XDDD If you can't beat them... Good way of learning a few Swedish folk songs!

Day 46 – Friday 9th of August – Stockholm (0km)

Crooford Place is the name of the hostel I was staying in, and it was the best hostel I had found on this trip. It was the last floor in a building that used to be a hospital, the other floors having been taken by an IT college from Stockholm University and a secondary school, so the place and the facilities it offered were more or less in line with many other hostels, what made my stay there so enjoyable was the people I met there.

Andrew, the Canadian guy I mentioned on the last post, was really nice and before I left in the morning to explore the city, we agreed to meet at the hostel later that evening and go for a . I did some food shopping for the next few days and then took the underground to the docks to find out where the ferry terminal was and what I had to do to get my motorbike on board. The previous night I had bought a ticket online for Sunday, but all I got was a reference number, no instructions whatsoever, so I wanted to get that sorted out as the ferry was leaving at 7 am and boarding was at 6 am and I did not want to be riding around so early without knowing where I had to go. Once I had got all the information from a very nice lady at the terminal, I headed to Gamla Stan, the island where the old part of town is, and spent the whole morning walking around and taking pictures, getting lost in its streets.





After that, I crossed into a smaller island that used to be the base of the navy and today has been reconverted for city use.



On the other side of the island there lots of historical ships that had been bought and restored by private owners and were part of a conservation society.



The day was quite cloudy and it drizzled from time to time, so by mid-afternoon I decided to get back to the hostel and see if I could get the laundry done. The day before I had met Andrés, a Colombian guy who was part of the staff. He had originally gone to Spain, where he had worked at Sony for several years until the crisis hit and he was made redundant. I was very surprised to find out that he had been living in Santa Coloma, where I had lived for many years before leaving my parent’s home, and that he was able to speak very good Catalan. He was a really nice guy and told me that there was a laundry about ten streets from there that cost 150 kr, but he would do my laundry in the washing machine they had in the staff living quarters.

While the laundry was getting done, Andrew came back to the hostel and told me that he had recruited more people to go out that night, some British girls that had just finished highschool and where travelling around Northern Europe. Back in the room we shared with four other people it had stopped raining and the sun had come out, and we saw that there was a ladder right outside our window, so we decided to explore where that lead. I was no longer in Russia, where Health and Safety is virtually non-existent, but in the extensive set of rules we had been told when we got to the hostel there was nothing against climbing to the roof, so we went for it. The ladder went up a couple of meters and then connected to a narrow metal walkway that went up to the roof pinnacle. The sun was hiding behind the buildings and we had a beautiful view of the whole city, we just sat down for a while and enjoyed the moment.

Back into the hostel, we chatted to other hosts and met a 17-year old boy from London who was on an Interrail trip, a French jewellery designer, a couple of Italians, a couple of Dutchmen, the girls from London, and two Russian girls, all really nice and easy-going people, the kind that make the hostelling experience so nice.

At night we took the underground and went on a mission to find a bar with cheap , no easy task in Stockholm, but in the end we managed to find a decent place where we stayed until they closed down, a bit too early, as we were having good fun. We decided to walk back to the hostel to save the underground ticket, one of the girls had a sore foot, but she had had enough to decide that walking back was a good idea.

Day 47 – Saturday 10th of August – Stockholm (0km)

One curious thing I noticed for the first time when I was living in the UK and that has been confirmed the further east and north I have been on this trip, is that in countries with bad or cold weather, people know how to make the most of sunny days much better than we do in Spain. We probably just take the good weather for granted and if we do not do something outdoors today, there will be plenty of time tomorrow or the next day, and it will surely be sunny. In cold countries, a sunny day, the summer, are an event, and you do not just let it escape.

So today, Andrés, the Colombian guy, had organized a barbecue for everybody in the hostel, which was very nice, as it was a very good way to help everybody there to socialize.

The day was just glorious, and I spent all of it walking around the city before going back and doing some shopping with Andrew.



We got burgers, hot dogs and , and when we came back to the hostel Andrés already had the grill going and people were gathering in the terrace. Everybody brought their own food and most people had something to share, Cedric, the French guy, had prepared a Thai soup that was delicious, and the Dutch guys had a bucket of ice-cream for dessert.

We had a great time and stayed out there until well after dark, when it started to get a bit cold and we moved the party indoors. By then most people had left to the center, as it was Saturday, and I spend a bit longer with Andrés and a couple of other guys in the kitchen before calling it a night, I had to wake up at 5 am to get the ferry the following morning.

