Honeymoon Around the World

Vratsa – Getting up in the Canyon and breakfast from CBA

Dani as usual had got up by the time we got out of our tent near Vratsa, under the huge rocks. It was the first time we had seen the canyon in daylight, it was really wonderful, just as we had suspected at night, at the light of the stars. Dani had been sleeping just next to a board commemorating a young guys motor crash. The only fact that made it clear it was not his grave was that the Bulgarians do not bury people in such places. However, it was still a little bit morbid that Dani had been sleeping there. Of course, it did not disturb us at night, we found a place here, Dani found two trees, so we stayed here. There were huge rocks above our tents, and it was a real experience to start from this place we only had to roll down in the Canyon, back among the rocks to Vratsa.

We purchased the breakfast in a CBA, yes, the Hungarian Shop Network in Bulgaria. Opposite the shop we found a grass-covered area, so we settled there to have breakfast. Dani had eaten so well that he even got down while we were gathering our stuff and bought some fizzy tablets in the pharmacy.

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We make up for the „lost” days now, so let nobody get frightened, we did not return to Bulgaria, just we do not publish the diary in chronological order. The events contained in this section and the following one happened to us after Serbia, and before Sofia.

With one leg to Negotin

Last time I ended up at our arrival in Negotin, the last town before the Serbian Bulgarian border. This day, Zita lost from her shoe a screw that held her SPD cleat. We removed the cleat so that it should not fall because of being held only by one screw then we changed shoes. So, I was riding to Negotin with one foot.

Just as we entered the city, we caught sight of a bike shop, I showed the cleat and explained that we needed a screw. The guy was very helpful, but he did not have kind of screw, only longer. He showed me to wait because a huge guy started to bargain for a motorbike. As I saw the situation, without understanding what they were talking about, it seemed to me tha guy wanted to buy a motorbike for the price of a croissant on credit. Read more…

Alexander, Lubomir and the story of the 100 km watermelon

The starting from the church garden wasn’t so easy that we thought.
Dani woke me up and I started to pack, leaved Zita to sleep. I packed the tent, so she was just lying down in a little blanket; only the outside sheet was there when she woke up. We had our breakfast in the park between the church and shop, the menu was bred with margarine and honey.
After the first hardest 10 km (when we are in the sleeping-bag yet in mind and our muscle are stinging) was everything quicker. Before the first top of hump, we met a pair with country bike and not so much pack, just one of them had a backpack. We started to talk with each other: they were Alexander and Lubomir, father and son, who were bicycling for 5 days from Sofia to Burgos and back. They are reeling 200 km per day which is very hard, even if they are doing this “just” for 5 days. We were talking just for few minutes, didn’t want to retard them so everybody can go further to reach their goal. At the hump we started to laugh very much as just remembered that we are carrying a gift watermelon more than 100 km. We made also a video from this but as our camera is so new and made in HD version which is so big (more mega) – we cannot upload or play or to just over code with our notebook. The solution will be the following: we will use the old, spare camera for making videos. One of us will make the videos, the other one the photos.
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Lunch with Petya

On our rest day in Plovdiv we woke up around 9:30 when Petya was already at work, the rest of the family just woke up too and finally his little 4 year old son befriended us. .
Stanimir couldn’t make to be our guide but we arranged a meeting at lunch with Petya. We sat in a restaurant next to a tiny park and it turned out to be the jackpot. The place was very friendly and cheap and even the toilet was fascinating, we liked the design so much Zita and I agreed to make our future bathroom like this. We had a good time with Petya despite the short time. Read more…

