Balkins August 26, 2018 Belgrade, Serbia

8:45 pm.  Long day on the bike today leaving Sibiu, Romania at around 9:30 am and checking into our Belgrade hotel around 5:30 pm local which is one hour earlier than Romanian time so around 9 hours total and 260 miles.  As far as miles go, we have ridden longer distances in one day.  However, we lost time in traffic, an unruly GPS, some rain and crossing the border from Romania to Serbia.  The border crossing was mainly 2 immigration checks, one leaving Romania and one entering Serbia. We were on a remote 2 lane road so it was pretty quick.  No customs, lines or crowds.  The personnel were friendly and didn't hassle us at all.  Though they were adamant that I not take any pictures of the crossing area, which is understandable, I guess.  The picture below is one they said I could take just inside the Sebian border.  Sooz wants me to mention that the female Serbian border guard had her nails done just like women in the US.

There was major construction underway on several sections of the main A1 highway that my GPS did not acknowledge so when we got on the detour the GPS was useless. So luckily Susie's phone was able to access Google maps which did the job.

The countryside was not unusual except for a couple rock formations that looked like western US.  Some parts reminded me of inland south Florida south of Lake Okeechobee,  except of endless sugarcane fields we saw endless fields of sunflowers and corn; long, straight, 2 lane rural roads.  A picture is below of Sooz sitting on the bike in the middle of nowhere.  

For dinner Sooz found a traditional, no frills Serbian restaurant about a 15 minute walk from our hotel.  I had goulash which cost about $6.60 US, and Sooz had about a 12 ounce perfectly prepared steak for about $13.00 US.  She couldn't eat it all even with me helping.

We have a new currency,  the dinaro which is about 100 to $1 US.  Prices look expensive but they're not.

The Serbian language is indecipherable. There really is no way to even get a basic understanding by reading it.  The Romanian language is kind of a mishmash of Italian, German, French and even a little bit of Spanish, so there is some familiarity of letters and words.  But Serbian, forget it.

Gas is expensive, about $6.00 US a gallon and was hard to find out in the boonies. The little towns we went through had virtually no commercial or retail businesses to speak of. 

About 30 miles before Belgrade we stopped at a cemetery.  I have a picture below.  The grave sites were the most lavish and well maintained I've ever seen. We didn't walk the whole site but there were recent as well as older graves.  I thought we might see a lot of graves from the war period of 1991-1995, but we didn't.

Balkans August 25, 2018 Sibiu, Romania

9:00 pm.  Sitting in beautiful corner room on the 3rd floor with our windows open to the historic square in Old Town Sibiu. Pictures below.  We had a nice light dinner sitting outside after eating sausage and polenta for 2 days.  But dessert of Floating Islands was required.  Our Romanian hostess spoke perfect English and had spent time in the US including Key West.  She loves the US and said everyone there is so friendly.  We sat next to a young couple with a cute  2 year old girl.  The father also spoke perfect English and works in a marketing company.  All schools in Romania teach English so most of the younger people speak at least some. 

I think the last couple of days getting here, renting the motorcycle,  etc. caught up to us because we felt tired today and didn't feel like traveling.  The adrenaline rush wore off.  So we rode about 2 miles to our current hotel.  The area we are in was established in the 1100's!  Our room is in a building with walls about 2.5 feet thick and has stayed cool without air conditioning.

We happened to stumble upon a Romanian Medieval Festival so you will hopefully see some pictures from that.  We also walked to a local market that had tables and tables of fresh vegetables and fruit.  We bought some green peppers, blueberries and grapes and ate them as we walked through the market.  They were very tasty. I took pictures of some of the local women who were very happy to pose for us.  I asked before I took the pictures and then they wanted to see the pictures which was fun to see their reactions, happy and proud.

Internet access here is good so I'm going to try to upload several pictures including from yesterday's ride on the Transfagarian Highway.  

Tomorrow we are off to Belgrade, Serbia, I think ...

Balkans August 24, 2018 Sibiu, Romania

4:30 am wide awake.  A couple of notes about riding in Bucharest: drivers mostly stay in their lanes, not a lot of horn honking, drive pretty fast, not a lot of speed limit signs so no clue if they are speeding, mostly cars, not many motorcycles or scooters, temperatures have been in the mid 80s and sunny so we have been sweating a lot riding in our gear.

Another example of stern to humorous transitions.  The checkout lady in a local grocery store - Susie asked her about the difference between 2 types of ice coffees we were buying, one container was dark and the other container light colored.  The lady gave us a stern "you've got to be kidding" look.  We then carried on a conversation in broken English during which she read the ingredient labels on the containers and basically said one is dark and the other one is light, and then we all started laughing.  She paid absolutely no regard to the people in line behind us and they showed no impatience.  That's my kind of humor and I think my Gainesville Geezer friends will agree.

