The rest of the afternoon, we continued along the north side of the Danube, through Deggendorf and to our tiny guesthouse in the middle of nowhere. Just like Austria, we were having the same amount of luck finding a reasonably priced place to sleep. Everything on Booking was out of our price range and others sold-out, but our method of typing ‘pension’ into google maps gave us a result of otherwise non-listed guesthouses. These are usually small B&Bs managed by locals targeting returning workers spending time for the duration of a project, they don’t do any advertisement but are known by word of mouth. We arrived in the afternoon, just as the weather was getting colder, and settled in for the rest of the evening – full of hot showers, tea, and Jerry Seinfeld.

The next morning, we woke up to everything covered in a thick layer of frost and some fog. As we ate our breakfast, the clouds were lifting, and it looked like we would have another rain-free day. We set off on the bike and enjoyed the flat Danube plains. We spent our morning riding and trying to find the best, most direct path to Regensburg. In this region, the Danube meanders, meaning that following the shoreline curves would add extra, unnecessary kilometers to our day. For the most part, we were alone on the roads except for local traffic; the A3 highway was nearby though and we could watch the never-ending stream of semi-trucks. Cycling west, we could appreciate what dense, wealthy Europe has to offer in terms of roads. It was reassuring to know that we could always find a quieter side road away from any heavy traffic and large trucks.

We wound up at a Greek restaurant in Wörth-an-der-Donau for lunch, where some curious locals asked about our bike and where we were going. When we told them Augsburg, which is just a few hundred kilometers away, they were astounded that we were traveling that far… mentioning that we began our journey in New Zealand seemed incomprehensible though. When we hopped back on the bike that afternoon, we were looking keen on getting to our warm spot for the night and meeting up with some friends. Cycling into Regensburg, we joined what our maps called the ‘highway-cycleway’ and found a speedy, paved route into the city. By now, around 2:30pm, the skies were covered with thick clouds, making the temperatures feel even colder and nightfall seem imminent. We quickly unpacked the bike and found our way into Bettina and Andi’s apartment so we could warm up our fingers and toes. That evening, we made another noodle dinner and enjoyed some drinks as we caught up with our friends.

The weather didn’t improve the next morning, and clouds were still hanging low and thick. It took a bit of navigating to find a good path out of Regensburg and back onto to Danube. Regensburg sits where three rivers flow together, so it was a bit tricky figuring out how to cross to the southern side of the Danube. However, we managed and started making the journey south towards Augsburg (Regensburg was probably the northern-most part of our trip).  Once we noticed that we would cycle significantly more kilometers by following the shores of the Danube, we decided to cut inland. Though this area wasn’t flat anymore and it meant climbing up small hills. Most of the morning was spent riding and trying to find the best option for riding towards Neustadt-an-der-Donau, where we figured we find a restaurant for lunch. For whatever reason, bike paths were nearly non-existent in this corner of Germany (we really got spoiled over the last week), so we rejoined some quiet roads through the forest. As we were nearing the village, about 10 kilometers away, we noticed that the GPS was giving us a route with a few additional kilometers, so we had to do some human-routing, which meant stopping at every intersection to look at the phone (thanks 21^st century technology!). In Neustadt, we had a well-deserved pizza lunch- it would be enough fuel to get us to Ingolstadt for the evening.

Once we warmed up a bit inside the restaurant, we prepared to get on the bike again and noticed that it was sprinkling. It wasn’t ideal, but we only had 25 more kilometers left for the day. This was also around the time when we decided that instead of cycling along the Danube through Donauwörth and following the Lech river to Augsburg, we would just continue straight to Augsburg. With the weather getting continuously colder and the days uneventfully gray, days off the bike seemed more pleasant, plus we knew the area fairly well from weekend rides, so we could wait for the next spring to bike on those roads. As we left Neustadt, we crossed the Danube to the northside and continued cycling west. Just like the morning, we had to be conscious of the GPS routing, because it kept wanting to follow a busy road, something that we preferred to avoid around Ingolstadt, the land of speeding Audis. We rolled into Grossmehring just as it was beginning to rain. We found our hotel, stored our bike in the garage and settled in for the night, only venturing out to find a supermarket for dinner supplies (which also included a bottle of Glühwein).

