It was a wonderful morning and it was going to be a wonderful day too. We left the guesthouse at 8.30 and slowly navigated out of town. We wanted to avoid the big highway and our map told us that if we went through something that appeared to be a residential area, we would both make a shortcut and avoid the big road. At an intersection we met a bunch of older guys who were chatting to each other beside an old car. They asked where we were going and when we told them the name of the village, they used sign language to indicate that we couldnt’t go that way. The language barrier made it difficult to understand why until one of them said:

”Daroga kaputt”

This mix of Russian and German was enough for us to understand that there was some problems with the road. We have ridden on many ”daroga kaputt” before and after our experience in Tajikistan a few years ago we are still waiting to see the ”daroga” that really is too ”kaputt” to ride on.

The men pointed at the big highway and tried to indicate that we should go there instead. We were not interested in that and tried to look like we didn’t understand. Then one of them jumped in to an old Lada car and pointed that we should cycle behind him. Game over, the ”daroga kaputt” won this time and we rode out behind the old man in his car. He drove slowly in front of us for about 2,5 km, made a turn to a smaller road, stopped and pointed to show the direction to the village we had told him we were going too.

It is amazing how nice and helpful people are and we felt a bit ashame for pretending not to understand the guys. They just wanted to help us and the couldn’t possibly know that our definition of ”daroga kaputt” is different from many others’.

The mission for the morning was to visit one of the many sites just south of town the guy at the tourist information had recommended. They all seemed to be interesting but we had to choose one of them and we picked the monastery carved into the side of a big cliff. Narrow steps were cut out from the rock and we climbed up to admire the various chambers and the impressive view of the neighbourhood.

After visiting the monastery we continued along the small backroad. Not many cars passed us and for once we could enjoy the pleasure of cycling beside each other and talking about things without having to shout. Flowers were blossoming along the road and birds sang in the trees. Could it be any better?

People are busy working on the fields, sometimes in large groups and sometimes alone. At one occasion we saw a horse carriage parked at the roadside but it seemed to be empty. When we got closer we saw a head of a man in the carriage and when we passed he raised and we saw that he was holding a water bottle in one hand and a small vodka bottle in the other. He then raised the vodka bottle in a way that couldn’t be misinterpreted. He simply said ”cheers” to us.

A short while later we noticed that he had turned his carriage around and made his way in the same direction as we were going. We normally ride faster than horse carriages but this time it was upphill and we were slow. The man and his horse approached quickly and soon we could here the sounds of the horse which was galloping at full speed. The guy overtook us with a big smile, waved and left us behind. At the top of the little hill he let his horse walk down, but once we closed in on him and were in position to overtake him he made his horse run at full speed again. This happened a few times before he stopped at the road side and let us pass.

We felt pity for the poor horse and we still wonder if it drunk driving with your horse carriage is a legal offense in Bulgaria.

Some time before lunch it happened….. It got too warm and I had to stop and put on my shorts. When fighting the snowstorms and icy roads 2-3 weeks ago I was dreaming of this moment when I would start cycling wearing only shorts and T-shirt. Now that time has come and we really hope this weather will stay a long time. We have got our fair share of poor weather so we think we are worth some nice cycling weather now.

Not only the weather was good today. We managed to stay away from the big roads and instead the road we travelled on got smaller and smaller and sometimes it took an hour between the cars we met.

We had no definate goal for today. We knew Velik Tarnova would be 130 km from Ruse and after spending time on the sidetrip to the monastery we knew we could make it there but it would be a bit tough in the end. We then decided to prepare for camping and we went in to a small grocery store to buy some food that we could cook.

Only two kilometers beyond the village were we shopped spagetti, tomato sauce and some sausage we found the ideal tent spot. It is along a river with nice flat areas and lots of trees and bushes on its banks. A perfect location, and even better is that a couple of hundred meters away there is a place where there is natural running water and people come to fill big flasks of water. Perfect place for doing the dishes,

We are experienced campers since long ago, but this is the first night on this trip. Although we had gone through our luggage about 10 times before departing were anyway a bit anxious that we had forgotten something. And we sure had….. We had not forgotten the tent or the sleeping bags, but something that is almost as important.

We had forgotten our foldable coffee mugs.

If anyone is going to Istanbul within a few days or knows anyone who is going there, then please send two plastic foldable coffee cups to us….. You will be rewarded with a postcard and eternal gratitude 🙂

I guess our long break disrupted our routines a bit. Today we didn’t start to cycle until 11.30. Some of the delay has to be blamed on the hotel that had so lousy beds that we felt every spring in the mattress and had to use our own air mattresses on top and they take time to pack and unpack (not more than 3 minutes though 😉 )

It had rained during the night and the street outside was all wet in the morning. The sky was completely grey and it looked like it was going to be a gloomy day. We rolled the 2 km to the border where we intended to spend our last Romanian money at a gas station. We had 4.20 Romanian Lei (approx. 1 €) and got a bag of snacks similar to cheese doodles which concluded the culinary part of our Romanian adventure.

When approaching the bridge across the Danube we understood that there was a fee to cross it. We then regretted buying those cheese doodles, but once at the ticket both we were waved through. The fee was only for motorized vehicles 🙂

All other countries we have entered have had fancy signs welcoming us to their country and we have stopped to take our photographs in front of each of them. Bulgaria had no fancy sign, only two simple signs – one with cyrillic letters and one with latin ones – with the name “Bulgaria” printed on them. Despite the signs not being fancy, we still had to take a picture of ourselves in front of the them.

We love gas stations and our first encounter with Bulgaria was a gas station at the end of the bridge. We bought a map and asked for directions into town. The weather improved by the time our wheels rolled on Bulgarian asphalt. We took off our jackets and rode through the suburbs into town.

When standing at an intersection with our map unfolded a young lady approached us and said:

– “I used to travel like that too, but now I have sold my bike.”

She then told us about her cycling trips from Denmark to Spain and from Spain back to Bulgaria. It is always interesting to meet someone who has the same interests as yourself.

Everytime we enter a new country we have the same routine. First get some local money, then a map and then try to find out the price for food and accomodation.

With fresh money in hand we went to a restaurant at the main square. It looked fancy and we invented a good motivation for eating there. The motivation was ”let’s eat there so we now what the maximum price for food is”. Wej had a bulgarian fresh vegetable salad and I had a traditional bulgarian dish of fried rice with chicken. Although having the same name as a dish in Thailand it was not quite the same, but I really enjoyed it. It was actually the best food I have eaten for many days on this tour.

The sunshine was strong and we were getting lazy. When we left the restaurant we saw a sign pointing at the tourist information. We went there to try to get some valuable information and we surely did…. The guy working there was a true professional and told us everthing we needed to know about the town and its vicinity. The tourist information in Russe is just as good as the Tourist Information in Stara Lubovna is lousy…

It was already late in the afternoon and we discussed if we should stop right away or if we should continue to a village with some interesting attractions some 20 km away. The laziness, the sunshine and the desire to walk around town wearing only a T-shirt got the upper hand and we went to a guesthouse and checked in.

This was a tough decision to make. After not having cycled for two weeks we feel a strong urge to move forward, but today we were smart….. We do this trip to discover what’s between Sweden and Thailand and why should we then hurry past an area or town that seems to be interesting? We also wanted to enjoy the sunshine after having fought with snowstorms and freezing temperatures for quite a while.

Giurgiu on the Romanian side of the border is a lot smaller and more dull town. The reason we stopped there yesterday was that we had just enough Romanian money left for a night at a motel and a dinner and rather than exchange it for Bulgarian money we prefered to use it in Romania for another night. If we had known then how nice Russe was, then we would easily have continued for 45 more minutes to get here already yesterday.

Exactly two weeks ago we cycled into Bucharest. It was snowing and the ground was all white. The temperature was around -3 and I was wearing my snow goggles all the way to the place were we were going to stay. We then stayed in Bucharest for three days and walked around in a snow covered Romanian capital.

