In a hurry

In the morning we had 3 riding days and 1800 km to home. Now, almost according to schedule, 2 days and just over 1200 km. But it will get faster now in transit, this morning we were still enjoying the last piece of the Alps, and then made a quick tour of Vienna's fancy buildings. Forgot to take photos with the old ones, here is one from the modern district across Donau.

Nocky mountains

Thanks to a roadside info display seen yesterday, we today found Nockalmstrasse, also called Nocky mountains (pic). Smaller and quieter, but also very nice. Even smaller, and with some roadworks, was Sölkpass. Choosing this road was especially fortunate since we found a dream place to stay on the other side: Zickhof. An absolutely wonderful farm on the hillside with fun people and the best food we've had this trip. They were grilling with friends when we arrived, and invited us to join. I still can't believe our luck. Norman got an opportunity to practice English with kids of the family (he has completely forgotten his German).

Grossglockner

Yesterday, started back from the conference in Ljubljana. The forecast was awful, but actually we hardly got any rain at all. Only Grossglockner was hidden in clouds again, as I guess it has been every time I've been on that road.

Industry

The Bran castle is a tourist attraction. Don't go there (unless you are a tourist of course). Even as a tourist, do not buy the extra ticket for the "time tunnel", costing as much as the castle entry itself. That's a one-minute elevator ride with movies shown on the walls, and you have to queue 40 minutes for it (see the people on the pic), while shouting angry employees repeatedly push waiting guests aside to ride the elevator themselves. The castle is best viewed from the road riding by, especially since the density of tourists gives you the queueing experience already there. With the Dracula character the castle has no real connection anyway. 

 

Discussing the day with Norman, we realised we both liked even groceries shopping better than the castle, not to mention the villages and mountains. It was such a relief to get on the bike again, and mountain roads to the SW of Bran were just great. We had pancakes for lunch and icecream for dinner, as a sort of compensation for contact with the tourist industry.

Omens

On Friday the 13th, the destination for the day was Dracula's castle. One of the first persons we met in the morning was carrying a scythe. Then a black cat crossed the road just before us. Then we passed a town called Târgu Mureș ('rightly worried' in Estonian). And then a roadsign specified that who is worried is Raul, my father. But I'm writing this on Saturday, so we were fine, thanks everybody for being worried.

Ukraine 2, or optimal stopping

Yesterday in the Ukraine, having seen multiple roadside ads for hot springs and spas, we decided to find one. The dream was a nice log house on a mountainside with a view of the sunset. We searched for 3 hours. This included a 20-km detour on a road that was a strong contender in our internal competition for the worst road of the trip. Norman said it was parkour, not riding. But all the places were closed, fully booked, didn't exist, or differed significantly from what was advertised. When exhausted, we finally settled in a grandmother-style guesthouse down in the valley with this view (the window was so small and near the floor I had to kneel to take the picture):

Today however, we stopped early at the first sign including the words "sauna" and "pool", and here I am on our balcony enjoying the sunset after the sauna and swim. Yes, it's a log house.

Ukraine 1

In between some very nice riding in the Karpathian mountains, waiting for the rain cloud to move out of the way and writing slides for the conference next week.

Poland

Yesterday was spent elbowing our way through Polish traffic on totally uninteresting roads. And the border crossing to Ukraine that I've already complained about here. Jumped the queue, drove right to the passport control booth, passing people who looked like they had spent days there. And still the border crossing procedure itself took 2.5 (yes two and a half) hours. Difficult to understand why do governments get away with this.

But now the waiting (on straight roads and cruise control) is over, roads in the Ukraine are interesting. Speed determined by road conditions and my abilities, rather than the mental world of legislators.

Lithuania

Starting from Võru provided an opportunity to avoid the all too familiar direct road to Poland, and go through Daugavpils and Vilnius instead. There are national parks and nice small towns like Trakai or Alytus. The road between these two was the dessert of the riding day - could finally switch off cruise control and tilt the bike a bit. But the biggest surprise was Ignalina. Expectation: nuclear power. Reality: ski resort. The pics are from central Vilnius where we had a picnic on the riverside. The writing on the wall reads "Let's have a moment of silence for all those who are stuck in traffic on their way to the gym to ride stationary bicycles". Since I didn't bring a bicycle or skates, I ended the day with a 11 km run in Alytus. Norman preferred his phone.

To Slovenia with Norman

The pretext for the trip this time is Euralex in Ljubljana. Going by bike with Norman. First stop Võru Folk.

Going North

Travelling alone gives good motivation to blog. With a companion, as you can see, the whole week has passed without a post. The weather has been wonderful and we’ve done 3000 km in the fjords, the coast and Lofoten.

The National Tourist Routes in Norway are overrated (unless your sense of fun is overtaking coaches and campers). We did several of them, and our favourite was the Helgelandskysten with its frequent ferries, varied scenery, and not a single tourist coach. No information on ferry schedules is available on the spot, but sitting on one ferry is a good time for checking the next one’s departures online. Sometimes they are back to back, with the whole ferryful driving together like a school trip. On occasion, though, reaching the next one gets fairly sporty, and once it happened that five bikers were the only ones who made it, and we had the ferry almost to ourselves. For me this was flat out racing, and I learned a thing or two about my curve technique from the three crazy Germans we were following (left on the pic).

On the other hand, there is an abundance of unbelievable paved singletracks with passing places. Some of them tens of kilometers long and going through wonderful scenery. A case in point is from Mogrenda towards Bjørke, especially until the E39 crossing. What made the ride even more fun was that we were in a hurry again, trying to reach the Hjørundfjord Hostel before reception was reportedly closing at 22. It didn’t close, by the way, and the whole hostel was very recommendable, especially at its price.

Travelling again

Bike trip again after a long while. This time with Ottomar, going to see the fjords and, with some luck, hoping to reach Nordkapp. Nothing much to report from the first day, 530 km mostly on tarmac, and now a nice signposted camping area in Elvdal. Would have bought potatoes, had I guessed that we’ll make a fire.
 

Tires

I’m home, the bike went to visit its parents for Christmas, and there's time to catch up on commenting the gear etc.

The Heidenau K60 tires held up well. They now have exactly 10k kilometers on them and they look like taking one trip more in the spring. As mentioned, they are good in soft sand. I was ready to lower the pressure when getting stuck, but didn’t have to. Even at 2.4/2.0 the rear had enough traction to come out of any hole I got it into, and both went easily flying on the surface already at 2nd gear. Also on rocky paths, which I found plenty of during this trip, I was too lazy to lower the pressure, because they felt good enough as they were.

Mud is different. It’s probably an issue that I have with mud, but there they really just slip in all directions. I’m trying hard not to panic, and in most situations can allow both wheels to slip without falling. Still, mud is only good for me as a warmup exercise, not as a surface to enjoy riding on. Even snow and ice feel better. The pic is from packed mud in Moldova, where both wheels just went sideways at one point; I didn’t crash, but ended up beside the track facing the wrong way.

The K60s are dual-purpose, and although I take every opportunity to get off tarmac, the fact is that most of the distance still gets covered on the highway. Time-wise the proportion is better of course, but distance-wise I’m afraid the practical schedules (e.g. needing to get from München to Istanbul in 2 days) result in the percentage being about 90% tarmac. Two impressions from that part too.

On the first evening with these tires, still in Germany, I got a chance to practice panic braking on the motorway, as a driver two cars ahead of me decided to bump into the next one, and the one before me reacted by hitting the brakes. The speed was moderate, and the GSA's integrated brake lever is wonderfully responsive, but it was still hard work for my index finger to get all this weight stopped. Made a note to retrain myself to keep TWO fingers on the lever at all times. 10k km later, the training is successfully done, two fingers go on the lever automatically. But the main lesson was that the new (250 km by that point) front K60 felt decidedly soft. Could almost feel each knobble give way. The same experience repeated later on tarmac hairpins where the K60 felt really out of place. And I’m not fast on those hairpins.

The rear K60 surprised me on a rainy motorway near Thessaloniki. Going uphill at constant 110 it started skidding. The ascent was nothing much, like a normal motorway. The rain was indeed heavy and the surface really wet. But still I didn’t expect or like the skidding at all.

The overall balance seems good, however, and the current feeling is that my next tires will be the same.

Made it

So it appears that 800 km a day in 0..3 degrees and intermittent rain/snow is doable. That included some sandy trails (my favourite surface) in the pine forests around Riga as a lunchtime warmup. 0 km to home.

13th

From Ukraine to Poland at Ustyluh was 13th border crossing this trip, and about 40th land border crossing this year. It was the first one that was unpleasant, that took more than an hour, and that involved irritated and shouting border officials. The whole problem was on the Polish side; Ukrainians were nice and helpful and finished with their stuff long before the Polish gate opened to accept the next car.