Now that we were in Ingolstadt, ‘home’ was less than 100 kilometers away… about 75, so a full day’s ride away. Instead of rushing to make it to Augsburg before it got dark, we decided to ride only until Aichach and savor our last day cycling without feeling like we had to rush. This second-to-last day was for the most part uneventful… the skies were still gray, everything was still a bit damp, but we were both giddy with the fact that we were almost home. We cycled through empty fields and the landscape began to look familiar; these were places where we had often cycled on day trips. We stopped for lunch at an Italian restaurant outside of Schrobenhausen, where we felt very out of place in our bike gear sitting next to a wedding party. Once we finished our last restaurant lunch of the trip, we got back on the Hase Pino and cycled the remaining distance to our guesthouse in Aichach, only stopping to gather sundries for our final dinner on the road.

As we prepared our things the next morning, we noticed that big snowflakes were beginning to come down. We also decided to start a bit later than usual because we managed to get one of our friends, Mike, to brave the wintery weather and ride with us into Augsburg. However, up to this point, we never rode in a snowstorm. Once we found Mike at the Aichach train station, we left and were eager to finish the cold ride to Augsburg. Even though we were so close to home, the GPS proved to be (once again in Germany) suboptimal for taking the most direct route. We ended up unintentionally riding through the hilly Sielenbach-Dasing section, which would have been nice on a summer day, but not in a near-blizzard. We thanked Mike for coming with us in one of the worst weather we had in the entire year – luckily one of the shortest too. Once we got back on track, we rolled through Dasing and Stätzling, the first direct suburbs of Augsburg. Now we were able to make out Augsburg from the top of the hill. We took some small paths into our hometown, so no grandiose arrival, and not even a city sign where we were hoping to take a picture, but also the snowy streets only for ourselves. It was still snowing once we made it through the outer neighborhoods to the city center, and went many kilometers talking about what happened in Augsburg during the year (spoiler alert, not much changes year after year!) and then suddenly, there we were… at the Christmas market in Augsburg’s main downtown square, only a few pedal strokes away and finish! We had to clarify to some folks that we had not biked from Munich Airport but from slightly further east (probably not checking our webpages regularly enough…), explained why we had a fully loaded bike at this time of the year at the Christmas market, etc.

But just like one year ago, we were at the same place sipping Glühwein(s) with friends. It was hard to find the right words, but we made it!

Our year’s journey came to its end, and had finally reached its destination – home!

(Don’t unsubscribe immediately, we may have a few more posts to come – it just happens that writing is more difficult with our daily routine/regular-life/daily-grind is actually quite time consuming!).

Bratislava is a pleasant mid-size city although without too many fancy monuments like its neighboring Budapest and Vienna, but green and pedestrian, so we just took an easy day off wandering around – after a visit to a bike shop to replace the entire front drivetrain. We had to explain the mechanics that the size of chain-rings doesn’t matter, it’s only a matter of ratios, and thus got some brand-new top parts with flashy colors – originally for an Enduro-MTB – but whatever, it is not the first weird part that we have added and we’ll now both be able to make it through the next two weeks! Through a discussion group that we used the whole year, we contacted a fellow cyclist from Spain (and actually living in Munich) – Jose – also in Bratislava at the same time and heading in the same direction to finish his year-long trip and spent the evening together over some Glühwein and beers.

We left early the next morning with the objective of the day to get into our last country before Germany: Austria. The easiest and shortest way would have been to simply follow the Danube, but it seemed on our maps that the path was not quite paved – which at this time of the year would have meant muddy areas on the side of the Danube. We would also pass through the Soviet iron-wall on that day, which meant that apart from recent large highways, there are still surprisingly few roads connecting Slovakia and Austria. Luckily a border crossing only for pedestrians and bicycles was created in the northwest of Bratislava, which allowed us to avoid going half way up to the Czech Republic like we would have had to with a car. That path brought us along the Morava under the Devin castle and later past several monuments commemorating the death of people who tried to cross into the west during the communist time (several hundred shot trying to go across a river only a few meters wide). The bridge took us across the border right into the large Schlosshof castle.

The first reaction in Austria was that it felt weird to be in an almost immaculate country: every single house well-maintained, farms perfectly clean, no dirt on agricultural machinery, etc. Well, basically Austria – but we had just gotten used to more unkept places! We stopped in a local restaurant to get our first Wiener-schnitzel since Thailand (back then at an Austrian expatriate!).

