Because the Serbian food recommendation that our host Mirka gave us was too far away from where we stayed, we went to the fancy option she mentioned when she got us settled into the nice short-stay rental apartment she and her husband are running besides their regular jobs. Our gin tonic, coke, sparkling water, burger, plate of pasta all’arrabiate, and four scoops of ice cream came to CHF 30, which is rather expensive for Serbia, and almost equalized our housing cost (EUR36).

We slept very, very well in the comfy bed (and me also because I had a dry day). After getting up and burek leftovers, we rolled out of town at 10.00. The route today would be long at 90km / 56 miles, but basically flat.

The flats and proximity to Beograd brought rather boring sights and busy roads. The only remarkable landmarks were the churches we looked at in Valjevo and Ub.

What we looked at and wondered about more along the way were the rather deep tire tracks on the side of the road, which further resulted often in pronounced rims at the edges toward the outside of the road – exactly where a cyclist would want to ride. My theory is that they form due to heavy trucks and bad road foundation. Liz was trying to find out if they are more pronounced in uphills, but did not come to a definitive conclusion.

It was also raining on-and-off, so we stopped a few times for putting raingear on and taking it off again. For lunch, we stopped at a Pekara for burek, and then got in a heavier rain again.

In this rain is when it happened, and a ridge like the one above was to blame for my fall. I think I was not paying enough attention to the road, because I was also focusing on not riding too close to Liz for the water spray from her back wheel. This is harder than it sounds because my default behavior, and it’s been default for many kilometers now, is to ride close enough to draft.

Anyway, my front wheel was going up the ridge, or snake as Liz likes to call them, but because it was wet, the wheel slipped back down, so my bike stayed on the left of the ridge while my body had acquired good momentum going to the right. The result was one of those slow-mo moments where all you can think is “ok, I am going down”. Because it was flat, we were going at least 20km/h / 12mph, so there was quite some deceleration as I hit the gravel driveway of a house, using my hands and right elbow to soften the landing. I yelled for Liz and then got up, seeing some blood on my hands and elbow. While I was annoyed at myself for not paying enough attention, I was also feeling very, very lucky, because looking at where I crashed, I realized that if I had fallen three meters later, which at 20km/h is only half a second, I would have hit the concrete ditch and would very likely have ended up with broken bones. After checking myself a bit more, I found only flesh wounds.

We took a breather, washed the wounds out with water, and then carried on. In the next town, we stopped at bar to wash the wounds, and then bought disinfectant, gauze and bandages to wrap my elbow and left palm which got it worst.

Cycling the last hour to the hotel was actually not too bad, it was only annoying that I could not hold the handlebar properly. And shortly after the fall, we could switch from the busy main road to the old road to Beograd that follows the river, which had much less traffic.

As we entered the city, we stopped at a bike store to buy new handlebar tape, as the one we have has shifted and ripped too much by now and is not providing much cushioning anymore.

The routed road going to the city center would have been very busy, but thankfully, Liz spotted a cycle path following the river, where Liz took the picture at the top. The cycle path brought us almost to the hotel, which we reached after a short climb up the hill. I am glad we have two rest days here, so I can recover a bit before going on. As I am writing this a day later, the wounds already started to scab. Our bodies are such amazing machines with their self-healing powers!

Total distance/elevation to date: 4870km/41’068m
Rest days: 16
Route and Stats
Relive Video

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

We had a huge dinner last night in the hotel restaurant, and I had too much beer and not enough water all day, so did feel slightly head-achy waking up today. Today, I would drink more water again because my plan to drink less alcohol lasted until 14.00, when I had a beer for lunch, and now I am sipping on a nice Vranac from Montenegro. The bottle says “experience Montenegro in a glass”. We turned off the coast of Croatia before reaching Montenegro, so I appreciate this.

Anyway, we did route planning for the next three days last night, and would stay here in Crvica, then Valjevo, and then Belgrade, where we booked a nice hotel for two rest days. We still have lots of time to reach the Black Sea, so there is no hurry and two rest days are nice because you can still do some bike maintenance and planning, and then still have a full day to rest and explore.

