Author: idratherbesailingnow

By Don

The SIM Card Saga

So all in all I bought 5 SIM cards on the trip. Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Outside of Turkey they were all very cheap. As it turned out the biggest challenge was that the people selling them were not well versed in how they behaved outside of the country.

In two cases they said they would not work once you left the country, but they did. However there was an additional charge added for data and calls. Since they came with some money on them and the additional charge was very little we continued with them through other countries.

In one country they said it would work in the next, Bulgaria, but it stopped at the border.

In Bulgaria they said it wouldn’t work in Turkey and they were right. We didn’t ask in Turkey so don’t know if they would have known, but we just assumed it wouldn’t. I’m now in Italy and have acquired my 6th SIM card which will work all through the EU. Of course it costs as much as my other 4 EU cards combined, but still cheap by Canadian standards.

The reason for the inconsistency, I have read, is the Eastern European countries charge so little that either a surcharge is added in other countries or they are blocked completely.

The Ring In Our Nose

I’m not sure how one used to do trips like this before sophisticated route planners, Google Street View, cell phones and GPS chart plotters. But I can assure you it would be much harder and take longer. On the other hand you get so used to these devices you frequently don’t know which way is north or where exactly you are. You just blindly follow their directions, led by the ring in your nose.

I had a Wahoo bike computer which has an integrated chart plotter and my phone mounted on my handle bars although I rarely had the phone on. Dennis just used his phone. The advantage of the Wahoo device is it is black and white and you can easily see it in bright daylight. It also has lights the flash red, green and white to tell you things, like you have gone off the route. The disadvantage is it is a very small screen and you have it zoomed right in so you really have no perspective of where you are in the big picture. Also it is difficult to know wether it matters if you are off course, as frequently the roads will rejoin. If you have to reroute you need to go to the phone to do it and then download the new route. Alternatively Dennis would use his phone and have it zoomed out so that he had the big picture but then would often miss a corner. I really liked the Wahoo, but you must also have a cell phone app for the bigger picture.

You Can Leave Istanbul But It May Not Leave You

As I mentioned I’m now in Italy where I have met up with Sue. Our first night was supposed to be dinner in a quaint restaurant with a fine bottle of wine. Not.

On my last full day in Istanbul, Dennis and I treated ourself to a lunch on a roof top terrace overlooking the Marmara Sea. It was lovely. The waiter talked us into some fresh pomegranate juice which was also lovely.

Well we aren’t sure if it was the juice, or something in the food, but two days later and it is still not a pretty picture, either for Dennis or me. I could leave nothing to your imagination, but I’m not that mean. But I will likely lose more weight in the few days after the trip than I did during it. Hopefully poor Dennis is better before he gets on his flight home. Did I mention it leaves at 4 am?

And?

All in all it was a great trip. The caveat is that it was a long time in the planning and now it is over and it is hard to keep the different parts clear in your mind. Fortunately we have pictures and the blog so we can try and sort it out, reflect back and savour. And Dennis and I are still on speaking terms.

By Dennis

Yambol to Edirne. 114km. 17.6 km/hr

Our hotels breakfast was not available until 10am so we headed to the local supermarket for its 8am opening to find 30-40 people waiting to get in. I left Don with the bikes and joined the crowd when the doors opened and was surprised that most of them made a dash for the fruit and veggie section which had a very limited selection of produce – no bananas and yoghurt for breakfast today.

From Yambol to the Turkish border was mostly on really quiet country roads but when we rejoined the highway for the final stretch to the border, we quickly ran into lots of truck traffic. 7km away from the border the trucks were stopped, dead stopped, with the drivers out of their vehicles sitting on chairs or doing truck maintenance. Fortunately they had pulled onto the shoulder allowing us to pass, while dodging into the gaps between trucks to avoid the few oncoming cars and trucks coming out of Turkey into Bulgaria. It was a big border crossing with 4 checkpoints that took about an hour to get through – the customs and immigration personnel were amused to process a couple of cyclists!

We followed a new highway with super wide, smooth shoulders all the way to Edirne. What a transition from the previous countries -mosques with Imans calling to prayer 6 times a day, modern shops everywhere and the smell of roasting meat from donair stands permeating the air.

Despite dozens of phone shops we were unable to purchase a new sim card because of system problems caused by communications a 5.4 earthquake a day before.

Edirne to Corlu 129km. 22.6 km/hr

A long, hot day on the highway but at least it was an excellent road with smooth surfaces, a 3 metre wide shoulders and a good tailwind. We stopped in Corlu and picked up sim cards, but because of ongoing system problems due to the earthquake it took 1.5 hours. It was difficult to be without a phone for a day as we are dependent on them for navigation and accomodation.