Somehow, even if we had progressively gone back to western Europe, we had to readjust again – prices had just tripled by crossing the Slovak border, dogs were not chasing you or barking like half-wits (some even going into restaurants with their owners and quietly staying under the table!), we had to park the bike to the dedicated bike-parking area, etc. We yet got some weird interactions, first Austria was the first country where people started to speak German to us – taking for granted that we had to be locals, when we were obviously foreigners anywhere else, then Austria still remains the only country in western Europe where smoking is allowed in public places – which makes local restaurants not enjoyable.

After our warm lunch in a small village, we decided to return to the Danube to avoid the Vienna traffic. Traffic was light in this region, but we knew it was going to pick up as we approached the capital city – so we wanted bike paths! Just as we got on the official Danube route, the rain once again started and we made our way up the Danube and into Vienna without many issues, enjoying what we could of the paved way. As it was approaching nightfall, we found our AirBnB and were happy to unload our wet things from the bike.

All the accommodation prices skyrocketed once we entered Austria and we were desperate to find places that were still within our budget. Hoping to once again use Warmshowers, we contacted a few people along our path in Vienna, but they didn’t seem considerate of a winter cyclist’s needs (arriving at 8pm and leaving before 7am would be fine in the summer, but not in the freezing cold and 8 hours of daylight). We instead found the cheapest (but not cheap!) AirBnB along our route. Because we arrived in a new capital, we couldn’t help but checkout the bike store across the street (looking for a new battery for the dead tachometer) before turning in for the night.

The next morning, with all our bags dry, we got back on the EuroVelo 6 and continued up the Danube. We immediately noticed that the bicycle infrastructure was worlds apart from anything we had been riding on this entire trip. The signage made navigation incredibly easy, we rarely cycled on the side of the road, and nearly everything was paved. This was a huge surprise because our navigation apps showed few bicycle lanes, so we were expecting a lot of dirt trails on the side of the river. In addition to the superb infrastructure, the weather was also sunny – making the day that much more enjoyable. We took a detour from the trail in Tulln to see the St. Stefan church, find a bakery for snacks, and peek at the Christmas market. Although it was sunny, we had no desire for a cold picnic lunch, so we found a small inn in “Langenschönbichl” (yeah, we also had to get used to German words!) to take a break. Once we had our fill, we continued along the EuroVelo and made our way through a small forest. The rest of the afternoon, we followed the north side of the Danube and enjoyed the extremely flat route. We cycled into Krems an der Donau and met up with our Warmshowers host in the downtown. Thankful for him opening his apartment to us for the night, we made a hearty pizza and chatted about our tour.

The next morning, we left Krems and cycled through the historic downtown before rejoining the Danube. Now back on the southern side of the river, we followed the EuroVelo through vineyards and up a few small hills. The weather wasn’t as great as the day before (it felt much colder without the sun), so we were both happy that we decided to take a break in Melk to do some sightseeing. In the late morning after cycling 35 kilometers, we arrived at our guesthouse, dropped our things, and headed up to the gigantic abbey looming over the village. As we were milling around the inner courtyard, we realized that we got lucky and were able to join the afternoon tour without reserving a ticket in advance. The next two hours were filled with discovering the abbey’s history and gazing at the impressive Baroque architecture. Unfortunately, the abbey doesn’t allow photography, so our dear readers will have to visit to see the inside (or do a quick Google search). We finished the day with a Glühwein at the Christmas market before returning to the hotel for the evening.

After a hearty hotel breakfast the next morning, we saddled up and set out for Ennsdorf. We were having difficulties finding simple, cheap accommodation along the Danube, so our destination was now determined by places that fit within our budget – today, this meant a 30€-Airbnb, 80 kilometers away. We left Melk and crossed the Daube to the northern side (the navigation said that this way was faster). Shortly after we left, the clouds started to become denser and a downpour erupted just 20 kilometers after we left Melk. After we threw on our rain gear, we decided to keep riding until we found a warm restaurant for lunch. We stopped at a large restaurant and bit-by-bit, peeled off our wet layers to hang up to dry, and relished the hour in a warm room. The rain had subsided that afternoon to sprinkles, so we continued along and rushing to get to our destination before nightfall. Throughout our trip, we wouldn’t consider 80 kilometers to be a long day, but now with extended restaurant lunches and only 8 hours of daylight, we would consider this distance to be the maximum that we could achieve in one day. The EuroVelo took us more inland in the afternoon, avoiding some marshy areas of the Danube, but we decided to deviate from the route and follow the river so we wouldn’t have to add extra time zig-zagging through fields. At the beginning, this seemed like a fantastic decision because we were following a newly paved path, but it suddenly turned to ancient cobblestones, concrete blocks and rock piles with a sign stating that cycling wasn’t allowed. We stopped and deliberated for a few minutes and looked at a few maps to figure out our best option: 1. Keep on going straight, 2. Cycling through the wet and muddy forest, or 3. Turning around. We decided to continue going forward despite awful trail conditions and it turned out to be the best choice because the path became paved again in two kilometers. We quickly stopped for a quick break before continuing the last 10 kilometers to Ennsdorf, rushing because it was after 4pm and we could notice daylight rapidly receding.  

