Tuesday 2 September 2008

1800 - 2700 miles: Belgrade to Istanbul

Inevitably, after posting a blog about the weather being too hot, we left Belgrade in the rain being sprayed by speeding traffic. We went in search of the Danube Cycle Trail dreamed up by the Germans but found no trace of it for 200 miles, so made it up ourselves.


Wet, cold and hungry we found refuge in the Hotel Grad in Kovin, after discovering that the campsite shown on our map did not exist. The Grad was built during communist times and was still functionıng as such, a genuine throwback and worth a stay if ever you find yourself stranded in Kovin. The cleaners stared at us through their fog of cigarette smoke as we trudged our wet gear up to the room (which was designed to look like a student room from the 1980's). Confusion ensued when we attempted to order drinks wıth our meal rather than at the bar beforehand (how silly of us). There was no menu so we plumped for what was offered - fish from the river wıth chips. Further confusion ensued, involving the chef, the waitress and the lad on reception (who was the only english speaker) and after a while he explained that the fish were not very big and did we want two fısh each. Imagining some kind of minnow we agreed. We got four normal sized trout, wıth salad. The waitress sat at the table opposite smoking fags and drinking coffee while we ate, only rising to clear the plates when she had finished her smoke.

Rural Serbia had not been inspiring so we pinned our hopes on the Romanian side of the Danube. We paused for lunch ın the Serbian town of Kaludervo before crossing the border. It appeared to be some kind of holiday place for fishermen but looked more like somewhere you got sent for hard labour. And so we passed into the land of plenty (the EU) and it started tipping it down as we hauled ourselves up a bloody great hill for half an hour. We were wet, cold, hungry and had no Romanian currency as we sped down the other side into the most desperate place we had yet seen. Under a lead grey sky the crumbling reinforced concrete apartments of Moldova Nova wıth ıts roamıng packs of stray dogs, dumped rubbish in puddles of rain, set off against an enormous semi-derelict industrial building half-way up a hillside were about as depressing as it gets. It was glaringly obvious why Romanians would want to migrate to elsewhere in the EU.


The River Danube itself was swollen like a giant lake due to the hydro-electric dam 100 miles downstream. It was impressive as it forced its way through a range of hills with national parks on both sides of the river, creating some inspiring natural scenery, and we shared the road wıth horse and carts. The villages along the way were desperate places wıth hardly any good fresh food to be had. The whole area was overrun with stray dogs as rubbish is dumped everywhere and a dog tried to bite Tracey as we cycled past, fortunately only getting her top tied to her bike.



Travelling without a useful guidebook has often meant that we have no idea of what to expect of places and has often left us surprised at what we have stumbled across and so it was as we rounded a bend of the river and saw a giant face four storeys high carved into the rock face.



We camped on some waste ground next to the river one night (with permission from some locals) and were asked to show our documents by passing Border Patrol Police trying to stop illegal immigrants gettıng into the EU. It rained some more, the communist architecture didn't improve, the dogs and the rubbish persisted, so after a fairly terrifying stretch of highway where a variety of international truck drivers did their best to force us off the road, we took the first opportunity to get the hell out of Romania and cycled back to the comparative civilisation of Serbia over the top of the hydro-electric dam.



We continued followıng the Danube through Serbia and into Bulgaria, land of the horse/mule and cart. It took us just nine days of cycling to get from the north-east of the country to the border with Turkey. It was blisteringly hot all the way and the minor roads were more pothole than surface. We continued along the Danube for four days which became an up and down epic with incredible panoramic views over the river and Romanian plain to the north and across the Bulgarian plain to the south with some desperate communist era towns in between. We camped rough every night, sweating in the tent under clear starry sky's to the sounds of thousands of chirpıng crickets and during the day we were accompanied by flocks of bee-eaters, rollers and golden orioles.



We stopped for shade and lunch one day on a beach on the Danube where we washed in water that we had knowingly crapped in several times upstream (floating nightclubs, restaurants and cafes along the Danube all have toilets that flush straight into the river), not to mention the nuclear power station, numerous ageing factories and foul smelling sewage works. The fact that we felt much cleaner for the wash perhaps best indicates how hot and grubby we were!



We were sad to leave our watery companion when we finally turned south. We had been following the Danube for 400 miles and before that her tributary the River Sava and the Sava's tributary the Krka, in total some 800 miles - perhaps not remarkable for people who live on large continents but for inhabitants of a small island it seemed quite amazing.



We paused a day in the medieval city of Velike Tarnovo and were fortunate enough to catch the 13th International Folklore Festival. It was brilliant, in a Eurovision kind of way (which appeared to be lost on most of the Bulgarians) and we plan to make our fortunes on our return by touring it around the student bars of the UK. Romanians slapping their boots, you can't beat it.



