slovenia is sweet!!!! if anyone out there wants do discover an entire country in 3 weeks come here!! my route? from the 'thernal' springs i went west to historic ptuj (pronounced patooey, like spitting:) and i spit off the nearest bridge. duh, had to do it. then through some sweet valleys and hilly wine country, 14% grades!!, then north to a mountian bike camp where i spent two days off biking up and over the slovenian alps and through an old iron mine-straight thru the damn mountian!!! that was wild. then up and over the alps again to historik kamnik and over to lake bled and the famous bled island and church. its a cool church on a tiny island in a lake tucked into the triglav julian alps national park. nice. then the big one, a huge mountian pass topping off at 1611meters and with 50 switchbacks...never climbed anything like it. ( 24 switches up at a 14% grade and 2400 vertical feet in 8 miles ) as far as slovenians are concerned its the top of slovenia and the mountian of triglav, which comes into view from the pass is the symbol of the country...or some thing. then i drained out to the slightly italian coast for a splash in a polluted port, swimming with oil rigs...and now im in postonja, one of the best caves in the country and off to the capitol tomorrow. the best town i went through?? radovna...i challenge you to find it on a map!! the guy at the mountian bike hostel gave me a earload of information about where to go and what to see in the country, and 9 times out of 10 he was right on. i did plenty of dirt roads, which they call mecadum out here, and the steepest grade yet...18% ouch.
the bike trip run down...
turkey: 6/6 - 7/1 547miles
bulgaria 7/1 - 7/14 399miles
romania 7/14 - 7/31 472miles
hungary 7/31 - 8/6 176miles
slovakia 8/6 - 8/17 285miles
czech republik 8/17 - 8/31 297miles
austria 8/31 - 9/5 202miles
hungary (again) 9/5 - 9/16 390miles
slovenia 9/16 - 10/7 570miles
woah...
slovenia-the smallest country and the most miles...ive also figured out how much altitude ive ascended and descended in this country ( this is what i do when i dont have a book or pipers ear to blab off to ) up 16,591feet and down 16,820feet...i think. but im not bored enough to recheck...this will have to do:)
peace-
timo
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Friday, September 22, 2006
gettin lost-
so ive calculated since piper left, 17 days ago, ive had 16 descent blunders...i wont go into all of them but i have gotten lost 14 times and i just recently bought what i thought was butter and poridge, turned out to be yeast and flour...hhhmmmmm.
I NEED THE DUTCHES OF SPICE!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( pipers dinner time nick name )
so i got to slovenia and here i am now. the final country. only another 10 days or so. feel like i will be landing from outer space soon.
eastern slovenia has lots to offer if your full of crazy human ailments and physical disorders. i arrived and quickly found the first camp which is at the largest and newest thermal spa in the country. people from all over flock to these thermal pools to cure all sorts of ailments. i didnt really want to go here but it was the only camp ground that i was sure existed and since it was raining i decided to go for it. when i checked in the receptionist told me that becaus ethe use of the thermal pools is included in the price they charge per day, not per night. so i said i wanted to stay for one day at 3400 SIT, about 20$ usd. he informed me that since i was checking in on one day and then leaving on the next day it is technically 2 days. "WHAT THE #&@#!!!!" i couldnt believe my ears. so we struck a deal, i would pay for one and a half days and need to leave by 9am. what a scam...i was pissed. and this "thermal" is more like camping at the six flags great adventure than a relaxing spa. pool slide, wave pool, twisty slide...so i spent the rainy afternoon on the twisty slide trying to get my self sick. i just ended up with a bruised back and pruny fingers...
timo-
total miles: 3330miles
total ass time: 336:46hrs
thats a lot of ass time!!!!
