Blizzard day on the Pusta

Today we didn’t cycle anywhere!
Today we didn’t sail anywhere either!
Today we flew from Kosice in Slovakia to Encs in Hungary 🙂 🙂 🙂

This time the weathermen were right. When we looked out from our window over the roof tops in Kosice’s old town we could see snow blowing around in the air. It was easy to decide to stay in bed for an extra hour. The wind was strong and it looked cold outside, but the forecast promised the wind would come from the north and since we were going south we decided to go for it.

Once outside on the streets we found out that it wasn’t so cold, only -1 degrees, but the wind was indeed very strong and it came straight from the north.

The road from downtown Kosice towards the Hungarian border was straight to the south and never in my life of touring cycling have I been able to continously cruise on a fully loaded touring bike between 30-40 km/h for kilometer after kilometer. It was an amazing feeling to fly with the wind with snow whirling around us.

There wasn’t anybody at the slovak-hungarian border but we made a brief stop to follow our routine of taking some photos every time we cross a border.

About some 25 km and 50 minutes after leaving the border we came to the first gas station. It was right outside a little town called Encs. Since we hadn’t used much effort to get there we were cold and hungry. The guy who fills people’s tanks felt pity for the two cyclists who came cycling in the snowstorm and invited us to park our bikes in the washing hall.

An hour and a couple of cups of coffe later we decided to go into Encs town to try to ride east on a small road towards Tokaj. Normally when you ride a bike and look straight down, you will see the top tube and under it the pedals. Today it was not like that – we had to lean towards the wind like windsurfers and when looking down we saw the road, not our pedals.

Besides poor balance, mother nature had also arranged for some snow and ice on that little countryside road too and we were simply blown off from the road a couple of times.

The wind was roaring so we had to shout to communicate and after a few hundred meters we nodded towards each other that we had got enough. We turned around and went back into town and found some shelter behind a building and discussed what to do. The temperature had fallen to -5 and the strength of the wind had apparently increased significantly during the past hours and we felt that riding with the wind into our backs was no problem, but even the most tiny side wind would cause us balance problems. The small road to the east was impassable and the big main road to the south was possible to ride on as long as it was straight with the wind. The tiniest change of wind direction or turn on the road would cause balance problems and with trucks passing us all the time, it would be seriously dangerous so we decided to stop where we were.

This was the first time in my cycling career that tailwind has made me stop cycling….

We circled around to find somewhere to stay, but everything was closed. A gentleman at a bus stop told us that there was a motel 2 km further down the big road, so we flew there with wind on our backs. This hotel was big and open and the guy at the reception told us to park in the garage.

Since it was rather early in the afternoon we spent some time on maintainence. I cleant all of our 4 chains, the cassettes and the chainrings while Wej went over all the panniers.

The storm seems to cause problems to the infrastructure here too. The light flickers a bit and the internet is really slow and uploading any picture seems impossible. Before it got dark we saw three guys going up to fix something on the roof. I guess they were securing some parts from blowing away. It really feels good that we decided to stay away from the road this afternoon.

We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The forecast says the wind will ease, but we will decide on if and where to go after we have had breakfast.

The first sound we heard in the morning when we woke up was drip-drop-drip-drop on our window. The weathermen have all been telling us that cold weather, snow and rain was on its way. The sound on the window proved them right and we dressed in our rain gear from start.

There was a funny story behind how we found the place to stay at. When approaching the city of Stara Lobovna we told our almighty friend, the GPS, to take us somewhere where we could sleep. The GPS first directed us to a place that was outside of town and we wanted to be in town so we decided to go to the next place on the list, which turned out to be closed for renovation. When we saw the sign “Tourist Information” a few blocks away we thought we were close to a solution.

I went in and asked for advice where we could stay and the lady told me to to go to the same hotel the GPS first wanted us to go to. It was by now 1.5 km away and downhill and we didn’t want that uphill in the following morning. I asked if there was nothing else around, like a B&B or something similar. Her answer was “No, I am sorry”.

Wej was watching the bikes outside and when I came out to her and told her about the result, she said “why don’t we try this one?”. The very next door from the tourist information was a “penzion” with rooms and a restuarant. I am not kidding – the door to this place was less than 5 meters form the tourist information and the lady wanted us to bike 1.5 km downhill the same way we had come uphill. I think the tourist information in Stara Lubovna need to get updated soon.

