the "Deportation". From the small department of Ain (including the town of Nantua) 1,301 people were captured in raids and taken to concentration camps by the Nazis, either Jews or people involved in the Resistance. One hundred and thirty four of these were Jewish children and their six caretakers, who had fled already to Nantua for their safety. They were taken on April 6, 1944. The tourism office today is the former train station where they were all herded onto those train cars we know from films. The resistance work was deadly but exciting: skiing into the mountains with messages, sabotaging the train tracks, hiding Jews or known resisters. All the while notices were posted everywhere in German and French describing your fate (and those of your near relatives) if you were caught--men would be shot, women and children deported to camps.

That afternoon I went up the minor road I thought I would take if I did go to Geneva, to a village called Le Poizat. It was another significant climb, but taking cars out of the mix made it an entirely different and more enjoyable experience. I feasted on tiny wild strawberries growing alongside the road on the way up. I had hoped to have a bed under a roof in a gite d'étape, but it was Sunday of the long weekend and a wedding party had booked the whole place. So I camped at a farm, the only camper there aside from the cows making cowbell music on the mountain slope near my tent. I also had more wild strawberries to myself. The next day, Bastille Day, I found a warm room in a "vacation village" called Les Clairmontelles. Still my phone, kept by me night and day, did not ring.

I enjoyed the family style dinner at Les Clairmontelles, and the conversation at table. I was also invited to join the other guests for the drive down to Nantua for the Bastille Day fireworks by the lake.

At breakfast the next morning, someone asked, "ce n'est pas dûr d'être loin de ta famille?" (isn't it hard to be far from your family?) ''Oui,'' I admitted, and my eyes misted-I was set to head north, not quite believing that I was abandoning the Geneva plan. Just minutes later, the hostess offered me the use of her office laptop. In my email inbox, there was a message from Susan with another phone number to call. Contact made at last, I headed off at once for Geneva. I was so excited I headed the wrong way down the road without a route plan and had to return to figure it out.

[Mes chers amis aux Clairmontelles, même si je ne m'ai pas bien exprimé en francais, j'ai compris 100% votre gentillesse, merci beaucoup.]

And in concert with my happier outlook, the sun came out, and the air was fresh. The way I had chosen was the long way back to the highway, but a gorgeous one, a touristic route called "Les Sapins" (The Pines). There was a little climbing, but then a long descent, as well as a viewpoint from which I could see the Jura Mountains, the Alps, Geneva and what I later learned (after going up it in a ''teléferique'', a gondola) was La Salève, which from my vantage point looked like a mountain sliding into Lake Geneva.

Then fast down to the town of Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, another river town, neat houses climbing the steep river banks. This was a day of friendly chats with cyclists from Annecy, workers on a lunch break at the river, and a man who stopped his gardening when I pulled up at his driveway, gasping for breath on my way up the hill out of town. He has some relatives who live in Canada; he didn't know which part. I resisted singing for him the Arrogant Worms' Canadian anthem, "Canada's Really Big."

As I got closer to Geneva hundreds of sunflowers beamed on me like a welcome team. I pedalled through the vineyards of Dardagny, wending my way downhill through the lanes of vines. I saw on my descent a sign flash by, warning me "franchissemente strictement interdit à la frontière". Something was strictly forbidden at the border and I wasn't sure what, but I continued on; then I huffed up a short steep hill and popped over the top: I was in Switzerland.

And then I was in urban traffic for the first time since Amsterdam. As I peered uncertainly down a six lane highway plunging into a dark tunnel, a man asked if he could help me. He said with authority that this was the way to downtown Geneva and that all I had to do was follow bus number 6 or 18. I asked him (incredulous) if this was the way for bicycles to go? And he assured me it was, I just had to follow one of those buses. Good grief, he was sending me to certain death. I thanked him and headed off; within 100 metres there was a bike route sign to Geneva's city center and I followed it off to the right, away from the tunnel of death, aware that he was watching me totally disregard his instructions. The bike path took me all the way downtown by a less direct route, but it got me there through treed parks and protected walking and cycling trails. People are eager to help, but they often have no idea about the bike routes in their own city. (Even tourist information staff give me car-appropriate (and vélo-inappropriate) directions.

I spent two happy days in Geneva, catching up with Susan, sightseeing with her brother and mother, and feeling like a normal connected person again; it was restorative.

And I started planning the next part of my route. I had thought originally that I would just zip back into France and get back on the rivers route (Eurovelo 6) from Geneva, but those Jura mountains were in the way. I eventually found a spot on the map where I figured I could get back into France at La-Chaux-de-Fonds. But I would have to make my way northwest through Switzerland first.

I started out along Lake Geneva, on the Swiss national bike route number 1, disenchanted with the suburbia I passed through. My standards for bicycle routes had perhaps become impossibly high after cycling in rural France. At Rolle, I stopped to camp. I put my tent right on the edge of the lake, with blue mountain views and lapping water at my feet, a couple of boats tugging at moorings and swans swimming by. Except for the swans, I could almost have been on Kitsilano Beach, looking at the North Shore mountains. And it was as crowded as Kits Beach on a hot summer weekend too: the tents were a foot apart. The only reason I got so close to the water, arriving as late as I did, was the tiny footprint of my tent which allowed me to put it between the walking path and the water's edge.

I left Lake Geneva and Camp Kitsilano the next morning to join up with Swiss national bike route number 5, the "Mittelland" Route. I had to do a long and steep climb, and was rewarded with views of the mountains in France; on my road, green agriculture and small towns with houses spilling geraniums from shuttered windows. I camped near the town of Orba. The ancient Romans occupied this site (Urba) and their mosaics are still here.

Then I aimed to intersect with Swiss route number 7, the Jura route, which involved a gruelling climb to about 1345 metres on a hot day. After this I came to the conclusion (yet again) that I must be made to ride: the hours of struggle and sweat were forgotten in the exhilaration of the cycling that followed. (When I arrived in Le Locle, near La-Chaux-de-Fonds, I had dinner at a sports bar and watched some of the Tour de France. Wusses! I thought, try doing that with 20 kilos packed on your bike.)

The Jura route was often off road, and the long climbs were in shaded forest. The mountain meadows were trim from munching cows; in the as yet unmunched fields, purple clover awaited their pleasure. The music of their combined bells filled the valleys I rode through, even when there were no cows to be seen (they were perhaps sheltering in a stand of trees up the mountain). The bells are large and attached under the cows' jaws with a wide leather strap. I can't imagine why it doesn't drive them demented to have the bell clanging with every movement, but they look more perturbed if I stop to try to take their picture. I thought of them as I sipped my "Heidi Drink" (Swiss milk and Swiss chocolate) and thanked the Swiss for their dairy cows.

I found my formerly urgent desire to get back into France fading; Switzerland was my new love. I remembered the Chinese artist Qiu Zhijie, about whom I had read just a month earlier (International Herald Tribune, June 14-15, 2008, 18). He had carved into his car tires the sentence, "actually, your destination can be somewhere else." At La-Chaux-de-Fonds I decided to continue on the Swiss Jura route all the way to Basel. Au revoir, France.

The highlight of the Jura was an exhilarating ride through the Franches Montagnes, culminating in a 12-kilometre descent into St. Ursanne on the Doubs River. I soared into the village, steady as a bird coming home; the green expanses of hills and the little cows and trees slid past in the deep valley on my left. All regrets about having to leave France had completely gone. Euphoria reigned.

Then, on riding into the village, enchantment: it's a well-preserved medieval town on the river, with multicoloured shuttered house fronts, the requisite church, and a cliff-side grotto where St. Ursanne was believed to have lived with his bear back in the 7th century. I decided immediately that I would stay a couple of nights.

The day I left St-Ursanne was my last day in the Swiss Jura, and my knees started to complain a little about the long ascents. But life was just about perfect as I made my way along the Lucelle River, downhill through forest, entering and leaving France several times along the way. At one point, there was a man standing in the middle of the forest road signalling me to stop--the Grenzpolizei, border police. He asked me if I had any merchandise. Our exchange was in French, probably because I greeted him first with "bonjour", but from this point, I entered the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and all road signs were in German. I was suddenly out of my language comfort zone, and into a new stage of the journey. As I cycled into Basel, it occurred to me that I would need to know the German for "Office de Tourisme". I was dismayed to discover in my phrasebook several options and all of them big mouthfuls for the beginning German speaker: "Fremdenverkehrsburo" is one. More on my German progress next post.

Ingolstadt, Germany, 3375 km

River Dream: Loire Valley to Burgundy

2008-07-24T03:11:00.000-07:00

Chateau Sully

Bressan farm

Loire after rainstorm, Chatillon-sur-Loire

Escargot de Burgougne

Decize

Orleans, Chateauneuf-sur-Loire, Gien, Chatillon-sur-Loire, Saint Satur, Nevers, Decize, Digoin . . . the nine days I spent on the Loire drifted by like the river. An ideal day went something like this: up early, pedal into town for ''un petit cafe" and "pain au chocolat" and pick up a fresh baguette. Cycle up river through the fresh morning; after an hour or so, find a picnic table for a morning tea (fired up on the pocket rocket stove). Cycle on, arrive in the next town around 2; set up camp across the river from the town, maybe take a dip, then cross the bridge and check out the historical center. (Every bridge is a bit of an event in itself, with its sturdy spans braced against the river's flow.) Then, usually as the first customer around 7:30, dinner in town--a different terrine to try as entree each night, a different cut of steak or salmon with delicious sauces, various wines, and desserts--creme brulée or local ice cream. I kept myself well-fueled.

The Loire has been through the centuries a key route for the carriage of local products and commodities such as wine, salt, and grains, and there is a lively culture of the people of the river--the "mariniers" (boatmen), the fishermen, the millers (working their boat mills), and the "lavandeuses" (the washerwomen). Also, in the old days, there were the tax collectors watching the boat traffic from their posts high on the chateau walls and taking their lord's due from the passing cargo.There's lots to celebrate about the river culture, hence the ''Caravane de la Loire" in the first week of July. Each day, a different community had a schedule of music, drama, acrobat feats, and parades. The Caravane was progressing downriver, toward me, so I aimed to intersect with the festivities in Gien. There on the grassy banks of the Loire under threatening skies, I gathered with an audience who knew the words to enjoy the Loire Mariners Choir, "Le Fils de Galarne.'' The choir was about thirty high spirited men who looked as if they'd come straight from their boats, having put on their choir outfits seconds before disembarking: traditional black tri-corner hats, white shirts and red scarves. Their songs were bawdy and sentimental, with the Loire as mistress--"j'aime ta voix, j'aime tes contours"--as well as the site of shenanigans between "les lavandeuses" and "les mariniers". Arms punched the air, hats flew.

And always a chateau to visit, though they're humbler than those the other side of Orleans. I find it hard to ride by when the moat bridge is down and the portals open.

On my road, corn and wheat gave way to vines; I was in Loire wine country. And as I got further east, the land started to rise. I climbed up to Sancerre, a wine-producing town since the first century (although the Augustinian monks really got it established in the eleventh century). It had a panoramic view of its vineyards and neighbouring town, Saint Satur, enclosed in ancient walls. (I learned another expression from the lady who gave me directions to Sancerre, that I've since had frequent occasion to use, on approaching Switzerland: "Ca monte!")

The weather in the first week of July was wildly changeable. Several times, intense heat and clear skies gave way by day's end to dark clouds from which thunder cracked and boomed; then came wind and torrential rain. I cowered in my tent at these times, unable to read or write for the flashing sky and the percussion on my tiny tent. But these storms didn't last long, and after a half hour or so, the drumming slowed to intermittent taps, the inside of my tent brightened and became too hot, and the birds resumed full song. The river steamed in the aftermath, and the evening sun lit the departing whisps on the moving river.

As a result of these storms, the river is a bit higher and faster than usual. I saw that this had caused the cancellation of at least one annual event which involved bridge jumping, but holidayers were still able to rent canoes. I was sitting by the river writing in my journal one afternoon, and had observed the rapid speed of the flow, and how the water dragged the branches of a tree on the steep bank. There was an extra splash behind the tree, and then I heard a small voice call "Mummy!" I jumped up in time to look down on a family of four, hanging on to their submerged canoe. It looked like a routine wet exit practice to me but when they looked up at me and I asked if they were OK the woman shouted "help!" and the family continued bobbing downstream and disappeared from my vlew. I realized I knew nothing about navigational hazards on the river-for all I knew, Niagara Falls awaited them-so I ran back to the campsite office where among other things, I may have informed the woman there that the family had been deeply moved ("bouleversée"); nevertheless, getting to the heart of my message, she asked if we needed "les pompiers". I was pretty sure they had something to do wtih rescue, so replied "oui, oui, les pompiers!" and she got on the phone. The firetruck arrived about twenty minutes later with the siren hee-hawing, but by then Dad, Mom, and the two kids had got back on land not too far down river. Brother and sister were enjoying the aftermath of the drama, but Mom and Dad were frantic about their money and passports, floating in a large white barrel fast toward the Atlantic. It seems they had foreseen the need to keep these items dry, but not the need to attach the barrel to the boat. Bedraggled and still wearing his lifejacket, Dad was next seen running down the road to town. About fifteen minutes later he appeared as passenger astride a jetski, which seemed to barely touch the water as it overtook the current downstream. The jetski disappeared from sight and sound and I learned later that they did recover the barrel.

