THIS IS IT! We reached our destination of Bucharest! Well, two weeks ago we didn’t know that Bucharest and not Constanța (pronounce the t with the low accent as a “ts” sound) would be our goal, but that is the nice thing about not being too set on either route or destination and being able to do what you want.

Today’s scenery was not much, as the terrain was very, very flat, and, assuming that the Romanian side of EuroVelo 6 would have been similar to today, we were all the more happy about our pivot to the mountains.

We slept well last night in our last hotel bed of the trip (we will be staying with my friend Iuliu in Bucharest), and decided to get up early to beat the mid-day heat. By 8.30, we were cycling out of Pitești (say the s with the accent as a sh sound, and I think the locals do not say the last i). The roads were very busy until we passed the highway ramp. As backup to the 7 road in case it would be too busy, we routed a detour further south as backup. But it was not too bad, so we could focus on the still very long 115km / 71 miles to Bucharest (would have been 124km with the detour).

I have to say, I am not too sad about not having to smear my face, neck, arms and legs with sunscreen anymore for a while. After a day of cycling, the slightly sticky layer of sunscreen collects a mix of dust and tiny insects that causes brownish, black-dotted run-off in the shower when you get the sunscreen layer off in the arrival shower. Yuck. Also, funny story, I got a bad, tiny sunburn on my thigh where my shorts ripped when I fell before Belgrade. So I had to think of yet another spot to sun protect and rinse off.

Liz set a fast pace for the first tens of kilometers, and we rode the first 40km / 25miles in just 90 minutes. We took a break in the park of the small town Găești (the a with the accent is pronounced just like an a). The park featured speakers that were playing some 80s playlist. Rehydrated and with a new synth-rhtym in our legs, we continued, setting our sights on kilometer 76, where we would stop to clean our bikes a last time and turn off the seven onto a quieter road leading into Bucharest.

With clean bikes, we turned off the 7 road to the smaller 601A, which was a great: Quiet, great pavement, and a bit more interesting due to many horse-drawn carriages.

We dread getting into cities as traffic usually increases a lot already 10-20km (6-12 miles) from the city center. Our route was not too bad, thankfully.

Iuliu’s friend Catalina and her daughter Irene met us to let us into Iuliu’s apartment. We had to manually override the safety features of the old elevator in the apartment building to get them up to the apartment, too. Iuliu: “If you are emotionally attached to your bikes, you should bring them up”. We are and we did.

After showers, we took an Uber to the local Mikkeller bar that also had amazing bar food to offer. Rather tired from the long ride today, and the long ride to get here from Scotland in general, we did not stay too long and were in bed by 21.30. By now, I can drink about one beer before feeling rather tipsy. Not too much of a tolerance anymore with the body also having to deal with long bike rides in hot weather.

And so we are here, at the end of our ride. What an amazing time we had, with only one flat tire (and none after buying the Schwalbe Marathons!), four broken spokes, only minor accidents and no broken bones, and memories to last a lifetime. Thank you Anne and Reece for the inspiration for doing this trip!

Total distance/elevation to date: 5654km/47’684m
Rest days: 21
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Another late start as I’m still recovering a bit, and I’ve never been a morning person, let’s be honest. Could finally take advantage of the full breakfast buffet, and drink coffee, this time at an oddly-sophisticated-for-its-surroundings hotel in the town of Râmnicu Vâlcea. A few fruits stuffed into the pockets and we were on the road by 11AM.

We had two climbs in the first 30 kilometers today and then the remaining 40 kilometers would be vaguely downhill. The roads were quiet and nice for the climbs, again through small farms and fields where workers, including many women, moved hay with manual tools or their hands, sometimes aided by a horse. The roads were lined with stone fruit trees – plums, mirabelles, and some smaller dark purple fruit I don’t recognize – many so full that they are propped up with support sticks to help bear the weight.

The heat hadn’t waited for us to finish said coffees, so we were soaked and parched by the time we finished the second climb. We favored smaller roads as long as we could, including a stretch of gravel that we posited Street View isn’t allowed to drive on for risk of damaging equipment.

