September 27, 2017
Leaving the War Zone: Day 51 - Vukovar to Slavonski Brod
Do Croatians ever eat out for dinner? After spending three nights in this country our observations would say that the answer is “No”. After two nights in Vukovar and one in Slavonski Brod, we’ve had very limited choices for restaurants, and a total of 5 dining companions!
However, if we wanted a coffee or a beer, there are scores of café’s and bars with lots of (mostly younger) folks hanging out, smoking, chatting and very slowly sipping their drinks.
Granted we’re not in a high tourist traffic area, and to be fair Vukovar is still a recovering war zone (why did we spend two nights there?), but it’s quite interesting so see the almost complete absence of restaurants in these reasonably sized towns.
This isn’t a complaint, just an observation. In fact, we are really liking Croatia. The people are very friendly and helpful, the countryside is interesting, the roads are good, the drivers generally courteous, and the food, when you can find it pretty reasonable.
Today marked the start of the end. We are heading back, although we won’t retrace any of our steps from here on. It was kind of cool to respond with “Frankfurt” when Palo, the owner of the pension we stayed at last night, asked where we were headed.
But before heading off for Frankfurt, we firstvhad to head to the T Mobile office in Vukovar to get Croatian sim cards for our phones. After spending a while last night trying to figure out O2 German websites (in German) and the flurry of contradictory texts we received from O2 in the last 24 hrs (“Your plan is about to expire” … ” then "you have 30 euros of credit that is good until Oct 2019”), we decided that the most sane thing we could do was just spend about 20 euros, get new cards, and pedal off down the road. So that’s exactly what we did. The money we left on the table with O2 might be a few beers or a bottle of wine. Our livers will probably thank us.
So we headed west, along the Sava river, towards Zagreb. Almost immediately we were biking through undulating hills along tree lined roads. Yeah! We were also biking along one of Croatia’s designated bike routes. Unfortunately, this did not mean that we had a dedicated bike path, but is was along (mostly) quiet country or residential roads. What traffic there was, was local, moving relatively slowly, and with courteous drivers.
We’ve noted a curious thing about Croatian bike routes. They are generally marked with occasional signposts, but these are never at junctions where they would be of use. Instead, they put them along straight sections or road, several km’s from any junction. When you see one it’s like getting a small reward for having made the right guess at the last road junction!
Fortunately, the route that we are taking to Zagreb, and then on to the coast shows up as a marked route on Pocket Earth, so our navigation was quite easy (as an interesting aside, the EV6 route does not show up on Pocket Earth in Croatia, although it is physically signposted).
September also looks like it’s national woodchopping month in Croatia. There are stacks of logs, some freshly cut and split, others waiting to be split, sitting in front of a large number of houses. I’m not sure if some people still heat with wood or if they just like fires.
We had a nice tail wind today so we managed to finish riding just past 4 pm, even though we got a later start after dealing with our phones. We checked into a nice studio apartment (38 euros) looking right out onto the Sava river, got cleaned up, found a grocery store and picked up some breakfast, and scoped out a café for our post ride beer.
The Harley Café was a great spot for our libations, and the beer was great too. It was right along the river, with folks strolling by on the bank or riding by on the bike path. It was a beautiful night and for the first time in what seemed like ages, we had a beautiful sunset.
While we were having our beer, we noticed a little popcorn and balloon stand along the river path. When we set off to find dinner we decided to have a box of freshly popped corn as we strolled along the river. Just like the beer, it was great. We wish we could say the same for dinner. Fortunately neither K or I were that hungry, and what we had wasn’t bad, more in the ‘interesting’ category. I’ll let the picture so the talking.
We’ve said before that a bike tour is more than 90% state of mind (the biking is easy if you’re in the right head space) and today put us back in that space. We’re looking forward to hitting Zagreb and spending a day exploring around there, and then the coast where we will probably spend a few more days.
Happy Days ..
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Song of the Day
Feel Good Inc by Gorillaz …
I've always really liked this song and the video kind of feels like leaving a war zone ... don't get me wrong though, I'm not dumping on Vukovar , it was full of friendly and good people
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Today's ride: 98 km (61 miles)
Total: 3,667 km (2,277 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |