The Danube Gorge

The gorges of the Danube valley started, and we passed Roman ruins riverside. There were few towns in this region, with large distances which separated them. Very few, almost nonexistent small villages were between. You blinked, and the village was gone. We were happy. The weather was beautiful – it was our first day of wearing shorts since last September. Spring had sprung!

Then the tunnels started. Twenty-one in all that cut through the mountains. They were all between 5.. Read More »

East of Belgrade:

On the routes of eastern Serbia, two things seemed to be omnipresent: dead dogs and trash. Even if you tried to look away from the dogs, you couldn’t avoid the trash that covered the landscape. Trash in the towns, trash in the streams and rivers, trash along the riverbanks, trash in the fields that lined the roads, trash in people’s own backyards. It was everywhere – heaps and heaps of it. It certainly didn’t help that the local or national government had neglected to put tr.. Read More »

Leaving Belgrade:

We left Belgrade in a warm Spring breeze – or, rather, the strongest wind we’d had thus far. Tiring, oh so tiring. Almost pushed us backwards. But Spring is definitely here. Oh, happy life! Sunshine.

We biked 50 km. to the small town of Kovin with a group of bikers from a cycling club – organized by Dragan Stankovic, who had heard Stephane’s interview on Serbian radio. Ten men and me. One said that passing cars probably thought it was terrible that all those men let a gir.. Read More »

Serbs talk about Serbia:

Our first real conversation about Serbia was with Ivan. We didn’t talk about it much in Backa Palanka, but you could tell that it was there under the surface. Miodrag’s mother and grandmother were afraid of the “bad people

Our life in Belgrade:

When I came back from Paris, I found out that Ivan had been showing Stephane around town. As he played in different bands, all of his friends were musicians and played in bars and clubs in the city. He had introduced Stephane to his friends and to the nightlife of Belgrade. So every time we showed up at a bar, we knew the band members or some of the bar staff.

There was one band that we especially liked, a band called “Eclipsa.” We liked them as much for their fri.. Read More »

Impressions of Belgrade – February – March 2004

Meeting Ivan:
We arrived in Belgrade amid a gray cloud of smoke and car exhaust, navigating our way over roads filled with potholes and trash. It was not easy trying to avoid the potholes and the slippery slush when there was no shoulder on the road there was a steady stream of cars flowing towards the inner city. We crossed a bridge and saw dilapidated boats on the river below through the thick cloud of gray fog. We arrived at the tourist offi.. Read More »

“Back to Paris…” – February 2004

This was an unplanned chapter in our story, my taking the bus back to Paris for a short interlude. We had decided that it would be better for me to have a French passport over the course of our voyage, and since the French government had decided to no longer issue passports in foreign embassies, I was obliged to travel back to France to obtain one (We had not taken into account the possibility that the law would be changed during the course of our trip. The .. Read More »

Backa Palanka with Miodrag – January – Feburary 2004

The Arrival:
We left Josipa, Ante, Nikola, Ivka, and Paula at noon with a bagful of provisions, homemade chorizo included. The snow was coming down fast and thick. It covered the roads in quantities sufficient enough to make me afraid of falling. The result being that we moved very, very slowly. Downhill was torture because I was on my brakes the whole time, all the weight of my bike pressed forward on my shoulders, afraid of going too fas.. Read More »