Our room was on top floor and had roof windows and it was from those windows I heard the drip-drop sound in the morning. Outside our room there was a pool table and I couldn’t resist to pocket a few balls before leaving.

When we left our “penzion” there was all of a sudden no rain but we were equipped for a monsoon shower. I bet that if we hadn’t dressed for rain, then that monsoon would certainly have been there and probably at the most inconvenient time also. So from now on, we maybe should start in rain gear to fool the weather gods…. 😉

Anyway the weather was OK. Slightly above 0 in the morning and up to 7 in the afternoon, but no rain at all.

The ride today just had some tiny uphill sections, but it was mostly slowly downhill. We had a nice pace and didn’t put in much effort. Our aim was to reach Presov, but thanks to the downhill we arrived there already at 1.30 PM, so we decided to head for Kosice instead.

Our aim has been to ride between Krakow and Kosice in three days, but that plan seemed to be wrecked when we were caught in the hills and the rain between Krakow and Limonova. We have now caught up what we yesterday thought was a delay of one day.

One should bear in mind though that this trip is not a race between Göteborg and Bangkok, it is more a journey to discover what and who is between our two homes so we should not talk in terms of delays, especially when we come across nice people, but it is nice to know that we are able to stick to our plans while also meeting interesting people.

Today there was not much happening. It was us, the downhill road, the clouds, the headwind and no rain. When we passed downhill through a little town at high speed (30 km/h is high speed for a loaded touring bike), I saw a man jumping out from a car with a camera. He waved at us to stop and so we did. We understood almost nothing what this man said apart from him being interested in cycling and very interested in our trip. He took many photos of us and our bikes. We gave him our card with the blog address and then we parted. It is a pity that the language barrier made it too hard to communicate with him.

When approaching Kosice we had to ride on the big highway for about 5-6 km. It appears it’s allowed to cycle on it and we rode on the wide shoulder. To be honest, from a pure cycling perspective, that is the kind of the way we want to ride on with passing traffic many meters away and with nice a smooth tarmac. It is however rather boring since the road is straight and there are no views, but when faced with going 16 km on nice roads or 6 km on this, then the choice was simple.

We entered Kosice from the northern suburbs. There was nice old houses but also some apartment blocks that looked a bit grey and worn out. When passing a little stream we stopped to take some photos and on this one you can see me wearing my new helmet.

Cycling day 18  

Distance:           103.2 km
Traveling time    08.19 hours
Cycling time       05.48 hours
Average speed    17.8 km/h
Top speed           48.3 km/h
Altitude gained     529 m
Altitude lost          872 m

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A few days we understood that a cold spell was approaching central Europe and that it would be more severe in the eastern part of Slovakia and Hungary. I put the question to all you readers to give us an advice which route to select and as some of you may have understood we chose the eastern route. We appreciate all your advices and we had a lengthy discussion before we set off from Krakow. The reason for choosing this route is that it is the route we planned from the beginning. After having struggled with ice, snow and subzero temperatures in Sweden, we thought that we might as well do it for a few days here too. We are now in the Slovakian part of the Tatra mountains and we can already now feel the temperatures dropping so we will se how things work out.

This morning our bikes got a proper shower. Benedykt and I used a water hose to clean both bikes. It was -3 outside and scrubbing the bikes in running cold water made my fingers numb, but the bikes got clean. If it had been a little warmer, then our chains would have got a proper cleansing too, but will do that as soon as the temperature is above zero.

One good thing with staying with local people who are cyclists is that they know the routes in their area. Lidia and Benedykt told us to go another route than the one we had planned to go and thereby saving us 10 km AND a giant climb. Thanks a lot for that advice.

Today there has been no rain, but it has been rather cold. In the morning it was below zero and foggy. In the afternoon the temperature raised slightly to about 0 or maybe +1.

We reached the border to Slovakia about 2.30 PM. The border was completely empty, no border guard or anything similar. The only thing was some signs informing about we just passed a border. I bet we will have much more complicated border passing procedures later during this trip.