I was reluctant to leave the Loire (would like another time to continue to its source, and head from there to the Pyrenees--just one of many French cycling itineraries I have in mind for the future) and so, after a scant 25 kilometres on a canal-side bike path, stopped off for a couple of days in Paray-le-Monial. This town is a kind of spiritual centre, a twin city to Bethlehem, which must have been a coup. It has one of the best preserved basilicas associated with Cluny, which had the largest and most powerful church in Christendom in the Middle Ages. There I met the owners of the 5-day-old Café des Artistes, visited the Basilica and some amazing mosaic exhibitions, and took some reading and writing time at my camp, which also had a small but spotless pool.

From Paray-le-Monial, you can go north on the (unsigned, future) Eurovelo 6 route, following canals and the Saone River. However, I had decided to go to Geneva and needed to go due east, through Cluny, Bourg-en-Bresse and Nantua. I noticed on the Burgundy Department bicycle route map that there are bike routes all over Burgundy, particularly, running north-south, but not between Paray-le-Monial and Cluny. At first I wondered why, as the route I had chosen for myself was scenic --long flying descents with vistas of far-off little houses, neat fields with white cows and huge rolls of hay on the hills. Oh yes, hills, and descents that you have to pay for with ascents--that's why it's not a bike route. I also passed through a mountainous evergreen forest in the afternoon, which was welcome for its shade. The forest was familiar to me, with fireweed, foxgloves and huge ferns. In spite of the tough ride (relative to the Loire Valley), I loved this route, with its towns still in the early summer heat, flowers bright against the creamy yellow sandstone houses.

The following day, from Cluny to Bourg-en-Bresse, was a long day, but notable for several wonders of man and of nature. The first thing crossed my path, literally, but you would have to measure its progress in millimetres--it was the biggest snail I've ever seen in transit. Over the next couple of days, I saw more of these, but the first, because of its novelty, was the most awe-inspiring. It was the size and appearance of a healthy Canadian west coast slug, with its shell perched on top. After marvelling at this intrepid traveller, I haven't had the desire to try "Escargots de Bourgogne" (Burgundy).

The next wondrous thing was the 1.6 kilometre greenway tunnel which allowed me to go through a mountain instead of over it. Near the entrance, a large sign explains that bats occupy this tunnel. At the bottom of the sign is a cartoon of them, with the caption "Desolées, on dort". "Sorry, we're sleeping" is how I would have translated it, but the English translation on the sign is "Afflicted, we sleep." The tunnel is closed from October 15 to March 31, when the bats are afflicted.

The third wonderful thing on my road, unexpected, was the Museum of Bresse, with displays of rural Bressan culture (beautiful clogs and hats for special occasions, sturdy versions for everyday on the farm), and a farm which had been in continuous operation for over 500 years, from the Middle Ages until the late 1980's. The last occcupant lived there until 1992. The farm has been restored to how it would have been in the 19th century. During my visit there the skies opened and dumped rain, making the mud jump in the farm courtyard. The buildings are constructed so that when this happens, the wood beams won't rot--the base of each buildings is brick, with the wooden supports starting about two feet off the ground. The torrents delayed my departure until 5:30 and by then the skies were dark but the rain was holding off. I had been on the road for about five minutes when I startled a large deer at the edge of the road on my right. It bounded through the wheat field, its body appearing and disappearing with each leap. I stopped to watch in amazement, and after a few bounds it did too: I could just see the V of its two deer ears among the wheat ears. It must have thought, "oh m*rde, she's still there," because it took off again, in graceful flight, out of sight.

Next post--only one way into Switzerland . . . up and over.

Basel, Switzerland, 2773 km

Internet access

2008-07-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

The internet cafe and public computers seem to be going the way of the telephone box. You're often expected to provide your own computer with WIFI. I found this computer in a hotel, available from 1700h to 1900h, but the USB port doesn't seem to work so I can't upload my post.

Very soon . . .

St-Ursanne, on the Doubs River, Switzerland, 2685 km

Sunday Riders

2008-07-10T06:20:00.001-07:00

I first spotted the Sunday riders on my way out of Bruges. They were going the other way on the other side of the canal, about twenty yellow jerseys sailing along the top of some herbiage, pumping legs invisible. Another Sunday, near Orleans, a flock of fifteen yellow and blue jerseys flew low over the wheat a couple of fields away. Perhaps Luna, the whale who got separated from his pod and stayed in Gold River for several years, felt like I did. Hope as I make the sighting: are they my kind? In minutes they're gone. No. It's a cycling club, out for the Sunday ride.

If the Sunday riders are on my road and going my way, they whirr past, leaving me in the wake of their after-shave. But if they come toward me, we all pucker up for "bonjour, bonjour!" as they flash by.

The Sunday I rode into Creil, a commuting suburb town of Paris, I was temporarily adopted by two members of the Creil cycling club. One member had got lost on the ride and phoned for help. The other had gone to find him and was bringing him in, and offered to show me the way as well. We talked about cycle touring, and about Creil, my destination and their home town: an important industrial town because of its location on the Oise River and the railway, but with many factories presently shut down. I was so happy to talk to someone about something in common that I think I chattered, babbled even. It was surprising to find myself chattering, but especially that it was in French. I had no idea I was so fluent (not correct, just fluent). Like Luna, I developed a creative ability to communicate with people who could be my kind.

When we arrived in Creil about an hour later, Daniel wished me "bon courage," and I was podless once again.

I was hungry and found "le chinois", the Chinese restaurant, for the Sunday lunch buffet. The owner didn't seem to speak much French, gesturing in an embarrassed way to show me to my table. The young waiters did the rest of the communicating; the owner sat outside, looking at the ugly commercial street and chain smoking the whole time I ate my prolonged lunch. I wondered what he was thinking.

The next day I did a long day ride which included visiting Chateau Chantilly, and returned to Creil as dark clouds brought rain and an early end to daylight. I came in from a different direction than I had the day before and was desperate for a familiar landmark so that I could find the hostel again--and then I saw him, still sitting there, smoking, watching, thinking, looking sad in the dimming light. My initial relief to have him as my landmark quickly gave way to less selfish thoughts. I am at least only temporarily displaced, and that by choice.

