The Danube gorge in the Carpathian Mountains

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 50 and 400 m. long, mostly about 100 m. long. The tunnels cut through the rockbed, showcasing rocks varying in color between pink, purple, lavender, brown, green, slate gray, and orange. Mother Nature is truly the most talented of all artists.

We passed a wonderful day. Spring was here. The sun was shining. We were happy to be back on the bikes again after a long, cold winter. It’s a world of difference between biking in the springtime and the wintertime. The mountains were beautiful, the river was beautiful. For each tunnel that we passed, we played a game, trying to guess how long each one was going to be. I usually won (sometimes by cheating a little bit!) – my vision is better than Stephane’s!

There was less trash in this part of the country, mostly because there were no towns and no cars. All the cars passed on the busier road, while we stayed along the river. It was peaceful travelling like this. We could ride side by side. The road was scattered with falling rocks here and there. The barriers that were in place to prevent falling rocks from reaching the road did little good. One big rock broke loose from a cliff and gravitated toward the earth – or, rather, towards me. It narrowly missed me by about a foot. We tried to stay towards the center of the road, away from the cliff’s edge, as much as possible.

Towards 6:00 PM, as night was falling, we passed through Tunnel #5 and up a long, long hill. It got steeper and steeper, and still we pedalled away. Several kilometers – up, up, up. It was very difficult. I was proud of myself to have made it to the top. I have to confess, my legs are bigger now than they were when we started our trip last summer! The view from the top was rewarding. The valley below, with houses sparsely scattered on the mountainside. A woman here and there walking home down the hillside carrying wood on her back for the fire.

As we stopped at the top to admire the view, two young men on bicycles approached us. One spoke to us in broken English and asked us if we would like to stay with his family for the night. What good luck! We had been wondering where we would find a spot for our tent, as the mountainside was too steep to set it up. The young man was Jovica and had celebrated his 25th birthday the night before. He took us to his house half a kilometer down a steep dirt path. He served us tea made from berries – the kind of berries that little kids in France put in each other’s shirts as a practical joke because they are very itchy. Stephane couldn’t believe that people actually ate the berries. He watched in astonishment as the tea was being prepared. I’ve had some good tea before and I’ve had some excellent tea. This was awful. We almost gagged as we tried politely to swallow it. I drank Stephane’s tea for him. He owes me. I suppose he makes up for it by drinking the hard liquor that people always insist on serving us, and that I have a hard time swallowing – but that he somehow manages to actually enjoy.

It was difficult to talk with Jovica’s family. I was extremely tired. He spoke only the most rudimentary of English, while his younger cousins that studied English at school were very shy. They were good hosts, though. We ate with the family – beans, cabbage with paprika seasoning, hot peppers, a very greasy omelet, bread, and extremely salty cheese. The next morning we had potatoes, cabbage, peppers, bread, cheese, and of course, rakija (the local brandy) for breakfast. We were offered our own room. Was I ever happy to go to sleep that night!

First Day of Spring – Camping Under the Stars

I awoke refreshed the next morning and found that it was much easier to talk to Jovica, now that I wasn’t so tired. We spent the morning outdoors admiring the view from Jovica’s garden and from his aunt and uncle’s farm, who lived farther up the mountain than he did. In fact, we thought we had stumbled upon a tiny village – or community, actually, because there were only a few houses and no stores or bar. But as it turns out, every house in the community belonged to a member of his family – 4 or 5 houses in all. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. We had seen a lot of communities like this in Serbia – whole families that lived on the same street or in the same neighborhood. After realizing this, it was no wonder that everyone called their cousins “brothers and sisters.” They practically lived together as such. We went to visit with one uncle for a spot of rakija, then we climbed the mountainside approximately one kilometer to another uncle’s house to have a drink with them.

On Jovica’s farm, there were horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens. We got water from the well outside the house. We walked up the mountainside (there was not even a dirt path) to another uncle’s house in the sunlight. We stood on the top of a mountain in Serbia looking out over the river towards the mountains of Romania. We walked with Jovica’s six-year old cousin Maya, who picked flowers from the fields for me and let me hold her brand-new puppy and her snow-white bunny.

