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Link to the diary: TRANS-OST-EXPEDITION - Stage 1

Carpathians

N 44°41'853'' E 021°40'118''
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    Day: 79

    Sunrise:
    06:41 am

    Sunset:
    5:58 pm

    As the crow flies:
    30.82 Km

    Daily kilometers:
    50,14 Km

    Total kilometers:
    2334.49 Km

    Soil condition:
    Asphalt

    Temperature – Day (maximum):
    22,7 °C

    Temperature – day (minimum):
    14,1 °C

    Temperature – Night:
    4,8 °C

    Latitude:
    44°41’853”

    Longitude:
    021°40’118”

    Maximum height:
    499 m above sea level

    Time of departure:
    09:35 a.m.

    Arrival time:
    4:15 pm

    Average speed:
    12.65 Km/h

The schnapps and beer made my stomach rebel for hours, which is why I hardly slept a wink. “Rocky’s got breakfast ready,” the only inhabitant of the campsite greets us as we crawl out of our dwelling. “We’ll pack up quickly and then come back!” I call in a friendly voice. Impatiently, Rocky creeps around and waits until we finally reach him. Then, when the time comes, we get a portion of scrambled eggs fried in oil with oil-fried champions. “That’s my special. Take it out of the pot,” he offers, pointing to a brown, oily mass that seems to be crouching at the bottom of the pot. Laughing, I drop my spoon into the special and put it on my plate. “Mix with the scrambled eggs,” instructs Rocky. “And be sure to drink schnapps,” he continues his explanation. “No thanks, no schnapps before cycling”, I say several times until Rocky packs the bottle away in a huff and empties his glass on his own. I try it carefully and ask again what it is. “The innards of appearances,” he explains with a proudly swollen chest. Since I no longer eat pork and especially not offal, I feel a little nauseous. I sip carefully and try to focus my thoughts on something else. Fortunately, Rocky likes his special himself so much that I get away with a small portion.

Then a friend of our host arrives with a rickety bike, leans it against the tree and joins us. They discuss our itinerary. “There’s no way you can drive along the Danube. The Carpathians stretch right up to its banks. You’ll never get over there by bike,” I’m shocked to hear. “What do you mean? The Danube is flat and water always flows down the mountain,” I point out, whereupon they grab the map and show me the brown areas. “I don’t believe it. I didn’t even notice them before,” I say with a bad feeling in my stomach. I suddenly don’t know whether I’m feeling sick from Rocky’s special, yesterday’s booze or the upcoming challenge. “You have to take a different route,” Rocky explains in his loud voice, sliding his thick index finger over the map in a crazy big arc. “But that’s a gigantic detour,” I say, and after taking a closer look at the proposal, I notice that his finger has traversed 1500-metre-high mountains. “You can’t go along the Danube. I’m often in Romania. I play there as a musician and know the area. There are very high mountains in the direction you want to go. You won’t make it there by bike,” confirms the friend, causing my confidence of reaching Bucharest in time to collapse.

We say goodbye to our friendly host and are not exactly motivated to cycle towards the Romanian border. In the pretty little village of Bela Crkva we buy some water and a few bars of chocolate to eat on the way. Then we continue eastwards. Just a few hundred meters after Bela Crkva, a strong wind blows in our faces again. We have to pedal like oxen to make any progress at all on the straight road. Then the straight road stretches over a sweeping hill and ends up there somewhere on the horizon. An 8% gradient is written on a road sign, whereupon the rest of my already shattered morale shatters like a glass that has fallen to the ground. Whatever happened before. No matter how many conversations I’ve had with Mother Earth, it’s all gone at this moment. My eyes are glued to the asphalt just before my front tire with a fixed gaze. The incline slowly gets steeper, our lungs start to rattle and we shift the reliable Rohloff down gear by gear. Finally, I let the sprocket dance like a sickle in first gear. The blood in my thighs rushes into my veins and feeds my now well-trained muscles. The route challenges every millimeter of our willpower to the utmost. Although Tanja also has to pedal hard, her trailer has become lighter due to the dwindling supplies. Mine, however, still weighs 58 kilograms. With great concentration, I work my way up the incline meter by meter, closely followed by my wife. Don’t give up, I tell myself, but I can no longer motivate myself. Inevitably, I can feel how my psyche is about to plunge into a deep hole. What if Rocky and his friend are really right and we have to ride the next 700 kilometers over the Carpathian Mountains? Even their suggested route cannot be completed in the time we have left. To avoid this insurmountable obstacle for our heavily loaded bikes, we have followed the Danube up to here and now it looks as if the Carpathians will simply stand in our way. At 1300 kilometers long and 50 to 150 kilometers wide, the Carpathians stretch out in the shape of an arc. They stretch from Bratislava in Slovakia down to the Iron Gate, the valley through which the Danube flows near Or?ova in Romania.