Due to a shortage of accommodation (at least of the online bookable kind), today would only be 45km / 28 miles, so we slept in until 8.00, and left by 10.00 after breakfast (corn porridge for me and more cheese burek for Liz, although she thought it would be something else from the description).

Despite the short distance, we had two hills to climb. From the hotel, we had about 300m/1000ft to climb, where at the top we had to go through a longer tunnel to reach the descent. Thankfully, the road was quite wide, so passing trucks were not an issue. There was not too much traffic anyway.

We still don’t like tunnels, but thanks to the little traffic there was, we could ride the road, only having to stop once and scoot to the side to let a truck pass. After, we enjoyed a nice longer downhill and flat section to approach the second and last climb of the day.

After a little bit into the second climb, we were passed by another cycle tourer, and started chatting with him. David is from the Czech Republic and loves cycling in Serbia. He spends all his holidays for the year, four weeks, to tour Serbia. He is wild-camping, so much more hardcore than we are with our pre-booked hotels for the night. In his estimate, he spends about 20€ per three days, including cigarettes. A pack of twenty costs 2.50€, but on another cycling trip David also found much cheaper cigarettes going east, with 2.00€ in Turkey, then 1€ in Georgia, and 0.50€ in Armenia, where he ended up smoking 40 cigarettes a day to make use of the cheap supply situation. Finally, he was pondering about how fast he could be on these climbs if he didn’t smoke.

David said that while there is a heat-wave in central Europe, Serbia has had rather bad weather so far, and that he got rained on about every other day. We hope for everyone that the weather is improving for the next week.

David had a very good pace, so we rather quickly climbed to the top, which was followed by a very nice, long, descent to Bajina Bašta.

We went for coffee together in the town, and then decided to buy stuff for a picnic lunch together at the river. We bought tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, a big watermelon, beers, cheese burek and some bread. Shortly after leaving town, David spotted a nice picnic area with tables, so we stopped and enjoyed the meal and a swim in the very fast flowing Drina river, which marks the Bosnian/Serbian border.

At lunch, we also discussed the Kosovo situation a bit, with David having much more knowledge from the Serbian perspective, i.e. that Kosovo is really the heartland of Serbia for historical reasons, but I remember from my days in northern Albania, that the Albanians also claim that it is their land for historical reasons. In any case, I should read up on this topic a bit more.

After lunch, we all cycled toward our place to stay. David said he would try and find another nice spot further downriver to set camp for the night. In the lunch sun, David just finished drying his shoes, which did not last long as we got drenched in a short but intense rain shower, while we were also trying to help a local with a flat tire. Hand-wavingly, he communicated to me that the tube is gone after I tried to pump it with both our and David’s pump.

We are staying in a nice place right at the river (for 20€, prompting David’s budget info earlier), with a washing machine which is always appreciated and a kitchen so we will make some nice pasta for dinner. With Vranac, cheers!

Total distance/elevation to date: 4712km/39’614m
Rest days: 16
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Avoiding main roads on a Sunday morning meant we had a blissfully quiet climb to Višegrad. I’d been feeling less than inspired for riding on some of these recent traffic-y, narrow, ride-only-to-get-somewhere routes, but these roads were a needed reminder of how fun it is when you’ve got space to look around and some fresh air to breath.

Data was missing for large sections of the climb, resulting in scary-looking 50% grades followed by uncannily flat sections on our computers. Luckily the average of the two was something in the 2-7% range for the first 20KM.

The whole stretch, plus a lovely plateau at the top, was quite agrarian, with more fruit trees, a flock (herd? murder?) of horses, and a couple taking wedding photos with a drone.

For better or worse the descent to Višegrad was much steeper, with loads of switchbacks, but we were happy to see they’d attracted the 5th other cyclist we’ve seen in Bosnia. At the bottom was the town with it’s famous bridge.

We were hosed and hungry after the climbing, so tarried too long at Ćevapi lunch and had a rough go of it getting out of town. I had told Philipp we’d soon pass the Dobrun Monastery – a cool 15th century orange monastery, but either the Ćevapi was bad or it had been painted white when we arrived. The monks lived in a cave above the monastery.