Just as we were closing in on our goal, it started to rain again so any hopes of arriving dry and not needing to hang all our gear had diminished. The family hosting us were surprised to find that they were still having cyclists so late in the season; they mentioned that another young pair of cyclists had also stayed with them two weeks prior. For being a cheap AirBnB, the family was very accommodating and let us wash and dry our clothes and even said that we could have used their jacuzzi if it hadn’t been raining. After a day soaking wet, a jacuzzi was not quite are greatest envy anyway and we would have better dreamt of an open wood-fire! We set off the next day feeling clean and refreshed.

Leaving Ennsdorf, it seemed like the weather was cooperating when we cycled through Enns and back to the northern side of the Danube (since Linz is mostly on the southern side, the north side would have less traffic). As we approached the city, we passed the steelworks and were happy that we chose the north side – the Sulfuric smell was intoxicating a few hundred meters away, we couldn’t imagine what it would have been like right next to us. We wanted to see some of downtown Linz, so we crossed the Danube and pulled up to the Christmas market in the main square – and had a very Germanic snack (sauerkraut and sausages) while we enjoyed bit of sun. Afterwards, we pushed the bike through a little bit of the city before we decided to cross back over the bridge and continue west. For the most part, the weather seemed stable as we were cycling along, so we were considering stopping for a picnic lunch on the shores of the Danube. Just as we pulled off the trail at a rowing clubhouse for a bit of shelter, a major downpour had caught up with us… which wasn’t making an outdoor lunch enticing. As we were looking around the premises for a dry spot, we noticed that there was a restaurant on the top floor of the club house AND it was offering warm lunch specials, so we decided to save our lunch for another day. As we sat inside the warm restaurant munching on warm falafel, we watched the torrents roll across the Danube and were happy that we pulled over when we did. By the time we left, the rain had significantly subsided, and we continued along the EuroVelo 6.

This part of the bike path wasn’t very developed, so we cycled for quite a few kilometers on the flat river banks before needed to turn off and navigate. However, just as we were reaching the next village, we noticed that the hills west of us had disappeared completely due to another storm closing in on us and we cycled like mad towards Feldkirchen an der Donau, looking for some shelter from an impending downpour. We pulled up next to a small supermarket just as pea-sized hail started pelting us. We stayed under the roof for a few minutes as the worst part of the storm passed, mostly laughing and taking videos of our situation, and then continued cycling the last few kilometers to our hotel in Aschach-an-der-Donau. This night would be our last (and most expensive) in Austria, and we couldn’t be happier.

Every evening, we were spending hours scrolling through internet websites trying to find the cheapest places to stay along the Danube, shocked at the hotel prices. Even in the low season, there were no deals in the hotels and half of the guest houses weren’t listed on internet aggregators like Booking – leaving us to look through every single directory in every village’s homepage. (Pro tip for cyclists: type ‘pension’ in Google maps, for some reason it will show guesthouses that are not listed anywhere else).

We are not quite sure what is going on in Austria, but yield management pricing still has not been discovered around there – the price is the same, fixed, yearlong, no discounts even when the area is deserted: we were wondering why anyone with a car would stop in those villages when they can get much better places for much less from international hotel-chains in Linz. With bicycles, things are a little more difficult, but given that we have not crossed a single cyclist in weeks, the business model is perfectible. This hotel was yet our last in Austria and although glad that we were not freezing outside, we just couldn’t understand what made accommodations three times more expensive than the neighboring countries for a poor service – here we didn’t even have a water boiler or studio kitchen, and had for only exchange with the owner a key and post-it left in the mailbox. Austria was our 20^th country on the way this year, and not our best recommendation for the value-for-money! We were feeling deeply annoyed to give away daily 4 months of average wage in Tajikistan to a ghost-host while we had stayed at amazing families in Central-Asia just a few weeks ago. We did not linger long in Austria!