Cluny, 2152 km

Café des Artistes

2008-07-09T07:45:00.000-07:00

Les Coquelicots

Ils éclatent dans le blé, comme une armée de petits soldats; mais d'un bien plus beau rouge, ils sont inoffensifs.

Leur épée, c'est un épi.

C'est le vent qui les fait courir, et chaque coquelicot s'attarde, quand il veut, au bord du sillon, avec le bleuet, sa payse.

Jules Renard, Histoires Naturelles. 19th C

[The Poppies

They burst out of the wheat, like an army of little soldiers; but of a much more beautiful red, they are harmless.

Their sword, it's a wheat-ear.

It's the wind that makes them run, and each poppy lingers, when it wants, at the edge of the furrow, with the cornflower.]

Found in a book on a shelf at Le Café des Artistes, Paray-le-Monial. I had just arrived in town and was looking for coffee at about 10:30 when I stepped into this tiny cultural café where you can read from the books lining the walls, and attend readings and piano concerts. It was just before story time. Five children sipped lurid red and green drinks in wine glasses, their adults had coffee, and we all ate little cakes. I hadn't known there was going to be any kind of performance, and I was doubly delighted to hear the beautiful words of the beginning of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince. I was as enchanted as the littlest child, right up to the part where the Little Prince takes out of his pocket his "treasure," the drawing that the narrator has made for him of a sheep, so that he can admire it. This after much dramatic emphasis on the detail that the narrator had been discouraged by grown ups at the age of six (SIX ANS! The little blonde girl in pink wriggled with recognition and anticipation) from his career as a painter, and became a pilot instead.

[I went back in the evening for the "spectacle" of piano and readings of works by Jean Cocteau, but I was the only spectator this Tuesday night so the show didn't go on. Instead, among other things, we talked about the meaning of "sa payse" above. After suggesting some possible meanings and consulting a literary dictionary, the story reader (and would-be evening performer) came to the conclusion that it's an old word not in current usage. I'm not exactly sure what it means.]

Paray-le-Monial, 2086 km

Auvers-sur-Oise to the Loire Valley

2008-07-06T01:53:00.000-07:00

. . . and thence to Auvers-sur-Oise. I settled in for a couple of days, pitching my tent by the river at a 2-star campground. Two stars means it has clean toilets and showers, a place to wash your dishes, and a grassy pitch for your tent. This one was managed by Maria, who watered daily the flower pots of pink geraniums cascading down the stairs of the "bloc sanitaire". By day I could walk into town by the riverside path.

Auvers-sur-Oise is a small, unpretentious and gracious host town to impressionist art pilgrims, and especially those seeking signs of Vincent Van Gogh's final burst of artistic output. He stayed here for seventy days in a tiny room over a bar, and in that time produced 72 paintings. Then he shot himself in despair and died in that room, which was never rented out again. In spite of the loss of income for the Auberge Ravoux, Vincent's prolific output and his suicide were a gift of eternal tourism for this town. There are signboards with paintings posted around the village in the places they were done, so you can compare the finished painting with its subject. A lot of these are Vincent's, because he seems to have painted everything in sight, but many other artists congregated here, including Paul Cezanne, Charles-Francois Dubigny, Camille Pisarro, and Camille Corot. I even found the site of the wheatfield and crows, which is not far from the cemetary where Vincent and his brother Theo have plain graves side by side. I was more taken with the wheatfields and crows I had seen further north, but my vision was not the one of loneliness and despair that inspired Vincent. As I and other tourists haunted the flower-lined lanes looking for the paintings, gentle residents doing their street gardening were ready with a warm smile and "bonjour". The civic "je jardine ma ville" program has paid off--the lanes are alive with the colour of towering hollyhocks, roses, foxgloves, and lavender.

My two favourite places in town were the houses and gardens of Charles-François Dubigny and Dr. Paul Gachet, both people who gathered artists together, providing mentoring and refuge. Daubigny must have had a great sense of humour. He painted almost all the inside walls of his house with country scenes, flower wreaths, and animals. His atelier, reaching two stories, is completely covered with huge murals, done by him and other artists. Dr. Gachet, another interesting character, was a long-time member of an "eclectics" society. He would barter his medical services for artists' work. He had some knowledge of Vincent's medical problems and advised him to paint as much as possible--the results of that advice is many paintings that are famous today. You need live in no more than a garrett to produce great work, but if you've got more, you can also serve history and art.

I got back on my bike nourished by my stay in this town that hosts greatness, and headed west, in order to better skirt Paris. (I had considered taking a train into Paris, and even carried the transit map around for a few days until I was well clear of it, but couldn't face going urban.) West took me through more forest, the ancient hunting forests of the dukes and princes and kings for whom this area was a playground, and the rolling hills of the French Vexin, a huge parkland dotted with ancient settlements.

I had lost the Green Meridian back at the abandoned campground in Ailly-sur-Noye, but now my path joined one of the routes to Santiago, the "route de Saint Jacques de Compostelle" through Chartres. I made a reservation early in the day for a hotel, since there were no campgrounds or hostels nearby. The afternoon I spent at Théméricourt, only about seven kilometres from my destination, absorbed in a museum about the area. (The chateau of Théméricourt was last owned by J-C Duvalier, dictator of Haiti.) I cycled off to the hotel in a meditative mood, through rolling wheat fields lit with afternoon sun, and arrived at an intersection where I stopped to take a photo of a house whose sides were peeling off, revealing ancient layers. I was snapped out of my reverie by a large brown SUV jumping across the road, and Fernando, my host, pointing and shouting with joy, "C'est par là, 5 metres!" Apparently he'd been lying in wait at the intersection for me to arrive at his hotel. And Fernanda, his wife, was standing in the road in front of the hotel in case I missed it (which I very well might have. At my jasmine-scented campground in Auvers-sur-Oise, I learned a new expression when a man suggested a good campground near Orleans, "on ne peut pas le louper"--you can't miss it. Just try me, I thought, a little bitter.) The 2-star La Cressonière was expensive by my standards at 45 euros, and the decorations floral and florid, but it was fun to be greeted with such eagerness. If you guessed that I was the only one staying there, you would be right. We watched a French quiz show on TV while I ate dinner, the sole diner in the dim dining room, and discussed the possible answers. Some of the questions were unbelievably easy, so that even I could get the answers. Who sells real estate? Multiple choice answers included "immobilier'' which I have seen on many a roadside sign. Bravo! Twelve thousand euros for me. (Also spotted roadside, this version of "sold":"trop tard! déjà acheté!" Too late! Na na na na na!)