The queue seems to be a normal thing there, and experienced fellow travellers told me to jump the queue, because bikers always do. I didn't believe at first, but when people before me in the queue started telling me to go, and one of them actually moved his car to make room, I decided to give it a try. Indeed, nobody objected, and even the Ukrainian officials went out of their way to help me through. One even walked with me to show where to circle one of the border buildings. As a result, I only waited 2 hours; for the drivers, it took probably the whole day.

What the Polish did: checked the passports twice, then took the passports into their building and did something with them behind their mirror windows for ten minutes per car. Ten minutes, without exaggeration, also for Polish people getting into their home country. (And there were hundreds of cars waiting.) Then customs searched the cars, and my bike. Twice again. And then there was the last signless window where the lady took my passport 5th time and said something in Polish. I apologised for not understanding and asked her to use English or Russian. She repeated her Polish a couple of more times with an irritated face and then called a younger colleague, who translated: do you have fuel with you? Wtf? How common can electric bikes be at this border crossing? Worse - why ask at all, if my "yes" answer still allowed me to pass?

I wonder what is it with land borders. Why do governments get away there with wasting thousands of person-days each day on this crossing alone, out of sheer stupidity? The only other option is hostility, because at airports they prove that the same procedure can be done about a hundred times faster. If it needs to be done at all, see Schengen.

Planned to ride straight to Lithuania to avoid the Polish government collecting taxes on my hotel night, but got too tired and frozen, and allowed safety concerns override the irritation. So stopped at a random place, which happened to be Suchowola, claiming to be "the centre of Europe", 760 km to home. At least I won't buy fuel in Poland, with special reference to that idiotic last question.

Culinary studio

Best food of this trip, and possibly a couple of previous trips too, at culinary studio Крива Липа. The whole centre of Lviv is cool. English seems to be the clearly preferred lingua franca; twice did I try to address people in Russian as in smaller places this had worked best, but here the reply was invariantly "Do you speak English?" Maybe it's a sign of how bad my Russian is. Maybe not.

It was a hot (+8.5) sunny day and I decided to take in a piece of the Carpathian mountains. The road there was in appalling condition, people were driving at walking pace because of the potholes, and I didn't go much faster because of the ice. (Btw, the K60s have more grip on ice than they do in mud, and snow is even better.)

So the place is Lviv, 1276 km to home, and the updated forecast suggests I only have two more days to get out of here. Will try to start early tomorrow.

Ukraine

Crossed to Ukraine, again at sunset, and again the border crossing was pleasant and relatively fast. The first place with hotels was Chernovtsi, where the neatly renovated pedestrian street has restaurants full of local young people, rather than being empty or closed in the absence of tourists, a sight I had grown used to.

1551 km to home, and the weather forecast looks like I have four days to get there.

Roads in Moldova

Especially South of the capital, there's again nowhere to turn off to, the small ones are not closed, but only lead to the next field or farm. However, even major E-numbered highways provide enough wrestling with the bike to keep warm in the zero temperature. If they are paved, there are potholes with dimensions that I really wouldn't like to test if my fork can handle at 90. For a large part they are not, or then have drivers created new unsurfaced lanes on the side of the surfaced ones, because it's less bumpy there (first pic). Later when desperately needing a warmup, I did find a nice half-slippery sandy-muddy side trip near Frumoasa, including first snow (second pic). Frequent monasteries provide the only splashes of colour in the overall greyness of the countryside (third pic).

 

Heavy vehicles

Heavy vehicles not allowed on the main street of Chișinău. Didn't try how well they enforce that.

Yes, I'm in Chișinău, 1911 km to home. Saw first below-freezing temperatures while riding today and stopped well before dark, which gave me lots of time to walk around. Quite a charming city. The centre is modern, but only a couple of blocks away there are childhood memories (I grew up in the Soviet Union).

Roads on the Romanian coast

On the Romanian coast, there's nowhere to turn off the road to. But some of the roads actually used for traffic between the villages are enjoyably off themselves. And long at that, for instance from Pietreni to Rasova it's 20 km of pure fun over the rolling hills (pic). Mongolia for beginners.

Roads on the Bulgarian coast

Things marked as hiking trails in the Strandzha Nature Park are actually quite fast gravel roads. They get narrower and twistier towards the sea, but are certainly not closed for vehicles. There's not much to see though, because the whole area is thick forest (that's what the nature park is there for). What you do get to see is the logger characters and the park ranger characters from the Orizont movie.