Day 48 – Sunday 11th of August – Stockholm to Turku (247km – by ferry)

I had barely slept 4 hours by the time the alarm clock rang at 5 am, but I had 11 hours of ferry crossing ahead of me, so I thought that aside from catching up on the blog, I would also catch up on some sleep. I finished packing the few things I had not packed the night before as quietly as I could to try not to wake anybody up and as I was gathering my things, I found a very nice goodbye note from Andrew. There was nobody awake in the hostel, so I had a cup of coffee on my own in the kitchen and then rode the bike on deserted streets to the ferry terminal, ready to board the Baltic Princess just past 6 am.



The sun was already up and there were no clouds in the sky, the perfect day to spend on the deck of a ship. The good thing about being on a motorbike is that they board you first, so I had barely got to the queue when I was told to skip to the front next to a Russian biker, and we were among the first vehicles on board.



I left the motorbike a bit worried about it falling over if the sea was rough and went up to find a good place to seat. To my dismay, there was no sitting area, and as I had booked no cabin, it meant that I was not going to get any sleep. The only place where I could seat was the top deck, but fortunately the weather was very good, so it was not a problem. At 7:10, right on time, the ship started to move and we started the 11-hour crossing.



One hour into it I was already tremendously bored, and wondered what on Earth people found so great about going on a cruise. Writing for the blog and reading my book killed a few hours, but in the end what really saved me was discovering that there was WiFi connection, a very poor one, but enough to connect to Whatsapp and be able to catch up my loved ones. Spending the day on the road or socializing with people in hostel or hosts from CouchSurf does not leave much time left to chat with people online.

By noon, the ferry called at Aland, a big island between Sweden and Finland, and from the top deck I heard the rumbling sound of Harleys. I got up to see what was waiting to board and saw a big group of bikes on the harbor. It was the Turku MC, who had spent the weekend in Aland and were heading back home.



The rest of the day went by faster than I expected, and by the time the ship was approaching Helsinki, I was surprised to have had such a nice time on board. The sea had been very calm, so I did not get any motion sickness, despite the fact that I spent a lot of time staring at the computer screen, and we had not spent that much time in the open sea anyways, about two thirds of the trip had been among small islands on the coasts of Sweden, Aland and Finland.



Half an hour before docking all drivers were called down to the car deck, and when the doors started to open, about 40 Harleys started their engines at the same time. The resulting thunder reverberated in the cavernous car deck, setting off the alarms of every single car sitting there, it was madness.

I got to the hostel in only ten minutes, and since it was already late and Turku was a small residential city, with not much to see, had a shower and just went to bed, happy to think that the following afternoon I would be picking up my girlfriend from Helsinki airport.

Day 49 – Monday 12th of August – Turku to Helsinki (302km)

There were only 155km, not 302 between my hostel in Turku and the one we had booked in Helsinki, but I had to check out from the former at 10 am and could not check in in the latter until 3 pm. Rather than get there three hours early and have to wait at the door or a café nearby, as I was not going to go sightseeing around the city in full motorbike gear, I decided to take the scenic route and follow all the smallest roads I could find along the coast. The problem was that it was raining very hard, but once you are wet, it does not matter whether you spend one or three extra hours on the road, so I went for it.

Luckily, the rain stopped in about an hour, just as I left the main road and started following a smaller one down to the coast. I took what was called The King’s Road, an old mailing road from the 14th Century that went from Bergen, in Norway, to Vyborg, in Russia. The sun came out, the roads were dry and I found a gorgeous route along the coast that more than made up for the morning rain. If any of the bikers reading this are planning to travel to Finland one day, make sure you visit this bit of road.



I got to Helsinki at 3 pm sharp, and checked in at the hostel. They had an underground car park that cost 17€ a day, but the very, very nice girl at reception told me that since it was a motorbike, I could park it anywhere close to a wall as long as it did not take space in car lots and gave me the keys. My girlfriend’s flight was landing at 5 pm, so I had just the time to do some shopping for dinner and find a place to exchange money – some of the borders I had crossed had no exchange offices, on other occasions I was too much in a hurry to look for one, and I had accumulated currency from Romania, Russia, Kazakhstan and Norway I needed to change, as well as some US dollars I was carrying in case of an emergency that I was no longer going to need. I was surprised to find that once I had exchanged all that back to euros, I had a nice extra bit of money I was not counting on.