After an evening with the heater on full-blast, we work up and put on our rain gear once again. The rain never really subsided overnight, so we were wet immediately. We spent the first hour cycling through a ‘remote’ stretch down a narrow country road along the shore, shocked by the frosted hilltops just a few hundred meters higher than us. Even through we were well into December, this was another reminder of cold winter weather to come. Once we reached the main road, we cycled up and down a few hills and made a lunch stop in Engelhartszell-an-der-Donau (“the spot of the hard fishermen on the Danube” if interested in the translation of weird Germanic locations!) to dry off. This time it was hearty-yet-expensive venison ragout and Schnitzel with a warm coffee. Shortly after Engelhartszell, we reached the first border crossing with Germany across a dam and decided to leave Austria behind. We could have continued cycling a few dozen more kilometers in Austria but found it too tempting to not cross at this juncture. As we rode along the dam, it was soon apparent that we couldn’t simply ride across… instead we had to carry our luggage, the bike, and the trailer up and down two flights of stairs. This added a little extra stress, but then we could finally say that we entered Germany. Shortly after the border, the rain subsided, and we rolled through some small German towns along the Danube. We reached our hotel in the middle of Passau in the late afternoon a bit stunned that we were so close to home. Cedric had worked tens on times in this area a few years before. As we cycled up to the hotel, many people were about in the streets and we received many stares. Ah yes, the return to Germany, were it’s completely normal for people to stop dead in their tracks and just stare at you if you look out of place (the Pino and trailer don’t help). Passau is the starting point of many river cruise ships on the Danube and before we carried our rig up into the hotel, we became the focus of a group of English-speaking senior tourists who apparently seemed more impress that we had been outside in December than biked non-stop from eastern Kazakhstan (because that’s probably just a few miles east of their cruise’s final destination in Budapest…)! We spent the evening walking around town, not too much in the churches and monuments (we had already seen enough and had been in Passau previously), but more interested in German shopping chains: Rewe, DM, Saturn, etc. Not because it was anything interesting, but probably just to make sure we were back!

From Istanbul, we had tried to figure a route back home by splitting to way into three parts: first Istanbul-Belgrade, then Belgrade-Budapest and finally Budapest-Augsburg (the three parts not being equidistant, but the road after Budapest is very obvious all the way to the end. So, getting closer to Augsburg, we could finally be able to estimate the number of days left on the saddle, and starting to count backwards with the constraint of being back in Augsburg the 18^th of December (Cassie’s parents arriving the 19^th in Germany), we figured that we could spend three days in Budapest.

After days of cycling in the rain, the weather turned to sunny but freezing cold in Budapest – we are still not sure what is a better weather for cycling versus sightseeing – and we started by visiting the most remarkable building of Budapest, the parliament building. Just as we imagined it, it is a very impressive construction, and very scenic on the shore of the Danube. We however felt that the visit was deceptive, overpriced and more of a tourist trap than anything else: you mostly see the corridors and stairs, a short glimpse at the parliament room, a long explanation at the very important symbols of the Hungarian monarchy (which is funny since Hungary is a republic and has not had a king for a quite a while now) – this very much felt like the story of “King Ottokar’s Scepter” or maybe an attempt to sell monarchy-crap-souvenirs?

A bit incensed by the high price of entrance tickets everywhere, Cédric and I decided to wander around the city and enjoy the sights from the outside. From the parliament, we crossed to the Buda (west) side of the city and wandered through the Fisherman’s bastion and Citadel area. Despite the odd time of year, there were still plenty of other tourists hanging around and posing for their online social media narcissism pictures. We find normal posing and picture taking okay, but things get bizarre when people take off their coats, take some high-heel shoes out of the bag for a few minutes, in freezing temperatures, hop up on a ledge, and do a range of poses, imitating a few tens of thousands of other people that have already taken their shot the current year, while their friends snap away. The rest of the day, we wandered around more of the city and searched for a cheap mulled wine (which we finally found at a Lidl). The next few days in Budapest were spent walking around more corners of the city, taking us from City Park to the Gellert baths. We also visited the Hungarian National History Museum to gain a better understanding of the country and its origins (along with avoiding the cold outside). It was peculiar that we didn’t find any of our sartorial friends mulling around the museum.

After we spent enough days off of the bike, Cédric and I packed our luggage and continued following the Danube northwards. The first hour or so was again through the chaotic industrial suburbs and shopping centers before getting back onto the EuroVelo 6 bike lane. The conditions had gotten colder and colder every day – although the plus side of bitter-cold temperatures in the winter is usually sun – and we were now leaving Budapest with -7c and our gloves were on the very limit of supportable.

We took our first break in Szentendre, a cute little artsy town on the shore of the Danube, that we would have probably enjoyed a little more if our main focus was not to just get warmer which basically meant to quickly get back on the tandem to produce our own heat. Cedric had contacted the mayor of the next village – Dunabogdany – a few days before, because somehow, he had some memories of that village being the hometown of a part of his family (hence his Germanic family name). The mayor having the same family name, being not much older than us and speaking German, plus Dunabogdany being small enough, he figured that we could meet up – just because “why not”! A coffee turned into a generous lunch while we tried to compare some genealogy trees that proved to be either uncomplete or faulty as many names were matching but not quite the structures. We may need some additional genealogy data about all that – there are a surprising number of Josef’s but none of the dates match – yet we nevertheless had some interesting conversations.

Given the short days of December, the temperatures well below freezing, our numb extremities and the different breaks during the day, our originally planned destination was far from being within reach and we decided to stop at the first guesthouse right after Visegrad, shortly before the sunset. Back in Western Europe, Sundays meant all shops closed so we spent the evening buying everything edible in sight at a small food stand (this meant burgers, chips, all the pastries… I think we were the best customers that day).

The next few days were a continuous amalgam of rain showers and following the spotty paths of the EuroVelo 6. We noticed traffic also started to increase along the Danube, so we were happy whenever we could follow a bike lane. Fortunately, the temperatures increased ever-so-slightly, and our digits weren’t as painfully cold as before Budapest. After leaving the guesthouse, we arrived in Esztergrad in the mid-morning and were surprised to find an enormous basilica looming over the city. It was a bit of a detour, but we cycled up the mount to the doors of the basilica and caught a glimpse inside Hungary’s tallest building (and head of the Hungarian Catholicism) before Sunday mass started. After cycling another 40 kilometers, we decided to spend that night in Komárno on the Slovakian side of the Danube – instead of Komarón on the Hungarian side. After doing a bit of research, the hotels appeared to be significantly cheaper in Slovakia and the town had its own small Christmas market where we could enjoy a bit of mulled wine. If you are wondering why the two cities have a surprisingly similar name, it is not a lack of imagination, but simply that the two sides of the city was one single Hungarian town until the reshuffling of borders after WW1 in central Europe, and even a century later the Slovak side still speaks mostly Hungarian.

The next morning, we re-entered Hungary and were surprised by the number of trucks dominating the road. Now that the work week had begun, goods and products were being shipped and we were getting soaked from the traffic driving through the roadside puddles. Luckily, we only had to share the road for a few kilometers before we could turn off to a quieter road. The proximity with Austria and further to the west of Europe also seems to make that region an attractive location for the plants of various companies. A quieter road didn’t come without its disadvantages, however, and it progressively degraded into a muddy track. Without many options, we (meaning mostly Cédric while I filmed) pushed the bike three kilometers through slick mud to the nearest road. Once we got back on the road tried to clear all of the mud and sticks from the wheels (i.e. finding puddles on the asphalt and trying to dissolve the mud on the frame with the hands…), we hoped that this was the last mud track of our trip. Now significantly dirtier, we cycled into Györ and made an absolute mess as we brought our things into a fancier than usual hotel (with spa, breakfast included, etc. … luxury!). We spent the last remaining hours of sunlight walking through the historic downtown and drinking mulled wine at one of the stalls. Again, after Pècs and Szekszárd, Györ is a little known town, almost no tourists (especially compared to nearby Budapest and Vienna on both sides) but remarkable architecture.

The next morning, we packed our things and prepared for our last day cycling through Hungary. It seemed like the weather was going to cooperate this day and we saw blue skies and sun for the first time in a few days. We enjoyed the large breakfast and realized we weren’t that far from Germany. Short anecdote: we saw our first non-tourist German, a worker on a business trip who had apparently just got up on the wrong side of bed and made a grumpy scene in a barbarian broken English because he the fresh fruits weren’t fresh enough for his needs! That entertained us later on the bike for a few days, and whenever something wasn’t working well we would yell, immitating the guy, “I need fresh fruits”.

