Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Osijek, Croatia to Novi Sad Serbia
Distance: 132 km (82 miles)
Serbia: President, Boris Tadic; capital, Belgrade
X+--We continue through this corner of Croatian Slavonia today on our way to Serbia, the core of Marshall Tito's Yugoslavia. Novi Sad is the second largest city in Serbia.
This morning at breakfast we said goodbye to Branko and met our new interpreter, Jovan. He is a tall dignified man who has been working tirelessly to get the Donau Bike Track signs put up in Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia. Two-thirds of the signs are up in Serbia and some in Croatia.
Jovan told us not to drink the water in Novi Sad but not to worry about mines anymore—Serbia was bombed but not mined.
After making a sandwich and loading our luggage on the van, we took off at 8:30 am to cover the 82 miles to Novi Sad, Serbia. It had rained in the night but the skies seemed clear and the sun was shining. The storm gave us a great tailwind for most of the day. The sun stayed out only for a couple of hours and then it clouded over and we could see rain in the distance.
One does not ride in the street in the city, and the bike path out of town cost me time. It was really a glorified sidewalk and had curbs and islands with curbs at nearly every turn and intersection which required dismounting the bike and/or waiting for a light or lights. I was riding by myself and very glad to break free onto D213 which did not carry too much traffic.
About 30 km (19 miles) from Osijek is the Croatian town of Vukovar, which was pretty much destroyed in every way possible during the war—economically, culturally, its infrastructure. Its town center was reduced to actual rubble. Today it is limping its way back to normality, at least on the surface—a lot of the buildings are new—but for every two buildings that are new, there are the broken, bullet-riddled, shell-damaged remnants of older buildings that give horrible insight into how awful the damage was to this town and its inhabitants.
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| Another surviving wall with bullet holes and a gaping shell hole |
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| War ravaged Vukovar Water Tower |
The water tower has been left intact with all its battle scars as a reminder of the horrors of war. The Croatian flag with its red-and-white checkerboard shield in the center flies proudly from its top. It’s an impressive idea—except that I found little, sometimes cheerfully colorful, mini replicas of the damaged water tower being sold as tourist souvenirs in Osijek. To my mind it took away from the gravitas of the whole tower-as-reminder plan. On the other hand, I suppose anything that makes money for Osijek and Vukovar (and other affected towns) should be seen as a plus . . . I don’t know.
Marion and Fred were pulled off opposite the tower and we took photos of the tower and shared a banana together. Then they took off and I was solo again.
I passed through several little villages (Savas, Bijelo Brdo, Dalj) before reaching the border just east of Ilok. The last three Croatian villages were down in great “holes.” I would speed down a long, winding, 8% to 10% hill into the village and then have to climb the equivalent to get out of the town . . . an oddity for us who are used to pretty flat terrain so far. In Austria and Germany early in the ride, we had long uphills, but they were mostly shallow grades and, sometimes with the wind at our backs, barely seemed like grades.
I had planned to eat my lunch at the border 85 km (52 miles) from the start, but when I got there, the place was crawling with trucks and cars, so I just pushed on.
Some time after I passed through customs, I was on a busy road and the rain came down in torrents. I struggled to get my raincoat out of my rackpack and put it on, its Velcro front closure tabs miserably sticking together and to everything. Because of this, I got drenched.
Then, like a fool, I continued riding in the pouring rain on this very busy dished road with it’s rolled shoulder, never knowing how deep the puddles in the dish were or whether there was a pothole lurking under the water. Trucks and cars came awfully close, and I found myself tensed in anxiety.
After about 20 minutes, it stopped raining. I pulled over to figure out where I was and to take off my hood and wipe off my sunglasses. I was standing beside the road trying to figure out my map, still getting drenched with each passing truck, when I looked up and here came Fred and Marion! They had stopped earlier and taken shelter from the rain, as would any smart cyclist, so were behind me! I was VERY glad to see them and the three of us gave each other moral support and rode the rest of the way in together.
Just outside of Novi Sad we were arrowed to a dirt rut behind what seemed to be the dump. It was very difficult riding and littered with glass and trash. We rode this for a couple of km and then popped up onto a gravel road for a short distance before finally coming out on a paved area atop a levee. After that it was city riding all the way to the hotel, which was off the central square.
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| Fred testing the sandy ramp to the (finally) paved portion of the trail; you can see a bit of dump truck too |
On our way along this path, we passed a large chainlink-fenced city park that was terribly littered with trash, abandoned tents, and beer kegs and cans. It, plus the ride through the dump, was an uninviting introduction to Serbia and Novi Sad.
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| Litter after a Sex Pistols concert |
Jovan told us later that this park had been the venue for a Sex Pistols concert, attended by over 100,000 fans. The storm that blew through in the night had knocked the limb of a tree onto one of the concert goers’ tents and had killed two people. The clean-up crews were working hard, but it would take them the better part of the week to turn the park back to its original state.
About 10 minutes before we got in, it began to rain and blow fiercely. Drowned again. The rear guard got in quite a bit later. The heavy rain and traffic had washed the arrows from the road, so Judy, Carolyn, and Harold had to find Hotel Zenit via directions from those who could speak English. They approached from a completely different direction and did not ride past the littered park or along the river.
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| Front and back of Hotel Zenit in Novi Sad |
After cleaning up, washing out our riding clothes, and writing this log, we met in the lobby at 7:30 pm to walk to the restaurant off the square where we had dinner: vegetable soup, chicken and FF, jam filled crepes for dessert.
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