At half past five, I got to the airport and found my girlfriend already waiting for me. It had been a month and a half since I had last seen her, and although travelling alone had not meant being lonely, as I had met a lot of wonderful people on my way, I had missed her a lot, and I was very happy that my change of route after the incident with the rim meant that we could get to spend more time together on holiday than we had originally thought. My trip so far had been quite an adventure, but I would not really call it a holiday, as it had been physically and mentally exhausting, and I had the feeling that now my real holidays were about to begin.

She had been in Helsinki twice already, so for the rest of my day she was my guide, and we visited the old part of town, which was beautiful. It was not raining, but the city had that very special light you only get to see when the sky is covered in really dark clouds but the sun has already started to go down and it shines under the clouds, lighting everything against the dark sky.



Back in the hostel, we redistributed all the luggage to make the best of the available space to get ready to hit the road for the last part of my trip – the following day we were going to take the ferry and cross to Tallinn, Estonia, to visit the Baltic States.

Day 50 – Tuesday 13th of August – Helsinki to Tallinn (86km – by ferry)

This was going to be my girlfriend’s first long trip on the motorbike, or for that matter, her very first trip on a motorbike, and crossing Europe from north to south was quite a bit like throwing her at the deep end of the pool with no warning. It was going to be a make or break trip, so I was hoping for good weather, even though I was not exactly optimistic about the dark clouds we had seen the day before.

Sure enough, as we rode out of the hostel and into heavy traffic, it started to rain. There was a huge traffic jam on the way to the ferry terminal, and what had to be a ten-minute ride was taking so long that I was afraid we would miss the ferry. If I had been in Russia, I would just have ridden onto the pavement and to hell with it, but we were in law-abiding Finland and there was no space to filter between cars, so I just had to inch forward patiently just like everybody else. In the end we made it to the terminal just in time to board and park the bike in front of a lorry. The rain was getting heavier and this crossing was on open sea, unlike the one from Stockholm, so I asked for some straps and tied the bike down just in case.



By the time we got to the top deck and the ferry was leaving, the rain was pouring down and there was a gale force wind. Fortunately, this ship had a bigger covered area on the top deck, so we were sheltered from the rain despite not having a cabin.

In less than three hours we were riding off the ferry in lighter rain and quickly found the hostel in Tallinn, right in front of one of the gates in the old town walls.There was parking space right on the door, and as it was just the bike, they did not charge us for it.



We dropped our bags and just as the rain had stopped, went to explore the old town. Unlike other European cities which are popular tourist destinations, I did not know anybody who had been here before, so I did not know what to expect of the city nor the country. Being an ex-soviet republic, I was expecting something quite gray, Russian-style, but it turned out to be a beautiful, city – the old town was charming, narrow winding medieval streets on a hill with views to a nice, modern, taken care of city.



We spent the afternoon walking around and then headed for a pub to have a pint of the local black , which was delicious.



Before going back to the hostel, we did some shopping (including superglue to repair my sandals) and then looked for a cheap place to have dinner out. This was a luxury I had not been able to afford since Russia, since prices in Scandinavian countries were ridiculously high, so it was a pleasure to find a cozy place where we had dumplings, salad, chicken Kiev, a pint of and dessert for 7€. I love Eastern Europe.

Day 51 – Wednesday 14th of August – Tallinn to Riga (315km)

In more than a month and a half I had parked my bike in lots of different places, from car parks with 24h surveillance to alleys in Russia to the desert in Kazakhstan, and never had a single problem; it was back in the EU, and because of a stupid oversight, that I had something stolen for the first time. It had been raining, I was tired and looking forward to a warm, dry room… I could give lots of excuses, but there is no escaping that it was my fault that I put the padlocks on the panniers when we got to Tallinn but forgot to check whether they were locked, and they were not. When we walked out of the hostel with our bags today to get ready to get on the bike, someone had taken the inner bag from the right side pannier. It contained the toolkit, the air compressor for the tires, the 12v chargers for the laptop and the camera, the broken petrol stove, as well as assorted bits and pieces such as rags, plastic bags, some ROK straps… nothing that was not easily replaceable, but all the same annoying to have stolen.

We took it the best way possible, determined not to let it spoil our holidays, and on the way to Riga I bought some basic tools on a petrol station. The day was cloudy, and the rain came and went all the way to our hostel in Latvia’s capital, an old building near the train station on the limit of the old town that looked like a classic New York tenement building out of an old police thriller. Despite the looks of the place, there were several IT companies based on the building, and the car park in the inner court where we were told to park the bike had CCTV surveillance, which was reassuring after the events of the previous night.