Decided to finish the Bosnian section on main roads to save time, meaning we rode through some seriously blasted rock and tunnel sections, likely to accommodate the train that we followed along the river.

Reached the now-leaving-Bosnia border crossing at about 3:30PM, as signaled by traffic backed up for several hundred meters. Philipp had the cheeky suggestion to just sneak by everyone, which was sketchy as unlike Americans in SUVs it seems drivers here prefer to fling open their doors for fresh air. However, between the exiting-Bosnia and entering-Serbia lines we probably saved more than 90 minutes of standing in the sun and exhaust fumes, so I’m content that we spent a little queuing karma.

Spun our legs around for another 6KM until our hotel for the night, a train station with a train only for tourism – over-ate on some steak, soup, salad, rice, french fries, and something like a whole-wheat burek for 2500 Serbian Dinar (25 CHF). Booked and routed our next few days and hope to be in Belgrade in three more sleeps.

Total distance/elevation to date: 4666km/38’938m
Rest days: 16
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Our nice hotel in Sarajevo was a bit up the hill (as many neighborhoods seem to be here), so we had a bit of a trek each time we went to the old town or back. We had a late start into the rest-day with a nice breakfast at the hotel with Bosnian coffee (it is similar to, but not Turkish coffee).

We then strolled down for another coffee at Ministry of Ćejf, before going to the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide, which is run by the victims of the many atrocities committed during the war at the beginning of the 1990s. As we entered the building, we ran into Samir, whose birthday we attended two days ago on the lake. He mentioned that he avoided going here for a long time (he lives in Sarajevo), but visited now that the son of his brother is in town (red shirt in picture).

Every inch of wall in the museum has a survivor’s story, facts, or a relic from the events. I spent a lot of time reading the story of a fifteen-year-old boy, who survived the genocide of Srebrenica despite three bullets hitting his torso. He survived the execution because the soldier that should have gone to check on survivors was too lazy, and he managed to crawl away with another survivor later when they were alone. Over many days of being carried by the other survivor or crawling, he eventually made it to a safe area, against all odds. As with other genocides that I learned about (I just finished reading an account of the Rwandan genocide), I cannot begin to imagine how a human being can get to the point of being able to methodically torture, rape, and kill fellow human beings.

With heavy hearts, we slowly walked further through the old town, roughly in the direction of the craft beer bar Vučko that Liz found. Along the way, we ran into Samir again, who was with his brother and nephew. We all laughed about the fact that we keep running into each other and said goodbyes. Close to the beer bar, we snacked on some burek (we like potato the best so far), and, of course, as we entered the beer bar, Samir was there, too. So we joined them for some very fine Bosnian craft beer – Liz’ Oldbridz imperial dark IPA was delicious.

Because we are basically good friends by now, I asked Samir how the relations between the different ethnicities are doing nowadays, 23 years after the war. His response was that like in many places, nationalism is on the rise again, which makes him worried about what lies in the future for Bosnia.

We said goodbye for the third time today, and went for a nice pasta dinner in the old town, after which we strolled for a while through the eastern part of the old town.

Ok, now about today: The route would be a reasonable 65km, but with some good climbs along the way. Right out of the gate, we had to climb about 450m to the first plateau. The road was steep, but without much traffic, which we very much enjoyed after the last two cycling days.

On the approach the the second climb to the highest point of the day, we saw storm clouds gathering. And about half way into the climb, the rain set in. Thankfully, we found a small shelter to wait out the rather heavy, but short rainfall.

The rest of the climb was not too bad, and we were soon on the downhill to the next plateau where we would approach the final climb of the day. At the end of the downhill, we had a nice, quick lunch of burek at a bakery for 5.90 convertible marks, or about 3€.

The last climb of the day was very gradual, thankfully, and also very beautiful. It could also be in an American national park, I mentioned to Liz. After the climb, it was downhill all the way to the hotel, which is the best way to finish a day!

