go west
Sunday, 27 June 2010 20:31
Reto
it took a while before we could finally leave the city of istanbul by bicycle. the remaining days in turkey were – no surprise! – full of nice surprises and great turkish hospitality. our first night out of istanbul we could stay with our friend halil and his family (parents, wife, sisters and brothers, sisters in law, nephews, children) and were spoilded. the next day halil accompanied us by bike. while cycling in turkey we got invitde for a cup of tea every now and then and thanks to the friendly turkish people it was never a proble to find a place to stay overnight. by now it was quite hot and usually by lunchtime the roads started to melt and it was a pretty sticky and tricky job to guide the bicycle around the melting parts of the road. the water in our drinking bottles was never far from boiling.in edirne we left turkey to make our way into bulgaria. as they were facing a computer problem at the customs the cars were qeueing in the heat. obviously cyclists were not affected by the technical problem so we could pass the customs while all the other people had to keep waiting. bulgariaduring the five days in bulgaria (edirne/tr – simeonovgrad – nova zagora – gurkovo – veliko turnovo – svisthov) it didn’t cool down at all. every day we would drink between 4 and 6 litres each. at least the asphalt road in bulgaria didn’t melt. although – sometimes there wasn’t much of an asphalt surface but there was plenty of huge holes in the road. some of the country roads with little traffic were in pretty bad condition. in general, though the roads were not too bad. it was obvious where some of the european union’s money got invested. people in bulgaria treated us very friendly. whenever we would face a problem there was someone to help us. when we couldn’t find a place to pitch our tent on the first evening peter took us to his restaurant. he helped us find a real cheap accomodation and we would eat at his restaurant. food was ridicolously cheap and tasted just great. he served more food than we could eat after cycling all day. it was a bit like being in paradise.the landscape became more interesting the closer we got to the ‘mountainous’ region. there wasn’t much traffic on some of the country roads and we enjoyed cruising through the rural landscape in the lasting summer heat. romaniagetting into romania was a bit of an experience. by checking our road map we knew that there had to be some sort of a ferry between svishtov/bulgaria and zimnicea/romania to get across the danube. unfortunately we didn’t discover anything in reality. we started to wander around town and ask people about a ferry connection between bulgaria and romania. finally we knew that there was supposed to be a ferry sometime between 6.30am and 7.30am. we made sure to be there early enough. the ferry left – with us and some bulgarians on board who went to work on the romanian side – around 7am. five minutes later we were back on the bulgarian shore. damage! there we were, waiting some one and a half hours with a dozen of bulgarian workers until the boat was fixed. around 9am we finally landed on the romanian side of the danube.the landscape during the first two days was not very exciting but we were surprised and impressed by the friendly romanians. another country with a bad reputation which proved to be nice. of course economically and technically romania is not as developed as western eurepean countries. on the road there were – next to modern cars – carriages led by donkeys and horses. and some country roads were in pretty bad condition. but all these things can’t avoid that the people we faced were very friendly. and sometimes we even saw people leading their pet cow for a walk in the countryside or around town.unlike in turkey and in bulgaria the tempereatures became a bit cooler and there was quite a lot of rain. it rained until some of the rivers started to flood. floods seem to be trendy in europe. the landscape was bit boring next to the danube. in the mountainous areas the landsacpe was quite spectacular. so romania surprised us in many ways and we believe it would be worth of going back there and spend some more time.
