Budapest to Bratislava Train to Avoid Rain

If wind looked like fog, you would not be able to see the road in this picture. 

High winds every day.

On the train from Budapest, Hungary, to Bratislava, Slovakia, I sat in a 6-seat compartment with two women in their 70s. One was visiting relatives in Hungary. The other was going to all the way to Bratislava. It was her first time in the city, which is just 120 miles from Budapest. Martine said she was going to see a portrait of a family member from five generations ago in a Bratislava museum that a friend had told her about. She said she was going to look for a hotel when she arrived.  I got on hotels.com and gave her three places within 2km of the train station for under $60. She thought it was funny that you could do so many things with a phone. She just had a flip phone for emergencies and said, "I only use it to talk."

We talked about changing money and border security.  She had seldom been outside Hungary so even this trip to neighboring Slovakia was a big deal for her.  I told her where I had been in the last week. She had been to Yugoslavia when Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia were one, big, unhappy nation and to Serbia after the countries separated.

She had never been to Macedonia or Bulgaria. One of the things I learned in reading about the Soviet Union was how little most people travelled. The same would be true in country under Soviet domination. She was also worried about immigrants and refugees. She told me I should never take my eyes off my luggage. I left the compartment ten minutes before the station to get the bike ready to exit the train. Martine thanked me for the hotel info. She said again she had no idea these phones were so useful.

When I got off the train, I started to ride to Brno in the Czech Republic, 60 miles to the north. It was raining in Budapest when we left, so I took this train to Bratislava to get ahead of the rain. It was clear in in Bratislava, so that part worked perfectly.  I got on the bike and started riding. The rest of my plan then hit a literal 20 mph headwind.  I rode 36 hard, hilly miles in four and a half hours. It would be dark in an hour and a half. My plan to cover 60 miles before dark didn't look so good now. I crossed the Czech border and found a tourist hotel. The phone does so much for me, but it can't make me climb hills faster on a 60-pound bike in a headwind.

German Who Loved Cold War Army

On a local train between Wiesbaden and Darmstadt, I sat next to a guy in the bicycle car who was in his late 40s. He asked where I was riding. I told him I had visited my former commander who was now at Wiesbaden Air Base where I was stationed in the 70s.

Dieter brightened and said, "I miss the American Army." He grew up in Darmstadt and was in school during the 70s. He said Americans came to all the festivals and brought their Boom Boxes. Black soldiers, he said, were at all of the festivals. He made a gesture indicating he remembered boom boxes a yard long or more. They played soul in the 70s. In the 80s when he was a teenager he heard the beginning of Hip Hop and Rap from the Americans.

Now, he said, all the Americans are gone from Darmstadt.  He was on the way to a big festival which he said was less festive since the Americans left.  I told him about letting German kids about his age play on my tank in the woods near Fulda. That story is here. He said he sat in several America vehicles, but never a tank.

In the 70s, I had the general impression that Germans from cities far from the border saw us as drunks they had to put up with, but closer to the border, they liked us a lot more. It was nice to meet a guy who truly enjoyed having American soldiers in his young life.

Small Talk About Life Fifteen Miles from Auschwitz

Riding to Auschwitz dfrom Katowice, Poland, I stopped for a drink at a gas station and met Jakub. He knew I was an American. He told me how he would love to go to America and work.

Like so many people, he sees a guy my age riding a bike he started talking about fitness. He lives at home with his mom and brother. He said his mom who is in her late 40s is always talking about getting in shape, but she drives one kilometer to work. "In case she needs her car. Which she never does."

He also told me that his girlfriend applied to get a visa to work in America and lost several thousand dollars in a scam telling people from Eastern Europe they could get visas to work in America.

He also loves cars. That is not always true of people working in gas stations. He has a little 3 Series BMW hatchback. I was telling him about the Toyota Auris I was driving in the Balkans. He likes hybrids a lot.

He visited America once. Only New York City. He would like to see more of America. I told him I live 200 miles from NYC in a place where some people still drive horses and buggies. He had never heard of the Amish. Then I told him they talk on cell phones while they drive horses. He was going to tell his friends about that. I wrote down Lancaster so he could show them on a map where the horses and buggies are.

Visiting the War Museum in Belgrade

In the Serbian capital of Belgrade, the military museum is in the ruins of a castle on top of the highest point in the city. It overlooks the place where the Sava and Danube rivers flow together. To the north of the confluence is an old Roman tower that marks the only other hill in an otherwise flat landscape--flat for a hundred miles in almost any direction.

From the walls of the old fortress, it is easy to see why Belgrade is among the most conquered cities in the world. In the museum on the property, you see how many times Serbia and Belgrade have been rolled over by conquerors from antiquity to now.

The first room in the museum has artifacts of Alexander the Great and the Greek Army from 2,300 years ago. The Romans, then various barbarian tribes took over Serbia.  They had a run of sovereignty in the middle ages, followed by the Turkish conquest in the late 1400s. The Ottoman Empire remained in charge until its collapse at the end of World War I. Belgrade's independence lasted only until Nazi tanks rolled in at the beginning of World War II. The Russians defeat the Nazis and formed Yugoslavia from a group of countries and peoples that hated each other. Marshall Tito kept a lid on that mess until the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Then the Serbs started years long slaughter of Bosnian Muslims and Croats that only stopped when American bombers attacked Belgrade.

Outside the museum is a display armor and cannons from World Wars I and II.  Some of them are here.  While I was near the tanks, I overheard a French group talking about the German tanks on display as early models. We ended up talking about the invasion of France and how the French and British tanks were in many ways better and that the Allied forces outnumbered the Germans 3000 to 2000 in tanks. The difference was that the French and British spread their tanks from Dunkirk to Switzerland and the Germans put nearly all their tanks on a 20-mile front through the Ardennes Forest and into France.

In the lead of that formation was General Erwin Rommel, the best tank commander in the German Army. The lightly armed and armored German Panzer I and II tanks were stopped several times when they faced a formation of heavier Allied tanks. Even the Panzer IIIs were outmatched by the much bigger British Matilda tanks. But the German light tanks were supported by large-caliber towed guns with well trained crews that would take out the opposing tanks so the Germans could move forward.
On paper, the French and British had the numbers and the equipment to stop the Wehrmacht, but the greatest and most storied victories in military history occur when brilliant tactics  overcome sheer numbers. The Fall of France in 1940 was one of those victories.

Hybrid Days: 3 Days Driving the Bike and Riding Short Trips

Three days into the trip after trying and failing to ride from Belgrade to Croatia and Belgrade to Romania, I decided to rent a car for three days. That way, I could drive to a half-dozen countries and ride while I was in them. I also got to see places I would never be able to ride.  It turns out even some of the places I rode, I would not choose to ride again. One story is HERE.

As with almost everything about this trip, I decided on the spur of the moment to get a car, so I had to find an agency in Belgrade with a car ready to go and a good rate.  I need a hatchback for the bike.  The cheapest car was a Toyota Auris hybrid, "Like the Prius," the clerk said. The car was the size of a current Prius, a big car to me since I drive a 2001 original Prius. Since it was new, it had iPhone ports, digital display and cruise control, none of which is in my Prius.  It clearly has a bigger engine too. On a motorway south of Belgrade, I was obeying the 75mph speed limit when an Audi A6 shot past me. I followed. The Prius easliy hit 120mph.  I backed off to set my phone to call my oldest daughter Lauren and waited for the next speeder.

When I traveled overseas every month for business in the late 90s, I would sometimes rent a car, usually a Ford or Opel. But if I was in Germany, I would pay the upgrade, usually only $10, and get an Audi A6 Turbo or, once, a BMW 750--a big sedan with a 5-liter V12 engine. I would go out on the A5 at night when there was no traffic and on a stretch with no speed limit, go 155mph (rental cars were governed at 155) and call my oldest daughter Lauren.  The walls and ceiling of her room was covered with pictures of cars. She wanted to know when Dad went 150. So I would call her and tell my speed on speaker then call back later.

Even though Lauren is now 28, when a BMW shot past me, I set the phone to call Lauren and hit send when I reached 125mph.

In three days with the car, I drove to Skopje, Macedonia, then took my ill-fated ride to the Kosovo border. The next day went to the bay in Thessaloniki, Greece. In late afternoon I drove back to Belgrade through Bulgaria. At a half-hour before sundown, I drove through thirteen tunnels on a ten-mile stretch of two-lane highway just over the border from Bulgaria. Bikes are not allowed on this road, so I could not have seen it without a car.

On pure fun grounds, this little Toyota had the fast acceleration only electric motors have, plus the battery on the back makes the car more balanced end to end than most modern front-wheel drive cars.  Going fast on narrow streets this car is stable and exciting. I haven't driven a car in Europe for 15 years. This was a great car to zip through city streets, reach occasional 3-digit speeds on motorways and twist through mountain roads.

I got to Belgrade at midnight. The next day I drove to Croatia then up and down some hills near the border.  Later I drove across the border to Bosnia. Until dark I rode along the Sava River. Sometimes I would ride into a roundabout and see a sign for a town 10 or 20 miles away. I recognized the name as a massacre site from the 1990s.  After riding in this country full of ghosts, I returned to Belgrade. The next day I returned the car and got on a train to Budapest, Hungary.

Since that first week, I have only ridden in trains or on the bike. But it was fun to drive again on the narrow roads of Europe.

South African Couple Riding in Germany

On the platform waiting for the first of the eight trains that would take me from Berlin to Darmstadt was a young couple with bicycles. We boarded the train in the car with the big bicycle painted on the side, hooked our bikes in the rack and asked where were going to ride and had been riding.

Craig and Sarah were from South Africa. Sarah was in Annecy, France, the week before for what she said was the biggest animation conference in the world. Then from Annecy they came to Berlin for a meeting. Now they were taking a train to Wittenberg then riding to Heidelberg. Craig was just following Sarah, riding and sightseeing while she worked.

Sarah works compiling video shows. She and a team of 100 mostly animators in Capetown are working on a Christmas special for Great Britain, the third year they created a half-hour program for the Brits for Christmas. She said, "The weather is always bad so they watch a lot of Telly." Craig said, "We barbecue. Christmas is the beginning of summer for us."

Craig and Sarah were riding mountain bikes on the road so they would be going even slower than I had been. Craig's bike was had three big bags, one on each side and one on top of the rear rack. He was talking about getting a front rack to spread out the weight. They will be riding for a week before flying back to South Africa.

We all agreed Berlin was a lovely city and we wanted to comeback. When I told them where I had visited--particularly the Soviet War Memorial and the Holocaust Memorial--we started talking about the history of Berlin and of Europe.

Since they are in their 30s, they were born under Apartheid, but it ended around the time they went to school.  Both of their fathers served in the military and hated it. I had read news reports about South Africa returning to conscription, which ended with the end of Apartheid in 1994. Craig knew very well about that news and was glad he is too old for the draft.

We went from the draft to politics. Craig thought it was very strange that we elected a draft dodger who calls himself a patriot. "If there's a draft, you go," he said. Up to this point he had been the bearded picture of fit, unflappable "chill" guy, but the draft made him animated. "My Dad thinks of his service as a total waste of time. Just smoking, drinking and boredom. But he went." Sarah said, "Trump admires dictators. That is strange to hear from a U.S. President."

Then we went back to talking about bikes and riding and wondered aloud if there is any place better to tour on a bike than in Germany.

Germany Gave Me Back Bike Mojo

For the first two weeks of the trip, riding with bags hanging off both sides of the rear rack on my bicycle made me feel I was riding a Mack truck rather than a bike.

Travel is about discovery and I discovered I don't like riding a 60-pound bike.  In the process of discovering what I don't like gave me clarity about what I do like about riding.

The toughest day on the trip was riding from Bratislava, Slovakia, to the border of the Czech Republic. I started at 3 p.m. thinking I could easily ride 60 miles to Brno in the Czech Republic. Sundown was 9:30 p.m. The weather was clear. The wind, sadly, was 15-20 mph in my face, but I only had to average 10 mph to make by dark.

Four hours later, I had covered 34 miles. I stopped a mile up the road, got dinner and started riding the next day.

Yesterday, I rode to Wiesbaden from where I am staying in Darmstadt, Germany. When I got back from the 65-mile ride, I rode up to Frankenstein's Castle. The steep 1.5 mile climb made me happy. Without the bags, it was tough, but I was not crawling. And on the way down, I was flying through three switchbacks and a dozen sweeping turns.

Today I spent the day on a trip to a museum in a car, but when I got back, I went up and down both roads to Frankenstein, then did the steep road again.  For the rest of the trip, I will be riding without the bags.  I like that much better.