Some men standing on the banks of one of the two reservoirs we passed shouted something about “donde” and Philipp responded “Switzerland” – as many more farmers or workers are on the roads here than elsewhere we’ve been, we’ve gotten many more comments, most of which sound pretty friendly and encouraging, but it’s a bit shameful to travel and not be able to engage with the locals.

We committed the cycling sin of waiting until we were hungry to start looking for a market for some bread for a picnic lunch and were twice turned away – we’d gotten comfortable with our Balkan bread shop stops in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and neither Romania’s supply nor quality of bread shops seem to hold up. Luckily, we ran into a restaurant as soon as we re-joined the main road, a seemingly casual place whose inside revealed a wedding venue ready to host more than 50, complete with dazzling chandeliers, chair sashes, and 8-top tables, where some guests were eating their food as it was cooler indoors. Outside, we enjoyed some chicken and pork and a side of garlic (the waiter’s suggestion), which was probably five or more cloves’ worth of chopped garlic in a thin, perhaps milk, broth.

I was counting every clove on the busy final 10 kilometers to the hotel, when Philipp proposed a game of “everything to the left of the white line is lava” to make steering clear of the many cars, mysteriously including many Fords, a bit more interesting. Indeed it is a challenging game, as no spare budget was spent paving shoulders, but it passed the time and we made it to the Ramada in Pitești a little after four.

Feeling a bit nostalgic as tomorrow will be our last day of cycling – a long route into Bucharest where we’ll spend several days checking out the city and seeing a friend of Philipp’s before flying back to Zurich. A Ramada seems a very un-Romantic place to spend our last night on the road (chosen for convenience), but nothing like a little air conditioning and a full bar to keep us in good spirits.

Total distance/elevation to date: 5539km/47’596m
Rest days: 21
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Given all the downhill this morning, the day turned out to be harder than expected. We had 95km / 60 miles ahead of us, of which the first 20km / 12.5 miles were mostly downhill. But the remaining distance had a lot of rolling terrain and we racked up 1200m / 4000ft of elevation climbing over all the bumps along the way, which is 2/3 of the elevation we climbed yesterday, where we only had to go 50km / 31 miles total. Anyway, we were rather tired when we arrived at the hotel.

Related to the feeling of having tired legs, we decided against the extra detour over the Transfăgărășan pass to Bran castle (Dracula). Instead, we are going directly to Bukarest to spend some extra time there, and to have then also more time back at home in Zurich to relax more / to do non-cycle activities before work starts again in September.

Today, we got up rather late and the nice man running the guest house offered us some coffee, over which we chatted with other guests that were from Bukarest about what to do there – they recommended checking out the Palace of the Parliament, the second largest administrative building after the Pentagon.

The ride started with a long downhill to Novaci, reaping the benefits of the endless climbing form yesterday.

After the downhill in Novaci, the rolling terrain started immediately, as we had to climb back out the small valley to go east toward Baia de Fier.

Part of the reason for the many climbs was that we sought out the quieter roads close to the feet of the mountains – further south, the main route 67 would have resulted in about 25% less elevation to climb – but when we had to ride part of our route on the 67, it very quickly became clear that the extra elevation was a fair price to pay for significantly less traffic.

Soon, we noticed that we did not have breakfast, and stopped at a grocery store in Baia de Fier to buy a Schweppes bitter lemon, 100g / 3oz. of ham, some “La Vache Qui Rit”-like cheese, and a loaf of bread. The total was 12 lei, or about 3 CHF/USD. We would have some extra budget for dinner later.

A few bumps later, we paused to have, I guess, our brunch. Liz’ digestion is still not back to 100%, so she had to convince herself a bit that eating would be a good idea to master the bumps to come.

The smaller road we chose passed many small scale farming outfits. Many properties had trees full of apples, plums, and other fruit, and we saw pigs, chickens, and turkeys inside, and many cows on the road. No begging donkeys, though.

At some point, we were basically the only ones on the small 665 road, which, as it turned out later, was due to some major road damage blocking all traffic. Bad for the locals, but very nice for us!