The impression I got from Riga when compared to Tallinn was a bit like comparing Brugge and Gant in Belgium. The former was a quaint place, all old streets and buildings, perfectly maintained or restored, spotlessly clean streets, almost as if it had been built as a tourist attraction, lacking a bit in real life in its streets, while the latter was a more lively place, also old and historical, but with real people and real life in it. We tried something called Black Balsam, a very strong herbal liquor, in a terrace where there was a swing band playing live, which later on gave way to a group playing jazz, pop and rock covers, with a singer who had a velvety voice that was perfect to make that place and moment one of those memories that you treasure back home, years later.



Since replacing the tools had put a dent in my budget, that night we had a pizza back at the hostel and went to bed early. The following day we had a short ride to Vilnius, less than 300km, which would be a nice change from the long rides I had been doing for most of the summer.

Day 52 – Thursday 15th of August – Riga to Vilnius (315km)

The weather was gradually getting better as we made our way south to the last of the Baltic republics, Lithuania, but there was still some rain before we got to Vilnius. The outskirts of the city and the roads looked a bit more like what I had come to expect from a country that had been on the other side of the iron curtain, but the city itself was modern and big, bigger than Tallinn and Riga, or at least it seemed to be bigger. Like in Astrakhan, several old, traditional wooden buildings had survived in the center, and our hostel was one of them, or rather several of them – reception and some of the rooms were in the main building, and other rooms, including ours, were in older wooden buildings. We were able to park the bike in the courtyard, away from the street.



Vilnius was probably my favourite of the three cities we had visited, as it combined what I had liked of the other two in the right measures – the old town was quaint and charming, but not artificially so, it was a lively place, with lots of very appealing little wine bars with terraces on narrow, cobbled alleys, it had big parks, tree-covered hills and a river and a canal flowing along the borders of the old town.



We visited all of it, found a place where we had wonderful traditional Lithuanian food for lunch and on the way back to the hostel bought a bottle of white French wine that we drank in the hostel’s garden as it was getting dark.

Day 53 – Friday 16th of August – Vilnius to Warsaw (477km)

Maybe it was because the travelling was taking its toll on me, but today was one of the worst days of riding so far, and it should not objectively have been so. We got off to a great start – it was not raining anymore, temperatures were up and the sun was shining. The road out of Lithuania and into Poland took us through deep forests, so the landscape was great, and the road itself in very good condition, but the moment we crossed the border the day quickly changed for the worse. The landscape was still beautiful and the road was good, the problem is that I would not call it a road, it was rather a 400-kilometer long truck maneuver yard. I had never seen so many trucks on the road, not even in Russia, it seemed that 90% of the Polish population were truck drivers, and being stuck behind them was horrible. It was the same story on the oncoming lane, so I could not overtake them, I had to ride behind them, paying attention to keeping a safe gap, which meant not enjoying any of the landscape, while they lumbered at a snail’s pace down the road, belching black smoke into my face, and worst of all, since a truck has even worse aerodynamics than a brick, I had to suffer being buffeted about in the turbulence they generated.

Getting to Warsaw was a horrible ride, so I was very glad to find that there was no rush hour traffic and it was very easy to get to the hostel in spite of the size of the city. It had been a long day, and by the time we had unloaded and had a shower, it was starting to get dark, so we did not really have much time to visit the city, and I must say it was a real pity.



Here was another city we were not expecting much from, since any Pole you talked to recommended visiting Krakow and skipping Warsaw, but while it may not have the old town charm of other European cities, it is still a vibrant place, with lots to offer, and I regretted not having a couple of days to try some of the bars and restaurants in the area where the hostel was located.



The hostel itself was really nice, and when we came back to it after having had a wonderful traditional Polish dinner in the center, we found the girl from the night shift having a cigarette out on the street; she asked whether we were the ones travelling by bike (it was parked on the front door) and said that she had been looking at all the country stickers. We chatted a bit with her, and she said that it was really nice to see couples who had the thirst for adventure to go on such trips.

Day 54 – Saturday 17th of August – Warsaw to Krakow (297km)

Maybe the road from Vilnius to Warsaw was part of some main route linking western Europe to the Baltic countries and from there Scandinavia via ferry, but the fact is that from Warsaw to Krakow the traffic was a lot lighter and we got there without anything to report except for a long queue at the entrance of the city caused by some road works that cut traffic on one lane, and that was quickly dealt with via some Russian-style riding on the hard shoulder to cut to the front.