The next night, another wedding Saturday, they would be "complet" at La Cressonière, Fernanda told me with satisfaction. She didn't have advice about where I might stay down the road, telling me regretfully that the others (pilgrims on the St. Jacques route) all had guidebooks that told them where to stay. But I didn't mind. I have nothing against guidebooks, but the cycling guidebooks I brought with me have been more a source of frustration than help. My method is to plan my route on the Michelin Departmental maps (1 cm = 1.5 km), which so far I've been able to buy in bookstores in fair-sized towns like Amiens and Orléans, choosing the narrowest white roads possible, and avoiding any roads of colour, except green, which means a scenic route. These little white roads have so far guaranteed me great cycling. Then I get myself to the Tourism Office in town and ask for a list of accommodations for the next department. The departments could be likened to a state or a province, except that they are much smaller, which means a visit to a Tourism Office every day or two.

Another advantage of not using a guidebook for cycling is that the day can be one surprise after another. When I left La Cressonière in Seraincourt and aimed my bike south for Orléans, I didn't know what I was going to find or see, and I had several good "finds". The first was the bakery, open at 7:00 a.m. I bought a quiche, a small loaf of brown bread, and a chocolate croissant. A picnic table soon appeared for me to enjoy my picnic. My road was through rolling hills of cultivated land, the corn getting taller and sturdier by the mile. I came upon the town of Montfort l'Amaury by 11 am, and this was my next surprise--it had been but a name on a map, my mid-day destination, and it turned out to be an attractive and historic town of old stone buildings and narrow streets built on a hill. It was bustling at its centre, with people coming and going from the shops and greeting each other this Saturday morning.

From there, my next happy discovery was a "piste cyclable", an 18 km cycle path all the way to Rambouillet, my final destination for the day. (After about ten kilometres of travelling in the forest, however, I decided I preferred the white Michelin road and its vistas.) I arrived in Rambouillet around 4:00, and people were out in force, hanging out in the cafes and strolling the streets. But there was more . . . a black guy in a purple robe was orating from a second story window to people looking up from the sidewalk on the other side of the street-"Ecoutez mes enfants!" Music was being played at an outdoor stage. Kids were scrambling up a climbing wall. Pleased-looking old men were parading old cars . . . it was a festival called "Que des histoires! dans les rues de Rambouillet", something like Vancouver's "Word on the Street". And I was lucky to have stumbled on it.

(My final surprise of the day was a 3-star campsite which cost 18 euros, about $30 Cdn--not one of the nice surprises. The wonderful chambre d'hote in Assainvillers, by comparison, was 23 euros, not much more than a hostel.)

And from Rambouillet, one more day of cycling to Orleans. This day I covered more ground than any to date (119 km) but it was easy with the wind blowing me along, fair weather that wasn't too hot, and not many enticements to stop me in my tracks. Along this route, the cultivated land became more industrial: the fields stretched further, the corn grew about seven feet tall, the towns were dustier and spread further apart, and the land flattened. Huge silos sprouted along the road. And then I was at the Loire River in Orléans. A thrilling moment, looking at the river I would be following east, the water churning around the bridge pilons below.

Not as many other delightful surprises this day, except for the fact that I did, in fact, find the campground in Olivet, just south of Orleans: je ne l'ai pas loupé. I put my tent riverside (on the Loiret, not the Loire) with ducks leading their charge on the sunlit river by my tent; sort of like camping in Stanley Park at the lagoon. And for only 5.75 euros ($9 Cdn).

And a new phase of the trip begins: the Loire Valley. A future post.

Nevers, 1912 km

Amiens to l'Ile de France

2008-07-01T00:49:00.000-07:00

After I made my last post in Amiens, I went to the cathedral and spent a couple of hours wandering around the vast Gothic space glued to an audioguide, under soaring arches and surrounded by towering stained glass, statuary and frescoes. Half the time I was standing in the wrong spot while the audioguide described what should have been in front of me, so I have not retained as much as I might. Unforgettable, however, was the relic of St. John the Baptist's head. I was skeptical, but lined up to check it out. I had a hard time getting a look in because the believers were unable to leave the spot--touching the outer glass over and over, kneeling, prostrating, murmering prayers. When I was finally in front of it, I took a good look. It was brown and leathered and wizened, as you might expect of someone's head that has been around for 2000 years. I could see reflected in the glass the woman behind me whose lips were moving ceaselessly. I felt I had no place there and slipped away, leaving the others to their devotions.

And pedalled down the road in the sunshine, still on the Green Meridian line. I had wanted to stay another night in Amiens (and enjoy my first hotel room and the music festival) but it was June 21, a Saturday of weddings and the day of nationwide music festivals. There was no room to be had--not at Hotel de Normandie nor at any other. When I arrived at the municipal campground about 25 km down the road in Ailly-sur-Noye, I found it with grass waist high and broken toilets and sinks--abandoned and spooky. So I pedalled the 2 kilometres back into the town and presented myself at "l'Office de Tourisme" where luckily I was the only visitor at the time. The woman there made about fifteen phone calls and did some internet searching to find a "chambre d'hote", a bed and breakfast, about 40 kilometres away. It was already 5:30, so I had a gift of an evening ride with the sun slanting sideways across my path, illuminating the wheat from the side. And the chambre d'hote turned out to the be the best place I've stayed yet--a large country house in a town of 150 people, 50 houses, one church and one town hall. I have a hard time remembering the town's name (Assainvillers) but not the comfort of my upstairs bedroom overlooking a field with a grazing horse, the creaky wooden floors and tapestries on the walls; and the hospitality of my host, Mme Zogas. (It was she who told me that the fields of little blue flowers that put me in a live impressionist painting, the plants with the tall slender dark green stalks, are "lin", flax.)

From there I landed myself in l'Ile de France for several days. In Chantilly I had the pleasant surprise, while taking in my "first" view of the chateau, that it wasn't--I had been on this lawn in 1980, picnicking with three of my cousins on Camembert, baguettes and wine. I don't recall if we visited inside the chateau; we may have as I do recall AB complaining in our group journal that the two youngest cousins' visits inside chateaux were perfunctory, lasting only ten minutes. This time I put all to rights and spent a few hours there and at "Les Grands Ecuries", The Grand Stables, where is now housed a horse museum. The place is huge, and they've filled it up with anything you can imagine related to horses--horses in history, war and hunting; horses in other countries, anatomy, bridles and bits, merry-go-round horses and hobby horses, toys, postcards, paintings . . . a place for horse lovers.

