The dance teacher Davor Dulic. 100 kilometers headwind

As planned, we went back to the restaurant next to the dance school last night. “Will the dance teacher be teaching today?” Tanja wanted to know. “I think so,” I replied confidently. He actually appeared at 8:00 pm sharp. We approached him immediately and shared our enthusiasm about his skills and the impressive dancing of his students. “Davor Dulic,” he introduced himself, held out his hand to greet us and sat down at the table after our invitation. It didn’t take long and we found ourselves in a pleasant, very interesting conversation. “You document your traveling life in order to explain and describe to people who cannot travel how other peoples live, what culture they have and which gods they pray to. An important task. It will provide an insight into the history of humanity in our time from the perspective of the traveler and thus help to record for future generations what it was like for us at the beginning of the 21st century,” he summarized our life project and explained it in a way that surprised us.

“I do something very similar. I have dedicated my life to preserving and maintaining the folk dances and customs of the Slavic peoples. I’ve traveled around a lot, had the old people show me the dance steps, collected old instruments, wrote down the lyrics of the almost forgotten songs, notated the notes and created my own choreography from them. In this way, we are bringing our generation closer to its own roots. Showing how beautiful folklore can be and how important it is not to forget the culture. I’m not going to get rich doing this, but I’m like you, for me it’s heart motivation, a mission, I just have to do it and I’m happy doing it. There are currently around 220 pupils at our school. The youngest are six, the oldest up to 25 years old. We perform with the best of them in front of large audiences from time to time, sometimes even abroad. I have to take care of the sponsoring myself. I don’t know how I always manage it, but so far it’s working and as you can see, we’re not having a good time here in Serbia,” he said, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.

Davor then proudly shows us around his school. We are allowed to film and photograph. He introduces us to his students and then shows us in the dressing room the very valuable garments and traditional costumes that are up to over 100 years old and are still worn today for special occasions when dancing. “Most of the treasures were burned a long time ago, but we still have beautiful embroideries and originals,” he explained. “What if they break? Nothing lasts forever,” I asked. “We keep trying to sew and repair the robes. I don’t know what we’ll do when they disintegrate completely,” he replied and I thought I could hear some melancholy in his voice:
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100 kilometers headwind

It takes a long time before we leave the city of Subotica with its hectic and dangerous traffic behind us. A gale-force wind is already blowing towards us as we leave the city. Due to the planned economy of a former communist country, there are no trees anywhere. They have all fallen victim to field cultivation and have reduced the landscape to a monotonous monotony. The wind is not slowed down by anything and can develop as it would on the open sea. Our speed is reduced from 19 to 11 kilometers per hour with double the effort. It feels as if an oversized hand is literally holding us down. We pedal until our lungs burn and barely make any progress. “It must be the autumn storms!” I shout against the wind and immediately fall silent again because the almost superhuman effort leaves no room for conversation. Trucks roar past us at crazy speed. As soon as they are at our height, we are hit by a pressure wave that literally pushes us forward as if we were just toys or dried leaves being thrown back and forth. Worst of all are the kings of the road approaching us, whose avalanche of wind throws itself at us mercilessly, grips us with an iron fist and then presses its cold, rough hand right into our faces. Our bikes almost come to a standstill even though our burning thighs are spinning the sprockets at crazy speed. We feel like we’re in a washing machine whose spin cycle stops the drum, only to change direction by 180° a fraction of a second later and then stop it again.

Cycling here on this insane road has nothing to do with fun anymore. All pleasure is gone, nipped in the bud, stubbed out like a cigarette on the rough asphalt. We feel like we’ve been spat out, like slime pressed into the sharp-edged asphalt joints by the rough, loudly thundering black rubber of the truck tires. “Ttttuuuuuuhhhhhttt!”, sounds the deep, soon ear-piercing horn of a heavy goods vehicle directly behind us, greeting or warning us joyfully. Every few minutes the Serbs honk a kind of salute for us. Again and again and again we are so startled by the sudden sounds that we almost fall out of the saddle.