The hostel was right on the old town and the manager let us take the bike through the doorway and into the backyard of the building, where I had space to clean and grease the chain. Squeezing it through the doorway meant I had to remove both aluminum panniers, but it was much better than leaving it on the street. After that we went out to visit the old town and the market square, and seeing that there were sales on one of my favourite clothes shops, I took the chance to get a new shirt, as the clothes I had brought with me on the trip were not really suited to walk around cities or go out for a beer at night, since I had originally planned to visit less populated areas.



I had been in Krakow a long time ago, fresh from my first year at university and still very green at travelling, and it was curious to see how different I saw things with a lot more experience in my backpack. When I was first here I saw a city that was very different from what I knew in Europe, a bit intimidating, and especially around the train station area, not very safe. It was Eastern Europe before the UE, the Euro, we were much less connected than now, no mobiles, no internet… Coming back after having been to Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan and having found them to be perfectly safe and nice countries to visit, Krakow felt Western European a city as any. The market square was as beautiful as I remembered, albeit with a lot more people visiting it, and there were a lot more trendy bars and restaurants in the back streets. Being Saturday, we went out for dinner to a nice restaurant, but it was different from the time when my two friends and I were the only tourists having dinner in a restaurant in the market square.



Back at the hostel, I went to check the bike and saw that it had company – there was another V-Strom parked next to it with Italian plates. I imagined that the rider or riders were also staying at our hostel, but we were only staying there for a night and we did not meet them.

Day 55 – Sunday 18th of August – Krakow to Budapest (393km)

Poor Slovakia. It is a beautiful country, with some of the best roads and landscapes I have seen on this trip, but it only gets a few lines and some pictures that do not do it any justice at all.

Our next stop was Budapest, which meant that we were going to cross Slovakia from north to south to get there but we would not spend a night in the country, so everything we saw was from the road. It made a great impression, the road was really enjoyable and there was very little traffic, so we had a great time riding through it.



Also, I would like to congratulate the driver of a dark gray Suzuki Gran Vitara for his excellent driving manners. I was going to say ’99.9% of drivers…’ and most people who know me would think I am exaggerating, as I usually do, but if you take into account that I have been driving or riding for 15 years and have only seen two drivers behave like this, maybe even 99.9% is too low a figure. Anyway, 99.9% of drivers can drive fast on a straight line, any idiot can drive a modern car fast in straight line – they just have to put their foot down and the car goes, not much more to it. However, the moment they see a corner approaching, they slow down to an irritating crawl, apparently thinking that their 60.000-thousand euro Audis equipped with a whole alphabet of safety acronyms are going to suddenly decide to fly off the road and send them and their beloved families through the gates of hell engulfed in a fire ball if they take the corner at anything other than walking pace. These are the most annoying people you can find on the road, as you are trapped behind them, suffering their total lack of driving skills, but the moment the road becomes straight and you have a chance to overtake them, the very limited part of their brains related to driving that controls their right foot makes the connection ‘straight line – safe’ and they floor it and disappear until they find the next corner. There is an extremely rare type of driver, however, that is aware that there are other people using the road, people who might want to travel faster than them on corners, and who tries to be as little of an annoyance as possible, This driver will go around corners at a reasonable speed in order not to make much of a nuisance of himself, but come a straight bit of road, he will slow down to let you pass. So thanks very much whoever was driving that Suzuki, and if there were more drivers like you in the world, the roads would be a much nicer place.

We stopped a few times in Slovakia for petrol, some food, an ice-cream, the country sticker, etc. and made it to Budapest in the early evening. We went back to that wonderful place that is BikerCamp, and before putting up the tent or even thinking about doing some shopping for dinner, I had a shower and we sat down to chat with some Italian bikers and enjoy a few beers.

Unfortunately, this meant that by the time we thought about the shopping, the supermarket was closed, so we had to go to one of those 24h grocery stores that always seem to have a few dodgy characters at the door drinking beer 24/7. Once we had filled the basket and were going to pay, they told us that they did not accept credit cards, and we did not have any local currency, so we had to leave the food there, find an ATM and then go back, all with an empty stomach and five beers affecting our reasoning ability.

In the end we managed to cook a meal that properly restored our energy (bacon, lots of bacon), and then went back to the beer and the interesting conversation.

Day 56 – Monday 19th of August – Budapest (0km)

I had already visited Budapest at the beginning of my trip, so now that I was back in the city there was only one thing I wanted to do, one thing I had not had time to do on my previous stay in the city – go to one of the city’s bath, and spend the day doing nothing but relaxing.

