Author: Tim

Serbia was not on our original route plan until sometime in September, but because of our side trip to Zagreb, we decided to take the opportunity to visit the somewhat nearby cities of Novi Sad and Belgrade. It’s been a great experience and even though we leave Belgrade today headed towards Sarajevo and back to the Croatian coast, we’d both like to return here. Here are a few things we’ve loved… (Sorry these are a bit out of order, the WordPress app chose a strange order for my photos and doesn’t make reordering them easy.)

The scenery: here is the confluence of the Danube and Sava Rivers, a geographical trait that makes Belgrade distinct amongst major cities.

The diversity in the cities of the architectural styles and street art.

Novi Sad is known for its music festival; this year the Killers (a band I like from Las Vegas) is headlining in a few weeks.

More street art in Belgrade:

Ice cream rolls! I first tried these amazing things in Thailand, and apparently they have them in Belgrade too.

Sending some post cards!

Apartment buildings in Novi Sad:

Oldest mosque in Belgrade from 1575:

I ordered “French toast”, and this is what I got. It was really good but I think a bad translation!

The best cevapci we’ve had so far, yum! We went back twice.

More apartment buildings in Novi Sad. You can rent some of these units for 130€/month for a one bedroom flat.

We mostly followed the Danube River in Serbia so far, and there’s a EuroVelo route here, so we ran into probably a dozen other cycle tourists, which was a great treat, having seen relatively few other cycle tourists recently. Hung out for one day in Belgrade with two fun German guys who we’d meet at a road-side fruit seller outside Novi Sad. Was fun to share some meals and beers with them (and some rakija!).

These were painted all over Belgrade, but I’ve yet to see any vegan options on any menus.

Interesting hotel in Belgrade:

Incredible baklava:

We ran into this wine festival in Novi Sad and I had a great time wine tasting and ended up buying a big bottle of rakija that I then carried 100km on my bike to Belgrade! Worth it, but it won’t make it further than Belgrade.

Orthodox Church in Belgrade:

Food porn burger at a porn-themed restaurant… Other photos are NSFW…

Tesla transformer at the Nikolai Tesla museum in Belgrade:

Okay and now we head towards Sarajevo. Today will be our longest ride yet, 169km. Time to get ready, see you soon!

On our way through Slavonia, the north east region of Croatia, we saw a number of reminders of the very recent Croatian War of Independence. We chose to ride north out of our way a bit in order to see some of the cities more impacted by the war, including Osijek and Vukovar, though we saw many empty buildings and artillery fire damage even within 100km of Zagreb:

In Osijek, this particularly powerful monument marked the Croatian resistance where a car was parked in front of a tank in defiance. Of course it was crushed, but this more imaginative recreation of that incident portrays the fact that Osijek was never captured.

Vukovar was the hardest hit city in the war and was almost completely destroyed. When we were in Zagreb, we spoke with a woman who, as a child growing up in Vukovar, found herself and her family hiding in their basement for many weeks until tanks began firing at their barracaded front door until they were forced to come out and be captured as prisoners of war. The city has been rebuilt and even though it still shows many signs of the conflict, it also shows the resilience of the Croatians and the reconciliation and reconstruction that has begun.

We’ve really enjoyed the cycling through this part of the country as well! A few random photos and comments.

Interesting architecture in Osijek, near the park where we ate our meso burek for lunch. A local came up to us to ask about our trip, welcomed us to Osijek, and was excited to hear we were from California.

We followed parts of the EuroVelo 6 cycling route which goes from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Because of this, we saw at least 6 other cycle tourists, including an interesting solo cyclist from England headed to China, who we rode with for a little while and hope to meet up with again in Belgrade.

Our first glance at the Danube River, which we will mostly follow until Belgrade:

We cycled through hundreds of kilometers of gorgeous farm land in Slavonia. It’s impossible to capture the vast peacefulness of this area:

One night we stayed with a delightful French woman with an amazing farm in a town that even Croatians don’t know the name of, complete with peacocks, sheep, chickens, ducks, and two-week-old baby kittens. She rents out rooms, hosts cycle tourists, and takes in work-away guests who help out on the farm.

Finally in Eastern Europe we have found cheap prepaid SIM cards that are cheaper than our current roaming plan, so we’ve set up a hotspot using this unlimited 7-day 4G card:

All through Croatia are road-side shrines like this one. Some are simple statues or crucifixes, and some are full-fledged parks with Virgin Mary shrines, benches, and landscaped gardens.

And next, we are on to Serbia towards Novi Sad and Belgrade, before returning to the Croatia coast through Bosnia. Stay tuned!

Tomorrow we leave Croatia to take a side trip to Belgrade, Serbia, followed by Sarajevo, Bosnia, before returning to the Croatian coast.

We have been learning about the recent wars here, and today we visit Vukovar, one of the hardest hit cities in the Croatian War for Independence that has since been rebuilt. But more on that in a future post.

One of the challenges we will have starting tomorrow is the swapping of the Roman alphabet for the Cyrillic one. The Croatian and Serbian languages are phonetically similar, but Croatian uses the Roman alphabet, and Serbian uses Cyrillic.

Except for two days in Russia 7 years ago, I’ve never had to read Cyrillic before, and so we are practicing! Wish us luck.

It’s hard to describe exactly, but there’s a feeling that Zagreb gives me that makes me feel comfortable, like I’m in the right place. Maybe it’s the perfect sunny weather we’ve had, maybe it’s the birds chirping everywhere, maybe it’s the eclectic friendly people, maybe it’s the comfortable cafe culture where you can sit for hours and people watch anywhere, maybe it’s the unexpected sense of optimism and growth, maybe it’s the delicious food (amazing burek and pizza!) and drink (locally roasted coffee, craft beers, and cherry liquor), maybe it’s the almost complete lack of tourist hordes and the local openness to outside visitors, maybe it’s the buzzing city center with trams zipping along next to people going about their daily lives, maybe it’s the locality of the rural country side, with farms, hiking/biking trails, and mountains so close to the city, maybe it’s the artistic culture with street art everywhere (the best artwork is hidden, but we found it with our amazing tour guide on the Secret Zagreb tour).

Whatever it is, this is a city that I don’t want to leave. It’s been a difficult decision to get riding again tomorrow, but there are still many places in this world that we want to see. Dovidjena, Zagreb! I’m certain we will return.

So for a while on Friday, I was riding my bicycle as if it were a single speed. I couldn’t shift into most of my gears. After playing around with it, I realized that the derailleur cables had become unraveled and were sticking in the tubing. On a normal bike ride, this could end up being a serious problem (unless you’re used to riding a fixed gear, like my friends on Team Cretins!), but we carry 4 extra derailleur cables and 2 extra brake cables, so after 15 minutes, I was as good as new. Huge shout out again to our friend Robert for teaching us how to do this repair and insisting that we practice. It paid off!!

Let’s see how long this lasts…. I used regular sewing thread and my sunglasses hard case as a darning egg. They still fit…

Our Icebreaker socks have a lifetime warranty, but unfortunately we can’t find a dealer in Europe to replace them. Any tips on patching holes in socks like this? ?

We’ve learned that a friend will be in Zagreb this weekend, so we’ve left the Istrian peninsula and are making our way over the mountains towards the country’s capital to arrive before the weekend.

As beautifully scenic and historic the Istrian coast is, we are quickly falling in love with the countryside with the barely touched landscapes, smiling friendly locals, well-paved roads, and a complete lack of tourist crowds (though we did stop to chat with two other cycle tourist couples and at dinner met some women from Vancouver celebrating their graduation with a hiking trip through Croatia.

It’s too bad we are rushing a bit to get to Zagreb (today’s ride will be our longest so far: close to 160km, 100 miles), but we’ve resolved that we will come back to enjoy the countryside of Croatia, perhaps venturing east into the rural Slavonia region before doubling back through Bosnia towards the Plitvice waterfall lakes, Croatia’s gem of natural parks.

Ferry heading to the island of Cres, where we will definitely return.

Our view from lunch at a small road side restaurant with just one dish on the menu.

Top of the mountain marker after a long day starting at Sea level in the Gorski Kotar mountain region.

Where we started the climb near Rijeka on the coast

Just got an update to OsmAnd that claims to improve cycle routing, and we tried it out riding from Rovinj to Pula, Croatia. The route it picked avoided major roads, favored signed cycling routes and roads with cycle lanes, and there are lots of options to configure route options. So far I like it and will try it out some more as we cycle through Croatia and Bosnia. OsmAnd will do cycling routes in countries where Google Maps doesn’t. Figured I’d write a quick tutorial to use the new features to plan a route and upload it to the Wahoo ELEMNT (probably works with the BOLT also).

Step 1: In OsmAnd, find the start and end points for your route. I usually add them as favorites so I can reference then easily later. Then tap the route icon and select the start and end points and choose the cycling icon.

Step 2: Tap the gear icon to set routing options. I usually turn on “avoid unpaved roads” and “avoid stairs” since we are on touring bicycles. “Use elevation data” will minimize climbing, but seems to take a lot longer to calculate.

Step 3: Wait for the route to calculate (there’s a little progress bar that will slowly move, give it time).

Step 4: Tap on the line that shows distance and time to see the route details. You’ll see some awesome stats including a new elevation and gradient profile as well as turn-by-turn directions.

Step 5: Tap the disk icon to save the route. Pick a name that’s fairly unique because it stores the GPX in a weird location and you will need to search for it later. I put the country code as the first two letters (BO for Bosnia in this example).

Step 6: Use a file manager like Total Commander to find the GPX file that was just saved.

Step 7: Copy or Move the GPX to your Download folder so that the ELEMNT app can see it. Maybe this isn’t required for everyone, but I was unable to open the GPX in the ELEMNT app without this step, I think because the ELEMNT app doesn’t have permission to read files in OsmAnd’s private directory.

Step 8: Open the GPX with the ELEMNT app and wait for it to import.

Step 9: Tap on “Select route” to begin navigation on your ELEMNT.

And that’s it! I love being able to plan routes on the fly with my Wahoo GPS, and this gives us one more option to find good routes!

I can’t believe we’ve been in Croatia already 5 days! This country was high on my list of travel destinations, and wow it hasn’t disappointed in the least! I’m blown away by almost everything we’ve experienced (not all, see below for the bad stuff!).

The cycling: Croatia has an extensive system of bike trails, especially in the Istrian peninsula, where there are converted railways, marked paths through national parks, and many dedicated bike lanes near beaches and tourist areas. Many of them are unpaved, so we are thankful for our gravel bikes and lightweight touring setup. With our newly installed Schwalbe Marathon tires, we’ve only had to walk the bikes a handful on times on really rough paths where the stone from the old rail line hasn’t been cleared and on some old stone cobble roads. Otherwise we’ve been riding cyclocross style to the amusement of the other riders with full-suspensious mountain bikes.

The food and drink: It’s hard to compete with France and Italy, but when Croatia does food its own way, it’s damned good! With an abundance of truffles, fresh fish, pork products, and wild asparagus and mushrooms, we’ve enjoyed a few really nice meals. My favorite meal was at a family restaurant (konoba) in a tiny town next to our Mini Kamp. It’s a place that doesn’t exist according to Google Maps, and the menu hasn’t changed in decades: grilled pork sausage and/or cutlet with fresh salad, with a starter of a plate of home made prosciutto, pork neck sausage, and goat cheese. You sit down around 6-7pm and wait for the 75 year old friendly Italian-speaking owner to start the fire, while tasting some of the family made wine (unfiltered and delicious) and prosciutto in the meantime. Once the fire is going maybe an hour later, her son comes around and takes orders, but he only speaks German, so you have to be able to order with hand gestures or just take what you get. He lays an imaculately clean (but holey) tablecloth over the bug-infested table, and then brings your delicious meal. It’s simple home cooking but tastes amazing.

Some photos of other meals:

Pasta with shaved truffles.

Grilled brancin (sea bass) below, prosciutto stuffed calamari and boiled potatoes above.

Fresh pasta with wild asparagus and cured pork.

Donkey (!!) stew. It wasn’t tough, tender like beef. It could have been a translation error by the waitress, but she spoke really good English, so I don’t think so…

Digestifs have commonly been offered to us after meals, and they’ve been quite tasty, often described as schnapps or grappa, though they’ve always had different tastes.

The people:

The Croatians we’ve met have overall been super friendly and happy! Our favorite experiences have been the random encounters like when we stopped at a local pastry stand in the country side on our bikes. Lots of people were stopping but were the only ones not from Croatia. A gentleman ordering some bread tried to guess where we were from Germany, France, England? America, we said, to which he responded with a smile and then a grimace, “Oh, America!! … but Trump?! Melania, okay, we like.” (Melania is from the neighboring Slovenia.) After that, we bought some pastries, and the woman at the stand helped us to practice our Hrvatski (Croatian).

The 3-legged kitty at our campground. Our campground host is variously from Croatia, Italy, and Australia, and he rescued this little guy with a mangled leg and had his leg properly amputated. He runs and chases the other kitties in the yard.

The tourists:

Okay, so here is the bad part. It’s sad to see Croatia in the midst of losing some of itself just to serve the tourists here. There are stupid huge campgrounds (marketed as “camping resorts”) on the coast with thousands of people, many from nearby Germany, Italy, and Austria, all demanding their schnitzel and pasta that they can get back home. And of course these resorts oblige with ridiculously expensive bad versions of these items. We could be anywhere in the world at these places, all the Croatian is stripped away except for the perfunctory “Istrian cuisine” section on the menu. We made the mistake to stay at one of these resorts one night, and it cost more than an apartment rental, and we spent the night camped next to a group of 20 German teenagers on a weekend trip.

And, come on Germans with your electric bikes… I don’t think they work because we’ve passed all of you. And not to be judgmental, but I think for your health, you’d be better off burning the calories instead of coasting along, clogging up the bike lanes.

That said, except in the really touristy areas where we’ve been hassled to come into overpriced restaurants (I was proud to be called “Jewish” by one woman after I refused to pay 2x the going rate for a beer at one place), the Croatians generally seem to take all this tourist madness in stride, and thankfully they put up with our ridiculousness, riding our bicycles through their country.

The scenery:

What can I say, I just want to sit and enjoy the views here for a year or two, maybe more… Stunning! Photos are inadequate, but I’ll share some anyway.