Slovakia greated us with a marathon climb. It wasn’t steep, but we had to slowly gain 400 meters of altitude. Now, a couple of hours lalter, we both have “spagetti legs”… 😉

Everytime we need to make one of those long climbs I get the feeling that I don’t want to go down once I have reached the pass. Going down is fun, fast and easy, but it takes a lot shorter time than going up. When fighting uphill for an hour at least I don’t think the quick descent is worth the effort and I rather want to stay at the altitude I have struggled to reach. Pretty much like when beating against the wind when sailing – you don’t want to loose what you just have gained.

When we pulled open the curtains in the morning Wej exclaimed ”look at the street, it’s dry”. It stayed dry for the time it took for us to get ready to cycle and about 10 more minutes. At first the rain was not even annoying, but the rain drops got less and less tiny and after a while it was raining heavily. We quickly changed to rain gear.

The terrain around Krakow is hilly to say the least. We went up, down, up, down and up again and soon we were in Wieliczka on the outskirts of Krakow where the salt mines are. My gloves were completely wet and my hands were freezing so we had to find somewhere to rest where we at the same time can keep an eye on the bikes. It happened to be at the local kebab shop.

In the afternoon my gloves got wet again and we wanted to stop somewhere. All of a sudden we passed a parking lot where a guy had a barbecue going and was selling freshly grilled sausages. Without saying a word to each other, we turned around and parked our bikes beside his van.

We don’t know the man’s name so let’s just call him the sausage man. He was a very funny and happy guy who knew a bit of German and Russian and since he had had seasonal work in Sweden he also knew a lot of Swedish words too. It is wrong to say we could communicate freely with eachother, but the guy was so joyful and joking all the time and it wasn’t hard to really like his easy going attitude. When I was eating my sausage he was grilling more sausages speaking to himself in Polish, when he suddenly shouted:

Smörgåsbord!!!

Anyone who grew up in the late 70:s and watched the Muppet Show would immediately have made the same association as I did. The Swedish Chef exists for real and sells grilled sausages at parking lot on a countryside road in southern Poland….. 🙂 🙂 🙂

We had a great time with the Sausage Man when another customer came by. It was a young lady and when she ordered her sausage I understood that the Sausage Man told her that we were riding our bikes from Sweden to Bangkok. She then turned to us and asked in perfect English where we were going to stay tonight. Since we had given up the plan to reach Nowy Sacz we said Limanova and she replied that it was her home town. She presented herself as Lidia and soon we were invited to stay at her house. Lidia had to go back to work first and we agreed that we would call her once we got the town.

The road to Limanova had a giant climb and when riding up it started to snow. It was a pity because I believe it would have been a very beautiful landscape with rolling hills and great views. Now we couldn’t see further than 300 meters.

Lidia and her husband Benedykt are really sporty people. They do rock climbing and have a climbing wall on their house. They go kayaking and Benedykt is definately more crazy about cycling than we are. In the evening Lidia’s parents and another friend came by and we shared a bottle of wine while discussing adventures. Lidia’s father appeared to be an experienced mountaineer who has climbed big peaks in the Himalayas so there were plenty of topics to discuss.

It once again strikes me how fortunate we are to meet all these nice people. Apart from being openminded ourselves, the key to all the interesting meetings is that we travel slowly on our bicycles. If we came by car, people would probably not have been as interested in us and we would have missed many opportunities to get to know the locals, which after all is the purpose of this journey. Sightseeing is fun but can basically be done from the computer at home. What counts is the meetings, or as Benedykt said tonight.

”You can take a photo of a nice sight, but never of our conversation.”

So thank you Sausage Man for the good sausages and giving us some good laughters and thank you Lidia and Benedykt and your parents for inviting us to your lovely house. When visiting Sweden you now where you need to go, and there are even places to rock climb around Göteborg 🙂

Today is our third and last day in Krakow. We didn’t do much during the first day except resting. Yesterday we went sightseeing and visited a museum and today we think will go to visit the salt mines south of town.

Tomorrow it is time to start riding again. We had decided to go southeast of town and cross the Tatra mountains south of Nowy Sacz. When looking at the weather forecast it doesn’t look good. We had nice spring sunshine a few days ago but now it looks like winter will be back again. We don’t like that and it has made us reconsider the route and now we have two options. The one we planned to take is the eastern route through Kosice, but it looks like it will be colder there. If going via Budapest instead it will less cold, but longer.

What are your opinions – should we go the eastern or western routes????