The chateau itself is filled with art and books--the wealth to amass such a private collection is staggering. One room has 36 windows of medieval glass work relating the story of Psyche and Cupid. The Duc D'Aumale, the last resident (until around 1890), was a passionate book collector and had acquired many rare volumes. They are lined up around the room and to the ceiling, with access by a balcony, their coloured leather covers and gilt titles providing a dignified yet glittering decoration for the room.

I spent a few happy hours in Senlis as well. The Romans occupied the town for three hundred years and left a sturdy four-metre thick wall around the town for posterity. The cathedral was first built in the Gothic style between 1150 and 1190. When I arrived a funeral was in progress, so I roamed around the outside. Made of local limestone, it has green tufts sprouting out of the walls and under the balconies. You can't very well powerwash an historic monument. To add to this organic appearance, birds and butterflies populate the walls. Later, when the bells were tolling the funeral procession out of the church, I was sitting in the square looking up at the birds swoop at speed around the belfry. One zoomed right up under the belfry's shutters (which looked like flying up the belfry's nose). l didn't see it reappear, and the next bell tone sounded muted, so l can only guess at its fate.

Once I got the chance to go inside, l found the church beautiful in its simplicity of line and light, which comes in from on high through tall stained glass windows, warming the yellow gray limestone. l sat for a while feeling serene. Not so many tourists to bump into, no audioguide bossing me around.

Then I pedalled west back to Chantilly through the Chantilly Forest, espying over the chateau wall now and then the pensive back of some piece of statuary, and then the chateau from the opposite direction, with the Grand Stables stretched out behind.

And thence to Auvers-sur-Oise, site of Vincent's final frenzy of painting . . . next post.

Orleans, 1631 km

Holland, Belgium, northern France

2008-06-21T01:35:00.000-07:00

There is a documentary film I want to see about the infamous Abu Ghraib torture photos, called “Standard Operating Procedure.” The premise of the film is that the photos are revealing in what they don't show. We all saw them and jumped to the obvious conclusions--what monsters those young soldiers were--but there is a back story that is not within the photo's frame. The same is true of text. While I was in Holland I didn't write much about Holland. What I was leaving out of the text in fact loomed large in my thoughts.

The landscape is pleasant. It's very flat, and in June it's green; farmers are using lots of manure and wild roses grow on the roadsides. Canals run everywhere, and towns vie for the title "Venice of the North". The Amstel River south of Amsterdam flows brown like beer (I imagine Amstel brand beer being drawn directly from the river) and eights row in unison, slicing the flat shining water in rhythm. Their coach cycles on the towpath alongside, with a megaphone. Trees line the canal to provide shade on this sunny day. And a bit further down, there are cafes water-side, filled with chattering people.

And here's the issue--it's such a supremely pleasant, romantic place, with all those canals to stroll beside, those cafes to while away time, those cobbled streets to stroll, hand in hand.

So as I found myself pedalling back and forth and in circles, I wondered if this was what I wanted, to come to a pleasant place that would be better enjoyed with a partner? I went to the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, climbed the Belfry Tower in Utrecht, toured the Kinderdijk windmills. I was a dutiful tourist. But I was having trouble finding my travelling legs (but oh, there they were, in Gouda on market day! I knew they were kicking around somewhere).

My spirits started to lift as I got to the coast and headed south on the North Sea Cycle Route; for several days the sun shone and the wind blew strong from the north. I flew across the islands of Zeeland and the huge dams with the water white in huge whirlpools below. Finally I pedalled into Bruges; wet but content with the ride canalside.

On Saturday in Bruges, serial weddings were being performed in the magnificent Gothic Hall of the Stadhuis (Town Hall). The happy couples with their friends and relatives sat and listened to the words of the justice, and us tourists carried on staring up, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at the huge murals and portraits and arches, holding our audioguides to our ears. Outside, several horse carriages and their smartly dressed drivers awaited each happy couple. Tourists crowded around them, craning necks for a view when the bride and groom would emerge (mostly they saw other tourists exiting the museum, blinking into the light).

Bruges is a romantic city. People come in pairs, and the tourist map identifies good places to kiss. This is all very well if you've got a partner, but if not, well, there it is, in your face. And Bruges, the old town anyway, is cloyed with tourists, and I met some restaurateurs and chocolate sellers who seem tired and jaded.

From Bruges, I cycled back to the coast, following as best I could an exhibition of calligraphic stones, a Belgian-South African project. There were forty stones between Bruges and the coast, engraved by artists with lines of poetry or sayings. One said, "kom ons pluk die lug en melk die son" (Let us pluck the air and milk the sun) which seems appropriate for an outdoor adventure.

For miles and miles in Belgium, you can cycle along a walking and cycling promenade beside the North Sea. The waves roll in and the sand stretches as far as the eye can see. Those straight beaches evoked for me the war landings, and the terror the men must have felt as they jumped into the sea. That's the view to the right; on the left, miles and miles of seaside restaurants, vying for the tourist trade.

My last night in Belgium was an unplanned one--I had been following the signs for the North Sea cycle route, very near the French border, when the road simply ended. It continued into a canal. I cycled around looking for it, then saw an inviting campground where I could spend a sunny afternoon, instead of being aggravated trying to find the route.

And that was really my introduction to France--end of cycling supremacy, back to the real world where cars growl at my heels! And even though I got irritated in Dunkerque where the cycle paths ended suddenly, tipping the cyclist right into fast traffic (like at home) and where pedestrians stroll all over the bike paths (like at home), it felt less like Pleasantville, and more like real life. And time for me to get on with it.

I spent an afternoon in Dunkerque researching my next route. I had planned to continue on the North Sea Cycle route to Boulogne-sur-Mer, but as far as I could see, it looked like a lot of the cycling would be through more seaside resort towns (endless rows of beach shelters for rent, copycat restaurants, people tired of tourists), and close to the heavy red and yellow lines on my Michelin map. So I decided to check out the Green Meridian, which I had heard about from a man who cycled with me a ways from Oostende. "La Meridienne Verte" was a millenium project to plant trees in communities along the meridian that runs through Paris, from Dunkerque to the Pyrenees. The project was meant to inspire care for the environment, including travel on foot and by bicycle. It's not a signed route, but I got a list of the communities it passes through from Wikipedia.