Well, there were in fact a couple of other things I wanted to do, but in the end only managed to do one of them. I needed to replace the rear brake pads and to tighten the chain, and I had been waiting to get to BikerCamp to do so, as there is space to work and you can borrow tools (which I no longer had after Tallinn…). Sleeping in a tent means that you wake up with the sun, so I was up early and had time to do that in the morning.



The second thing I wanted to do was find a motorbike shop to buy a kidney belt, as my back was starting to feel the time on the road and I could no longer ride +200km non-stop, but this proved to be impossible. It was a national holiday and there was also a folk festival going on in the city, so everything but a few supermarkets was closed. Instead of going shopping we went for a walk in the city, but we could not go up to the citadelle, as there was the folk festival going on and we had to buy a ticket.



It was a bit of a relief, mind you, as it was way to hot to walk all the way up. We had lunch and then splashed out on a wonderful frapuccino before heading for the baths.

There were several places to chose from, and in the end we settled for the Gellert baths, which were popular, in a very interesting building and had been recommended by a friend. The place was enormous, with several indoor and outdoor swimming and bathing pools, and after being kicked out from the indoor swimming pool for not wearing a cap, we went to the outdoor thermal bathing pool. The water was at a very pleasant 36ºC and there were water jets where I could massage my sore back, so we spent the rest of the day there, just relaxing, until it was closing time.



By the time we left the place it was already dark, and the air was cool, so we decided to walk back to the camp instead of taking the metro. It had been one of the best days of the whole trip.

We did some shopping on our way and after dinner we found a hostel for our next destination – Belgrade. I was very excited about the following day, we were going to be out of the EU again and into a part of Europe that I had never seen before.

Day 57 – Tuesday 20th of August – Budapest to Belgrade (379km)

It was a long way from Budapest to Belgrade, so we had decided to take the motorway. I had ridden most of that road on my way to Romania, and since it was about 500km to Ighiu and I wanted to take mountain roads once on the Romanian side, I had also taken the motorway and paid for a matrika, the vignette that allows you to use it. As this time we were trying to save as much money as possible, I decided to risk it and not pay for it. In any case, we had come all the way across Poland and the northern part of Hungary without getting one and nobody had stopped us (motorbikes were exempt from road tax in Slovakia). The ride to the border was quick and uneventful, at a point there were a few drops of rain, but seeing that it was sunny ahead I did not stop to put the rain gear on, and in a couple of hours we were at the border.

I had crossed 9 borders without stopping since leaving Russia and was getting used to the convenience of travelling within the EU, so I had almost forgotten the hassle of waiting for your passport and the bike’s documents to be checked while sitting in the sun in full riding gear. Fortunately, it did not take long, and we were handed back the stamped passports and a leaflet warning about police corruption with a hotline number to call in case we were stopped and had problems with the local police. Nice welcome.



I had learned to trust first impressions when crossing into a new country based on lots of factors – landscape, border guards, drivers’ behavior, and gut feeling in general, and I got the impression that Serbia was a country that I was not going to enjoy much. We stopped for petrol and a couple of coffees at the first service station we found, and a man driving a BMW came over to say hello. He was from Liverpool, and was travelling to Bulgaria for the holiday with his wife, who was from there, and his mother-in-law. He was very enthusiastic about our trip and wished us the best of luck. For most of the ride to Belgrade, the landscape were flat, dull, sun-scorched fields, and the boredom was only momentarily broken by the occasional bit of road under maintenance. We stopped for one last break in another service station, where I bought a country sticker and had a chat with three boys who worked there, who also asked about the trip and said half jokingly half seriously that it would not be a good idea to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia with a Serbian sticker on the bike.

By the time we got to Belgrade the sun was a dull shade of gray, and it was unbearably hot, which did not help much with the first impression I got from the city. Things got a lot worse when, right after crossing a bridge over the Danube, the GPS said that we were only a few meters from the hostel. We were on a five-lane street, three lanes going up and two going down, with very narrow sidewalks, lined with tall buildings covered in thick dark grey soot from the traffic fumes, with absolutely nowhere to stop and no way of taking a U-turn to reach the hostel front door, which was on the opposite side of the street. The only thing I could do was to ride on and look for a place to turn around.

