Welcome to the Jungle

In the morning I woke early and stayed in my sleeping bag, observing at the sky and the woods and contemplating Chris and his story. I wondered how many of us would do something similar or at least something very out of the ordinary if we would know how much time we had left in this life.

Not having to break down the tent, once I was up I was quickly on my way. Soon I came to a town and looked for coffee. Since I don’t speak Slovak, I approach people in this part of the world first asking if they speak German and then Russian. In broken Russian I was directed to the town café. This café was so typically east that it could only be described with photos, but it was 8.00 in the morning, I was clearly foreign and different and it would have been offensive to begin photographing. I wanted to blend in as much as I could, observe and enjoy the atmosphere.  The bike rack before the café was lined up with old, rusting bicycles and the men were all drinking beer and were wearing whatever seemed to have been the first thing at hand in the morning. One was in disco shirt that would have been in style in 1977, another was wearing black shoes, black socks, green shorts and a red t-shirt and a few gypsy women passed by going to the small grocer next door. I write these words not to be disparaging in any way, but simply to paint the picture. This is what I love about the East, its simplicity. The interior of the café was so typically East that it made me smile and gave me a feeling of not being so far away from that what I know, not being so out there and alone. When I say so typically East, I mean that I think a person could travel to small towns from Tallin to Sofia and from Prague to Volgograd and would find the same atmosphere in every village café. I love it and it felt good to be back in that simple and real environment.

Some of the men left and it seemed that the remaining ones changed from a Slavic language to Hungarian. I don’t speak any Hungarian but have heard it enough to recognize it. Indeed when looking around the village later I saw that everything was printed in both languages. This is common in central Europe because Hungarians are everywhere. There are areas in Romania, huge areas, in which the inhabitants don’t identify themselves at all with the nation-state in which they live. They are Magyars, speak Magyar and live Magyar lives. Hell, they hardly even speak the national language and even in last few months made a motion in parliament to secede from the Romanian state. They are proud people and don’t believe in adapting to the lines that were draw on the map in the course of history. I like that and wish I could speak their language. I will be in Hungarian speaking country for a least a week and will make an effort to learn some of it.

Today marks two weeks since I woke the first morning on the road after the night on the hay bales. It seems like ages ago. In the meantime this journey has become less of a man on a bike riding toward a destination and more of life on the road, meeting people, seeing sights: just a man living in new places who just happens to have a bicycle with him. I feel the journey becoming part of me and I am becoming part of the journey.

7 kms before Komarnò I stop for refreshment. A half liter of delicious Zlaty Bazant cost me the equivalent of CHF 1.12…This could be trouble…Earlier this year I visited a wonderful physician in Spain, where I was living, and she advised me that I have too much yeast in me, prescribed some natural cures and told me to stop drinking beer. I managed quite well with that for a while. The whole time I was in Spain I made the switch to red wine quite easily. That was Spain and this is central Europe, the home of beer. Now, it might seem to my readers that beer plays a big role in my life, and it does, but it does so for the quality and experience of the beer and not the quantity. I enjoy the experience of beer as wine experts enjoy wine. For example a Pilsner Urquell in Pilsen or a Mythos in Thessaloniki or an Ursus in Siebenbürgen. That is a part of the environment and should be enjoyed as much as the local scenery and historic sites. I can never understand the over-globalised morons who visit a new country and order Heineken or Carlsberg. I have left restaurants on occasions having learned that they only serve such imported global brands. Globalization sucks and fortunately it is slowly reversing.

In regard to the cycling, the famed Danube bike trail that allegedly stretches from the Atlantic to the Black Sea has quickly turned to hell. It is no longer paved, is now largely made of gravel and is very poorly marked. In the late afternoon I get directions – in Hungarian mind you – in a village and find the trail again. At this point the trail is made up of concrete blocks laid end to end and each time I pass over one of the joints the bike and the gear rattle and shake. A brilliant writer who in the 80s entered Afghanistan and travelled with the mujahedeen described the Soviet roads being made in this same fashion. As he wrote, even in those enormous Russian Kamaz trucks it was an unbearable ride.

After a few kilometers it is so bad that I am worried that something on my bike will break. Earlier in the day I had given up on the bike trail and ridden on the road. At some point I stopped for water in a bar and realized that everyone was completely drunk and assuming that at some point some of these drunks would be driving, I thought it better to stay on the trail, as awful as it was. I carried on and on, not seeing anyone and hoping to arrive at a town in order to get more water for the night because earlier in the day I had bought pasta and sauce and was very excited about cooking hot food that night. The bloody trail just ran out, finished at the gate of a power plant. Perhaps that gate is open sometimes and the trail passes through the grounds of the power plant, but tonight it was closed. That did not put me in a pleasant mood. Damn if I was going to return the entire way I had just come. I look around, walked around in circles for a while cursing this phony and imagined Danube bike trail. Out of stubbornness I refused to go back as I had come. I estimated one more hour of daylight and decided to try going overland to arrive at a road. In the setting sun I could see some buildings a few kilometers away. I pushed that overloaded bike through at least a kilometer of grass and weeds as high as my knees stopping regularly to look around and ask myself what the hell I was doing. Daylight was running out, I only had half a liter of water and I had no idea what I would find on the other side of the field.

One of the things that I like very much about traveling like this or walking the Camino de Santiago for example is the idea of having everything I need with me, being completely self-sufficient and independent of society. So, overcoming my anger and frustration and trying to follow my own philosophy of enjoying the moment I decided to set up camp and stay out here tonight, lost in the field. Once I calmed it actually turned out to be quite nice. At the edge of a sunflower field I found an open and flat space large enough to pitch the tent, which I finished just as the sun fell behind the horizon. I could not use the little water I had for cooking and had to eat bread and vegetables and nutella, but that was ok. Soon I was asleep and had a fitful night, waking early in the morning to millions and millions of sunflowers all around.

I left the campsite on foot and went out to find a way out of the field. It was via a train depot not far away and though it would be hard to get the bike down the embankment and across the dozens of tracks, it was the easiest way out and by doing so I would avoid returning the way I had come. Seems silly even to me, but I did not want to succumb to predicament in which I found myself and have to return the same way I had come. I wanted to persevere and move forward.

 Once out and on the road I found a strange little village that had a nice café and it even had wifi and I ordered a few coffees and worked on this blog. Thereafter I crossed the bridge into Hungary and the Slovak portion of my adventure was done. I hope that there is a real bike trail in Hungary………..