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!

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 ):

Ready to start on a cold but sunny day.

The fortress in Pirot in Serbia.

From Bulgaria into Serbia, heading north.

One day I will also steer this bicycle across the Balkans!

We kinda missed the green forest season! At least there are trees here…

Waterfalls in the Serbian hilly valleys

A real Serbian Hamburger (tons of cheese, a billion calories, and no bread – because who needs bread anyway? and even more cheese stuffed inside of the burger)

The next morning, Cédric and I were treated to another Serbian breakfast (this time a plate of charcuterie) before heading off on the bike. The weather had turned grey and our spirits were a bit low – so to avoid camping outside, we decided to make the day short by cycling to the next biggest city as towns are relatively sparse in this area of the Danube: Zajecar. Instead of riding a usual day length, we went into the backcountry and visited an ancient Roman complex about 10 kilometers outside of the town. Without many breaks, we arrived in Zajecar in the late morning and dropped all our things in the room before heading out to Felix Romuliana, a Unesco listed heritage site. Cycling with an unloaded bike was a nice change and we noticed that we were just slightly faster when going up hills. We wandered around Felix Romuliana for some time, climbing over the foundations of the old palace and temple and peering around old complex walls. Because we still had time to spare, we also cycled up to the two mausoleums of the Roman emperor Galerius and his mother, Romula. We cycled back to Zajecar that afternoon and spent the rest of the day looking around the small downtown and treating ourselves to another Serbian meal.

A classic sight on the Serbian farmland.

Entrance of the Felix Romuliana

Mercury, god of travelers!

Gamzigrad site – location of the Felix Romuliana palace complex.

Goddess Diana trying the hunt

Emperor Galerius palace (that’s just a part of the fortification walls)

Emperor Galerius and his mother’s tomb.

Looking for the Roman Emperor’s mausoleum

In the morning, we left the city and continued north. In order to cycle through the ‘Iron Gates’ portion of the EuroVelo tracks, we needed to get close to the Romanian-Bulgarian-Serbian. Since we weren’t yet on the riverside, this meant cycling over a few more hills. The morning was crisp but cycling up and down the countryside warmed us up. Due to a lack of grocery stores or restaurants along the way, Cédric and I had to make do with gas station food for lunch, dinner, and breakfast. To add to the glamour, we ate our lunch (remaining bits of bread, spread, chips, and Coke) just outside of the shop’s doors. We continued cycling along quiet country roads that afternoon and enjoyed the remaining bits of sunshine. As the sun began to set, Cédric and I decided to spend the night camping since we were unsure of hotels in the nearby area. Using Google Map satellite view, we found a place with empty, self-made cottages along the Danube. We quickly pitched the tent before dark and then got in our sleeping bags for the remainder of the evening, i.e. after dinner at 5pm because it gets dark after 4:30pm – one of the benefits of staying in hotels or guesthouses is not having to huddle in a sleeping bag for hours before we fall asleep.

Cities aren’t necessarily much more beautiful in Serbia than Bulgaria, but the big difference is that they feel a lot livelier and not like ghost towns on the other side of the border.

“I think we come from this way”

Mountains of the Balkans.

Last climb before reaching the Danube.

Romania on the right side, Serbia on the left – that was also a heavily guarded border between the Soviet block and Yugoslavia a few decades ago.

We woke up the next morning to cold temperatures and grey skies. It seemed like the bad weather caught up with us. Just as we were disassembling our tent- it started to sprinkle, so we rushed to pack our things before more rain came. It was still raining when we started cycling on the road, which didn’t make the cold morning any more enjoyable. We cycled over our few last hills before reaching the Danube route in Kladovo. There, we stopped for a hot chocolate to warm our fingers and toes before heading west on the Danube River. Finally, we thought, we’re homeward bound. If we continued following this river, we’d reach Donauwörth, which is just a few dozen kilometers north of Augsburg, a few more hours along the Lech river and we’d be back home. We continued for a few more hours before stopping for a lunch of fish soup and more grilled meat. The weather never improved throughout the day, but we enjoyed the views cycling between the Danube and the rocky cliffs of the Iron Gates gorges. In the late afternoon, we made our way to a guesthouse and turned the heaters on full blast to warm up our frozen bodies.

First views of the Danube, finally! We just have to follow it almost 2000km and we’ll be home.

Empty summer house on the Danube: good quiet camping spot in the winter!

The Diana Fortress, a Roman fortification – the Danube being along most of its length the northernmost border of the Roman empire.

Cedric Bizinessman (probably trying to figure out if an accommodation for the night would accept our Iron Horse)

The gorges of the Danube river.

Hay being piled for drying before the winter.

View of the gorges from the top.

The Iron Gates, the gorges of the Danube.

Famous rock carving of Dacian (Roumania) king Decebalus. He is still a national hero in Roumania after two millenia for daring to fight against the Roman Empire.

Luckily the road goes through tunnels! Our maps had us go up and down all day with crazy inclines… we just went through the mountain easily!

The cold weather hadn’t improved much overnight, it was still near freezing and grey, but we luckily had no more rain, only a lot of humidity from the large Danube river. As we prepared for the day, we put on our warmest clothes and hoped for the best. For the first hour along the Danube, we cycled past empty vacation cottages and small villages. We stopped quickly in Donji Milanovac to pick up some lunch supplies – although our current approach to keep warm includes indoor lunches, we can’t always expect an open restaurant to appear around midday. November is apparently also not the favorite season for tourists to come to this popular area, so a lot of businesses are running either very slowly or simply close for a few months.