If you are planning to visit Belgrade by car or motorbike, don’t. Seriously. It is much worse than anything I saw in Russia or Ukraine. At least there, you could get around the traffic and pretty much do anything you needed to do to get to your destination – U-turns, riding on the pavement, parking anywhere – but Belgrade was full of traffic, there were traffic cops everywhere handing out fines to drivers who stopped anywhere that was not allowed, and it was not allowed virtually everywhere in the center. To make matters worse, there was no logic at all to the streets layout, and it was impossible to navigate your way back to a certain point once you had ridden past it, everything was no way, no turning, no stopping, no parking, no entrance, pedestrian area, dead ends… It was a nightmare. It took us a very long time to find a way to get back to the hostel street the right way, and when we managed to do it, I just put the motorbike on the pavement, effectively blocking people’s way and only inches away from speeding buses. Nat when to check we had got the correct address – in true Soviet style, there was no sign anywhere indicating there was a hostel there – and I prayed that no cop would decide to fine me in the meantime. She came back with bad news – there was nowhere to park the motorbike nearby. There was a shopping center, but it was on the other side of the river, and the girl at reception had no idea whether we could leave the bike there overnight. Hot, irritated and tired, I unloaded the bike while the buses charged down the street and then programmed the GPS to find the nearest car park. At that point I did not care how much it might cost to leave the bike there for the night. It indicated that there was one on the street just behind the building, but it took me a long time again to find a way to access that street. I finally made it to a multi-storey car park which did not seem to have much in the way of surveillance, made sure everything lockable was locked and chained it to a column. I got back to the hostel sweaty, tired, and with a deep dislike for the city. After a cold shower we went out for the rest of the afternoon and evening to visit the city, but I came to the conclusion that it had nothing to offer that justified the misery of riding or driving into it. And that is the first time on this trip I have felt this way.

Day 58 – Wednesday 21st of August – Belgrade to Sarajevo (388km)

388 kilometers. It is not that much when compared to other days. I had been riding long enough and found roads that were bad enough to know that I could not afford to be too optimistic when calculating distance and time, but I was confident that we could make it to Sarajevo in good time to visit the city. It is a place with a history that is harrowing yet strangely fascinating at the same time, and I was very much looking forward to see with my own eyes a city I had read so much about. Alas, it was not to be.

I had already mentioned that among the things that we got stolen in Tallinn were the chargers for the camera. I had three batteries and along the trip had discovered that they lasted much, much longer than I thought, but the previous day the last of them was running low, so I was about to be left without a camera for one of the most interesting parts of the trip. After checking out we tried to get to a part of the center where the guy who ran the hostel had told us we might find a shop that sold what we needed, but as it was to be expected, it was impossible on the bike. We gave up and decided to leave as it was already getting late. Right after crossing the bridge, we saw the shopping center the girl at reception had mentioned the day before, so we decided to stop and have one last go at finding a charger. There was only one electronics shop and I was told that the only two things I could do was to try and Google the Serbian distributor for Canon or go to a shop in the center where I could… wait for it… get a charger made. Resigned to not having a camera for the time being, and seeing that it was almost midday, I decided to leave.

Getting out of Belgrade turned out to be as much of a nightmare as getting in, and we lost a lot of time. Once on the open road, things were not much better, there was not a lot of traffic, but Serbians take things very easy behind the wheel, and nobody was in much of a hurry to overtake the trucks, so we made slow progress for the first 150km, until we got to a crossroads where I stopped for fuel and then, following the petrol station staff’s advice on which route had less traffic, took a smaller road to the border. We went to several small cities and villages that looked more as if they belonged in Siberia than in Europe, and the only interesting bit of road came when we finally got to the kind of hills I had been expecting to find in this country, already near the border. I had a bit fun there, but the day was cloudy and I was too cold and tired to really enjoy it, and Nat was freezing. To make things worse, a few kilometers from the border we missed a turning that was not as obvious as it should have been for a road leading to a major international border crossing, since I was concentrating on safely passing an idiot on a silver Polo that had been slowing down a line of ten cars and as we got to an uphill section with a passing lane, had suddenly decided he wanted to drive much faster. As a result of that, we drove for several kilometers the wrong way before finding a place to stop, check the paper map against the GPS, find out where we were and ride back to the crossroads.



By the time we got to the border it was already late, we had more than 150km to get to Sarajevo and we were both cold and tired. However, just as crossing from Hungary into Serbia the vibes I got from the new country changed, things changed again riding into Bosnia and Herzegovina, and this time for the better, despite the looks of the border on the Bosnian side, which was nothing more than a few metal sheds.

