Blogs from Serbia, Europe

I generally do not like travel articles like this. Frenz Hub lists twelve European countries that are ranked bad to worst. I have visited a few. Frenz Hub: Despite the allure of Transylvania, Romania is plagued by poverty and corruption. It has much work to do to make it a more attractive destination. A Romanian politician, Traian Basescu emphasized, “There is no such thing as several Romanias, but only politicians who divide Romania depending on the interests of their parties and their clout.” Granted, I was staying with great American friends, Dirty Pat and Mrs. Pat while visiting. They are quick to learn the local customs and rules, so it made my trip quite enjoyable. We dined at some of the best places, visited the famous Bran Castle (aka Dracula's Castle), and met some interesting local ... read more

We left our salubrious 2 level 3 bedroom apartment in Nis just after 8am. Apartments suit us well. They give us plenty of room to spread out, and if we're lucky, we each get a bedroom to ourselves. Our destination today is Pirot, some 68kms away with two significant climbs included. As is normally the case, it's slow going winding our way out of a big city. We've only covered 12kms in our first hour of riding. While it's been flat, we've noticed a bit of head wind today. There's no denying today's ride was all about the climbs. Individually, neither of them are too fearsome, but with two back to back and with over 3,600kms in the legs, we didn't know how much of a factor fatigue would be. For those that ride and climb ... read more

Our Fairy Godmother brought over a dish with a dozen fries eggs and an ice cream container full of long syrupy sweet donut type things right on 7pm. We combined that with the home grown vegies and left over sausages from lunch and we had quite a feast for dinner. I can't say I've ever had fried eggs as the main component of dinner but it seemed to work. We used the cold meats and cheese in the fridge with the extra bread and made up rolls for lunch. We had effectively gotten 4 meals provided free of charge so we decided to leave a very sizeable tip for our host thanking her for her generosity. Due to our short distance today we slept with no alarm. A lazy riding morning is a luxury we haven't ... read more

We had to delay dinner for a while as the heavens opened just as we were about to leave. There was plenty of thunder and lightening to accompany the rain as well. Dinner was Italian. Jeff and Tom ordered medium pizzas that would have had to be 45cm in diameter and there was a size bigger than that! I settled for the Chef's Burger which was delicious. (And yes, Tom finished his and Jeff battled manfully leaving one piece which he took away in a doggy bag). We left at 7:30am today as we had 89kms to travel. Getting out of Smederevo required concentration as the traffic was very busy and the drivers quite aggressive. We were on a side road to the main highway going south, so while there was traffic, once we got out ... read more

We sailed out of Budapest on Wednesday, August 30th. On Thursday morning we arrived in Kalocsa, still in Hungary. Here we first went to the Assumption Cathedral where we admired the church but had an organ concert which was superb. Then we walked around the local area before boarding buses which took us to the area called the Putza. This contains the Plains of Hungary which are the flat agricultural land which grow corn, paprika and other crops essential for feeding both people and animals. Our next destination was a horse farm where we had a great show of horsemanship from a range of horsemen and carriage drivers. The whip cracking riders welcomed us as we drove in and we were then given a welcome drink of local brandy and bread with paprika. Then we settled ... read more