Then we reached Horezu that seemed quite a bit more polished than the other villages we rode through, and there were many tourists checking out the numerous pottery stores. In Horezu, we also started riding on the main road 67, which was a bit too busy for our taste. So we were very happy when we could, a few kilometers and few more bumps later, turn off onto the 646E taking us again closer to the feet of the mountains.

We (slowly) passed quite a few locals on the climbs of the remaining three bumps, and they shouted, we think, encouraging words at us.

After climbing the last of the bumps, we had 15km / 9.5 miles of nice, gradual downhill to the nice hotel we booked for the night. I don’t think I realize yet that in another two days of riding, we will have completed our amazing trip!

Total distance/elevation to date: 5468km/46’962m
Rest days: 21
Route and Stats
Relive Video

After the spaghetti, we both started feeling queasy, and it was the beginning of a bad digestion day for me and two bad digestion days, including some shivers at night, for Liz. We were not sure where we could have picked up something, partly because we both eat the same. Some googling suggested that maybe the tap water should be avoided, so we got plenty of bottled water. On the other hand, the CDC seems to be overcautious with their tap water safety recommendations suggesting that ever since we entered the Balkans, we should have stopped drinking it (but the tap water so far seemed fine).

Anyway, instead of tackling the Transalpina, we spent three days in a hotel room, working on rehydration, watching some TV shows and movies, and I read about 60% of the Martian to Liz. A great book, also on the second read.

In any case, after three days of inactivity, it was very nice to start moving again today. The route today would not be an easy re-entry into cycling, as we had the scenic Transalpina to climb. We started from 640m elevation in Petroşani and eventually reached up to 2100m on the pass, which, including the dips along the way, resulted in a total climb of about 1800m / 6000ft. But we only had 50km / 31 miles of distance to cover at least to reach Rânca.

And we also took it really slow to not stress our bodies too much (Liz only started eating again yesterday). Our average speed was just 10km/h / 6mph. After leaving Petroşani, we followed the 7A road that would get us to the 67C which is the Transalpina. The 7A was not busy at all, because part of it is a dirt road / in rather bad condition, so drivers tend to avoid it. This was very much ok with us, and the road condition was actually not too bad, but our standards might have adjusted since riding the incredibly bad 66A.

To reach the Transalpina, we had to climb a tiny pass along the way, and in the steeper part towards the end of the climb, we listened to the very entertaining This American Life episode about the natural history museum heist of the century, where a flute player breaks into a British museum to steal exotic bird feathers to sell to salmon fly tiers (for fly fishing) so that he could fund the acquisition of a flute made of gold. Yes, true story.

We were happy to find reasonable pavement on the descent toward the Transalpina, and then even happier for the very scenic ride approaching the bigger climb of the day.

After reading a sign warning about snakes, we carefully chose our break spot for a bread and jam snack before the climb. No snakes were spotted, and we started on the big climb. The road got a bit busier as well, but not too bad. Along the way, there were donkeys on the road asking for snacks.

We also passed and got passed by a 60-year-old Citroen car that sported a tiny pirate flag and the French driver would always honk at us and we would wave back.

There was a big souvenir area at the top of the first summit, and we got some coke and a nice polenta dish with sour cream and a kind of feta cheese topping (polenta is called mamaglia and it is a very traditional dish here).

From the first summit, we rolled down about 150m / 500ft of elevation that we then would have to climb again to the second summit. It is always a bittersweet feeling when on a downhill where you know that all you lose you will have to gain again.

We also mastered the final 200m / 660ft of climbing, from where it was a nice, short, scenic descent into Rânca where we will stay for the night.

Total distance/elevation to date: 5373km/45’751m
Rest days: 21
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Slept in in our happy tent, under beautiful stars interrupted only by a glaring lamp from the toilets, which thankfully I only had to use once in the night. I spent the morning reading and stretching in bed, while Philipp thought up activities to vibrate the boards underneath our tent platform.

