Motorcycles and Beer, and did I mention beer?

Timisoara Romania was a stop to remember. We hooked up with some awesome people here and we had such a good time we ended up staying a week longer than we expected. Our two hosts Anemaria and Mihai were fabulous, taking us around town and showing us the sights of the 4th largest city in Romania. Kevin and I split up for a few days to keep our sanity, but I feel we have got past much of any petty bickering we have endured through our travels.

We left Timisoara to meet up with some of Annemaria's friends in a town called Resita. They were motorcycle enthuisists and defintitely the best motorcycle gang in Romania. They showed us a good time in Resita which was a similiar city to our hometown of Hamilton (steel producing industrial city). The beer was dirt cheap here in Romania and we were told by our friend Mihai that Romania's first national sport was Football (soccer) and second national sport was drinking... too funny.

We were invited to attend a biker party and headed back to Timisoara and decided to experience the meeting. We joined the Street Wolves pack formerly the MF's from Hell. We had a blast and some good pictures from the weekend that we will be posting shortly. The hospitality we were shown by the Romanian people was out of this world. We could not pay for anything as our hosts would not accept our money. Kevin eventually had to quickly pay for a round once and a while.

Fabi, Muti, Gabi, Flavius, Marius, Vio, Costi and everyone else helped us feel like we have been best friends for years. We had our first bicycle pack as Fabian and Gabi decided to join us on a 130Km ride to and beautiful city called Herculaine. Fabi could only ride a with us for 30K because of other priorities but Gabi joined us for the entire 130!! What a trooper, he had not been out on a bike in about 6 years, I had some doubts if he was going to make it. He was the Man!!! We arrived in Herculaine which was the place where Hercules would stay to relax and soak in the natural Hot Springs. We had a long day and it was dark out so we grabbed some Schnapps to relax with in the springs. Beautiful half naked Romanian women and a hot spring was defintitely the highlight of the night... whoa!!!

We stayed in this beautiful valley surrounded by limestone cliffs in this picturesque setting in the south west part of the Carpatian mountains. Mama Doina hosted us in Herculaine. She has a wealth of knowledge about natural medicine and homoepathic properties of the surrounding encvirontment. People in Romania have a good sense about what is important in life. I feel more and more that I will not remain in Canada as people have lost themselves to a system that will eat itself.

The one downfall in Romania would have to be the lack of proper garbage maintenance. Most river ways were polluted and roadways were littered. It is unfortunate but in the country has only experienced "freedom" for the past 15 years and is still in it's infancy for a developing country. Like most politicians the rich are making decisions to further fill their pockets for personal interests like the rest of the world... it's a sad state politically everywhere.

Romania is definitely a place I think I could live in to help promote environmental change. They share similiar philosophies and live for needs more than wants in life. One day North America will have to share this point of view as our mispending of natural resources will bite us back...

Feed us your children ?!?!?!?!

The Serbian border crossing was a typical border crossing. The old, “Where are you going”, and “What are you doing”, and “Holy crap your wet.” Routine. Two “shu-gungs” in the passports from the stamping implement and we were on our completely saturated way. We stayed in another hotel that night in Sombor and met a super nice woman in the morning who invited us to her house to stay. We declined and pedaled ahead towards Romania parting an infinite number of puddles along the way until we arrived in Backa Toppola. What a neat little town. It was probably a whole lot cooler because we met a bunch of locals that took us in for the night and treated us like gold. Thank you Robbie, Poofie, Ljosch and Silvia. Robbie owns an underground nightclub and we rocked the night out drinking some local Pivos {beers} and enjoying the local music. The morning finally brought us sunny skies and smooth riding into Romania. Thank you Serbia! The people are fantastic. To everyone who thinks or says, “Don’t go through Serbia. Your crazy.” you should travel to Serbia and turn off the television. People are way too afraid in this world. The media laden, preconceived notions people have like, “I heard a story that something bad happened there to someone once when they were traveling.”, or “That’s a bad place you could get ripped off so be afraid of everyone attitude,” is so far off from reality. I spoke to a woman in Serbia about this and she says, “Yeah. It’s not like we’re eating children for god sake!” In short, people are people everywhere you go. Good and bad. Most of the time people are not mean spirited and they are not out to get or rip you off. Trips like this are good for restoring one’s faith in humanity.

So doe’s anyone out there want to come and join us for a week or two or what?

Onwards Bulgaria!

Where's Noah's ark when you need it?

Here we are in Timisoara, Romania with 2 more countries down and 12 more to go! My knees are counting them down.

So Steve left off the last post when we were in beautiful Hungary. We stayed in an intentional community called Gyürüfü Ecovillage. It is a pretty neat space. There are 25 residents living there and each family has their own hectare of land. Our host Imre had an incredible house made the traditional Hungarian style, using mud brick and straw to build the walls. Most of the homes are built like this here. Super insulated to hold the heat and it is naturally very cool in the summer. Now that Hungary has joined the European Union Imre said it will be illegal to build homes this way under E.U. law. Ridiculous eh. Good old conventional style homes with poor to terrible insulating qualities that are continually reliable on non-renewable inputs of energy! "That's the kind of house I want daddy." Good planning. Anyways, the roof on his home was of particular interest to me, because it is a reed roof that is made by harvesting local reeds from a nearby marsh. It too is a good insulator and is completely renewable. The only challenge is finding the locals who still have the knowledge to build the roofs like this as it is in jeopardy of disappearing. “Daddy how come nobody can build reed roofs anymore.? Well you see son, it isn’t good for the economy to use local regenerative reeds. You need to use black shingles that get really, really hot in the summer and have to be replaced in twenty years and are made from all kinds of chemicals and petroleum so people sweat and want to buy air conditioners.” Sorry. I have to stop doing that. So anyways, the village is also home to many sheep and cows that are used for making cheese and providing milk for the residents. Really good cheese too! The milkman would come by every morning with fresh milk. Remarkable community. Thanks Imre!

From Gyürüfü we pushed the old pedals towards Serbia. True to form, we got rained on heavily the day that we left. And I mean heavy. Noah himself would have been proud of this torrential downpour. I embraced our 4 days of rain content with the knowledge that it would end soon enough. Steve, understandably, didn't share my enthusiasm for embracing for the crummy weather. We were forced to resort to hotel accommodations in Mohacs on the banks of the Danube. The next morning it was raining even harder. We rode into a little border town and stopped at a super smoky pub to have a couple of cappuccino’s to bring our core temperature up. While I was sitting there I here," Hey you want a beer or what?” Then a woman walks by with a Canada sweater on. Very random. You never know where you’ll bump into a Canadian in the randomness that is life. They invited us for bean soup but we had to push on to Serbia.

A Hidden Treasure... shhhhh

Slovenia was an unexpected jewel on our travel here through Europe. Kevin and I had a lack of knowledge about this hidden treasure as we began to roam through this big country. I say big country in regards to the vast amount of forest and mountains we were riding through in this untouched landscape.

Oh my, fresh air.... imagine that, I was saying to myself as we left the heavily populated Italian countryside. We could breathe deep and enjoy all that extra oxygen that was not tainted by pollution. It`s always a welcome sign to see large green spaces not molested by industry and ahem... progress. Slovenia and Croatia is one of the few areas left in Europe that bears still inhabit as well as other large forest mammals. The biodiversity in the country was extraordinary as we encountered the largest salamander Kevin and I have ever seen. It was as big as a hot dog bun. We saved it from getting smucked by a couple cars. We ended going up this short cut that turned into an 600 meter ascent with a killer grade... but what a detour. It was some of the most pristine land we have seen in Europe thus far and we caught a glimpse of an eagle maneuvering like a Top Gun pilot through the forest.

We were hosted by a great dude named Robin in the capital city Ljubljana. We found out he was also an avid cyclist who has probably rode more kilometers in his life than Kevin and I both. He has traveled to 85 countries... whoa and get this, he is entitled to 9 weeks vacation! It took me 10 years to get 4 weeks of vacation when I was slaving at my old job ouch! . The city was totally set up for cyclists as it had mulitple bike lanes for us to cruise through to miss all the traffic. The city's population was about 300,000 which was perfect. The population of Slovenia is only about 2 million which was awesome from the overpopulation we have encountered in Western Europe.

Ljubljana was very similar to the rest of Slovenia, full of natural beauty like the countryside. We arrived in town and there were a tonne of police around. We found out there was a NATO convention. There were no protests this time and the city was pretty chill. We got some great pictures around town and they should be posted shortly.

On our way to Croatia we were taken in by another Slovenian couple, Brenna and his wife Tatiana. The Slovenian hospitality was great. We enjoyed some wine and the most delicious strudel. They had a Maltese dog that reminded us of our family dog when we grew up. I'm missing Slovenia already.... what a great bunch of people.

Ok... don't ever plan a cycling trip into Zagreb (Croatia).... it was the worst experience so far on our bikes. The drivers were unbelievably rude as we were honked off the rode more times then I could count on my hands. There was literally no room for cyclists anywhere... we were shooed out of a gas station by some rude employee as we needed to stretch our tired legs. We decided to do a count of single occupancy vehicles and it was pretty much the same as North American metropolitan cities... about 80 percent of the cars. I hate big cities...

Zagreb's downtown core was amazing compared to the unfriendly rodes. The downtown core was full of pedestrian friendly walkways and patios that lined the middle of the city streets. There was a great urban park where we stopped for lunch and many amazing sites to see. I even got a photo of (in my opinion) one of the truly greatest minds of the 20th century Nikola Tesle. If you don't know what this guy has done in his career he is worth researching, almost everything he has done effects our daily lives immensely We could definitely see a difference in the public transportation as the busses were old looking but the infrastructure was great as they had many tram lines in and out of the city.

We are now in Hungary and I'll provide an update on this country soon, I'm going to end this post for now, we will be in touch soon.

Update, pictures are now online!!!! I have sent out a photo album from Croatia send me you're e-mail address if you have not received an e-mail from our yahoo account. :)

Steve