Sometimes I literally scream with fear when a modern Mercedes speeds past us at 180 kilometers per hour. The whirring of the wheels coming from afar sounds like the attack of wild hornets and it sounds like the swift and merciless cut of a sharp butcher’s knife when the star carried on the polished hood races past our bodies like a rocket. Our nerves are on edge. We don’t have the slightest chance of avoiding it. There is no road we could turn down or flee down to escape the madness. Thoughts of the question of meaning soon cross my mind with painful force. Other long-distance cyclists must have similar experiences to ours. My respect for these people who put up with something like this is growing by the minute. I would never have believed that cycling would push me to my limits like this. How are we supposed to survive this? “Ttttuuuuuuhhhhhttt!” it sounds again. “How are we supposed to survive this?” I ask myself aloud. Where have the beautiful cycle paths gone? The idiocy of the lawn, the moronic traffic, the unleashed people with their uncontrolled emotions, clattering, thundering, rushing, and rolling over the ribbon of death. The deadly evidence of this unleashed traffic is everywhere. Dead cats stick to the black tar like flattened comic figures. Four feet stretch out of the fur that have not even managed to bend a joint to escape. Dead dogs will soon be on mass. Sticky tongues puff out of their open mouths and are eaten by ants. Rats, mice, snakes, birds of all kinds line the ribbon of death. I almost feel sick. Why are we cycling around here? What was the original idea? Where do we even want to go? Every few kilometers there are memorial plaques on the side of the road to commemorate the people who died here with all the animals. Some of them were victims and some perpetrators. In the end, it doesn’t matter who did what, because they are dead. Only her relatives think of her and bear her pain. A pain caused by this gray-black band on which we find ourselves. “Ttttuuuuuuhhhhhttt!” it snaps me out of my troubled thoughts again. It is only a matter of time before we are also immortalized here like flattened comic figures on the ground. We have to do something. Only what? The whole thing seems like Russian roulette to me. At some point, the cock hits the primer of a bullet. The wind, this time from the side, almost blows us off the road. A truck arrives at the same moment. Another king of the road is in the opposite lane at the same time. They can’t get past each other. We are the weakest link in the hierarchy. The truck driver behind us takes pity on us. His right foot slams on the brakes and the 38-ton truck comes to a halt in time. Sweats and anxiety attacks shake my system, shake my wife Tanja’s system.

“I need to step out!” she shouts, drowning out the traffic noise to make me stop for a moment. As we can’t put the bikes on the stand because of the heavy weight, we had to come up with something. In such cases, we park next to each other at the side of the road and lean the bikes with the saddlebags against each other. Tanja and I can then each get off the bike, while the other remains standing over the center bar of their bike to hold their partner’s bike by the handlebars.

Our trembling handlebars, the vibration of the heavily loaded frame and our concentration leave no view of the largely ugly landscape. There is garbage everywhere. The roadside is often completely littered with litter. In some places there are whole mountains of large, burst garbage bags. People dispose of their waste wherever they can and nobody clears it away. The country of Serbia is completely filthy and its inhabitants seem to trample it underfoot at every turn. Sure, environmental protection costs money and they spent it on the war. Economically, the place is in a real mess and we have the feeling that the years of war have made some of the people numb.

The wind mixes the enormous exhaust fumes and diesel vapors into a nasty cocktail. None of the vehicles appear to be equipped with a catalytic converter. After a short time we get a headache. Struggling against the merciless wind, we breathe the poisonous mixture into the deepest corners of our lungs with our mouths open. They start to burn, which causes our bodies to cough and fight back. “If we survive this, we’ll need a three-month spa stay in the mountains!” exclaims Tanja.

In the town of Bac Tobola, a driver almost knocks me off my bike. I’m only a few centimeters short of my left hand on the handlebars. One little swerve and it would have been over. The driver stops at the red light just a hundred meters ahead of us. As I pull up next to him, I look through the passenger window. “Just one centimeter and I’d be dead!” I say and show the speeding driver with my hand how close he missed me. The man, who is about fifty and dressed in a suit, looks at me somewhat pityingly, shrugs his shoulders and turns his gaze to the traffic lights.

We take the first opportunity so far to leave the busy arterial road. “The only way to get out of here safely is to take a detour and take a smaller road to Becei,” I explain to Tanja, pointing out the route on the map. At a small store next to the village of Bac Tobola, we take a break at kilometer 35 and buy juice and a chocolate. Because I couldn’t get reception with the satellite phone due to the urban canyons in Subotica, I used the village square to send the update. Then we continue in the direction of Belgrade. We take a breather every 10 or 15 kilometers. We drink water, eat a handful of rapunzel nut mix for refreshment, and then resume the battle with the unchanged strong headwind. The change of direction has actually made traffic a little quieter.

It is already late when we reach Becei. However, 45 euros for the overnight stay prompts us to pedal our bikes another 13 kilometers to Novi Becei. The planned economy, the muddy ground from previous rains and the almost indescribable number of mosquitoes soon make it impossible for us to find a suitable place for our tent. So we have to rely on the few accommodations that can be found here. We cross a weir on the mighty Theis, Europe’s largest tributary of the Danube. It is formed by the confluence of the Black Theis and the White Theis in the Forest Carpathians of Ukraine and flows into the Danube after 970 kilometers in the north of Serbia and Montenegro. “Let’s stop for a moment,” I say. It is already dark. To be on the safe side, we attach the indicators to our Uvex helmets again. “Ahh, quick! The mosquitoes are sucking me dry here!” shouts Tanja. We quickly put on a jacket to protect us from the cold at night and let our bikes glide down the bridge. The wind has calmed down recently. We reach the city in complete darkness and after exactly 100 kilometers we find an ugly hotel from the communist era. First, we put the dirty blankets to one side and lay our sleeping bags on the mattresses. Tanja boils hot water in the shower, far enough away from the shitty toilet. We decided to dine in the mosquito-infested room. We have no energy left for eating out. As the hot water boiler doesn’t work, the shower doesn’t work, but at least we sleep in a bed and have survived the day without an accident.

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