How could I possibly think of escaping this enormous barrier? I must have been completely naive to believe that I could cycle around such a mountain range, which borders the road to the east like an insurmountable wall, I reproach myself and pant like a walrus. Suddenly we reach the end of the incline. The view from up here of the lovely-looking lowlands of Serbia leaves me unimpressed at this point. Exhausted, I stop and take a big sip. Without a doubt, water tastes like a drink of the gods after such an exertion. I’m really glad I don’t have to drink schnapps,’ I try to make a tired joke. Tanja’s mouth is also sucking on her water bottle. The wind blows cold over the ridge and makes us freeze. Before we cool down, we pedal back down the mountain. The headwind is so strong that we even have to pedal downhill to make distance. The winding, dusty, steep road leads us directly through the border town of Kaluderovo. When the desolate sight of the border buildings appears, I am ready to break off our tour right here. Not often in my life have I backed out. I never gave up, but now I’m absolutely soft-boiled and completely demoralized by the effort, the prospect of endless pass crossings, the conversations with Rocky, his booze and his terrible special.

“What are they doing with the solar panels?” asks the Serbian official. “We use it to charge the batteries,” I reply and wait for him to give me a reason not to cross the border. Only the smallest detail, the unnecessary examination of our equipment or other borderline difficulties would immediately give me a reason to turn back. We stand there freezing miserably and wait for the Serbs to run our passports through the computer. In the meantime, we put on our rain jackets to protect our bodies from the strong wind. Then we get our passports back without any further questions. “Uh, do you know what it looks like on the Romanian side? I mean, are there high mountains there or do we have a chance of getting around them?” I ask the disinterested officer, pointing at the map. “Where it’s green, it’s flat and where it’s brown, there are mountains,” he replies, to which I say goodbye.

We let the bikes roll further down the mountain and stop at the Romanian border. The buildings here seem even more desolate and poor. A well-built official makes an appearance. I wait to be unable to continue here because the border is only open to local traffic, but I am disappointed. The official gives us back our stamped passports without making any trouble. “Are the Carpathians coming now?” I want to know. “Yes,” I understand. “What do you think of this route?” I ask, gesticulating and showing the officer the map. “Not good”, we think we understand. Completely broken, I stand over the intermediate bar of my bike and want to cry. “Should we turn back?” I ask Tanja, who looks at me a little startled. “What do you mean?” “Well, if we keep driving and the mountains get higher, we’ll never make it to Bucharest. We’ll never get back to Germany in time. If we turn back, I’m sure I’ll find a good route back to Belgrade and we’ll take the train home. We can continue our journey here next year,” I suggest. “We’re not going to let ourselves be boxed in that easily,” I hear and am somehow relieved to know that my last attempt to turn back has been thwarted. Just a small word of confirmation from her and I would have had the reason to give in to my weakness. “We’ll take a look at the situation. If it goes well for the next two days we’ll carry on, if the gradients get too bad we still have the option of turning back,” I decide.

“Just after the border building, turn right towards Moldova. You only have to drive about five kilometers over a pass and then it’s relatively flat along the Danube,” the official advises us in sign language and Romanian. “Unbelievable, that’s exactly the route I had originally planned,” I say to Tanja. “It looks like Rocky and his friend would have sent us into the middle of the disaster afterwards,” I add, studying the map sheet in detail. “See you again!” we shout with relief, wave to the officer and let our road trains roll into Romania. Immediately after the buildings, we turn right onto the completely empty country road. A few dilapidated buildings appear at the side of the road. An abandoned gas station withers away in rusty colors. A sign reads International Telephone and bears witness to better times. Dogs bark and in the distance we discover some poor wooden huts on the mountainside. It doesn’t take long, however, before we see the 8 % gradient sign after a few bends. Surrendering to fate, we start the climb and pedal for all we’re worth. Tirelessly, we wind our way up bend by bend at walking pace. Again and again we stop for a drink, eat a handful of our power food and carry on. We leave switchback after switchback, turn after turn, hairpin bend after hairpin bend behind us and approach the summit of the pass with hours of tireless hard work. We rarely come across cars and even fewer trucks. All drivers behave very considerately towards us and overtake at a safe distance. Then, all of a sudden, we made it. We are at the top of the pass. Although my GPS only shows an altitude of 500 meters, it feels as if we have conquered a high peak. It’s cold up there. A hand-painted sign explains something about a national park in a foreign language. We read Okulul Silvic. “Does this have anything to do with Transylvania?” Tanja wants to know. “I have no idea. As far as I know, Transylvania is in the Southern Carpathians. Well, who knows? Maybe these mountain forests are also part of Count Dracula’s territory,” I joke.