I NEED THE DUTCHES OF SPICE!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( pipers dinner time nick name )
so i got to slovenia and here i am now. the final country. only another 10 days or so. feel like i will be landing from outer space soon.
eastern slovenia has lots to offer if your full of crazy human ailments and physical disorders. i arrived and quickly found the first camp which is at the largest and newest thermal spa in the country. people from all over flock to these thermal pools to cure all sorts of ailments. i didnt really want to go here but it was the only camp ground that i was sure existed and since it was raining i decided to go for it. when i checked in the receptionist told me that becaus ethe use of the thermal pools is included in the price they charge per day, not per night. so i said i wanted to stay for one day at 3400 SIT, about 20$ usd. he informed me that since i was checking in on one day and then leaving on the next day it is technically 2 days. "WHAT THE #&@#!!!!" i couldnt believe my ears. so we struck a deal, i would pay for one and a half days and need to leave by 9am. what a scam...i was pissed. and this "thermal" is more like camping at the six flags great adventure than a relaxing spa. pool slide, wave pool, twisty slide...so i spent the rainy afternoon on the twisty slide trying to get my self sick. i just ended up with a bruised back and pruny fingers...
timo-
total miles: 3330miles
total ass time: 336:46hrs
thats a lot of ass time!!!!
Sunday, September 17, 2006
oh where, oh where, could my biking tim be??
I have to say I (piper) was a little blogging-bitter after the digi went MIA, and we could no longer post pictures. But now that I've been home on US soil for a little over a week, I'm feeling extra bloggy, as if I could somehow live vicariously through Timo; still biking from one adventure to the next in Central Europe...
Touching the tarmac at the Baltimore airport with soles that have taken me nearly 3000 miles, I felt I had finally 'arrived.' A funny feeling, "arriving;" the bike trip being a series of mini-arrivals, but never the grand finale... and my life up to this point also being a series of mini-arrivals and revelations, but never before have i felt such an enormous feeling of accomplishment and joy at truly being humbled by the world in which we live.
... and where is Tim?
That valiant man 'o mine biked 10 miles (in the snow up a hill with nothing but a tshirt on ;D)... with a giNORmous bike box, back to our campground, packed up my bike and put me in a cab to the airport in Vienna... The cab driver (a balding, overweight, chain smoking Austrian man of 50, with bad dandruff, a black shirt, and a love for the Austrian equivolant to Celine Dion) graciously kept the conversation going to the airport, so that it wasn't until I boarded my flight that I got a bit teary thinking of Tim packing up the tent by himself for the very first time...
....he must be cursing the extra weight... muuuuuuuuuaaaaaahahahahahahh!!!
... but where is Tim?
Last I heard he had reached Budapest- about 3/4 days from Vienna, and he was heading to the Lake Balaton region (get out your maps kiddies...) about 2 days... but that was 3 almost 4 days ago... am I worried? Not really... I kind of feel like it's a game of "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego.." trying to guess when/where he'll pop up on the radar again... crap... I feel like my mom.
Touching the tarmac at the Baltimore airport with soles that have taken me nearly 3000 miles, I felt I had finally 'arrived.' A funny feeling, "arriving;" the bike trip being a series of mini-arrivals, but never the grand finale... and my life up to this point also being a series of mini-arrivals and revelations, but never before have i felt such an enormous feeling of accomplishment and joy at truly being humbled by the world in which we live.
... and where is Tim?
That valiant man 'o mine biked 10 miles (in the snow up a hill with nothing but a tshirt on ;D)... with a giNORmous bike box, back to our campground, packed up my bike and put me in a cab to the airport in Vienna... The cab driver (a balding, overweight, chain smoking Austrian man of 50, with bad dandruff, a black shirt, and a love for the Austrian equivolant to Celine Dion) graciously kept the conversation going to the airport, so that it wasn't until I boarded my flight that I got a bit teary thinking of Tim packing up the tent by himself for the very first time...
....he must be cursing the extra weight... muuuuuuuuuaaaaaahahahahahahh!!!
... but where is Tim?
Last I heard he had reached Budapest- about 3/4 days from Vienna, and he was heading to the Lake Balaton region (get out your maps kiddies...) about 2 days... but that was 3 almost 4 days ago... am I worried? Not really... I kind of feel like it's a game of "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego.." trying to guess when/where he'll pop up on the radar again... crap... I feel like my mom.
Monday, September 11, 2006
tim and piper an der donau, wanderlost in Hungary and other stories...
biking the Danube is for old people, and pipe and tim realized that as soon as they stepped rubber to pavement. but we weren't complaining. bike shops, ice cream shops, bars, restaurants, campgrounds...all on the bike trail. it was like a bike super highway and pipe and timo were in hi gear dingin our bells gettin granny to pull to one side so that we could steam past like a mad truck driver, trailer and all. you felt as is you just biked along a river, saw nothing but the river and some fields and then a camp ground appeared and you camped. kinda surreal. the bike trail avoids the center of towns, probably because of the massive amount of people who bike the trail, and there for you lose any sense of where you are and why your biking. we need towns!! we need to see locals doing their thing. we need to see chickens running across the street...we need architecture!!! all we got was the back side of all the slow bikers...oh well, now we know. also, everytown in the area is some name followed by "an der donau". like no one knew that these towns were on the Danube?? any way we had lunch an der danau. and pitched the tent an der donau and we even crashed into each other and fell down an der donau. it was good times an der donau. drank a beer an der donau in a tiny pub in the middle of nowhere an der donau, like a field an der donau , and there was this massive power plant behind it an der donau. and im talking stones throw behind it an der donau. but the powerplant an der danau wasn't spewing any funk or making any noise...it was dead quiet an der donau . eerie. when we left a guy informed us that the plant was meant to be nuclear but greanpeace stopped it and they never finished building it an der donau...huh. kinda cool, i'll drink a beer ( organic i hope ) to green peace!! ( an der donau )
passing into slovakia and Hungary an der donau was a bit of a mess. as soon as you pass into these countries the bike signs stop pointing you in the right direction and finding the right way is near impossible. i even managed to pass into Slovakia on a bike trail only to be stopped by a gate, so i turned around for Austria to figure things out and there was an irate border guard asking me for my passport and why i was in this forbidden area!!! " NO BIKING" he is teling me. "but this is a bike trail..." i though, go figure. many times while in Hungary the Danube trail would spit you out on some back road with no signs of where to go and a big sign that indicated "no biking". why the hell would there be a no biking sign on a bike trail??!! any way, i found my way to Budapest and here i am. tomorrow i leave for lake balaton and eventually into Slovenia...
one thing that pipes and timers got into was doing nite rides around sweet towns. we did athens, rhodos, nesebar bulg, chesky krumlov czech...and so in the past few days ive racked em up...a nite ride in bratislava slovakia ( where i got horribly lost...another story ) , the donau island (an der donau? ) -that was sweet, 20 miles from the heart of the city and a tiny quiet island with sand roads and people having camp fires and the moon was full and all the tourists left to go back to work...mmmmm:) and finally budapest. nite rides are the best, you get to see a lot of the cityand all te cool stuff is lit up...
talky soon!!
email us !!!!!!!!!
ok bye-
passing into slovakia and Hungary an der donau was a bit of a mess. as soon as you pass into these countries the bike signs stop pointing you in the right direction and finding the right way is near impossible. i even managed to pass into Slovakia on a bike trail only to be stopped by a gate, so i turned around for Austria to figure things out and there was an irate border guard asking me for my passport and why i was in this forbidden area!!! " NO BIKING" he is teling me. "but this is a bike trail..." i though, go figure. many times while in Hungary the Danube trail would spit you out on some back road with no signs of where to go and a big sign that indicated "no biking". why the hell would there be a no biking sign on a bike trail??!! any way, i found my way to Budapest and here i am. tomorrow i leave for lake balaton and eventually into Slovenia...
one thing that pipes and timers got into was doing nite rides around sweet towns. we did athens, rhodos, nesebar bulg, chesky krumlov czech...and so in the past few days ive racked em up...a nite ride in bratislava slovakia ( where i got horribly lost...another story ) , the donau island (an der donau? ) -that was sweet, 20 miles from the heart of the city and a tiny quiet island with sand roads and people having camp fires and the moon was full and all the tourists left to go back to work...mmmmm:) and finally budapest. nite rides are the best, you get to see a lot of the cityand all te cool stuff is lit up...
talky soon!!
email us !!!!!!!!!
ok bye-
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
the long and winding road...
because of the lack of digital photögraphing and the funny keey boards, like this one, we have been bolg negligent and we apologise. so let me fill you in on the last month:
romania: one of the most beautifull countries that we have been to that is contrasted with lush green mountians and hillsides and impoverished peoples that will beg for anything that you might have in any way that they seem fit. like a mom holding her crying and starving baby over the edge of a railing seperating a food court and a street so that the baby is hovering over you and your food pointing, drooling, screaming. the mom...indiferent, vacant stare, giving you the "its not my fault that you wont share" look.
we cycled close to 500 miles in this country and we did so pretty quickly so that we could get out and into "more civilised" land. we did happen to mee a french guy who was finishing his around the world bike adventure and that was sweet. we also met the nicest romanian brothers in the country. they let us sleep in their yard becasue the campground down the road was booked solid and piper gave the tear jerker burts to get us in. they instsied that we try some romanian moonshine, bystrika. powerfull enough to burn. when we left romania the rain began...
hungary: as soon as you cross the hungarian romanian border many things become apparent. romania is very poor, hungary is not. the roads were the first major difference. they were smooth!! wow, what a novelty. the first town that we came to had bike paths!! and people used them!! more noveltys. as we approached our first major hungarian city a mountian biker cycled up to us and befriended piper. if we were in romani or bulgaria or even turkey and someone biked up to you to talk they were surely crazy, or drunk, or going to try to steal or beg. but this guy offered to buy us poweraid and insisted on taking us into the city to buy us a beer¨!! where the hell are we?!?! so Zoltau became our first hungarian friend.
we ventured on following cÿcle paths to a wine region where you can get your bottles filled from the keg for pennies and then to the hungarian hills of svlvasvarad. we tried to mountian bike here but got rained out and discovered that most of the mountian bike trails are paved...hhmmm. from here we trudged through more rain to slovakia...
slovakia: amazing for cyclists. signed cycleways, quiet roads, long valleys, mountians...were going back!! we cycled the 3 major national parks in the country: the slovensky raj, the tatrys and the mala fatras. all amazing and very different. and people actually recreate in this country. no where else have we seen people taking time to recreate in the outdoors. maybe this is what a little money brings...vacation time. we cycled for about 2 weeks through the rain and decided that it was time to escape into czech...
czech republic: this coiuld very well be the most amazing country in the world. its fairytale land out here. rolling green hills dotted with thick dark green pine forests, cut by babbling brooks with jumping trout and spangled with old churches, castles and chateux. did you know that the ploural of chateux is chatimo?? its gross but true. weve been following lazy bike trails that drip allong the landscape and drop you in painted cities and mideavel squares with mounstrous fountians. camping along lakes and rivers and barelÿ using the roads. its all bike infrastructure out here, truely puts the US to shame. cz has been developing their long distance bike trails and hiking trails since the seventies and they are all well signed to the point where we dont we dont even need a bike map to figure them out. so here we are in chesky krumlov taking a few days off and its still raining, for a month straight now, and tomorrow we head south for austria and the danube river where we will let the tail winds and gentle down stream grade push us into vienna where piper will be flying home and the timo will continue solo. hope to hear from you all soon...
romania: one of the most beautifull countries that we have been to that is contrasted with lush green mountians and hillsides and impoverished peoples that will beg for anything that you might have in any way that they seem fit. like a mom holding her crying and starving baby over the edge of a railing seperating a food court and a street so that the baby is hovering over you and your food pointing, drooling, screaming. the mom...indiferent, vacant stare, giving you the "its not my fault that you wont share" look.
we cycled close to 500 miles in this country and we did so pretty quickly so that we could get out and into "more civilised" land. we did happen to mee a french guy who was finishing his around the world bike adventure and that was sweet. we also met the nicest romanian brothers in the country. they let us sleep in their yard becasue the campground down the road was booked solid and piper gave the tear jerker burts to get us in. they instsied that we try some romanian moonshine, bystrika. powerfull enough to burn. when we left romania the rain began...
hungary: as soon as you cross the hungarian romanian border many things become apparent. romania is very poor, hungary is not. the roads were the first major difference. they were smooth!! wow, what a novelty. the first town that we came to had bike paths!! and people used them!! more noveltys. as we approached our first major hungarian city a mountian biker cycled up to us and befriended piper. if we were in romani or bulgaria or even turkey and someone biked up to you to talk they were surely crazy, or drunk, or going to try to steal or beg. but this guy offered to buy us poweraid and insisted on taking us into the city to buy us a beer¨!! where the hell are we?!?! so Zoltau became our first hungarian friend.
we ventured on following cÿcle paths to a wine region where you can get your bottles filled from the keg for pennies and then to the hungarian hills of svlvasvarad. we tried to mountian bike here but got rained out and discovered that most of the mountian bike trails are paved...hhmmm. from here we trudged through more rain to slovakia...
slovakia: amazing for cyclists. signed cycleways, quiet roads, long valleys, mountians...were going back!! we cycled the 3 major national parks in the country: the slovensky raj, the tatrys and the mala fatras. all amazing and very different. and people actually recreate in this country. no where else have we seen people taking time to recreate in the outdoors. maybe this is what a little money brings...vacation time. we cycled for about 2 weeks through the rain and decided that it was time to escape into czech...
czech republic: this coiuld very well be the most amazing country in the world. its fairytale land out here. rolling green hills dotted with thick dark green pine forests, cut by babbling brooks with jumping trout and spangled with old churches, castles and chateux. did you know that the ploural of chateux is chatimo?? its gross but true. weve been following lazy bike trails that drip allong the landscape and drop you in painted cities and mideavel squares with mounstrous fountians. camping along lakes and rivers and barelÿ using the roads. its all bike infrastructure out here, truely puts the US to shame. cz has been developing their long distance bike trails and hiking trails since the seventies and they are all well signed to the point where we dont we dont even need a bike map to figure them out. so here we are in chesky krumlov taking a few days off and its still raining, for a month straight now, and tomorrow we head south for austria and the danube river where we will let the tail winds and gentle down stream grade push us into vienna where piper will be flying home and the timo will continue solo. hope to hear from you all soon...
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Agro-Tourism with Romaniacs!!!
Alrighty... last left ya in Bucharest... cool city! Too bad my digital camera was stolen right out from beneath my nose; literally! It was in my handlebar bag, covered in a rain sack, under my cookie bag... good god they were stealth! So, no more pics for the blog... oh well... I've shed my tears.. moving on...
So, Agro (not in a bad way) tourism in Romania- pretty cool... you can camp on people's farms/ villas... very nice... and listen to them tell you all night to be careful of gypsies in the next town... WHO, by the way, really do wear long flowery skirts, gold jewelry, and head scarves... and are really really poor..... and loud.... and scary.
...and Romanian drivers....ROMANIACS! by far the scariest drivers we have encountered yet.... Tim, wear your helmet for chrissakes...
BUT the terrain/mountains are stunning... swiss alps meets gypsy ville.... it's breathtaking... and we've been blessed with good cycling days... watch it dump rain tomorrow...
So, Agro (not in a bad way) tourism in Romania- pretty cool... you can camp on people's farms/ villas... very nice... and listen to them tell you all night to be careful of gypsies in the next town... WHO, by the way, really do wear long flowery skirts, gold jewelry, and head scarves... and are really really poor..... and loud.... and scary.
...and Romanian drivers....ROMANIACS! by far the scariest drivers we have encountered yet.... Tim, wear your helmet for chrissakes...
BUT the terrain/mountains are stunning... swiss alps meets gypsy ville.... it's breathtaking... and we've been blessed with good cycling days... watch it dump rain tomorrow...
Sunday, July 16, 2006
a few photos from the road:
piper about to head to the bulg...otherwise known as bulgaristan, in turkey,
tims betterhalf, his shadow and piper and tim enjoying a kebab nearthe blue mosqu, istanbul. tim near the town of bulgari and piper filling water at a road side spring.
a top ten list of commando camp spots.
1) Xanthos, turkey. camped within eyeshot of a lycian ruin in a golden brown feild atop a hill on a saturday night. belw us was a small town bursting with turkish music and the shouts of young club goers!! oh and all this under a full moon.
2) a heli pad nead egridir, turkey. after our hitch hike ride ended at about 8pm we found ourselves scrambling for a camp spot. we found a secluded hill and what would you know, there was a helicopter landing pad on top!!! so civilised to live on concrete huh?? so we camped on it! no helicopters landed that night.
3) antalya, turkey. the day that we biked with skot! we camped on the coast of the med. with city lights reflecting off the sea and the sound of the lapping sea lulling us to sleep:)
4) a vineyard in bulgaria. that night we drank wine and the next morning we ate oats with rasins. ode to the grape in the vinyard!!
5) in a sunflower farn in the bulg. so many sunflowers you couldnt imagine!! we camped in the shadow of an endless field as the sunniest sunflowers. they look to the east and they were all facing us. like a thousand brown eyes with yellow eyelashes starring at you...kind creepy, kinda cool!
ok, thats only 5, buts it good enough!!
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