Dani woke us up at Svetla’s around 8 in the morning saying the breakfast is ready. This felt embarrassing. They were too kind with us. George, who helped us yesterday was here too, told us how he has 3 heart attack and a surgery too, but he still smokes, drinks. It was great to see the way he was smiling, and enjoying life. I will have really good memories of Gorno Varshilo, thanks to his joy for life. He spoke simple English, Every 5 minutes he said I’m happy, or I’m very happy, and my friends, also Love. :) He really liked us and we saw this on his face. I remembered those who we welcomed in Budapest, Henry and Jamie, who are in South East Asia now, or Előd and Lehel who have travelled across the entire Europe since. We tried to help them and make their time at Budapest be as good as possible, which made us happy too. We saw something similar on George’s face, that made the farewell better. It’s difficult to accept such love from a stranger, but it was easier as I remembered myself being hosts for other strangers. Read more…

We break the space-time continuum in our posts! First we publish the “yesterday’s” stage, and then at some point we’ll finish writing the Bulgarian border – Sofia stage. Till then here’s this goat’s story:

In Sofia we didn’t wake up early, Zita snoozed the alarm as many times as possible. Our breakfast was the pastries we bought the previous day, and then we started to pack. It was a big job because the tent was hanging on the balcony to dry out. Zita and Dani put some music on to the Youtube which I didn’t mind first, but then a „Let’s find Stacey” sentence almost freaked me out Read more…

Good-bye Timişoara, Hello Serbia!

We only left Timişoara in the afternoon because the previous night Zita and Dani had a big Youtube party and I was writing the journal till 3am. We woke up late in the morning and took a while packing up our bikes. By then an elderly Hungarian couple arrived who are Dudi’s neighbors. We had a good chat then they wished us luck plus Zita has received a necklace from the lady.

On the way out of Timişoara we stopped at a supermarket to buy some food, then we headed south. We had to stop frequently somewhere we found some shade because of the scorching heat. At the first stop we met this guy in a hat who must have had a heat stroke, because he kept talking to us non-stop and he wasn’t bothered at all that we didn’t understand a single word he said. At the end he read us something from a book, maybe a chapter from the Bible. Our next stop was at a little shop. We bought some ice creams for 50 Bani each.

At the Serbian border we took over a 50m long queue and started to look for our IDs. We didn’t want any more stamp in our passports that would have used more pages from it that we’re going to need later. On the Serbian side the border guard came out of his booth and started to tell something about turning back to Romania, cause in Serbia it’s not good/not allowed to ride a bike. Read more…

We promised, it has arrived, so now it’s published:

The departure

The last three days before our departure was extremely busy for us, we had to organize our visa to Pakistan, got the second medication for colera and all three days we were running from shop to shop, one sponsor to another so we could have all our necessary equipment for the journey. In the evenings we stayed up late organizing, packing our stuff, edited our website. Miracolously we got all the critical things done, only a few less important were left out, but we’re going to try to catch up with these. On Saturday, 11th June we woke up later than planned, after sleeping 1-1.5 hours, because I thought the meeting at Hősök tere was at 9am, so I let us have a nap till 6:35am. For breakfast my newly become mother-in-law (Aunt Kati – The World’s Best Mother-in-law) made us a slice of bread each, but none of us were able to have more than a bite. We had searious excitement. The previous night we tried to pack up our 4 bags, so we were ready to go in just over an hour. By this time my parents had arrived with my brother and Aunt Jutka. We made some photos in front of Zita’s house, then we departed on our recumbents. They were rolling surprisingly smoothly under the heavy load.At the Hősök tere there was a 40-50 people crowd waiting for us, there were guys among them who we didn’t even expect. Thank you all who came to our farewell, we had a very good time, it was a really memorable departure.
We rode to Pestszentlőrinc in a very comfortable pace, took about an hour or so. We found Oszi’s bike service open at the corner of Bókay street and Petőfi street, so we could make a little adjustments on Dani’s breaks and change a used rachet on Tihamér’s bike. Thank you Oszkár for your help! While the bikes were in the service the rest of the gang had a picnic in Madarász street. By then Zita and I were very hungry, so the lard bread and the lemonade given by my parents tasted great. I quickly ran into my room to say goodbye and I picked some other bits up too I left out in the rush. It was very difficult to leave home. We cycled across the little woods called Péter-halom straight to Gyál leaving the city behind us. Our group had about 15-20 members at that point.
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