Back on the road, more good news was that we were going to have paved bike lanes all the way to Bratislava – 75 out of 80km on a separate asphalted lane, the dream! Although the weather might have finally been on our side, the bike mechanics weren’t. Just a few kilometers after our start, we were struggling (again) with the front-chain sliding on the chain-ring, but the chain-ring had now reached a point that playing with zip-ties to push the chain on the sprocket was no longer an option. We had seen the problem coming for a few thousand kilometers and had hoped that we would make it back home without visiting another bike shop – at that point less than a thousand kilometers. Being in Europe made us less nervous than we would have been in Central Asia; we are never too far from a bike shop anymore. The situation yet was that Cassie was now pretty much wading through molasses. We thus decided to shorten the chain to have the tensioner pulling as much as possible – but the next problem became that chain was so extended that quick-links were not usable anymore, and managed finally to remove even more links to connect the two ends of the now very-shortened chain (and hoping that the connection or the chain would not break, although the area being completely flat we had the possibility of Cedric pushing the tandem alone to Bratislava…).

We entered Slovakia – almost without noticing it – along the Danube, apart from the sunny weather turning around and welcoming us with torrential showers and sudden strong headwinds. We just tried to pay no mind to that and pushed the last hour soaking wet before reaching our accommodation for the next two nights. The way getting into downtown Bratislava by bicycle is probably one of the best we have seen so far for a capital city; there are good bike lanes everywhere and bridges across the Danube for bikes and pedestrians only. We went from farmland to our accommodation in the city center almost without having to stop, dealing with traffic or struggling with car-only paths (Belgrade…). The good thing with traveling in central Europe during the low season is that you can get great bargains in the larger cities – and we enjoyed having a 6 people apartment to dry all our gears with the heaters full-on!

In the afternoon, we made our way back to the hotel and were surprised to find two other cyclists in our room: Corinne and Chris, who were also traveling on a Pino this year. As luck would have it, we have mutual friends in Augsburg and had been in contact with each other for the past few weeks, so we could finally meet. We were relatively close to each other in Kyrgyzstan, then we split – them going through Iran, we through the Caspian and the Caucasus, and even since Istanbul we had been playing cat and mouse throughout the Balkans – Cassie found her favorite French expression: chasse-patate! We finally found a way to join at the same place and same time in Belgrade, the (almost) final destination of their trip. The rest of the day, we exchanged stories of our travels over food and drink.

The next morning, Cédric and I said our goodbyes and headed north. Corinne and Chris, on the other hand, left to take a bus to Munich and were thus closer to ending their trip. Our day cycling on the road was a blur – with little opportunity for small roads, we joined the constant flow of traffic on a secondary road. The rolling showers and fog didn’t make the ride exciting either, so we cycled into Novi Sad with few breaks and arrived there early in the afternoon. After getting scammed finding an accommodation (a very poorly rated hotel presented themselves as being the owner of the highly rated place next door – and found out about it after paying the night – certain that given the reviews we would not need to check the room first like we used to do in Asia), we went around to discover this historical city and so for the remaining part of the day, we walked around the picturesque downtown. Unlike Belgrade with its plethora of communist-style architecture and busy industrial suburbs, the center of Novi Sad still has an abundance of regal 19^th century and older buildings. Novi Sad being on the extreme north east of Serbia, it had been part of multiple other countries (Hungary until recently), and the influence of Austria and other central European powers is a lot more visible.

When we woke up the next day, it seemed like the bad weather was behind us (for now). We packed our things and decided to head for the Serbia-Croatia border. Cédric and I were getting tired of the traffic and the current hotel owners made us long for friendlier hosts – so we decided to give a different country a try. However, that first meant cycling with the traffic to Backa Palanka. For a kilometer or two outside of Novi Sad, we thought we found a newly paved bike path along the Danube (and the sight of a road cyclist made us hopeful), but the trail ended abruptly, so we pushed our bike back to the road. We got rid of our excess dinar (the Serbian currency) at the last supermarket and then crossed the Danube into Croatia. And just like that, the traffic disappeared. As we were riding through some small towns along river, we noticed that some houses were still riddled with bullet holes from the Croatian war of Independence. Many houses had a fresh coating of stucco, but some buildings bore scars as a testament to the war. Before finishing our day in Vukovar, we visited the military cemetery, which was another memorial to the war. Serbia is just across the river, and Serbians are not the souvenir of a good neighbor in here. The Balkans is now composed of many small countries that may look silly on a map, but the cultural difference is still significant – it is never sufficient for wars, but within a few kilometers we went from an industry-based Christian orthodox country to a Catholic wine growing touristic region.