Tanja uses the time of our breather to go for a walk. When she returns, she is suffering from severe pain in her thigh. “It will be the overused muscle,” I ponder. “I don’t know. It feels different. I can’t even touch my thigh and it already hurts.” “Hm, strange,” I say, worrying a little. “Look at that! That can’t be true! I’ve been bitten by a tick. It’s causing the pain,” says Tanja, pointing to a small slit in her cycling shorts from which the small, ugly rear end of the forest dweller is sticking out. In fact, a tick took the opportunity to attack Tanja on the only torn part of her cycling shorts in order to feast on her blood. Tanja immediately turns the dangerous insect out and throws it back into the forest. The bite site forms a red halo within a few minutes. “I hope that’s not a sign of Lyme disease,” I say, startled. “Well, I don’t need that right now,” she replies. “So you weren’t bitten by Dracula, but by one of his lowly subjects,” I joke. “Hi, hi, I don’t know which is worse. I hope our homeopathic vaccination works,” Tanja replies confidently and swings herself into the saddle. Then we set off on the fastest and most beautiful descent of our entire trip so far. We rush towards the valley for seven kilometers, cheering and often jubilant. We consciously fought for every meter of altitude and were happy to have conquered perhaps the highest pass of our current stage. Once we reach the bottom, the mighty Danube rewards us with a breathtaking view. Horse-drawn carriages drive past us and people greet us and call out to us in a friendly manner. Serbia’s melancholy is no longer palpable. Tractor units chug slowly past. People work in the fields and still harvest every corn stalk by hand. It is then loaded onto the horse-drawn carts in bundles. Without a doubt, we suddenly find ourselves in the Middle Ages. The step across the border has allowed us to take a step back in time, a step so enchanting that our jaws soon drop in amazement. A farmer leads his cow past, tied to a rope. Apparently every single animal is still worth a fortune here. We are already being rewarded for our exertions and are happy not to have turned back. Once again, it has been proven that perseverance pays off. Of course I realize that I wouldn’t be here without Tanja’s help. I enjoy the moment all the more and try to inhale every second of it.

We can’t find a bank in the small town of Moldova Noua. But urgently need money. A woman wants to send us somewhere. A few meters further on, a man explains something about a vending machine. Hoping it might be an ATM, we let our vehicles glide slowly through the strange place. It seems to us as if we were actors in a movie, except that there are no false facts being played out on the set. “Hello!”, people shout or just look at us in amazement. We find the aforementioned vending machine at the police station. Since I don’t know how much the Lei is worth, I’m only changing 2.5 million for now. I ask about the course at a small store. The girl speaks some English. According to her explanation, you can buy 10 bars of chocolate or 14 bottles of beer for one euro. We can’t believe that Romania can be so cheap. Completely exhausted, we sit in front of the store and discuss the next steps. There is to be a hotel. However, we would have to cycle seven kilometers back, which wouldn’t be a problem, except that we would have to climb a good bit again. There is no overnight accommodation in the village itself. “What should we do now? We absolutely have to eat something. Apart from a bit of muesli, I only had Rocky’s terrible special. My stomach is almost falling out from hunger,’ I complain. “How do you think I feel? Could eat a whole bear,” Tanja replies. There should be a restaurant about five kilometers away. We decide to drive there and then look for a place to camp on a full stomach.

A tendon on my right knee has been hurting for many kilometers. They are constantly increasing and I have serious concerns about catching something chronic. Tanja’s tick bite has become even more reddened. She can barely move her thigh. Really battered, we jog along the slope and keep an eye out for the restaurant. “There it is!” shouts Tanja 20 minutes later, whereupon we lean our bikes against the building. Relieved, we enter the completely empty restaurant. Two women are sitting at a table. “Do you have anything to eat?” I ask in sign language, bringing my hand to my mouth and rubbing my stomach. “There, there, they say, which means yes, yes. We sit down in the sheltered room and have a beer. The view of the Danube from up here is overwhelming. Large freighters pass by in the heavy evening sun. From time to time, the wind carries the low tooting of a ship over to us. Then comes our tasty meal, which we devour with ravenous appetite. With every bite, we are paralyzed by a leaden tiredness. “Why don’t you see if there’s somewhere here that’s suitable for our tent?” Tanja asks me. Without wasting any time, I put her suggestion into practice and find a suitable patch of grass behind the house. “You’re welcome to pitch your tent there”, the landlady offers us a place to stay, which is a load off our minds as we don’t have to look for a campsite at an advanced hour and in the now six-degree cold.

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