So on Wednesday, June 18, I headed directly south on the meridian line, and for the past three days, I have been travelling minor, almost car-free roads through gorgeous countryside. Finally I felt my breath come hard in my chest as I climbed hills and rolled down them on the other side; this is the first time in three weeks that I've had to exert myself. The scenery captivates me; the light over the fields shimmers and there are those crows that Vincent painted! My road has wound in and out of towns, through fields stretching wide; golden wheat on one side, green corn on the other, and masses of red poppies on the verges. I imagine soldiers traipsing through these fields in the world wars, finding shelter in farmers' barns; that's the context in which I know this countryside but now, there is the single track roads without cars to cycle on, and the pristine red brick rose-covered houses in the towns. There are not many services along this route so when I see a cafe I pull over right away. On Thursday I found "Au Bon Coin" cafe/patisserie at a crossroads. When I walked in (dripping from the rain) there were four customers. Two were nursing half full mugs of beer; a third had a new glass of rosé, and the fourth was checking out the wine selection. It was 9:38 a.m. This kind of surprise is what makes me want to keep pushing those pedals to see what awaits me around the next corner, or up the next hill. And I love the French sendoff: "Courage!" they say as I pedal away to the next unknown.

My route plans have changed daily with my whims, but I think it is safe to say that from Amiens I will continue south to l'Ie de France, then to Orleans where I plan to join the Eurovelo6 route which follows the Loire, Saone, Doubs, Rhine and Danube rivers to the Black Sea (www.eurovelo6.org will show you a picture, with animated bicycle, of that route).

Amiens, 1082 km

Flandres

2008-06-18T06:29:00.000-07:00

I left Dunkerque this morning, plunging into the northern French countryside to get away from the busy highways and resorts of the coast. Today's cycling has been through rich fields of green with purple flowers and the scent of lavender. I feel like I've been moving through a live impressionist painting, and I am indeed getting closer to Vincent's wheatfields. Now heading directly south on "La Meridienne Verte"which takes me through communities on the meridien that runs through Paris. I'll have to post more later, becquse Iù, still leqrning the French keyboqrd qnd itùs hqrd for ,e to hunt qnd peck!

Saint Omer, 935 km

Finding the Way

2008-06-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

If I had a GPS locator on my body that allowed you to follow my progress on a map, the result would look like the work of a demented etch-a-sketch artist. So far, I have zigged and zagged from Amsterdam southeast to Utrecht, southwest to Gouda, southeast of Rotterdam to the Unesco World Heritage Kinderdijk windmills, northwest to Delft and Den Haag, and now south on the Nordzee (North Sea) cycle route. In a cafe in Middelburg, when I told the cafe owner where I had been, he assumed I was doing it without a map (but . . . I'm constantly consulting my maps, and note the plural!). All the major highways between the cities I have been to have fietspads beside them, so I could have travelled fast and direct if I wanted, but I have a strong preference for the scenic route, which is less obvious.

To add to the challenge that exists for anyone trying to find the scenic way, I have a poor sense of direction, I daydream, I'm chronically unobservant, and I just want to ride without the hassle of route finding. These factors all work against me making significant forward progress, especially when you add in the enticements of a new town's cobbled streets leading to koffie and apple pie, or a paved path leading through a leafy wood along a lagoon. No matter how much I kid myself, I will never quickly find my way out of a leafy wood--I haven't yet. And the same goes for a town. I'll just check it out, I tell myself, and then get back on the route. Ha! Deluded again. And as I start to sweat because I'm passing the same landmarks for the third time, I remember my new toy: GPS to the rescue.

What a gift to daydreaming, direction-challenged, just-wanna-ride cyclists everywhere. I've got mine mounted on my handlebars and I've used it every day. On my ride during the day, it lets me know, any time I want, "u staat hier." The marker shows me which direction I am travelling in. If I know the address I'm travelling to, I can mark it and tell the GPS, "go to". It calculates the way from wherever I am, and recalculates if I don't follow its instructions exactly (if, for example, I take the bike path instead of the road). At the end of the day when I'm tired, I'm even more prone to miss directional signs. On my way to the Utrecht hostel, the GPS made its discreet attention-requesting sound, which it makes when a turn is coming up: "be deep be deep!" I looked down at the screen and I had a message in big black letters: "make a U-turn". I had missed the sign for the turn-off. Not "make a U-turn, you dope, you idiot, you are going in exactly the wrong direction again," which would sound a lot like my inner voice, but simply "make a U-turn [and U will be fine]." It's as reassuring as the Garmin phone tech support people, who always listened to my map software problems, then said in their soothing midwest American accent, "Sure, I can help you with that."

Of course it's also possible to ask other cyclists or passersby for directional help. I never know, however, if the person I asked is going to want to take a look at my map, necessitating possibly the extrication of reading glasses from a pocket, and then I'm fumbling in my handlebar bag for mine too. So asking for directions can also be time-consuming. Before I know it, it’s time to find a place to camp and I've only gone about 50 kilometres.

On the North Sea Route I've had a reprieve from route finding. I've been following those blessed signs--LF1a Nordzeeroute--ever since I found the coast near The Hague. Dutch taxes have been well spent on those industrious sign workers. The signs have been reliably posted at just about every possible juncture, and the route has been mostly on dedicated cycle paths on dikes and polders (reclaimed land), and through forests and dune areas beside the North Sea--places where I can in fact, just ride. I had another gift, sun and strong tail winds for three days. I could just pump along with music in my ears, taking in the scenery with a grin splitting my face. Even though the weather turned to heavy rain for my ride into Brugge/Bruges, I still had tailwinds most of the day and riding canal-side was pleasant.

So I have several times ended up where I didn't expect, but now I've arrived in Brugge. I will take some time out for a rest, see the city, and regroup for the next part of the tour. I'll probably stay on the North Sea Route until Boulogne-sur-Mer in France, but experience is telling me I can't predict exactly which way I'll go or where I'll end up.

We've all made mistakes that seem to lead us astray
But every time they help to get us where we are today
and it's as good a place as any
and it's probably where we're best off anyway
Wailin Jennys, "Heaven When We're Home"

Brugge/Bruges, Belgium, 719 km

Word of the Day

2008-06-09T04:20:00.000-07:00

Fietser, fietspad, fietsenstallen, fietsroute, fietsnetwerk . . . fiets, fiets, fiets! Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle!

I was so confident that I'd find one of the legendary bikepaths to take me to my first hostel that I exited Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport with my bike ready to ride. I saw a signpost with that lovely word, the only one I knew in Dutch: "fietspad". I took off on the wide red pavement, feeling special wheeling along on my own cycling road. After a little while, it occurred to me that I didn't actually have a clue where the fietspad was leading. I returned to the airport and eventually found a cyclist to redirect me on the correct bike path, which was in the opposite direction.