We slowly got ready, laughing at the Romanian kids from the nearby tent who were on their first “camping” adventure with their mom. They had brought binoculars and said they’d seen a fox, and this morning they may have caught a glimpse of an American reading her Kindle in the wild.

It was warm when we rolled out at noon, but immediately we were treated to our reward for yesterday’s effort: nearly 30km of beautiful gentle downhill through the gorge, with relatively little traffic due to what should be thought of as the dead-end nature of the road further up.

After our descent we sampled our first well-appointed Romanian bakery, which had some focaccia-based burek imposter that did not stand up to the Serbian or Bosnian, but for $1.50 for two and another $1 for a sweet cake topped with stiff cream and soaked in syrup, the price was right. Philipp used the restored telephone service connection to book an apartment for the night in Petroşani, and we were off on the final 20km.

Arrived around 3PM and met a gracious host Oana who helped us sort our plans for the next few days by comparing road conditions on the next two passes to what we’d been through, and even got us some laundry soap so we could skip the clothes-washing step at the end of the day.

Spent the afternoon planning out the next few days (read: getting scared for hills), and grocery shopped to make a simple spaghetti supper. The Alp part of the Transylvanian Alps begins in earnest tomorrow.

Total distance/elevation to date: 5318km/43’911m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Google Maps shows Romanian Route 66A in the same colors and size as any of the other well-paved highways in the area. On a map it looks delightful – continuing from the route we rode in on yesterday, the road bisects a natural preserve and wiggles around a lake before climbing up and over a pass – our first Romanian pass!

Our first hint otherwise came last night when we noticed a pair of cycle tourists outside our guesthouse as we went down to dinner. We went out to greet them as they considered stopping for their meal, and asked if they’d come from the direction we’d be heading. The woman pointed to her mud-splattered shoes and told us only cars should go there. They didn’t seem interested in talking with us further.

Undeterred, we asked the waiter at dinner whether there was a market further that way, and he showed us one on the map that was off of 67, a road that forks from our looks-like-main-route-north course. We said instead we’d be going directly north, not forking, and he replied that our route wasn’t really a road and reminded us to pay in the morning before leaving.

Still undeterred, we slept (damply) until 8, when at breakfast we met some Spanish motorcyclists who’d come in from the way we’d be leaving. Asking them they assured us that the first 20km were bad, but then the road got really nice.

Always preferring the good news, we chose to believe the most recent report, and set off happily, briskly scampering up the first few kilometers. Indeed they were beautiful, as the road continued alongside the river, following a deep gorge with steep cliffs providing shade on either side.

When we arived at the fork, coincidentally at about the 20km mark that the Spanish men had mentioned, we could see a bit of the folly of our ways. We pulled off onto the gravel side, toward the direction that a roadsign marked as not advised, and settled in for a slower pace but assuring each other that this was still reasonable and wondering where those cycle tourists could have acquired all that mud.

Twenty kilometers later we were lucky to both still have dry feet, as we cruised through the center of, or wiggled to avoid, huge puddles, swaths of mud, and pits of sand on the dirt road. We pulled over for a lunch (Philipp eager to be relieved of yesterday’s watermelon purchase) and two German motor cyclists stopped to ask if we knew for how long the road continued like this and said one of them had already slipped out in the mud, and had only a half a tank left.

We did wiggle our way around the rest of the lake, and then settled in for the remaining 500 meters of climbing, along similar roads, to the peak, which is then just 6km away from our glamping/camping site. We acknowledged the beautiful scenery at the top but ground on, as downhill rocky roads can take as long as uphill.

As we neared the end of the descent, a pack of dogs descended on me. Luckily these weren’t the wild sort, but belonged to two farmers gathering dried grass. We’d been warned about several tactics for dealing with wild dogs, including fake and real stone-throwing, and water guns. I chose speed as my evasion tactic, unadvisable as the dogs actually like the chase, but a nice driver headed out from his campsite provided some honking which let me go free.