Total distance/elevation to date: 4593km/37’664m
Rest days: 16
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Today we had a long climb up a narrow and busy road before descending into Sarajevo. I spent most of my time playing “keep your tires on the white line” game, and not looking around, so here are some updates about the kind of fruits I saw on the ground while staring at the ground and playing said game.

It is high summer season for apples, plums, pears, figs, and quince in Bosnia. Apples are the most dangerous to pass as they don’t decompose as fast as the others. That’s the full update. Sadly we haven’t yet gotten to eat many of these – menus in the restaurants so far have focused on grilled meats coupled with occasional tomatoes and cucumber garnish, though last night we did have some very tiny blueberries as dessert.

No late-night Jack-Daniels-and-sing-along last night (as we’d been included in on the previous night with another guest’s 50th birthday) though the Bosnian/Swedish group all wished us well on our journey this morning at breakfast – after sharing harrowing tales of Bosnian drivers and tunnels. When Philipp mentioned we hadn’t seen many cyclists, the birthday boy said “There used to be a lot but now they are dead.” Good Bosnian/Swedish humor to kick off the day.

They promised to honk if they passed us on their way to Sarajevo, and indeed honking seems to be all of a friendly hello, an expression of enthusiasm for cycling in general, or a last-minute warning about the enormous size of the truck that wants to pass you.

Our legs were fresh from a rest day at Pansion Asim on Jablaničko Lake – a simple guesthouse in a stunning setting that seems to specialize in boat tours for conservative families (read: the women are covered), and we’ll take another rest day in Sarajevo tomorrow to take in the city and celebrate Philipp’s birthday.

Photos of things I did not see today:

Total distance/elevation to date: 4528km/36,532m
Rest days: 15
Route and Stats
Relive Video

After the long day yesterday where we argued too much, and the last rest day being too far back (in Rome!), we were more cautious again about strenuous routing. There does seem to be a jo-jo dynamic: You do an easy day, see an exciting place to stay or go and route a bit further, and then also with a bit more climbing, you realize it is too much, take a rest day, and plan an easy day again.

With the route being quite open now, we keep changing plans: We wanted to stay further south of Sarajevo to get to Višegrad where we would enter Serbia and a nature reserve. But then we could not find a nice place for a rest day tomorrow, so now we’ll end up going to Sarajevo anyway, because about in the middle of the 120km / 75mile trip to get there, we found a nice place to stay right on the lake Jablaničko jezero (jezero is Bosnian for lake).

Before leaving the guest house, we chatted to both the owners and a family living in Osnabrück, where my good friend and former PhD office mate Sebastian is from (they did not know him or his family, though). The family with Bosnian roots was here on holiday and gave us a tip for Sarajevo, before they would leave for beach holidays at the Adriatic coast in Croatia.

For breakfast, we stopped at a Pekara/bakery, where a small cat eyed us curiously/beggingly while we had a chocolate croissant (me), sour cherry poptart (Liz) and a delicious cheese burek. A bit further on, we also stopped at one of the many fruit stands along the road to get some grapes and peaches.

To get to our rest day, we followed the valley of the Neretva river out north of Mostar, which made for some stunning views. Unfortunately, we also had to follow the main M17 road, which did not have a shoulder and made for some situations with large trucks passing too close for comfort. We focused on riding as close as possible to the edge of the road to get as much space as possible.

The first part of the ride had only a very gradual incline, but we faced strong head-wind. Through some tunnels we had to pedal hard to keep moving at a reasonable speed.

After crossing a bridge over the river, we were on the same side as a railway line that the road followed a bit further below. We saw some maintenance workers doing something to the power lines, so there are probably no trains running at the moment.

We then climbed a bit further up to Jablanica, with more stunning views. After town, we started the longest climb of the day, which turned out to be only about 120m of elevation. At the top, we had to go through a longer tunnel (about 550m), and we decided to ride on the small elevated sidewalk next to the tunnel’s wall to be safer. When we did this again in the next longer tunnel, the sidewalk had a sketchy surface and we had to slow down a bit. Just before the goal, we hit yet another long tunnel, with an even sketchier sidewalk, and we even had to climb over a major pothole. But, we are rather slow and safe there than ride on the super narrow tunnel road.