You'd think that I'd fit right in here, but in fact I don't. I'd be more inconspicuous on my shopping bike, a ladies' ten speed with upright handlebars and a chronic chain noise. However, my tires would have to be half flat. I'd be wearing a flowing dress and stylish sandals. And my shopping panniers--they'd be the big flowered square ones, probably in red or pink. What really sets me apart, though, is that I wear a helmet. It's not that the Dutch are not keen on safe cycling. I cycled through an intersection in Utrecht where there were three beefy policemen ("Politie"), handing out tickets to cyclists for traffic infractions. I met a fellow from Belfast who told me he was cycling home from the pub on his fiets one night and got pulled over for not having lights. Next he told them to f#@! off, and they realized he was drunk cycling. He spent half a night in a cell at the police station. The fine for the lights was 20 euros, and 60 for the drunk cycling.

Helmet wearing is very uncommon. I've seen a few racing men wearing them, but they're also wearing multicoloured lycra. I've seen only two women wearing helmets (also riding fast), and not a single child. I have cycled without mine, but I was conscious of my head being as fragile as the watermelon in the ICBC seatbelt ads.

Is the Netherlands a cyclist's paradise? Almost. . . Where else would you find, as I did in a small town, a road wide enough for two lanes for cars; instead, there was a single track for the cars, and a red cycle lane on each side of the road for the cyclists. Still, there are a lot of cars in the Netherlands. I am never far from heavy duty highway traffic. At least cars and pedestrians stay off the bike paths. On my way out of Utrecht I had to stop as a car was blocking the fietspad, waiting to turn left on the main road. He saw me and backed up very suddenly to get out of my way. He hadn't seen the woman walking behind his car and she just about went under.

I've heard from many sources that bicycle theft is rampant, and the people at my first hostel lent me a second lock to use when I went into the city. While I was strolling around Amsterdam on my first day, I saw two rough looking guys sitting in a public square in two plastic chairs. One was sawing at a bicycle chain, which was still attached to a bicycle. He and the buddy were talking. Then he stopped and put the saw in his backpack, laughing. The next day I bought another bike lock, almost as heavy as the chain I lug around at home. In Utrecht, I came across a major bike theft awareness event. A minister of the Dutch government was there to be photographed by dozens of journalists while she had her bike registered and locked correctly to a bike rack.

The police had brought thousands of found but unclaimed bicycles to put on display. The campaign (www.fietsdiefstal.nl) was to promote bike registration and correct locking techniques, but as the minister was giving her speech, I was thinking how ironic it was that the bike racks provided there for the hundreds of bikes parked were those useless ones that you insert your front wheel into, and to which it is impossible to lock your frame. I had just spent a bit of time finding an open end of a rack where I could lock my frame. On my first, most nervous day in Amsterdam, I took my bike to the central train station's fietsenstallen (bike parking) where for a euro and 15 cents, a guard watches closed circuit TV at the gate. Anyway, I'm not surprised bikes get stolen--very few of them are properly locked, and the bike racks can get so full that it can be difficult to get your bike in at all. (Every bike rack has at least one bike with a flat tire--does Holland have a problem of abandoned fietsen?)

Anyway, it's been a daily wonder to travel on the fietspaden; my only desire is for information on the routes in English. There are dozens of maps and guide books available at the ANWB (General Dutch Cycling Association, which is equivalent to our automobile association and serves car drivers as well), but they are all written in Dutch, which make them inaccessible to me. I even found an atlas which I could use with my GPS, if I could read the explanations. Knowing "fietspad" and "u staat hier" ("you are here", another favourite of mine when seen on the map at a fietspad intersection), is not enough Dutch for foreign fietsers.

The Hague, 471 km

Next post: How it is that I've cycled almost 500 km, yet I'm only at The Hague?

The to do list

2008-06-07T03:00:00.000-07:00

Something tells me there must be something better than all this . . .
Wailin Jennys, "Heaven When We're Home"

The dream: cycle in Europe, through ancient towns and valleys, past castles and monuments, amongst cultures that have shaped history. Listen to other tongues and how people express themselves; see other ways of living. Live outdoors, eat well, be well in body and spirit. Seek vocation; meet people who will show me possibilities. Write; reflect. Be open.

The reality/the nightmare: The "to do" list. My monstrous, three-page, single spaced "to do" list haunted my weeks before departure. The mystery about it was that when it got down to two pages it got stuck at that length. Every day I toiled like Sisyphus from waking to sleep, and every day lots got done, and the same amount again got added to the list. Each task was a cancerous growth, sprouting associated tasks. Eventually the list became one page for the last two weeks, the length it stayed until my last frantic day. I couldn't sleep the night before for worry about the size of the list! If I hadn't managed to kill it before, how could I now, even with my plane's departure as a deadline?

Well, I didn't kill the list; three items remained at 12:30 a.m. the morning of my departure, which was 4:15 a.m. from my house. One of them was to set up the blog site, which I could do from any computer on the internet--if I read Dutch, that is. Thanks to advice from Susan in Doha, you are reading this now.

I still feel somewhat traumatized by the preparations, so will not go into detail about all the little set-backs which caused such anguish. Just suffice it to say that a lot of it seemed to involve hanging on the phone, cycling through endless menu choices and then hearing, "we are experiencing higher than normal call volumes . . . " You know, the kind of thing that makes you want to scream when you've got lots to do.

So you're wondering, what was she doing all that time? I had to research my routes and gather information; I had to gather the things I needed for my trip; I had to get my bike overhauled; I had to rent out my house and pack it up to make room for the renters. In retrospect, it looks straightforward. I, however, am a perfectionist, and manufactured hundreds of details. I was also a Brownie, and I learned well our motto, "Be prepared." (I never went on to Guides, where I think they had more fun, putting their preparation into good use on excursions and adventures.) I decided I needed a GPS, and a solar battery charger, and a PDA and mini keyboard to write with; a mobile phone . . . and I had to learn how to use all these devices. I realize that my extensive preparations are a clear sign of neurosis. Contrary to some people's idea of me that I'm brave, I'm not. (The nurse at the Vancouver travel clinic said, "oh, you're so brave!" I was about to say, "oh, I'm not," when she finished, "I could never cycle downtown." I could only stare in stupefaction, trying to compare my familiar 20 minute cycle into Vancouver with the thousands of unknown kilometres I was heading off to.)

In fact, I'm scared blind about having to find my way by myself, as I have a very bad sense of direction. I worry about where I will stay at night. So I prepare and prepare in the Brownie's belief that if I'm prepared enough all will be well.

It's a long and rugged road and we don't know where it's headed,
But we know it's gonna get us where we're going
When we find what we're looking for, we'll drop these bags and search no more
Cause it's gonna feel like heaven when we're home
Wailin Jennys, "Heaven When We're Home"

Gouda, 315 km

Next post: my favourite Dutch words . . .