Some eight hours after starting we rolled into our glampsite, and the lovely couple running it helped us help ourselves to a radler and a shower before grilling up enough food for four. We ate nearly all of it, and retired to our cosy tent, filled with pristine IKEA beds and bedding, and a heater. We were happy about the cooler temperatures and the safe end to a long day, and still felt thankful for the pivot away from the hot and flat.

Total distance/elevation to date: 5266km/43’798m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video

For our last night in Serbia, we went out for a large Serbian meal with plenty of meat. Partly inspired by another thing that the Israeli bike tourer told us, which is that Serbians cannot be without at least 300g / 10oz of meat every day. Very stuffed at the end of the meal, we skipped ice-cream (!) and opted for a Serbian schnapps as dessert instead.

Today we would have a reasonable 60km / 37 miles ahead of us. The first ten kilometers were backtracking yesterdays route to the hydropower plant that is also a bridge across the Danube to Romania. After the Serbian passport control, where a Romanian cyclist told us that we should skip the line, because cyclists “have priority”, we cycled over the dam to the Romanian passport control and then we were back in the European Union.

We really hope that no bike tourer ever makes the mistake of opting for the Romanian side of the Danube to cycle our route from yesterday, because the roads are a lot busier. Thankfully, there was a shoulder that we could cycle on to let the dozens of big trucks pass us. On the many bridges, we cycled on the narrow sidewalks for safety. The traffic made the 14km to Orsova rather stressful and we could not really enjoy the otherwise magnificent views over the Danube.

In Orșova, we started to follow the Cerna river up the valley. We immediately started feeling very happy about our big pivot decision, because the valley looked beautiful and the traffic was much reduced compared to before.

We reached the entrance of the Domogled-Valea Cernei national park in Băile Herculane. There, we first got ourselves some local currency (Romanian Lei, singular is Leu), and then decided to do a picnic lunch and bought some bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, a small watermelon, and a salami-like sausage. At a bakery, we also tried to get some burek, but no dice, and Liz bought two small sausages wrapped in dough instead. I also got a Romanian pre-pay SIM card, which is cheap (5 EUR / 6USD) and easy, because unlike most EU countries, Romania does not require any ID to buy a pre-paid SIM. As a final shopping stop before lunch, we got some cold sugary drinks (weird flavors of Fanta, I did not finish mine).

We then cycled a bit further up through town to a small square with benches in the shade for the picnic. Across from the park and the Cerna, there was an old, decrepit sulfur bath building, that must have been glorious back in the day. The hot sulfur springs are the thing to do here, and Herculane is a big spa town. Further up, we passed a site where locals built two small sulfur pools for anyone to use, before the very hot (~50C / 120F) spring water runs into the Cerna.

The gradual climb up the last ~200m / 670ft of elevation brought many Romanian tourists walking along the road in swimsuits to their favorite hot springs along and swim holes in the Cerna. We also passed many stalls selling rubber slippers, swimwear, and towels. And we also got some beautiful views, making us even happier about the pivot decision.

We soon arrived at the motel for the night, a bit surprised at the late arrival time of 16.00, until we realized that Romania is in a different time zone than Serbia, and we went an hour ahead. Before dinner, we went for a quick dip in the Cerna.

The motel was quite basic and did not have WiFi, so we had a rather analogoue but pleasant evening and went to bed very early at about 21.30, against the logic of the mini-jetlag. We booked a nice glamp-site tent for tomorrow night, but learned that the road there would be mostly unpaved, so it would be good to be well-rested.

Total distance/elevation to date: 5192km/42’363m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video

In 1993 a Romanian businessman commissioned a giant head, 40 meters tall, to be carved out of stone to commemorate the last king to fall to the Romans. While some would say the stunning beauty of the Danube as it passes through the Iron Gates, a mix of dramatic rock and now real iron, or more likely steel, dams, is sufficiently dramatic beauty, this extra touch of modern absurdity entertained me for most of today’s 114KM ride.

We left our scenic guesthouse, overlooking the Danube and just past the first fortress marking the entrance to the Iron Gates, a little after 8. The scenery immediately turned dramatic, as the road on the Serbian side clung the cliffs of the coast. Many kayaks and tour boats were already on their way downstream to take in the sights from the center section.