The next morning, we left Vukovar with brilliant blue skies and continued our journey north. Again, without many other options, we had to join a larger, more trafficked road on our way into Osijek. When we cycled into the city, we were greeted by bike lanes (they’re becoming more prevalent to more north we go) and stopped in the Tvrda, an old 18^th century fortress built by the Hapsburg Empire. Heading west down the main street, we were surprised to see multiple Art Nouveau buildings lining the streets – coming from places with cheap, new construction projects, cinderblock houses, or soviet-style apartment buildings, this immediately gave us the feeling of being in Western Europe. We wandered around the downtown to look for a lunch spot, and finally found a boat restaurant on the shores of the Drava river. In the afternoon, we cycled through small villages and farmland to get to Valpovo, where we called it a day.

By the time we packed our bike the next morning, we noticed that the gray clouds were promising rain for our ride. Our plan for the day was to cross the Croatia-Hungary border and ride towards Pécs. Leaving Valpovo around 9am, we crossed the Drava River and continued north to the border town. The Hungarian border, with its new fencing and barbed wire, flanked us to the left and was a reminder of Hungary’s harsh stance against refugees and migrants. Shortly before the border, we met a few guys who where slaughtering and smoking a pig and offered us a few shots of their homemade schnapps, but we didn’t feel quite up for drinking at 10:30 in the morning. Just as we crossed the border into Hungary, it started to sprinkle and didn’t let up. We rode through small picturesque villages with their rows of wine houses and the wine bars in Villany. This would have been a perfect area to explore on a summer day, but we were determined to find a dry room in Pécs, so we continued cycling. When we arrived in the afternoon, Cédric and I dropped off our soaking wet bags and went out to explore the city while there was still some daylight. We had a bit of luck and the rain stopped just as we arrived in the city. Many downtown buildings were built at the turn of the 20^th century and exhibit a neo-baroque style, but there are other vestiges of former periods and rule of other Empires, like a mosque-turned-church built during the Ottoman occupation and church foundations built during the Roman Empire. Our first reaction was that cities in Europe are definitely the most beautiful, sorry the rest of the world (okay, other countries or continents have other good things)!

The next morning, the bits of the sun were poking through the clouds, and we were thinking that we’d have an enjoyable ride into Szekszárd. Due to the rain from the previous day, Cédric diligently oiled our gears and chain, but we discovered that the lubrication exacerbated a growing problem with our drivetrain: one of the chainrings was so worn down that the greasy chain would just slip over the teeth. This is a big problem because only one person is transmitting the force to move our iron horse. After 45 minutes of unsuccessful meddling, we managed to set things right with a well-placed zip-tie putting more tension on the chain and thus sticking it onto the chainring.

Upon leaving Pécs, we followed some hilly secondary roads north. Hungary is also the first country in Europe where we saw ‘No bicycle’ signs on the more-trafficked roads (which is probably a good thing, as those roads mean in Hungary that there is a quiet alternative nearby), but this meant that we spent the day swerving through the hills to stay on the correct roads. Hungary was also the first country where we met many people cycling as a hobby or sports – after all countries we visited, doing (and no watching!) sports is apparently mostly a western countries thing. Around lunch time, the heavens once again opened up and we were rained on the rest of the day. Towards the end of the day, we arrived in Szekszárd in a downpour and were happy to find our warm apartment for the night.

For the next two days as we rode towards Budapest, the weather didn’t improve – it remained cold, gray, and rainy. Out of Szekszárd, we rejoined the Danube and crossed onto the east side and followed the mix of bike lanes and roads into the capital Budapest. We attempted to stay out in the rain when biking wasn’t necessary, so we cycled non-stop to an indoor place for lunch, and then again to the apartment for the night. Nothing very exciting on those flatlands, more and more traffic getting closer to Budapest, and as usual the chaotic and totally uninteresting suburbs before finally reaching the much more bike friendly capital of Hungary. When we arrived at our place to stay, we somewhat felt bad for bringing soaking bags and clothes into the room, but… oh well, we needed a place to stay – and we tend to have less remorse in large hotels than guesthouses or B&Bs (and we are super cautious when invited or Warmshowers!). As we arrived into Budapest, we followed a bike lane along the Danube and into the heart of the city. It was nice to see grand buildings pop up out of the more modern suburban dwellings as we approached our hotel for the evening.

We however got a new article from our regional newspaper in Augsburg, the “Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung”.

Here’s a copy of the paper edition:

Alternatively, you can also check the web version:

https://azol.de/53200831

or the original pdf version:

And if you need some help with German, some “Google Translations” (or learn German ):