The local currency is Lei, which are about 4 to a US dollar.  Below is a picture of the sausage counter in the grocery store with prices and you can see it's pretty inexpensive.

Sausage, ground meat and chicken seem to be pretty popular local proteins.  And polenta a favorite starch.

9:00 pm and we are having dinner at our hotel in Sibiu, Romania after riding about 200 miles from Bucharest. We rode the Transfagarian twisty, mountainous road.  It was beautiful and we got to 6,600 feet elevation.  We shared the route with loads of cars, a few tractors and 1 or 2 horses pulling wooden carts.

Saw alternatively fields of corn then sunflowers.   Big traffic jam at 530pm on the two lane road to Subiu, couldn't figure out what was holding us up, turned out to be a roundabout. 

We are staying at the Apollo Hermannstadt Hotel.  Nice clean room for $64.00 US including breakfast and very slow wifi so I am going to sign off for today.

Balkans August 23, 2018 Bucharest, Romania

Our luggage arrived at our hotel last night!   A very nice thing to wake up to.  I took a cab to pick up the bike while Sooz had a massage. Her back was hurting a little and the massage helped.  I met Tebi, not Sibi, at his shop and completed the paperwork and signed over our house to pay for it.  His full name is Tiberiu Anghel and he owns Motorcycle Hub which is primarily a motorcycle rental and repair shop,   www.moto-hub.ro  He is a very nice man in his 30s and easy to do business with.  The bike came with panniers and a top case.

I was able to plug my stand alone BMW GPS (thanks Ted) into the onboard BMW mount which works very well.  I also installed a tank bag I brought from home. I mounted my cell phone on the handle bars using a Ram mount I brought and ran a power cord to a plug (also brought from home) that fits into a BMW outlet on the bike to keep my phone powered.  I use the phone as a backup GPS and can also play podcasts and music into my helmet through Bluetooth. The GPS audio also links to my helmet Bluetooth.  Sooz also has a Bluetooth helmet receiver and speakers in her helmet she listens to books on tape and music through her phone.  We can also use our Bluetooth helmet gear as intercoms to speak with each other when riding.  It may all sound complicated but it's really pretty simple.  The companies that provide the equipment are part of a niche group of motorcycle gear suppliers that seem to work together fairly well.  Like any hobby, once you get involved it comes together in time.

I rode back to the hotel, picked up Sooz and we went out for lunch and a tour of the city. 

For my planner friends, it's a beatiful city with impressive architecture. I think what impressed me most are the wide , tree-lined boulevards with cable car lines in the center lanes and wide bike and pedestrian lanes away from the traffic.  All of the main boulevards are also anchored at each end with large, impressive and visible monuments or public buildings.  These were designed well over 100 years ago but could have come out of any recent new urbanism textbook.  This is the old urbanism that new urbanism tries to emulate but is rarely successful. 

For lunch Sooz had a nice salad and I had a kind of Mexican inspired chicken meal in a taco bowl - shutout to Max.  It was all good.  I think the entire meal with 2 bottles of sparkling water was $17.  Bucharest is very affordable.   Dinner at the hotel was  cabbage rolls and palenta for me and a palenta, cheese and fried egg combo for Sooz.  Our water/chef/bussboy was a hoot.  He spoke enough English to make our orders an adventure and had a great sense of humor. 

Sooz and I remarked to each other that we may be seeing a personality trend with the locals.  When I went to get coffee this morning at the hotel a woman was there to assist if needed.  I walked up to her not sure of the protocol and I asked her if she spoke English.  She looked at me very sternly and said, "Of course!"  I said something like, "Well this is my first visit to Romania so I'm trying to learn."  And she immediately asked, "You're trying to learn English?" and started smiling and laughing at her own joke.  I just about fell over laughing myself.  The contrast between her stern look at first followed by a very dry sense of humor is a characteristic of a few people we have met so far.  We'll see if it holds up.

Tomorrow we check out of the hotel and ride north into some small towns and the Transvagarian Highway which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful 2-laned, twisty roads in all of the Balkans. 

Balkans August, 22, 2018 Bucharest, Romania

It has been a long 30 hours since leaving Gainesville.  Our flight leaving Atlanta to Amsterdam was delayed about an hour so we just made our connection to Bucharest.   But our 4 bags didn't. We hope to get the luggage tonight or tomorrow.   Otherwise, we will be getting all new riding gear compliments of Delta, our credit card and our travel insurance!