I knew we were in for a long flat ride, the former being an intended function of the latter, and we sped through the first 20km / 12.5 miles. Most of our predicted elevation turned out to be data errors caused by topo readings near any of the 11 tunnels on our route, so we were even faster than anticipated and stopped for a burek and yogurt at 50km / 31.1 miles.

Philipp flagged down the only other cycle tourist we saw today, an Israeli man who was adamant that we avoid the Romanian side of the river further down, due to 1. distance of route from river (we agreed having seen this on maps) 2. superiority of Bulgarian food, 3. superior tidiness/less poverty of Bulgarian neighborhoods, and 4. lack of climbing. He warned us of the climb to come later in our day and sped off.

Luckily, the climb was less than 200 meters, and the stunning sculpture man came into full view, providing infinite distraction from the incline!

About this time the storms rolled in, so we switched order and I drafted off Philipp as we set a brisk pace for the last 30km / 18.6 miles of the day, stopping only to rescue a turtle who was traversing the road. Into Kladovo dry and in time for an ice cream and some route planning. Despite the Israeli’s warnings, we’ve decided to abandon the Eurovelo 6 to the Black Sea, and seek instead the cooler weather (we hope) and more scenic views (we’re pretty sure) of some of the mountain passes in Transsylvania. And if we happen to pass the Dracula castle, so be it…

Total distance/elevation to date: 5132km/41’953m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video

We passed 5000km / 3107 miles today! When we did the first rough plan for our tour from St. Andrews to Odessa, we estimated that the whole trip would be about this much. But that plan did not include Rome or all the kilometers that following bike routes instead of main roads bring. So now we are still about 1000km from Odessa, and, by now, we are very unlikely to go there.

Anyway, today was great! My wounds from the fall are healing well and are hurting less, and I can almost hold on to the handlebar as usual again. The route was nice, too, with mostly smooth riding and not too much traffic, and finally we met Manuel and Augustin, two French cycle tourers doing the Eurovelo 6 from Budapest to Constanta.

We started early, hitting the road by 8.00. The ferry from Banatska Palanka to Ram runs only every three hours, and we really wanted to catch the 10.30 ride. We also changed the route to follow mostly the main road to make the arrival time more predictable and realistic. The road was very nice and with little traffic, so we managed to average about 25km/h / 15.5 mph for the first 35km.

Then we turned off the road and followed the embankment of the Danube-Tisa canal, which was a bumpy, 4km dirt-road to the ferry. But it was easy to forget the bumpyness watching the Sunday morning fishing groups, and the grazing cows and sheep.

There were already many cars and pedestrians waiting for the ferry, and then two fellow cycle tourers! We started talking to Manuel and Augustin and they have spent five days on the road so far from Budapest, and also have Constanta as a goal, but were on a more ambitious 100km (62miles) per day timeline.

We continued cycling together with Manuel and Augustin, and I had a good conversation with Manuel who is studying economics and did an internship at the World Bank in Washington, DC. We discussed nationalism rising in Europe and the USA, and how it can be used as a smokescreen to distract from a country’s economic (or income inequality) problems. He also recommended two speeches to me to listen to, both of which he analyzed in a rhetorics class: Barack Obama’s 2008 speech on race in America, and Martin Luther King’s I’ve been to the mountaintop, his last speech before he was killed. We listened to the former over dinner and were feeling nostalgia for a president who was able to form complete English sentences.

We rode together to Vinci, where we stopped for some cold Radlers (beer and lemonade mix, about 2% ABV), nice homemade sausages, and a swim for Liz and Augustin.

Rather full from the big lunch, we cycled on to Golubac where it was time to say goodbye to Manuel and Augustin as they were planning to cycle another 60km (37 miles) before nightfall, and we had to buy salad and bread for dinner (we only had another 5km (3 miles) to go from Globulac.

At the guest house, we sat with the host’s father for a bit, who only spoke Serbian, but offered us delicious homemade cherry juice mixed with soda, some peach schnapps, and fresh figs from their tree.