The thing that shocked me was that we were on top of a mountain in the middle of beautiful Nature – blue river, green blades of grass and green leaves starting to appear on the trees, blue and yellow flower in the fields – and still there were piles of trash. Dumped over the mountainside towards the river – in their own backyard! I was shocked. Maybe the problem stemmed in part from the fact that no trash trucks came out this far to collect the garbage. But then shouldn’t they maybe deposit it in the closest town, which wasn’t far away? I don’t know. I don’t know the exact reasons for the problem, nor do I know the solution. I simply know that it appalled me.

We left with a good feeling from Jovica and his family. He reminded us a little of Miodrag (from Backa Palanka, in western Serbia) in his mannerisms and the way he talked.

Then…Woohoo!! We went downhill for about 3 km. after starting at the top of the mountain. What a way to start the day! I got up to 55 kph (33 mph) and Stephane reached 70 kph (I was too scared to go that fast and put on the brakes!). The road was in good condition and we pedalled by the Danube all day long. The road twisted and turned a lot. We took the long route, which followed the road along the Romanian-Serbian border instead of cutting across the mountains. We crossed the last five of the 21 tunnels. It was hard going. The road was steep. Especially the last hill, which was 3 km. long and up all the way. I was advncing at a whopping 5 kph. Never got off the bike, though. Stephane was so far ahead of me that I lost him from view. I thought about the film “Les Triplettes de Belleville,” and the idea passed through my brain for a brief moment that he had been kidnapped by the French mafia and sold to New York, like our “Tour de France” hero in the movie. We were isolated, in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes my imagination runs overtime. Then I saw him light-years ahead of me – he had turned a curve in the road. I felt reassured.

As I advanced slowly up the mountain, I had more than adequate time to admire the cliffs, the mountains, the mountain passes, the sparkling water – it was all beautiful. The cliffs were carved in different colors. The few houses and shacks that we saw were poor. Rocks fell onto the road from the sheer cliffs.

Finally, after the long ascent, I reached the top, where Stephane had already been resting for a long while. We actually found a spot at the top to camp. In front of the trees on the cliff’s edge, hidden from view. The first day of Spring, and we were camping again. It was nice to be outside again, just the two of us alone. We cooked dinner under the stars, then laid on our backs and Stephane pointed out the different constellations and planets to me. We saw two planets. And one of my first-ever shooting stars. It was romantic.

Down, down, down…then flatlands and small villages

It was cold when we rolled out of our tent, but oh!, what a view! Tent right on top of the mountain, sunrise, breakfast overlooking the river and the mountains on the other side. Best feeling in the world. We were so happy to be alive. Cool, fresh air and the sun beating down on us.

We cycled the tiniest bit uphill, saw the Roman ruins, then went down, down, down, faster and faster for 3 kms. We sped by on good roads. I reached 55 kph, quite a change from the 5kph of the previous night, and Stephane reached almost 75! Whoopee! We were having so much fun. We rode along the river, and the weather was perfect for a weekend outing, but I saw no boaters. Not even canoers.

After about 20 kms., the scenery changed. It became flatter. We could see the mountains in the distance on the Romanian side. We passed seemingly hundreds of small bridges on the Romanian side. This region was called the “Iron Bridges,” and was beautiful. There were cliffs on both sides of the river. Then we passed green and brown fields. It was good to see the green fields; everything had seemed so brown since Slovakia.

We passed small villages and cute towns on the hillsides flanking both sides of the Danube. Some of these towns were not so poor as other ones we had seen. There were villas, large and close together. Old men and women sat talking on the benches lining the main streets of the towns. On the roadways, we saw not only cars, but also tractors and horses and wagons.

As the river snaked its way around the far northeastern corner of Serbia, we passed more fields and more rich houses on the waterfront. The fields we passed had big wooden crosses in guise of scarecrows, and one imaginative soul even hung a doll’s head from a tree.

As the day drew to a close and we registered 75 km. on our odometers, we were forced to knock on someone’s door to ask to camp in their yard because there was nowhere to put our tent in these flatlands. As luck would have it, we saw a teenage boy and his father outside of their houses walking towards us. They invited us in and we shared their supper of grilled meat, bread, pickles, and amazing homemade doughnuts. We were with Dajen (17), his sister Adrijana (10), his grandmother Baba Marija, and his parents. We played foosball at the local bar with Dajen and his father. It was fun, but boy, was I happy to get to bed.

We passed little traffic the next day as we headed towards Bulgaria. Brown and green fields. Were able to speak with Miodrag and Ivan’s mother, Milka, before crossing the border. Tried to call Ivana without luck. Then came Bulgaria….