Today was the complete opposite. We had temperatures around 18-20 degrees in the shade, lots of sunshine and a tiny little headwind. I started by wearing my jacket, but after only 3-4 km I stopped and took it off and rode with only my long sleeved cycling jersey. After a while I even had to pull up my sleeves 🙂 The difference in weather couldn’t be bigger.

During the 9 days when we have been home trees have started to blossom, some have thin light green leaves, birds are singing and lots of people wear shorts and T-shirts.

Knowing we only had a ride of 65 km from Bucharest to the border we intentionally left our Bucharest and Romania maps at home in Sweden. This meant that we could only follow road signs and the signposted road was super boring with long straight sections. We rode over vast flatlands with fields that were so long that we could only see a horizon. It was like looking out over the ocean. The traffic was only occasionally heavy and most of the time it was on a acceptable level. If we would still have had our map we would definately have tried to go for another route.

Before starting we had to re-pack all our panniers and fit the our new equipment to the bikes. This took a couple of hours and we didn’t leave the hostel until 13.30. It was good to have a slow start and especially since I had been a bit anxious about the re-start of our journey.

Despite snowstorms, headwind and big climbs I have enjoyed being on the way and before we went home for our week long break I worried that such a break would disrupt the magic of being on the way on a slow trip from one corner of the world to another.
I enjoyed every second of being home to visit friends and family but I never worried about going back to Bucharest and resume cycling. Not until this morning anyway……

While I was busy preparing the bikes this kind of worries started to grow inside me. We have already biked all the way to Bucharest, which is an achievement in itself. I started to think ”what if it isn’t fun anymore when we start riding?”

Once on the bike it felt just like usual. We were busy watching the traffic while navigating out of Bucharest and after some time I remembered my worries from the morning and understood that the worries were probably my brain playing tricks to me. We enjoyed the weather so much that it is hard to understand that yesterday we were walking the streets of Göteborg and two weeks ago we were cycling into a cold and snowy Bucharest

Being on the cycle means being on the way, and the feeling of being on the way has become my normal state of mind which the trip back to Sweden luckily didn’t change.

Dear readers and followers,

After spending 9 days in Sweden we are now back in Bucharest again. We had a wonderful time in Sweden with clear skies and lots of sunshine eventhough the temperatures were unusually low. Best of all was the complete lack of snowstorms…. 🙂

When we left our home on February 16 we were so busy so we hardly had time to say good bye to friends and family. Now we have compensated for that and visited lots of people. We have enjoyed sauna & beer, sailing on the westcoast and traveled around by train (our car is sold) to visit friends and relatives. We have not cycled at all, not a single meter….

Our experiences during the first 6 weeks on the road has also made us change some equipment and we have spent a lot of time (and money 🙁 ) on shopping new gear.

We left Göteborg at 9 in the morning yesterday and arrived in Bucharest 4 in the afternoon Swedish time. The distance that took us 6 weeks to cycle was covered in less than a day with a Lufthansa flight through Frankfurt….. That is food for thought…..

Now we are now busy re-packing all our equipment and installing some new things on our bikes.

We have left all our winter clothes in Sweden and brought along summer clothes instead. The panniers where the clothes are kept look a lot smaller now. I have bought a new handlebar bag from Vaude which has a couple of small compartments and pockets inside, zippers, a plastic map pocket on top and a good carry strap. The Ortlieb I used to have had just one big compartment and a single small pocket inside, no plastic map pocket, no zipper and a lousy strap for carrying. Wej has had such a bag for a long time now and I hope I will like my bag as much as she likes her.

We haven’t cycled anything for 11 days now so today we will make a soft start and only ride some 65 km. We still have Romanian money so our plan is to stay one more night in Romania before entering Bulgaria tomorrow morning. The break has also made us loose a bit of our routines in packing so things seem to move slowly now, but who cares??? We still have plenty of time 🙂

I wrote I would make blog updates during our break with summaries and so on. There was simply no time for it and we are sorry if we kept you waiting.

This break has been good for the planning and thinking process and we will come back later and tell more about our reflections of the first two months and the plans for the future route.