The place we are staying on the lake has a restaurant with a rent a floating table service: You order your food and sit at a table on a motorized floating island, and a pilot takes you around the lake while you eat your food. There are also lots of women in burkas, reminding us that many people in Bosnia are muslim. Liz was a bit hesitant to take a swim in a bikini, but later we saw that the local women apparently have no reservations.

After a nice lunch of more Chevapi and the house specialty, trout (we passed several trout farms along the way), a refreshing swim in the lake where we missed the additional flotation provided by salty water, we took a longer nap to be well prepared for the rest day tomorrow.

During dinner, the owner of the Pansion Asim offerd us to try his homemade quince schnaps, which was quite tasty. He took a shot himself (while we sipped it), albeit a smaller one because he still had to work. Earlier, we were invited to join a birthday party by the brother of the birthday boy (50th birthday), and we walked up to them after dinner, where we promptly got invited to sit with them at the table, enjoying the music of Benko, a guitar player and singer they hired for the party. We congratulated the birthday boy who then offered Jack Daniel’s to us and filled our wine glasses with a very generous amount, almost a Swiss pour of wine (100ml / 3.4 fl.oz.), I would estimate. At some point Liz took over my glass, saving my rest-day from starting out head-achy, as she has much better tolerance than me. We told them about our trip so far, and they laughed at our pictures of us riding the dodgy sidewalks inside the tunnels. Liz talked to a the mother and daughter of a family that owns a leather processing company east of Sarajevo. Declining more shots of whisky, we went up to our room, looking forward to sleeping well into out rest day tomorrow.

Bonus beautiful music: The birthay boy’s and his brother’s father could not make it to the party because he is too old, so they played Sve Smo Mogli my by Jadranka Stojakovic for him:

Total distance/elevation to date: 4454km/35’759m
Rest days: 14
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Today we reached Bosnia! We managed an early (pre-8AM) start after hitting the bakery below last night’s guesthouse for what seemed like Croatian pop-tarts, one made with sour cherries and one with cheese. Philipp ate something that looked like a croissant made from a dinner roll stuffed with chocolate but we won’t say anything more about that here.

Had some brief climbing away from the coast and were rewarded with an incredible landscape of rolling rocky hills and lakes as we neared the Croatia / Bosnia border. The quiet roads were a welcome respite from the busy coastal route and cloud cover even pitched in to make riding very comfortable. Another quick climb brought us to the inspections leaving Croatia, and a few meters on the customs to enter Bosnia. No stamps or questions at either gate.

Immediately after entering we were confronted with a sign for the EU-sponsored Wine Route through Bosnia – maybe a goodwill project to keep Bosnia’s EU-application moving. At this point the clouds proved they had less benevolent intentions and we donned rain gear as we got into the first town where we planned to change our Croatian kuna into Bosnian convertible marks.

Enthusiasm for Croatian cycling combined with lack of planning or currency research meant we had 1240 kunas (167.5 Euro / 196 USD/ 195 CHF) walking into the bank, and we left with 316 convertible marks (169.5 Euro / 198 USD / 197 CHF). Something with Google’s currency converter must be off, as I do not think we made money off of the exchange. The convertible mark is fixed at about 2:1 against the Euro, and places seem to accept Euro or kuna, but we thought better to go local as we’re heading away from the coast and EU. The helpful English-speaking security guard even intervened to get us small bills from the bank teller.

Next stop: waterfalls! We’d seen signs for these even in Croatia, and so planned a quick side tour that didn’t disappoint, even in the rain. Can’t say whether the natural beauty, tourist watching, or 2 Euro enormous sausage sandwich captured our attention more.

Linking back up with our intended route we discussed whether to go a route that had 300 meters more of climbing or one along the river that was longer. Philipp’s strong thighs and combative style of persuasion won out and we ground out some climbing as the sun came out, just in time for some beautiful panoramas, and a fierce headwind on the downhills, getting into Mostar.