When you go from Eastern Europe to Turkey it is like a light switch being thrown.  The other countries we have been through change a bit from each other, Turkey changes dramatically:

• There are metal detectors in the big supermarkets.
• Beer, when you can find it, costs more than at home.
• There is much more of a police presence, both in the towns and on the highway.
• Crosswalks are dangerous.  Even the locals don’t cross until it is clear.
• There are no church bells, just calls to prayer 6 times a day (although some sources say 5)
• There are so many stores selling delicious sweet things. I think a profession as a dentist would be great!
• People are twenty pounds heavier than Canadians on average
• Red lights for cars are optional
• Men are in every cafe drinking tea, not coffee
• Half the women dressed traditionally, the other half western
• There are shoulders on the highway!

But the biggest thing is the mass of humanity walking through the center of towns, with tiny streets in all directions selling everything imaginable. It is hard to believe who buys all this stuff and how the vendors make a living, as we have seen few people in the shops.

This was our penultimate riding day. Tomorrow Istanbul!

Corlu to Istanbul 78km 16.2 km/hr

The early morning start for our last riding day was delayed by a flat tire on my bike, the first either of us have had. Overall we have been lucky – we are both using Schwalbe Marathon tires, and although heavier than conventional tires, they are very durable.

About 60km away from Istanbul Central the traffic started picking up significantly and got to the point where we got off the highway and searched side roads even though they were much slower and longer. We were both very conservative in our last day of riding, not wanting an incident on our final day with the crazy Turkish drivers.

We arrived at our hotel in Buyukcekmece late in the afternoon, hot and tired but glad to to be here. Buyukcekmece is a district of Istanbul, still 35km from Central but this is as far as we are riding – there is no way we are going to ride through traffic again like today, we will take a taxi to the Airbnb for our stay near Taksim Square.

Total distance ridden: 3497 km.

One of the busiest land crossing into the EU is between Turkey and Bulgaria. Turkish operators want to push around 60,000 trucks into the EU each year. But taking products by truck in and out of the EU is not easy, even though Turkey is part of a Customs Union which means there are no duties owed on the materials being carried.

Well we saw one of those crossing points when we went from Iambol, Bulgaria to Edirne, Turkey. On the way to Turkey the line up was 7 km long, the line up in the other direction was relatively short at 4 km. They say the record into the EU is 17 km with a 30 hour wait. Estimates are 3 billion Euros lost in trade a year because of the beurocratic hassle.

Apparently the Turkish drivers have to get a permit for each country they cross. To cross Austria only 18,000 permits are given and they were all taken 18 days into January. So all the others have to put their trucks sealed on a train to get to Germany. Or so goes the articles that you read. So far, at least as far as I know, the UK is not part of the Customs Union.

So Boris. Have you really thought long and hard about a Hard Brexit? Or just about becoming Prime Minister.

The Dark Ages of American Currency

We are all familiar with how archaic the American approach is to their currency. They still have pennies. They are worthless. A study found that 100% of the time in multiple different circumstances nobody will bend over to pick up a penny. But they still have them.

They don’t have chips in their credit cards. The reason is they thought it would slow the consumer down too much when buying stuff. And in the US the consumer is king. So ‘tap’ has come to their rescue which will allow them to now have the security of chips.

They have tried several attempts to get rid of their one dollar bills, like every other country in the world with their low value bills. The reason is coins last way longer. Their efforts have always failed.

Their bills are still made out of cotton and linen and this is my beef. I have a US account that accumulates money from my time working in the US. So I took a bunch of cash out of it and brought it along to convert into whatever. I had it in a plastic zip lock bag along with some Canadian cash. The bag got some moisture in it. I’m on a bike and sometimes it rains and the bloody bag had a hole in it. The US cash got mildew on it. The Canadian cash which is from the 21st century and made from a polymer did not. No body will take the US cash because it is ‘ruined’. At the moment it is like their pennies, worthless.

Half and Half

In Romania what was noticable was the juxtaposition of the old and new. People riding down the road with a horse pulled wagon getting out of the way of a Scania semi truck.

In Turkey it is the juxtaposition of the conservatives and the liberals, which is noticable in the groups of young girls walking around. One group will be in jeans and t-shirts and the next in a hijab, both the headscarf and a overcoat type garment. I’d say the split is about half and half but it really depends on where you are at. Occasionally a group can be mixed but the norm is not. Quite interesting but not sure what to make of it.

The men, of course, all look the same in t-shirts and jeans.

