Last legs of Serbia to Bucharest

Our poor bikes had not seen much action once we got into Romania. But let me back up a bit...

We had our fun loving romp through Serbia in the heat and bug waves, on the ever rough and tumble route of Eurovelo 6(Atlantic to the Black Sea). I highly recommend if doing this route through Eastern Europe that you have a mountain bike with solid shocks, straight handlebars, and one hell of an ass pillow made of pure air for your seat, all of which we did not have. By the time we made it to Valiko Gradiste we were exhausted, it was hot, and let's face it, I am a whiney little child. We ended up there for a few days deciding our game plan. Greg, the ever-gracious husband that he is, agreed to let me take a bus the final 80 or so kilometers to the Romanian boarder. This would essentially take a final two day ride down to one and all in the hopes that we'd be able to grab a train across the border into Bucharest for a much needed rest.

After a failed attempt to board a bus in Valiko, we decided to say 'fuck it' and grin and bear it to the boarder after all. 16km to the next town I had yet again, unknown to me, suffered another broken spoke, thus causing my brakes to rub, giving me one challenging ride through some hills. So there I sat sweating my ass off and once again Greg said we could try to catch a bus. We were told "15-30minutes"(the local standard for time pertaining to anything of measure) for the next bus that was actually 3hours, I blissfully sat my happy ass down in an air conditioned cushy coach seat to the border.

So we arrived at the border, were greeted by a crossing guard who whistled when he saw our passports and sang a little quip of "Left my heart in San Francisco". We hauled ass the last 12km to the train station in Drobeta-Turnu Severin and attempted to board a train to the capital, Bucharest. Apparently Romania doesn't see much bicycle travel other than the locals in outward lying small villages, and as a result the first train we could board with our bikes was at 2am. The trains don't really cater to cycles and as a result we had to manipulate our bikes between cars while allowing room for other passengers to get by and chain smoke their cigarettes between stops. It ended up being a fun loving 5+hour train ride with little sleep.

Thankfully whilst on this train adventure we meet another cyclist from Bucharest, Ervin, who was extremely helpful in helping us with our bikes. We ended up spending a few days with him drinking beers and enjoying a local museum. Greg posted pictures here

Ervin is a good guy

After a good chunk of time being spent in the country, getting to the city of Bucharest was a nice change of pace. At first we didn't like it because we ended up in a part of town that seemed very dirty and run down. On the second day we switched location to a more suburban area with massive old houses and a lovely park. I instantly fell in love with all the old buildings but it is sad to see that a great deal of the historic areas are falling apart. Ervin informed us that the city won't put money into restoring the old buildings but won't let developers tear them down either. As a result, developers buy old buildings and weaken them further in hopes of them falling apart faster so they can then build their update new eye sores. Shame, really. Out of curiosity I looked at some prices of a few old homes. Example: 4-5 bed house built in 1906, huge, with a yard, about 85k Euro, or $100k USD. Granted, you'd have to spend another $100k to get the house up to living standards, but my god, you could own a mansion!!

Overall Bucharest was nice and the old buildings beautiful, but the drivers are nuts and the streets could use a sweeping. Still, I'd visit it again.