When you could ride faster than a train

Today is our last day on the bikes. Even though there have been days when I wished my bike at the bottom of a ravine below whatever perilous mountain I had been hauling up at the time, it is with sadness that I pack up my meagre belongings for the last time, cram them into their separate, water-proof bags, and then stuff them into my water-proof panniers. I pull on my cycling gear, make that one last check around the beautiful room we have slept in, and leave.

On my bike I find a note from Andy and Lynn, our fleeting friends from last night, with contact details and an invitation to look them up if we ever come their way. By now they will be on their tandem, pushing on to the Black Sea. We load up our bikes, set a course for Romania, and leave town.

To get to Romania we have to cross the New Europe Bridge, a huge bridge that connects Vidin and Calafat. It is only the second bridge across the Danube between Bulgaria and Romania since Constantine’s Bridge which was built back in the fourth century. This bridge is new. Very new. It was opened only in 2013 after many years of construction and even more years of stuffing around.

To get to the bridge we must ride along a highway. We’ve not seen a road like this in a long time and ride swiftly, but with caution, as we always do on busy roads. But this one is not busy. Not busy yet perhaps.

I had read there was a bike lane on the bridge, but that it was hard to get to. I see no sign of a bike lane as we pedal our way up and over the bridge. I turn my head left and right, taking in views of the Danube, the river we are leaving today. But I see no bike lane.

We don’t really need one. We are passed by exactly zero cars as we make our way over the 2km bridge. On the other side we negotiate a wide, sweeping bend that takes us down from the bridge, to passport control and toll booths. We clear the passport control, and are waved through the toll booths. It is free for cyclists!

We are in Romania, our eighth country on this trip and the seventh we have cycled in. Once off the bridge the road changes and we cycle along an adequate but not brilliant road into Calafat.

We head directly to the train station. There is a train we wish to catch to get to Bucaresti. Neil, with his basics of this region’s languages, has done most of the language research and basic communication for us everywhere except Hungary. Romania is my turn, because I have some small experience with Spanish. Romanian is supposed to be a bit like Spanish. It doesn’t look much like Spanish.

I walk into the train station. It is completely empty. I find the ticket seller window, and, in my very best Spanish I ask for tickets for two adults and two bicycles to Bucaresti. To my surprise, she seems to understand me, and starts what seems to be a terribly involved process, including several phone calls and much tapping away on a computer. At the end of it all, time that must have extended past 15 or 20 minutes, she hands me a wad of tickets. We have two trains to catch. AND our bikes are welcome.

All the way through this trip, one of my concerns was that we would reach Romania and our bikes would not be allowed on trains. I had read many other traveller blogs and they talked about having to sneak their bikes on the train and bribe conductors. It is with relief that we are OK with the bikes.

We have some time to fill before the train, so we head back into town, and settle at a café. Almost as soon as we arrived in Romania, I could feel a difference in the air. We left the safe cocoon of Serbia, where we were coddled and cosseted and treated like VIPs simply for visiting the country. Here, I feel a shift, a sense of uneasiness, and a need to gather my belongings about me. Perhaps too many stories from our friends last night, or too many stories from Aleksandr back in Donji Milanovac? Nothing comes to pass, and I feel bad even writing this, but it is just what I felt.

We finally board our train, our very very slow train. Our train that takes 3 hours to travel 90km. We could almost have cycled the distance in that time. It is a scruffy local train that moves like a snail and stops in unlikely places to pick up and drop off passengers. Our bikes are propped at the very end of the train, where the doors swing open unexpectedly from time to time; doors we are unable to secure. We are nervous for our bikes, but they cling to the train, and we arrive at our stopover point (Craiova) with bikes and possessions intact.

The second leg of the journey takes us from Craiova to Bucaresti, and this time is a normal train travelling at a regular speed. We eat chips and consume drinks from the on-train seller and relax as our train takes us further and further from the Danube, drawing us ever so slowly toward reality.

In Bucaresti we mount our bikes for the last time ever on this trip. We are one day earlier than planned, but have made arrangements with our hotel. We carefully navigate the busy city streets, and, like normal, make a few wrong turns and overshoots before we hit the quiet street that houses the Grand Boutique Hotel, a hotel that is quite the loveliest I have ever stayed in. Neil has carried on a conversation with Alexandru from this hotel since first booking and we have posted various packages for the hotel to store for our arrival. Alexandru is not on duty this evening but we are welcomed warmly, and a secure place found for our bikes. We bask in the luxury of our room, showering off the dust and grime, before enjoying our last end-of-day drink in the beautiful hotel bar. We head out looking for dinner, locating a restaurant after some difficulty and much wandering around. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this city.

We plan to take a train to Brašov tomorrow, without the bikes. We have a few days before our flight home, but for the bikes, the holiday is over.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 24km
• Climb: 103m
• Average speed: 18.5km/h
• Average temperature: 20C
• Moving time: 1:17:59
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken in the bar at the Grand Boutique Hotel in Bucaresti, but I forgot to take the picture. Instead, here’s a picture taken outside our hotel at another time.

Along the way today: