Figures mutating in the darkness

After breakfast, we say goodbye to our Hotel Dracula. The weather is just perfect for our departure. With a light tailwind, we speed out of the city in a great mood. After a while I start to wonder. The signs indicate a place that is not in our direction. After a short pause, my navigation error is obvious. We should have turned off onto a small country road in Calafat. “I’m sorry. That means a 13-kilometre detour,” I say, disappointed. “I don’t like detours, but it can happen,” says Tanja calmly. Now with a crosswind, we cross to the south to rejoin the leisurely, less busy Danube road. Many horse-drawn vehicles use the arterial road alongside us. Heavily laden with harvested corn stalks, they sometimes even drive across the country in convoys. Again and again we also meet Sinti who sometimes cheer us on. One of them brandishes a bottle of schnapps and offers us a drink with him. We politely decline with a laugh, overtake his old-fashioned vehicle and turn onto the Danube road at Poina Mare. Now back on the right course, the wind is blowing at our backs. We speed over the uneven asphalt at speeds of up to 28 kilometers per hour. Including the detour, it is 113 kilometers to the border town of Bechet. So we are looking at a new record. Only rarely does the road rise up in front of us for a few meters only to send us back down to the plain. Despite my slightly aching tendonitis, I let my teeth circle with full vigor and would love to sing a song. Leaving Hotel Dracula behind us is an inspiring situation. What’s more, we never expected Mother Earth to give us another warm sunny day like this. After 40 kilometers we take a short break. I stretch my muscles with stretching exercises. I have discovered an important exercise to prevent muscle shortening.

The people in the small street villages are still lovely. They shout and wave. Some want to know where the road leads us. We enjoy the unique sight of the simple houses, the gardens and the side streets, all of which are unpaved. Ducks, turkeys, dogs, cats, horses, oxen and donkeys are constantly crossing our path. Here the animals are still allowed to live a life worth living. They are not crammed into a stable all their lives just to wait to be eaten by us humans at some point, but often live in the open air. At 2 p.m. we stop for lunch on a bench in front of one of the houses and devour our ready-to-eat meal. The owner of the bank is surprised to find us sitting on his bench as he leaves his house for his afternoon siesta. “Won’t you sit down?” I stand up and offer a seat. As if it were the most impossible suggestion ever, he refuses and stands next to us, watching as we try to satisfy our insatiable stomachs. Then he takes heart and sits down next to me. He asks and I explain in the international language of signs and gestures where we are coming from and where we are going. A very interesting conversation ensues for a short time. As Tanja captures the scene, the woman of the house joins in and also wants to be photographed. Then we say goodbye to the two of them and let our planes zoom further east. We are overtaken by border police on the way. They seem to be patrolling the border with Bulgaria, which is only a few hundred meters from here on the other side of the Danube.

At 4:30 pm, we take a short coffee break just 15 kilometers before our destination for the day and enjoy the familiar cone mix. “Is there a hotel in Bechet?” I ask the landlady. “Yes, but it’s very small,” her reply reassures us, as we are longing for a rest and a good meal after the long journey. The light begins to fade towards evening as we drive past bawling children, as we often do. They cross the road running fast and grab stones lying on the ground. “No!” we shout in horror as the little ones throw at us. Thank God they are still too young to be a danger to us. Nevertheless, on this trip we experience children throwing stones at us for the first time. In some areas, such as eastern Anatolia, stone-throwing children are a real danger for motorcyclists and cyclists. On our camel expedition through Pakistan, we were often pelted with these highly dangerous projectiles by children and teenagers. Sometimes all we needed was a mounted attack to scare the casters for a short time, put them on the run and then flee the banished area ourselves. This time we rush on quickly.