In touristier areas on the coast, around Burgas and Varna, it is near impossible to turn off the highway, everything is closed, some roads even for bicycles, with signs about huge fines. The pic is from the singletrack that resulted from a non-closed road I did find between Batovo and Odartsi (follow the unfinished bypass, don't stop when that ends with a drop into a river valley).

Crap

The supermarket sells all kinds of crap here.

Lost son

Yesterday I stayed at an unbelievable place: Guest House Preslav in Nesebar, Bulgaria. Arrived early, to have a skype meeting for qlaara in the afternoon. While I was rushing to set up the meeting, the host surprised me with a bowl of delicious beans and a salad. How did she know I hadn't had lunch? "I've seen the likes of you before," she said. In the morning, when I went downstairs to scrape the ice off the bike, there was no need: the host had covered the bike with a blanket. And she even gave me a small present for the new year when leaving. Not to mention the room with a balcony and lots of light and the plentiful breakfast. I really felt like a lost son returned home, not like a hotel guest. Can't remember such thought-reading attention to detail from any guest accommodation, the only thing that might have come close is a five-star hotel in Firenze where I stayed many years ago.

The pic is from Nesebar old town at night. The authentic parts of both Nesebar and Sozopol (the two ancient cities on that stretch of the coast) are charming, which is quite a contrast with the overall industrial scale of the tourism industry here. Sunny Beach (Слънчев бряг) right next to Nesebar, for instance, is a proper 10 km long city of high rise hotels, closed and deserted at this time of the year.

First ice

Reached Bulgaria at sunset yesterday, at the easternmost crossing on the E87 (which btw is a nice lonely curved highway, recently renovated on the Turkish side. The border crossing was fast, no queue, but the procedure was different again from Bodrum, Edirne and Ipsala. Nobody is stopping you, you have to go inside the building yourself to look for the officials. They will only stop you later if you don't.

The weather has been unbelievably favourable, +12 and sunny, and looks like continuing this way. Only in the morning the bike was covered in ice. Given this weather and the wonderful roads, it's such a shame that I haven't seen any other long-distance bikers this whole week, riding or parked or anything.

Yesterday crossed to Europe at Canakkale by ferry. The ferry is fast, cheap and goes every half hour. Hoped to do some riding on the peninsula there, but that just doesn't happen. The whole peninsula is the biggest war memorial I've ever seen, with marked battle sites everywhere, signposted with how many thousands of people were slaughtered at what time on the morning of April 25th 1915. The mountains also level out around there, so the only fun to be had was 6th gear gravel roads on the plains later.

The pic is from Pergamon the other day, which is a nice change, provided that you have satisfied the first hunger for riding mountain paths. The ruins are at a hilltop with good views, and the signs explain technical details like why were the Romans able to build a much larger terrace than the Greeks before them.

Two countries

Both in Greece and Turkey, mountain roads are thankfully open and sometimes tough. The pic is from a road on Kos that narrowed to a singletrack and contained gradients that tested my limits. (If you are wondering about my riding level for comparison, then it's approximately where Aras, Hechlingen and Stehlin aim with their "advanced" courses.)

The difference between the countries is that while in Greece, as mentioned before, even major roads just end in random places, my impression of Turkey is the opposite. Roads always connect to the other side, so if you want to cross a mountain range and find a track going up from the highway, then this track is quite likely to take you all the way to the other side, with multiple branching points, even if it's not on the map. Wonderful place.

Another difference is that tourist towns on the Turkish coast are much more lively than the ones on Rhodos or Kos.

Greek island ferries

Not recommended, at least not in the winter, for getting to Turkey. The ferries between the Greek islands are fine, the difficult part is the last 100 m (almost literally) to Turkey. There are no ferries at all from Rhodes. If there is one (from Kos) then it is not known in advance if it takes vehicles. The ticket office is closed with no sign about opening times. The travel agent in town does sell tickets, but lies about prices, and actually fails to call the ferry company with the reservation (it was pure luck that there still were places when I got to the harbour). This last 100 m costs twice as much as the overnight journey here from Athens. Border formalities take an hour on each side, mostly consisting of waiting for the customs officer to arrive. But at least the bike could enjoy the coolest cardeck ever, and the view from the bench in Bodrum where I waited for the Turkish customs guy was not bad either.

Beach

Best thing about a beach? Car tracks all over it, suggesting it's ok to go. Couldn't resist again, and rode until the next river where a local fisherman suggested it's not worth trying to cross. That was Pamukçuk beach just North of Kuşadası. The people in the background were nice German ladies looking for their husbands who had gone swimming. The husbands emerged from the bush shortly thereafter.