Allah is Merciful

When coming from Iambul to Edirne it was 114 km with a headwind, 30 degrees and 755 meter climb. It was hard, not Ron Jewula hard, but hard. We knew the next day going from Edirne to Corlu would also be a challenge with 130 km, 1200 meters of climbing and another warm day.

But then the wind turned around and it came from behind. Allah is merciful.

By Dennis

Bulgaria, unlike its next door neighbour to the south, Greece, is not a popular destination for a lot of people, but I have always wondered what it is like. Besides Greece, it is surrounded by Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, Turkey and the Black Sea as its eastern border. It is an old country having broken away from the Byzantine Empire over 800 years ago and then freed itself from Ottoman rule in the 1800’s. It was ruled as a communist authoritarian dictatorship, with a strong Soviet influence through most of the 1900s but became a democracy in 1989 (albeit with mainly communist parties). Although it is Europe’s 16th largest country it only has 7 million people, the majority of whom live in its capital Sofia and surrounding area. It is widely acknowledged to be the most corrupt country, and the poorest country in the EU, with 20% of its population making the minimum wage of $1.75. The working hours for some are long – the receptionist in our hotels worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and spoke 5 languages, and I imagine she was being paid the minimum wage. Bulgaria is in a state of demographic crisis with a negative population growth since the 1990’s and over 1 million young people leaving the country by 2005. Its birth rates are amongst the lowest in the world and cannot keep up with the replenishment rate, while its death rates are amongst the highest due to an aging population, poverty and poor health care (and probably because 45% of men and 25% of women smoke).

But it is an interesting country. In the last 30 years it has transitioned from a mainly rural society with agriculture as the main economic driver, to an industrial and services economy with scientific and technological research well supported by the government. The literacy rate is 98%, its students rank amongst the highest in the world in terms of reading, out ranking Canada and Germany. It’s gender equality index ranks 18th in the world. It has many English speakers, especially amongst the young, the people are the friendliest we have encountered, and compared to Romania the roads are better and they have more coffee shops!

Bucharest to Ruse. 78km 20.4km/hr.

It was easy getting out of Bucharest early Sunday morning, with the exception of one taxi driver who just about hit me as he came up on the inside of a car that had stopped for me. Although Romania in general has good drivers, in Bucharest they seem to be of a different breed. One can never be too proactive.

The ride was along a good highway with the widest shoulders we have seen in Romania, which isn’t hard as the majority of roads do not have shoulders or if they do, the shoulders are in poor condition often full of potholes or breaking away.

More random acts of kindness occurred for us when we stopped in a large farmer’s market on the way to Ruse. I had some Romanian lei to get rid of and saw a nice bunch of plums at 4 lei/kg (about $1.25), but not wanting a kilo of plums I handed him a 1 lei bill. He scooped up 6 plums and handed them to me, refusing payment. A little further on a man was selling jars of honey, and I was looking at them from a distance wondering if they were really jars of honey. The man walked up to me a shook my hand, pointed to the Canadian flag on my handle bar bag and handed me a jar of honey. What is it? Do they think we look tired and hungry? Old and infirm? Or is it part of their culture?

We left Romania by crossing over the Danube on a long, high bridge and entered Bulgaria at Ruse, a lovely small city of 200,000. I was a little disappointed in the Danube as we were picturing a clean flowing river where we could sit on the bank and have lunch, instead it was a muddy, grey colour with heavy industrialization lining it’s banks.

Ruse to Veliko Turnovo. 111km 19.7km/hr

It was a long day with 1050 meters up and 790 down and started with a cool 7 degrees. The first half the ride was on a hilly, rough “highway” with little traffic, but the second half was on a busy highway with no shoulders and lots of trucks buzzing by. Although most Bulgarian truck drivers are pretty good, we have adopted a strategy of getting off the road and stopping when two trucks in opposite directions are passing us at the same time. Better safe than sorry when you are tired.

Veliko Turnovo is a town built on a hillside and seems to be popular with Eastern European tourists, drawn by it’s picturesque setting and fortress on a neighbouring hill.

Veliko Turnovo to Pilitsi. 58km 17.7km/hr.

A short but hilly ride on a quiet country road giving us a good glimpse of rural Bulgaria. We decided to make this a short day in order to avoid a single 140km day with two big hills, but the options of where to stay for the night were very limited. Our accomodation is at a “resort” about 5km beyond Palisti, which has a population of about 40.

Palisti to Yambol. 90km 17.5km/hr.