Beyond Velike Tarnovo lay the Balkan Mountains, a very hard slog in the heat and not helped when the nice tarmac road we were on turned to rubble and my confident prediction that the road couldn't go straıght over the top of a mountain and that there would be a pass somewhere proved unfounded. Nevertheless we camped near the top wıth fantastic views of the wooded hills as the sun set and the air cooled and despite how far we could see there was not a light ın sight at night, which ıs fairly remarkable in this crowded world we live in.



On the other side the land was scorched brown and dry as we crossed a plaın of intensive agriculture, mining and power stations and where we found it hard to find any fresh food ın the village shops - in one place the sum total for the three shops in the town was three potatoes - we suspect that the 5-a-day campaign might not yet have reached these parts!


We then climbed up again, fairly steeply to the top of a range of hills that gave panoramic views of the plains and hills of Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey - from where we swooped down into a valley and onto the Turkish border.

Upon leaving Bulgaria we passed through four exit checkpoints before entering no-mans land. When we reached the Turkish checkpoint they would not let us through without the visa we had to buy for 10 pounds. We had saved 20 pounds worth of Bulgarian currency to pay for the visa and so went over to a group of small white cabins to buy our visas. However the grumpy visa man would not accept Bulgarian currency, neither would the unhelpful bank man ın the cabin next-door change our money to pounds or euros or cash any travellers cheques. Tracey happened to have a fiver she had forgotten to change when we left the UK but that was it. So we were stranded in no-mans land in the midday sun in the chaos of the construction works going on and the half-mile queues of traffic trying to get into Bulgaria. Tracey was close to tears and it looked like our only hope was to go up and down the lınes of cars asking if anyone would change our Bulgarian currency. However, seeing a woman ın distress was too much for a kindly customs official (its true, they do exist) who took Tracey over to another booth and more or less ordered the person to change our money. Problem solved we were able to buy our vısa and enter Turkey. We were so hot when we arrived in Edirne that I drank two cans of ice cold Sprite in four gulps.



I had some sympathy with the Balkan countries, their strategic location has meant that their history ıs one of being conquered and crushed as various tribes and armies since the dawn of civilisation have passed through between Europe and Asia. Belgrade is one of the oldest cities ın Europe but it has apparently been razed to the ground over forty times and the oldest buildıngs only date back to the 19th century. To top it all off they had the communists inflict thier charming concrete architecture. The result is that compared to the rest of Europe their cities, towns and villages seemed unattractive and without charm, with few buildings of interest to the tourist. Across the Turkısh border ın Edirne it became clear who had been doing the sacking. As the former capital of the Ottoman Empire the town was awash with amazing mosques ın a variety of styles dating back to the start of the 15th century. It really was a very different country to the Balkan villages we had been passing through and we rejoiced at being able to eat delicious fresh fruit again.



We pressed on to Istanbul in order to make our date wıth Tracey's friend Gill who was coming out to visit us there. It was 150 terrible miles of up and down into a head wind in the scorching sun over an intensively farmed and industrial landscape on the hard shoulder of a main road - a bit like cycling 150 miles into London along the A1, except hotter and hillier wıth the hard shoulder periodically disappearing or going to dirt. The first sight of the Sea of Marmara cheered our spirits and we camped on top of a grassy hill with a sea view and I was chased by an owl (which was scarier than you think).


We had hoped to camp by the sea for a rest before heading into Istanbul but the campsite on our map didn't exist and instead we found ourselves on a 5 lane highway in the thick of Sunday trippers to the beaches on their way back into the city. Perhaps the best way to describe the terrifying ordeal that ensued is to imagine cycling down the M1 into London without a hard shoulder and as you reach the junctıon for the M25 and traffic is turning left at 70mph to join the motorway but you want to cycle straight ahead and ıts hot, there is a strong side wind making you unstable and you have already cycled 40 miles. I have never been so scared cycling in my life. It was a terrıble white knuckle adrenaline ride that I was glad to get out of alive. Needless to say that by the time we had discovered the campsite we aimed to stay ın Istanbul no longer existed it was dark so we sought refuge in the nearest hotel and a stiff drink.



We stayed in Istanbul for a week and had a great time, wıth Gill staying for the week-end. I would recommend anyone who likes cities to spend a few days there. It's a huge modern city of 12 million people with some amazing buildings dating back to the Roman era, bustling bazaars, busy waterfronts and it has a fantastic setting, built on hills overlooking the shores of the Sea of Marmara and the Bosphorous Channel linking it to the Black Sea. One side of the city lies in Europe and the other in Asia. We had crossed Europe in 85 days, ahead of us was a different story.