We reach our destination, the border town of Bechet, at 17:45. We make our way to the hotel. I lean my Roadtrain against the dilapidated building and look for a way inside. The main entrance was boarded up years ago. I enter the building from the bar next door. Drunken Romanians and Bulgarians sit in the dark pub and look at me like I’m from Mars. Through the gap in a door I see a young woman preparing something on the stove. Although the guests draw my attention by shouting loudly, she keeps me waiting for a long time. Then she comes, ignores me like air and serves a bawling guest. He grabs her by the arm. She pulls him away and the two begin to argue loudly. I would like to run away, but I need to know if we can stay here for the night. After observing the scene, I don’t think it’s a good idea to linger here for even a second longer. It feels like something unpleasant is going to happen at any moment. And where should we store our precious bikes in this inhospitable place? “What do you want,” the young woman suddenly asks. “Is there a possibility to spend the night here?” “Camera defecto I understand, which probably means that the rooms are not available or are broken. Before another glass flies at my head, I step outside again. Shaking my head, I approach Tanja. “Don’t make any jokes now, please,” she says tiredly after 113 kilometers. “I’m not joking. The place in there is impossible. You wouldn’t want to stay there anyway and apart from that, there’s no room,” I say helplessly. While we ponder our next steps in front of the Grenzschenke, more and more people approach us or just observe us. “We still have an hour of daylight left. If we want, we can drive to the next town. There’s bound to be somewhere for us to stay there or we can look for somewhere to camp,” I suggest. “How far is it to the next town?” “About 45 kilometers,” I answer thoughtfully, wondering if my aching tendon will last that long. “How are you?” Tanja wants to know. “I can do it. If you’re convinced too, let’s focus our minds on the new goal and we’ll get there,” I suggest. “Okay, let’s go,” she replies with a determined look on her face. Before we get back into the saddles, we both put on a fleece jacket against the cold and long gloves for the first time. Then we swing onto the trestles and turn our backs on Bechet. As soon as we leave the city, we hear loud dogs barking, as we often do. But this time it’s different. Through a hole in the fence, two barking decoys race towards us. One of them reaches Tanja’s bike in no time at all. Fearing she might be bitten, I turn around again and again. I would love to fall back and take the bait with a pinch of pepper spray. Normally the dogs leave us when we leave their territory, but this time they stubbornly stick to us. We give it our all and accelerate our machines to top speed until we finally shake off our aggressive pursuers unscathed. It’s getting dark, the thermometer drops to eight degrees and the trend is downwards. We cycle through small villages. The horse-drawn carts return from the fields. There is hustle and bustle everywhere. We search in vain for a place where we can retreat unnoticed to set up our tent. We drive on with the firm goal that we will make 160 kilometers today and find a warm, safe bed for us. Suddenly, two figures come running towards us out of the darkness. “Hey! Hey! Hey!” they shriek, laughing loudly. We almost fell off our bikes in shock. “The things young people can think of?” Tanja wonders. “I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve,” I say, concentrating on the dark road. “Ho, ho, ho! Hooouuuuu!” it roars from a factory site. “Tourist! Tourist! Tourist!” a group of young people shouts over to us. “We’d better take off the position lights on our helmets,” Tanja suggests. “The biggest danger is not being robbed, but that one of the drunk drivers doesn’t recognize us in time,” I reply, which is why we keep the lights flashing. Something thunders towards us like the eerie roar of an inexorably approaching train. “Rrrooohhhrrrr!” the articulated lorry roars past us. Then we suddenly hear the rattling of chains behind us. Two boys overtake us on their old bikes. They greet us with a smile and follow us to the end of the village. They quickly turn into one of the dark alleyways and we are alone again. Unlit horse-drawn carts appear in front of us. We draw a bow to overtake them. Suddenly, cyclists approach us from the blackness of the night. None of them have a light. “We have to be very careful not to collide with them!” I shout to Tanja. “Tell me about it,” she replies and we continue our nocturnal journey through the foreign country. We are shocked by the aggression that we are unexpectedly confronted with again and again. The friendliness of the day has changed in the night. As if the darkness were mutating people into other beings. Secretly I begin to pray, to pray that we arrive safe and sound. Then Tanja’s front light goes out. “I’ll stay close to you! You just have to tell me in time if there’s a hole coming,” she shouts. “Maybe I should fix it?” “Here in the middle of the country road? We’d better keep driving.” “Okay,” I reply, concentrating even more than before. Every 15 minutes we stop for a short while, sweating profusely, drink a few sips despite the cold, eat some of our trail mix so as not to fall into an energy slump and carry on. “How’s your tendon insertion?” Tanja asks how I’m feeling. “Hurts. I hope I don’t ruin her on this trip. Apart from that, she’s scared of the Sinti, Romanians and Bulgarians who keep scaring us with their screaming. She wants to sleep in a nice warm bed like us,” I reply, chuckling to myself.

In one of the last suburbs of Corabia, a man almost drives into my trailer on purpose. He misses him by just a few centimeters and laughs out loud as I steer past him at the last second. When our speedometer shows 155 kilometers per day, we reach the dark suburbs of Corabia. “Three more kilometers to the city centre!”, I announce, as I have been doing for two hours, to motivate us. In the barely lit town, we ask at a petrol station if there is a hotel here. “Yes, you have to go back about four kilometers,” says the gas station attendant. “What? Four kilometers? We didn’t see anything. Everything is completely dark there. Unlit. Isn’t there a hotel further ahead?” I ask, feeling my strength leaving me. After a short conversation it turns out that there is a motel about two kilometers from the gas station which is located directly on the Danube. Thank you for the information and let’s get on with the final spurt of our mammoth day. Turning onto a black gravel road, we leave the main road and glide carefully down a hill to the Danube. “I hope we don’t have to go up there again. It’s killing my tendon,” I say and spot the lights of the motel. While Tanja holds my bike, I stumble off the saddle, drag myself up the stairs and stand in a modern, clean and, above all, warm reception area. I think I’ve saved the day when I report to Tanja that after 161.44 kilometers and 8 ½ hours of pure driving time, I’ve found a port for the night.

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