We met a couple of Germans riding on a GS650 and chatted to them while waiting to cross the border, which always makes you feel better on the road, then the sun came out and the Bosnian border guard came back with our passports, gave us a friendly smile and waved us past the boom and into a gorgeous landscape. The road from the border was simply amazing – it followed a canyon on the river Drina and I immediately fell in love with the place. After a while we got away from the river and climbed into a landscape of rolling hills. This was the last new country I was going to visit in this trip, and it went to the top of my Most Beautiful European Countries together with Romania. We stopped one last time for petrol and when Nat went to pay and buy a country sticker she was greeted with lots of friendly questions about the trip, the guys at the petrol station had seen all the other stickers on the panniers and wanted to know if she had been to all those countries. I rode to Sarajevo in the sunset, waving back at little kids in small villages that made gestures for us to rev up the bike. A gentle twist of the throttle provoked wide smiles.

We got to Sarajevo as it was getting dark, and I was pleased to see that it was a lot more relaxed than Belgrade regarding traffic. While the streets were busy with traffic, drivers did not seem to be at all stressed, and there were cars and bikes parked everywhere and not a single traffic cop in sight. I immediately found the looks of the city fascinating, it had a mix of Muslim and Western cultures I had not seen anywhere else in Europe, and I had not been stopped for more than five minutes before people offered help with directions. Nat went to check us in at the hostel and then came back with a woman who barely spoke any English at all, who gestured me to follow her on the bike and then set off with Nat on foot at a very brisk pace. I turned the motorbike around on the pavement, started it and rode the wrong way down the street, which did not seem to bother anybody else, not pedestrians nor drivers. I followed her across a small square, a couple of streets and a bridge, while she stopped the traffic with more determination than many traffic wardens I have seen. We eventually got to a small house and she gestured me to ride around the back, where I found a garage door that she opened from the inside to allow me to ride me ride the bike into a backyard and park it right under the window of what was going to be our bedroom for the night.

It had been quite a day, and Nat was exhausted and so cold that she just collapsed on the carpet and covered herself in several blankets while I went out to find some take away food that I could take back to the hostel to have for dinner before going to bed. The hostel was by the river in the old town, so I just walked out the door, crossed the river and found a pedestrian street that was so lively with cafés, restaurants and bars that the only thing I could do was go back to the hostel, get Nat up from the carpet and go out for dinner.

Day 59 – Thursday 22st of August – Sarajevo (0km)

The previous day we got to Sarajevo late, tired and cold, and I had resigned myself to not having time to visit the city, even though I really wanted to, so it was not very difficult to come to the decision of staying for an extra day while we were having dinner.

The following morning we told the woman who ran the guest house where we were staying and she said there was no problem. We went to visit the city I so much wanted to see and I was not disappointed; the good first impressions I had got the day before and I quickly fell in love with the place – the looks, the history, the people, the atmosphere… it worked its magic on me in a matter of minutes and I was hooked and determined to go back some day in the future and spend a holiday discovering the country.



We visited the Old Town, a permanent exhibition about the Srebenica massacre, the Martyr’s Memorial Cementery, some of the bridges over the Milijacka river…



Seeing how lively the city was, it was hard to imagine that not that long ago, between 1992 and 1995, the city had suffered the longest siege in modern war history, a siege that put its inhabitants under constant fear for their lives, living day in, day out under artillery and sniper’s fire from the Serbian troops in the hills surrounding the city. There are still scars if you look for them, virtually all buildings in the city suffered damaged during that period and the repairs are visible on some of them, while other still wear the scars left by the siege clearly on their walls.



The woman who owned the guest house where we were staying, Nadia, told us she had lost seven members of her family during the siege, but that previous to the war, all cultures had peacefully coexisted in city for ages and, according to her, all the hatred that sparked the war was caused solely by politicians.



In the afternoon we walked up a hill to see the city in the evening light, and found a viewing point in an old fortress overlooking the city where several locals had gathered to see the sunset. We spent some time there and on the way down, a kitten coming out from a nearby house drew our attention. I stopped and it came straight to me, which is unusual for most cats. It was one of those very rare cats that behave more like a dog, and it let us pick it up and stroke her, for it was a her.



We took her for a walk with us, and she was as happy as a kitten can be, purring loudly all the time. We called here Sara, for Sarajevo, and even toyed with the idea of staying in the city an extra day to get the proper paperwork done and take her with us back to Barcelona, but she was clean and well taken care of, it was clear that she lived in the house she had jumped out of, so in the end we let her go back to her owner.



We had dinner out that night too, and after that we went for a and sat down at a place with shisha pipes, where we spent a long time laughing and thinking about the last ride the following day, after which we would finally stop and rest for a few days.