Last night, we cooked pasta with Marcella Hazan’s famous four-ingredient tomato sauce. Well, we did not remove the onion but sliced it and ate it with the sauce. And we added the whole 125g (110% of a stick of butter) piece of butter we bought. It was delicious. Today on the bike, I thought about the Anthony Bourdain quote Liz told me a while back: “In a good restaurant, what this all adds up to is that you could be putting away almost a stick of butter with every meal.”
Rastko, who is running the guest house we stayed at, invited us to join him and his girlfriend Isidora on the terrace. He then explained that he and his father are building the infrastructure needed to run a restaurant as well, and the terrace we were on would be part of it. They are from Niš in the south and spend their summers here, where his grandfather grew up.
Isidora studied to be an English teacher, but does not like teaching, so will look for opportunities in translation. It is hard to find jobs she mentioned, and the pay is bad. She made 250€ a month as a teacher, and her monthly expenses are about that as well.
Because of the dire job market, they said that many young Serbians go to the USA on a temporary work visa. I don’t remember exactly, but I think the visa allows three months work and one month travel after. They said that many use the travel month to work more and then overstay their visa and work illegally. They mentioned earnings of $17 per day, which I doubt a bit, because it would be not much more than what one could make here, and would be significantly below minimum wage (federal is $7.25/h). In any case, Ratko’s cousin is currently working in the USA.
The conversation then shifted to Isidora’s memories of the 1998/1999 war in Kosovo. She and her family lived there before they had to flee. Thankfully, her grandmother had an apartment for them in Niš where they could go. She said that after the war, they could not return – I don’t remember if she said it is because somebody else took their apartment, but they said that many Serbs tried to return but would find that someone had appropriated their former home.
As we talked, a thunderstorm was brewing, and soon there was flash and thunder, too. Isidora said that she still feels afraid during thunderstorms, because it reminds her of the NATO bombings (she was 5 and 6 years old during the Kosovo war). To help calm Isidora down, Ratko sang/played the “Fuck you Thunder” song from the movie Ted.
They told us about the bombings that, according to them, killed many Serbian civilians, and they mentioned the bombing of a hospital and a TV station. We asked why NATO was bombing Serbia; they did not know, but offered their suspicions about the USA wanting to “use their bombs” and to wage a war that was none of their business.
According to Wikipedia, the bombing campaign marked the first time that NATO used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council, and was described as a humanitarian intervention, with a NATO spokesman saying the goal is “Serbs out, peacekeepers in, [Albanian] refugees back”.
In Serbia, the name of the operation, which Rastko and Isidora mentioned, was incorrectly translated to “Operation Merciful Angel” from the official US name “Operation Noble Anvil”. But either version must sound cynical to them. Also, I was thinking about whether it was a good idea to keep wearing my cycling jersey that says Iowa on it.
Finally, we turned to the more uplifting topic of music, and Rastko and Isidora showed us their favorite music. “I studied German for many years in school, but I am still bad at it. But my guilty pleasure is German rap music”, Isidora said. She also mentioned that she loves the German band Rammstein, and how her dad would not let her go by herself to see the show when they played in Belgrade. I translated the beginning of her favorite song “Rosenrot” to her. Rastko showed us some of the rap music that his cousin made (the one that went to the USA), and apparently he is a big name in Serbian rap. Here is a playlist of all the songs they recommended. I liked this song by a Bosnian band.
All throughout the dinner and conversation, Liz and I managed to drink the whole bottle of Vranac that we bought. I tried to drink lots of water to preempt having a bad time today. It kinda worked but I did not sleep well (half a stick of butter probably did not help either).
Which finally brings us to today’s cycle route! We would do 65km / 40 miles to Valjevo, but there are some climbs to overcome on the way. Liz filled our waterbottles from the mineral water spring that they have on their grounds, and we were ready to go.
The first climb started after a short, flat warmup along the river. Since it was a long climb, we decided to listen to podcasts. We listened to Reply All’s story about a star of Yotube’s PetTube, i.e. people making videos about their pets, and then a cool This American Life Episode about magic tricks (do you remember when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear?).
Along the way, we passed a lady selling blackberries, and we got a small container for 100 dinar / $1. We ate the same when we reached a nice lookout with benches, where Liz took the pano that is up top. A snack was a good idea, since we only had coffee for breakfast. Maybe the stick of butter was fueling us up the hill, too.
There were lots of people stopping there to enjoy the view, and many of them ended up talking to us. First, a father of a family visiting from Bremen, Germany (you know, Becks!), who, since he is a bike mechanic, was commending our choice of Schwalbe tires, and told us that many people owning houses here nearby earn money living in Dietikon, near Zurich. It is a small world. Then we got approached by another father traveling with his family, who brought his nice mountain bike on their trip. Since they live in Belgrade, we asked for a restaurant recommendation. Finally, we talked to a German father and son traveling from Leipzig to Albania on their motorbikes. The son slipped nearby on some spilled diesel oil, but, thankfully, he was going slow and wasn’t hurt. They spent four days getting here from Leipzig.
All this talking made for a long break, so the legs were a bit cold for the last 100m / 330ft of climbing to the top. But we made it and were rewarded with some views and a downhill section.
Just before the second climb, we spotted a car with Zurich license plates and started talking to the family in Swiss German. They live at Hohlstrasse in Kreis 4 (district 4), so probably within a few kilometers of our Zurich home. Small world indeed! The family drove here from Zurich in one long 22h session (only 14h without traffic, the father mentioned), and would spend the summer school holidays here, which is five weeks. The four children told us about the computer games that they are spending their time with and that internet is slow here. They all wore Serbian soccer national team shirts or shorts.
The second climb wasn’t too long, so we started but did not finish the very interesting Radiolab episode about why people are bad. At the top, more views, and the start of a longer downhill.
In the final climb, we started noticing that we did not have any lunch, and also got rained on a bit, but did not get drenched. Then we had a nice final downhill to Valjevo, where we loaded up on burek and bitter lemon for a late lunch at our nice apartment for the night. One more cycling day, with much less climbing, to the rest days in Belgrade!
Total distance/elevation to date: 4776km/40’816m
Rest days: 16
Route and Stats
Relive Video
The 1948 Tour 
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