The mighty Danube.

After we left the village, Cédric and I had to cycle up one large hill – it was nice to have something warm us up, but we knew that the descent would be bone-chilling cold – it became clear that more than the weather itself, getting dressed appropriately according to the terrain was more tricky: a flat road is easy to manage, but ups and downs are a succession of over-sweating and over-freezing. At the top, we sought refuge in a bus stop to eat some cereal bars and try to hide from the wind to warm up our toes. On the long descent down, we passed through 20 small tunnels, all between 50 and 200 meters in length – which made the road like some Emmental cheese along the tunnel – and a big relief as our phone mapping application did not know these, and was showing us an infernal way going tens of times between the shores of the river and the ridges of the canyon. We could now see the end of the Iron Gates and as we approached our destination for the day in Gobulac, we went into another tunnel under the scenic and famous Gobulac fortress. We ended our day in an apartment in the town of Gobulac, enjoying deals of the low season in a normally crowded town, and again spent a few hours just warming up and drying of our stuff at the end of the day.

The Iron Gates area of the Danube had been an awesome ride the previous few days, with little traffic and dramatic views over this rugged part of the Danube (possibly the only one over its 3000+ km). Although pretty much following the river, cycling was quite hilly (nothing like Central Asia, but still never flat!), and the next following days would be much easier in plains heading to Belgrade.

A village along the Danube – we start to feel some Austrian influence in the churches architecture,

Finally a picture with both of us!

Impressive fortifications of the Gobulac fortress.

The Danube, towards Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna … and Germany!

The iconic Gobulac fortress at the entrance of the Iron Gates gorges on the Danube.

The next morning, we set out in the direction of the Belgrade. Since our Eurovelo 6 routes for the day were a combination of dirt tracks and ferries, we decided to develop our own route instead. In the summer, this would have been fine, but the infrequent (or nonexistent in winter) ferry crossings and sticky mud made us decide to stay along the south side of the river. The morning was pleasant as we rode through small villages, but a few hours into the day we started to climb up and down a few large hills. Since it was the weekend, we also spotted a few guys hunting on the side of the road and hoped that we were colorful enough to not attract bullets! In the afternoon, we cycled through Pozarevac and made our way west. With the increased amount of traffic around Belgrade, the ride was becoming unenjoyable – the roadside was no longer quiet and we had to continuously check our mirrors. Just as we were finishing our last few kilometers into Smederevo, the light rain turned to sleet and snow, so we cycled as quickly as we could to our hotel.

Ah… a usual sight in the outskirts of towns in Serbia. Trucks just dump their stuff incognito near the forest.

Getting some blood flow again in the fingers.

We swear that nothing else was open on Sunday evening! We got lucky to have a hamburger with bread, the normal one has been simplified to just meat (the Pljeskavica): who needs the other stuff anyway? Also a local specificity is that the meat is actually stuffed with a big block of cheese inside… Almost quite not over-caloric!
Note in the background the national tennis star Djokovic being wrecked by some new young player…

When we awoke the next morning, the clouds were clearing up, and the dusting of snow was melting. The day was still cold, but we’d be able to make it into Belgrade. As we left Smederevo, we stopped to look at the old fortress, although not as picturesque as the one in Golubac. We crossed to the north part of the Danube and started following the EuroVelo 6 signs towards Belgrade. Luckily, we were able to find some quiet roads which made the morning’s ride through farmland and villages more enjoyable. Seeing that we weren’t going to make it to Belgrade before the late afternoon, we stopped in downtown Pancevo for a pizza lunch (I had been dreaming about pizza for the last week). In the afternoon, we continued west and decided to see whether the bike would manage on one of the muddy paths into Belgrade- it didn’t even last 1km before needing to dig out all the mud from the wheels – so we cycled along the main road to the northern bridge into the city. The bridge crossing was reminiscent of our Hobart crossing – pushing the bike for a few kilometers with traffic rushing pass us, not enjoyable at all. However, in Belgrade, the sidewalk stopped immediately after the bridge, so we needed to push the bike in the grass until we could merge onto a road. It is sometimes questionable how countries decide to build bike lanes: there are great paved lanes in the middle of nowhere near roads with little traffic, but then usually in the suburbs of large cities where roads are clearly a danger for pedestrians and anything that does not have tons of steel-shields there is just nothing but massive highways – and given the population density, bike lanes would be used much more there than in the backcountry! We navigated our way through Belgrade, a maze for cycling as roads are either forbidden for bikes, or have stairs, tunnels and multiple items making it good for pedestrians only. Okay, we aren’t going to complain much as Serbia was the first country to at least consider bicycle – but next time we are on the EV6, we will just do like Sofia in Bulgaria and keep the city 30km away. We were happy to find our hotel shortly before sunset and call it a day.

Ready for a cold day towards Belgrade!

Orthodox church in Smederevo.

Again, the Smederevo fortress – and we were the only people interested in it at this time of the year.

The citadel of Smederevo, keeping safe the transit of coal-loaded barges on the Danube.

Yep, it started to snow… big gloves and all clothes on for the day’s ride!

Yes, a 45cm pizza has the same amount of pizza as 2x32cm pizzas – so it’s a better deal…
And if you can’t agree on which 45cm to take, just take the Quatro Staggioni
And also, a pizza with an egg on top is always better!

There are not too many bridges on the Danube, so the EuroVelo6 just has to suck it, and you get to somehow push your bike along the 2km long bridge.

Yes, the great EuroVelo6 into Belgrade! Very interesting and exciting ride…

Some fancier buildings in Belgrade.