We were not sure if we should ride along the Bulgarian or the Romanian side of the Danube to the Black Sea, so checked some reports from other people on the internet, and the bottom line is that after passing the Iron Gates (which we will do tomorrow), the roads are not really along the Danube and rather boring until the Danube delta. So we are considering a big pivot away from our goal of reaching the Black Sea, and turning north toward the Transsylvanian Alps or Southern Carpathians, which are likely more interesting, landscape-wise. Oh, and the castle inspiring Dracula is also somewhere there. We’ll decide tomorrow!

Total distance/elevation to date: 5018km/41’350m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Blah blah cycling – today we watched burek being made! Burek is a savory pastry, usually baked in a round dish and sliced like a pizza, filled with sir (cheese) or meat or krompir (potatoes). It’s fueled much of our cycling since we got to the Balkans, and sometimes is in fact more interesting than some of the cycling, so today’s post is mostly about that.

We stopped for lunch at a bakery and sat to eat our burek and yogurt under the shade on the stoop of the bakery’s workspace, which neighbored the shop. I had noticed dough resting out as we had walked in, and as we finished I looked behind me and saw a man had approached the doughs and was starting to shape them. He saw my excitement, and waved me over to watch.

He first spread a thick layer of fat on the work surface. I knew it was some kind of lard based on the resultant pastry, and the man confirmed it was pork fat when we asked, but this wouldn’t be universal in more Muslim-predominant bakeries. He then pats a disk into the fat, and then throws it in the air (like a pizza chef cartoon), until it’s more than a meter square and transparent, with no holes, hinting that more fat was an input ingredient in the dough. Laying this out, he first folded the sheet like an envelope, and pulled away the thicker edges of the dough. More folds, with pinches to create holes so no enormous air pockets remain.

On the folded dough, he spread cheese and folded again, and then set this denser disk aside and resumed with the wide sheets, then nesting the first cheese-spread dough inside the others, removing edges of all layers. The corners of the square got tucked in, and the whole thing went into a round metal baking pan.

We couldn’t chat much due to Philipp’s and my poor Serbian skills, but we managed to convey we were from Switzerland, and he managed to convey either that Switzerland was expensive or that we have a lot of money.

We next watched as he made a “pizza” burek, with layers of lunchmeat, cheese, and tomato sauce. He also showed us the meat and potato fillings when we asked what the full set of variants was.

He last made a rolled version, spreading the cheese onto only one edge of the initial disk of dough, and rolling it toward himself and then into a spiral and into the same metal baking disk.

It’d be hard for him to be happier than I was about the interaction, but he had seemed quite proud to share his work, or at least have a distraction from it. We noticed a community picnic of sorts as we left town that he’d be missing, so at least I hope we gave him something to laugh about while missing the event.

Having gotten our fill of unpaved roads on the morning section leaving Belgrade, we opted for the paved option the rest of the way to Kovin, saving us 10K overall and 10K of riding on unpaved roads next to the river. The final stretch was hot and flat, with evidence of large-scale agriculture in a Pioneer-branded sunflower experiment field, and signs for one winery and a tourbus advertising wine tours in German.

Other highlights were leaving the posh hotel in Belgrade via the mall in full bike regalia (an offense for which we had been stopped on the way in, though likely looked worse for wear at the end of the ride) and catching our first Eurovelo 6 sign just across the hectic bridge sprint out of Belgrade north. We’re also sporting some new tape on the handlebars, and me a new, much lighter and better-fitting helmet, thanks to some rest-day shopping and bike maintenance.

While the surfaces were rough the route was exceptionally signed, save one section where someone had bent the sign to point in the wrong direction, but we righted ourselves and the sign for future cyclists. The Eurovelo 6 is “planned” all the way to the Black Sea, but only “signed” until Vidin, so we’ll enjoy them, or at least the correctly-oriented ones, while we can!

Arrived, hot and happy for the short and tasty day, at 3:30PM.

Total distance/elevation to date: 4931km/41’149m
Rest days: 18
Route and Stats
Relive Video