A tough day, it took us 3.5 hours to do the first 25km due to a 10km 2000 foot climb. The “included breakfast” at the resort where we were the only guests, consisted of a small glass of herbal tea and a few slices of white bread with melted salty cheese on top. It did not fuel us sufficiently for the climb. But at least the road for most of the day was devoid of traffic, as we travelled through a sparsely populated area of Bulgaria.

This will be our last day in Bulgaria, tomorrow Turkey!

By Don

So you want to be a rock and roll star
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time and learn how to play

Roger McQuinn and Chris Hillman wrote these lyrics in around 1966. You know Roger McQuinn and Chris Hillman, as in The Byrds.

Now the key phrase in this song is “take some time and learn how to play”. The point being that if you want to be a rock and roll star you should know how to play an instrument, even if that intrument is your voice. Now why am I telling you all this? Well we will get back to it.

We were quite lucky in our timing to visit Bucharest, as on the weekend we were there they celebrated Bucuresti Days which is to say they celebrated their city. Lots of activities of which many were focused on the street in front of the place we were staying which was a long boulevard that ran from a large array of fountains at one end to the Palace of the Parliament at the other. In front of the Palace a large stage had been set up and for two days they had been doing sound checks that reverberated all the way down to our apartment, which was a km away. Big stuff coming.

We had been told that there would be a concert on Friday, then Saturday late afternoon and finally on Saturday evening. I think we walked down a total of 3 times trying to see if a concert was happening to find nothing. But finally we hit pay dirt on the 4 attempt on Saturday evening. Of note is that on the Saturday all the way up and down the boulevard there were buskers, bands, food stands and thousands of locals milling about so it wasn’t any hardship.

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When the concert finally began there was a warm up band that played mostly crooner type music. They played it very well (interestingly not a Romanian band, the singer sounded American). Then the big event which was a band, and I use the term ‘band’ in the loosest of sense, called Schiller. Now Schiller plays Electronica, and like ‘band’ we are using ‘plays’ also in the loosest way. I’m not an Electronica fan but, well it was free. And so…

Well the set up. Massive stage, huge array of speakers so that people circling in the space station could hear, big screens to allow for full visual effects, and did I mention security like you were going to see the Pope? Anyway on either side of the stage they had big screens so that you would see close ups of the ‘musicians’ while they ‘played’.

In the end it was definitely a spectacle. The visual effects were quite stunning. The sound was full, the beat rhythmic and trance inducing. The young audience seemed to be really enjoying it.

A bit more of the set up. Schiller consists of three people with 4 or 5 keyboard synthesizers and a few computer screens. No drums, no other instruments. Because of the close ups shown on the side screens you could see what these ‘musicians’ were actually doing. And it was close to nothing that resembled playing an instrument. The drumming was all loops, the music was all loops, and the melody, when there was one, would be very simple played with one hand, but mostly they would just touch one key and then play with dials with the other hand. Computers did almost all of it. For much of a ‘song’ two of the members wouldn’t barely touch a keyboard, just changing a base note of a chord every minute or so. There didn’t seem to be any correlation between what you were hearing and what they were doing. The young people liked it all the same. Have I become my dad?

In 1963 Bob Dylan wrote:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

I suspect Dylan wasn’t thinking about an age where musicians are actually just technicians. Not to say that to develop the visual effects and master the technology that generates full rhythmic sound without actually playing anything isn’t creative or taking skill. But are they rock and roll stars? I guess I shouldn’t criticize what I clearly don’t understand.

But I was entertained. And later they lit up the Palace with lasers, shifting colours and giving it a surreal feeling.

By Dennis

The day we came over the Transfagarasan was a long, tiring day of 103km to make it to our destination Corbeni, where we celebrated our milestone ride over a good dinner and bottle of tuica, a local spirit made of plums.

Our next destination was Gaesti, 98km away, and the wind gods were good to us with a strong tailwind pushing us along at 30+ km/hr most of the way. We stopped in Pitesti, a small city to gets Don’s bike fixed and were informed that this was the home town of Bianca Andreescu (the Canadian tennis star who just won the US open). It is not the first time we have heard her name mentioned, the Romanians are proud of her!

I know I should have stopped at the roadside shrines to thank them for yesterdays wind, as the wind gods were no longer kind to us on our day riding to Bucharest, with 83 km of headwinds all the way on mostly busy roads with no shoulders and heavy traffic.

Bucharest is a bustling city of over 2 million people with an interesting mix of old and new. It is not hard to find an old church next to a steel and glass tower that both sit next to a communist style building. And although parts of the central area are run down, other parts have modern malls, fine restaurants, fast food outlets (and lots of patisseries!) and a plethora of trendy young people. The traffic is horrendous, cars double park and the few bicycle lanes are unused, but the city has character.