Without searching we were able to spot bullet or shrapnel holes on a building as we entered the city, and our route inadvertently landed us on top of the very touristy 16th – century Stari Most bridge, which was destroyed in the Croat-Bosniak war in 1993. It was rebuilt in all it’s glory, which now includes many busy nearby ice cream stands and pedestrians weilding selfie-weapons. Not a place for cyclists, but we bumbled through and made it to our guesthouse, where our lovely host gave us a map and tips for more riding in Herzigovina. She and a barman both were quite proud of the tourism the city brought, including the upcoming Red Bull divers.

Set out again on foot to see the bridge and eat some delicious (Bosnian? Herzigovian?) food, including trout, meat rolled in grape leaves, and raviolis in a yogurt sauce. We’re both reading books set in or about Yugoslavia, and have a lot to learn about our temporary host country.

Total distance/elevation to date: 4396km/35’308m
Rest days: 14
Route and Stats
Relive Video

We had almost a rest day yesterday with the early arrival, a long afternoon nap, swims, late lunch and nice dinner in the cute little town of Mimice. After almost 9 hours of good sleep, which we needed after the sweaty and short night on the ferry, we had a nice breakfast by the sea and got out on the road by 10.00.

We both remembered the steep descent into town that we would have to go up first thing. And yes, it was steep, and by the time we reached the 8 Road again, all legs were awake and warmed up.

The scenery was again stunning, with the mountain range hugging the shoreline of the Adriatic. However, maybe because it was Sunday, there was a lot of traffic for the first 25km / 15 miles, making it a bit more difficult to enjoy the views.

The late start also made for rather hot cycling. Thankfully, the wind was blowing from the sea, cooling us down. We also climbed a good bit more than yesterday, and in many of the climbs, the cooling wind was blocked by the terrain. So it was twice as nice to reach the top, because the wind would return and a descent would give us a nice break.

At about half way, we stopped for a Coke and Fanta (not the nice tasty Italian Fanta anymore, but the more artificial kind, like we have in Switzerland), and an crepe and beef broth. Somewhat re-energized, we set out to cycle the remaining 33km / 20 miles in the early afternoon heat.

We arrived at the guest house for the night at 15.00, after a quick stop in a supermarket to buy some of the tasty proper lemonade radler that they have here. Further cool-off was provided by a quick swim in the sea.

Gradac is full of tourists, and so are most of the towns we passed today, and we decided to head inland tomorrow to avoid the touristy shore. This turn would also result in a more direct path to Constanta at the Black Sea, which we picked as the goal for the time being.

Total distance/elevation to date: 4309km/34’173m
Rest days: 14
Route and Stats
Relive Video

Welcome to Croatia! We arrived on-time, at 6.00, in Split. Passport controls were much more efficient this time, and within minutes we were cycling toward the old part of town and right into a market where the people where busy putting the finishing touches on their stalls with fruits, flowers, and vegetables.

We bought some very delicious figs for later, and then walked further into the historical center, getting lost on the way to a hipster coffee bar. Properly caffeinated and somewhat caught up on the string of breaking news from the US capitol, we embarked on our short cycling tour going south along the coast.

The 8-Road was rather busy as it is the main connection to all the tourist places along the coast. We got passed by cars from Germany, Slovenia, Bosnia, Poland, Hungary, and even one from Zurich. The Adriatic that was sometimes close, and sometimes quite a lot further down, looked beautiful with clear, turquoise waters and the rocky shoreline.

The mountain range that is more or less hugging the coast made us do a few climbs here and there, but nothing major. We didn’t stop along the way and arrived just shy of 11.00 in Mimice, where we could, thankfully, do an early checkin. While Liz went straight to nap mode, I went for a quick swim in the clear, refreshing sea. We will spend some time in the afternoon to book more accommodation and route plan; at the moment, the plan is to go further south along the coast until we reach Montenegro or even Albania.

Total distance/elevation to date: 4243km/33’481m
Rest days: 14
Route and Stats
Relive Video