Simi picked us up at the Bucharest airport and took us to the Moxa Hotel.  Very nice place with good wifi.  Simi owns the shop where we will be renting our motorcycle.  He spoke great English and is very opinionated about the national government that came into power in 2016.  Let's just say he is not a fan.  He is well educated and very knowledgeable about what is going on.  He got 3 calls from his shop during our ride to the hotel.  He said it is extremely difficult finding people to work in his shop because the young people are leaving Romania due to the corrupt government. 

The pictures below show us at a restaurant on our first day in the Balkans.  If we look tired it's because we were.  Sooz had a burger and I had a local dish called Mici, basically a saugage made from a mix of beef, pork and some other meat, maybe chicken. All good and the dessert was a orange cake with orange ice cream which was very good.  Our waiter was friendly and spoke pretty good English, much better than my Romanian, which is nonexistent.

The church is one of many Orthodox churches in the city.   The other building is the Romanian college.

Balkans Aug 21, 2018 Atlanta Airport

Sitting in the Atlanta Airport waiting for our delayed flight to Amsterdam and then on to Bucharest.  I've been thinking about the region we will be visiting.  The Balkans are the former Yugoslavia.  Yugoslavia split into a collection of small countries after Tito died.  The new countries are based primarily on 3 ethnicitries: Catholic South Slavs called Croats, Orthodox South Slavs called Serbs, and Muslim Slavs called Bosniaks.  Tito could hold them all together but when he died a series of ethnic wars broke out that lasted until 1995.  Right now they are enjoying a kind of fragile peace.  A couple of the countries are in the EU, a couple are trying to get in and a couple seem to be leaning towards Putin's Russia.  Currencies and languages are a mixed bag. 

Sooz bought me a book for Christmas titled Where Fools Rush In written by Bill Carter.  He wrote it about his time spent as an American civilian in Sarajevo during the wars.  It is a first hand report and pretty dark at times but he gives a good description of the insanity of the war.  He worked as a volunteer with a low budget nonprofit organization delivering food to residents of Sarajevo.

I'm currently reading a book by Rick Steves called Travel as a Political Act.  I know Rick Steves has a kind of goofy, nerdish reputation but I like his approach towards traveling.  He likes to interact with regular people, ask questions and learn about the areas he visits.  He generally stays away from the real touristy areas and roam around less traveled areas.  He tries to be the opposite of the loud, obnoxious American tourist.  Not that all Americans are loud and obnoxious, but a lot of people in other countries have that opinion of us and he likes to show that not all of us are like that. 

Still waiting ...

Balkans - August 18, 2018 - Gainesville, FL

Susie and I are leaving Gainesville, FL for the Balkans on Tuesday, August 21, 2018 and returning Tuesday, September 25, 2018.  Max will be taking care of Bandit and staying in our house while we are away.  We fly in and out of Bucharest, Romania and will also be renting a motorcycle in Bucharest.  We are renting a 2018 BMW R1200GS which should be a lot of fun.  My GS is a 2008 so this is an upgrade!  Below is a map I captured from the GPS route I developed.  We are considering this as a suggested route, we will alter the route along the way I'm sure.  We plan on following the northern route first and then the southern route along the Adriatic during the last part of the trip.  We're thinking that will give us a little warmer weather in the Julian Alps earlier in the trip and the tourists should be mostly gone along the coast later in September.  The only hotel reservations we have are in Bucharest for our arrival and departures.  Other than that we will wing it along the way.

You can track us through this link:
https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=1a95a5b6d96f3a62b4&hoursPast=0&showAll=yes

Whenever we mention to people where we are going the first thing they say is "be safe", which we appreciate.  We will be riding (safely) on the motorcycle and have been following the news very closely; the area is calm with no safety issues to speak of.  I contacted the European Studies department at UF here in Gainesville who linked me to a PhD student in their program who is from Croatia.  We exchanged emails and she gave some great advice on where to go and what to eat and indicated we should be very safe in our travels.  I have also registered with the State Department to receive any safety alerts that may pop up during our trip.  The entire Balkans region is categorized at a safety level I which is the safest, so we're not concerned and you shouldn't be either.

I'm going to do my best to update this blog daily during our trip.  If I miss a day or two it will probably be due to lack of internet service, although I'm expecting the internet access to be pretty good.  We also have Sprint service on our cell phones which allows us to use the local cell service network (at slow speeds) for no additional charge so that will also be nice.  We are bringing our cell phones and wifi-enabled Kindles, no laptops.

T-minus 3 days until take off.